Todd's Blog

Origins 2012 call for abstracts

2012-01-25T06:54:00.008-05:00

Origins 2012, the annual joint conference of the Creation Biology Society and the Creation Geology Society, will be held at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA on July 25-28, 2012. The CBS and CGS invite abstract submissions for Origins 2012. We seek submissions relevant to the life and earth sciences and the issue of origins. Submissions must offer positive, constructive interpretations or criticisms. Abstracts that are primarily negative or destructive in tone will not be accepted. All abstracts will be reviewed by an editor and at least one other specialist. Submissions will be judged on scientific merit, adherence to the guidelines, and relevance to creationism.

Abstracts are due April 1, 2012

For complete information, check the Origins 2012 call for abstracts.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Creation Science Symposium in California

2012-01-24T09:24:00.000-05:00

On February 18, 2012, I'll be speaking at The Master's College in California on the subject of "Biology and the Flood." This is part of their annual creation science symposium. This year's symposium features Steve Boyd of Master's, Andrew Snelling of AIG, and me. The afternoon technical session and workshop where I'll be speaking is open to the public for a registration fee of $35, which includes dinner with the speakers. The evening session that features just Boyd and Snelling is free. For more information, click the link below:

Master's College Creation Science Symposium

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Journal club: Trying something different

2012-01-17T11:20:00.000-05:00

When my annual turn at scheduling CORE's origins journal club came up this semester (Roger Sanders and I alternate semesters), I decided I wanted to try something different. Recall that the goal of journal club is to keep apprised of the latest publications relevant to the creation/evolution issue, especially publications by Bryan College faculty or students. Rather than just pick some interesting papers at random, I decided to shoot for an overarching theme. This may be the only time we ever have a journal club theme, but I thought it was worth trying. Our theme for this semester is "Faith and Science in Dialogue." Here's the schedule:

January 24: Special presentation by Michael Gulker. Michael Gulker is executive director of the Colossian Forum, and he will be presenting on the work of the Colossian Forum. According to their website:

In an age of increased fear and animosity over issues of science, faith and culture, The Colossian Forum reminds believers of the stunning truth, "all things hold together in Christ." (Colossians 1:17) In Christ, it need not be faith versus science, nor love versus truth. The Colossian Forum is dedicated to bringing this truth - of unity and, therefore, of reconciliation - to all who are separated by issues of science, culture and Christian faith.

This should be an excellent kick off for our dialogue theme.

February 7: Presentation by Todd Wood, Creationism and Evolution: Can there be a respectful disagreement? I'll be talking about my dialogue with Fayetteville State University paleontologist Phil Senter in the pages of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology over the evolution of dinosaurs and birds.

February 21: Discussion of "Evolution, the end of human uniqueness, and the election of the Imago Dei" by Joshua Moritz, led by Brian Eisenback. The paper we'll discuss here is an attempt by a theologian to integrate human evolution with the theological concept of the "Image of God." Moritz makes some interesting claims, and we'll have Bryan bio prof Brian Eisenback examine it and tell us what he thinks.

March 13: Discussion of Seven Days that Divide the World by John Lennox, led by Ken Turner. Lennox is a mathematician and philosopher, and he's written a book on interpreting Genesis. The book has mostly positive reviews on Amazon.com, and our own Old Testament prof Ken Turner will be giving us his take on Lennox's ideas.

The rest of the semester, I've reserved spots for student presentations (we have a LOT of student research going this semester).

Journal club meets at 5 pm Tuesday evenings in Mercer 137. Everyone is welcome.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Been busy

2012-01-12T08:41:00.000-05:00

Last semester when I turned in my grades, I was looking forward to blogging about some interesting stuff. But then something happened. I don't know exactly what, but words have just been tumbling out of me. Not words on the blog, of course. I've managed to write three papers (one completely from scratch) in the past month, and I'm in the middle of another one now. I feel like I need to channel this creativity into formal writing rather than just blogging, so things will be quiet around here for a while. In the meantime, allow me to divert your attention to Paul Garner's blog, in a cheap effort to pretend like I'm posting new content.

First, Paul's got a post on one of the weirdest and stubbornly persistent issues in biblical exegesis: Where did Cain get his wife? Fact is, the Bible doesn't say where Cain got his wife. If you want to read contradictions into Genesis, you can pretend that this is a huge problem and that the Bible must teach that there were other people besides the family of Adam and Eve. If you want to read Genesis as a consistent narrative, then you can take the textual hints that Eve was the mother of all living and that Adam and Eve had sons and daughters, and deduce that Cain married his sister. Either way you go, it's an interpretation of information the Bible doesn't actually give us.

In another post, Paul announces the debut of Set in Stone: Evidence for Earth's Catastrophic Past, a DVD he's been working on for some time. Those at Origins 2011 got a sneak peak at this video, and now it's available to order (presumably just for UK DVD players? I don't know.) Here's a (suitably dramatic) trailer:

I'm always skeptical of "fact-filled" things, but in this case, I quite liked the video.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Bryan and science

2012-01-10T11:06:00.000-05:00

I was recently asked to write an essay on William Jennings Bryan's views on science for the college's magazine Bryan Life. So I did. The outcome was kind of surprising and kind of not surprising, and the essay I've written will probably induce some scoffing among certain folk (you know who you are). In case you don't get Bryan Life, here's a link to the essay (beware, it's a 3.5 Mb download):

W.J. Bryan and Science: science and anti-science in Bryan's progressive crusades

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

I'm back!

2012-01-03T10:09:00.000-05:00

I had a lovely break, but now I'm back and busy finishing up some writing projects. Thanks to all who wrote about Jeff's new ARJ paper, which you can find here. I know that many of you would like to know what I think about this, but unfortunately, I just have too much on my plate right now. I admit that my ego wants me to respond RIGHT NOW, but I think it's always safer not to listen to my ego.

I got some really good comments on my last post, and I intend to act on them presently. Thanks again, and keep watching this site (perhaps this week) for a new feature.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-21T09:56:00.000-05:00

You might not have noticed, but I've been blogging now for three years. In my first blog post, I wrote:

... some blogs are nothing more than opinionated (sometimes bigoted) outlets for people to spew their irrationality onto the internet. But some blogs aren't always bad, and there is some utility in them, the most obvious of which is keeping up with obscure news. That's what inspired me to start this blog. (Imagine that: blog hater to blogger in under a year. What's the world coming to?)

Guess what? Not much has changed. I'm continually amazed at the ways my writing gets misinterpreted, eisegeted (is that a word?), warped, twisted, etc. I've certainly made a lot of people angry because of what I've written, and my enemy list is probably longer than it was.

On the other hand, I've made a lot of new friends thanks to this blog. I've always wanted this to be a haven from the cocksure arrogance that characterizes many people involved in the creation/evolution war. I haven't always succeeded. I've definitely gotten carried away on occasion, but for the most part I think I've created a place for those who just aren't sure what to make of this whole debate. I'm glad for that, and I'm grateful for all your encouragement. Thanks for your kind feedback.

What's coming for the new year? I have a lot of research projects that I want to get done. I say that every year about this time, and then I don't get everything done that I hoped. But I seem to be on a roll this year. In the past two weeks, I've finished two papers that I was working on this fall, and I've started a new one. I'm getting ready to finish the research for a very (VERY) large project, and I've got plans for a few contributions to the next ICC. To top it all off, I've got three student research projects to supervise in the spring semester. Sounds like a lot on my plate, but I love it. It's what I'm here for.

Some of you have written to inquire what I meant back in October when I wrote,

I've been pondering that question a lot lately, and I've been taking a long, hard look at my own involvement in the creation/evolution debate. I don't mind saying that I'm reconsidering a lot of things, and there will probably be some important changes coming before the end of the year. Stay tuned, I guarantee it'll be fun!

Some readers have been worried about what that meant, but the "important changes" referred to how the blog was run and what kinds of things I posted about. Part of the "reconsidering" was revealed in my essay for the Colossian Forum. In the future I want to make this blog more overtly edifying than it has been, but I'm still not sure how to do that. If you have suggestions, I'd be grateful to hear them.

Finally, I pray that you will have a blessed Christmas. I should probably encourage you to think about "the true meaning of Christmas," but that phrase seems so trite, doesn't it? Instead, I'll just ask you to be grateful. Jesus would rather die than live without you. What an amazing blessing that is!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Bats and ebola

2011-12-13T09:49:00.000-05:00

Ebola is a nasty disease. Sufferers endure a high fever and severe internal bleeding from every mucus membrane in the body. Depending on the strain, it can kill as many as 90% of its victims. A 2007 outbreak in the Congo killed 186 of 264 people who contracted the ebola virus (71%). The puzzle is how something so virulent manages to survive.

Think about it: Any disease-causing organism (called a pathogen) is completing some kind of life cycle in its host. That means that the pathogen is using the host as an environment to produce offspring (or for some pathogens to mature to a form that can produce offspring somewhere else). In some cases the host is actually required for the pathogen to complete its life cycle. So it's actually in the pathogen's best interest not to kill its host. Do that, and there won't be any baby pathogens. For pathogens that kill their hosts quickly, there must be some other place that the pathogen hides out when not causing disease. For example, the anthrax bacterium, which can efficiently kill people in about 24 hours, normally lives in the soil. What about the ebola virus?

Bats have long been considered the "reservoir" of the ebola viruses, and a 2005 paper from Leroy et al. found indirect evidence of ebola virus infections in fruit bats. More recently, a research group from SUNY Buffalo found actual ebola-like genes in the genomes of certain bats, rodents, and insectivores, which implies that ebola's been hiding out in more than just bats. I commented on this research last year.

Now the same group is back with a paper that indicates that these virus genes might in some way be functional to the mammals that have them. Their research was done using evolutionary and comparative methods, but I think the basic message is probably the same for creationists: The virus genes in Myotis bat species still have "open reading frames," even though they appear to have been integrated into the host genome before Myotis diversified into multiple species. Usually when extra DNA is integrated into a host genome, it tends to break down due to mutations that build up randomly in the DNA sequence. In this case, there seems to be a mysterious lack of mutations that would disable a gene, which is what we might expect from DNA sequences of no use to the host.

When discussing this research last year, I wondered,

What we would really like to know is whether any of these putative insertions exist at homologous chromosomal sites in mammals that are likely to be of different baramins. That would suggest that they were created there rather than inserted.

This new report confirms that the inserts in some rodents are "positionally homologous," which would imply that they were created at that spot. So bats and some rodents were created with ebola genes? Fascinating!

Longtime readers will recall Liu and Soper's exogenation hypothesis for the origin of viruses. They proposed that endogenous retroviruses were originally part of mammalian genomes that escaped and caused trouble. Could we now add ebola viruses to that list as well?

Something to think about.

Taylor et al. 2011. Evolutionary maintenance of filovirus-like genes in bat genomes. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11:336.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Moritz on the Adam/Eve debate

2011-12-09T07:17:00.003-05:00

In the latest issue of Theology and Science, Joshua Moritz has a fascinating editorial on the Adam and Eve debate sparked (in part) by the papers published in PSCF. I found a lot in the editorial that I liked, as well as some things that were baffling and frustrating. But let's focus on the nice stuff, shall we? Here's his take on the state of the debate with regard to the notion of "literalism" or "concordism:"

...anyone who has followed the recent conversation/debate between Evangelical Christian and Conservative Reformed leaders and scholars on the question of human evolution and the historical Adam could not help but notice the ubiquitous - and often derisive - use of the terms "concordism" and "biblical literalism." According to the majority of scholars in this discussion, both "concordism" and "biblical literalism" are hermeneutical perspectives that are to be avoided at all costs.

Ain't that the truth? I think he's caught on to a little hypocrisy here. I can certainly understand when an Evangelical evolutionist complains that creationists treat them poorly, but what about when those same folks turn around and talk about creationists like we're a disease to be eradicated? The "intellectual catastrophe of fundamentalism?" My brothers and sisters, these things ought not be. I think we can all stand to work on our ability to dialogue in a respectful and Christian way.

Anyway, Moritz wonders what a "literalist" even is, which is something I've wondered myself. I certainly don't consider myself a "literalist," and I wince every time I hear a fellow creationist describe our hermeneutic as "literalist." It isn't that simple by any measure. After discussing some historical examples, Moritz proposes a more clear way of thinking about creationist hermeneutics:

In light of the history of literalist hermeneutics, I thus suggest that a less pejorative and more accurate way to think of biblical literalism is the following: with regard to passages of scripture that are not obviously poetic or parable, the essence of biblical literalism consists in adopting a narrative approach to scripture (where the biblical text is basically read as an internally consistent narrative) and then going on to understand the details of the narrative as objectively true in the historical and scientiﬁc senses. This narrative-literal hermeneutic is a non-pejorative understanding of biblical literalism that I believe captures the core of what is going on in the minds of self-confessed scriptural literalists throughout Christian history.

I think I can live with that, as long as we recognize that the "objectively true" bit is not necessarily always clear. I'm still not thrilled with the "literal" in narrative-literal, but this is definitely progress.

Moritz then goes through a summary of interpretive opinion from modern critical scholarship that he claims is the "literal" reading of Genesis, several points of which I think are nothing of the sort. I fear Moritz here has fallen victim to his own theological tradition (of critical scholarship) coloring his reading of Genesis, which is what he warns us about earlier in the essay.

That drawback aside, his essay concludes with this really nice warning that I agree with 100%:

...I would caution theologians and believers of every confessional tradition, who in their eagerness to throw out all hints of concordism, by so doing manage to discard all hope of meaningful dialogue between theology and the natural sciences. If one is not to venture down the well-trodden path of neo-orthodoxy or existentialism, where scripture is said to make no claims whatsoever with regard to actual history or the structure of natural reality - a destination where many contemporary Evangelical scholars ironically seem to have unwittingly arrived - then one is forced to do the hard work of ﬁguring out exactly which details of scripture concerning the objective world are theologically signiﬁcant (or at least have been central throughout theological history) and which can be (or have been) relegated to the status of adiaphora.

(For the uninitiated like me, adiaphora is "a concept of Stoic philosophy that indicates things outside of moral law.")

If you can, this essay is worth reading. Especially you BioLogos fans (I know you're reading me!).

Moritz. 2011. The Search for Adam Revisited: Evolution, Biblical Literalism, and the Question of Human Uniqueness. Theology and Science 4:367-377.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Testing common ancestry again

2011-12-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

At last, the semester winds to a close here at Bryan! What a relief (as my students will no doubt attest). I have four more exams to give and grade, and then I'm done. That's a lot of grading in the next week, but I'm looking forward to getting back to research projects of great interest to me (especially my response to Senter). And in the next few weeks, I'll be cleaning out my backlog of "interesting things I ought to blog about."

Longtime readers might recall an interesting paper by Doug Theobald on "A Formal Test of the Theory of Universal Common Ancestry." In my assessment of the original paper, I expressed some doubts about his methodology, especially since there is no good model for "independent ancestry." Soon after, Koonin and Wolf published a response in which they dismissed Theobald's claims as a trivial consequence of sequence similarity. I initially reacted optimistically to this, but after giving it some thought, I realized that Koonin and Wolf's argument wasn't as good as I initially thought it was. Here's what I wrote about a year ago:

The problem as I've come to see it is this notion of eliminating "phylogenetic signal." By scrambling the sequences the way they do, Koonin and Wolf eliminate the "signal" that supports a bifurcating tree. BUT that's not the only tree possible. If their sequences are truly randomized as they describe, then they are modeling a star phylogeny, which is still a phylogeny.

Now Theobald has a response in the same journal, and here's a snippet:

...lacking hierarchical structure does not necessarily imply that the sequences are independent evolutionary inventions (though a lack of phylogenetic structure may decrease the probability of common ancestry relative to competing hypotheses that predict a lack of structure). As mentioned earlier, star trees are bona fide common ancestry models that lack hierarchical structure. A star tree is a phylogeny, after all.

Hey, that sounds familiar! His conclusion:

It is always possible that a biological model may be proposed in the future that explains the data better than the UCA models. Clearly I have not tested all possible models, especially those yet to be developed. I emphasize again here, as I have elsewhere [120], that I have not provided absolute "proof" of UCA. Proof is for mathematics and whiskey; it is not found in science. Nevertheless, these results provide strong evidence for UCA, given the hypotheses and sequence data currently available.

I can live with that.

The paper contains a fascinating look at basic statistics, including a critique of frequentist statistical tests. As one educated in the frequentist school, I'm going to have to ponder that one. If you're into this kind of thing, I strongly recommend reading the full article.

Theobald. 2011. On universal common ancestry, sequence similarity, and phylogenetic structure: The sins of P-values and the virtues of Bayesian evidence. Biology Direct 6:60.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Call for Abstracts - Seventh ICC

2011-12-06T15:47:00.000-05:00

I was wondering if there was even going to be a seventh ICC, but apparently there is. I just got the call for abstracts from a colleague in California:

High quality papers for the Seventh International Conference on Creationism (ICC), August 4-7, 2013, Pittsburgh, PA are now invited for submission. In continuation of the Sixth ICC, the theme of the Seventh ICC is again Developing and Systematizing the Creation Model of Origins, making the Seventh ICC also a "working" conference.

The interested author should write a minimum 1000-2000 word Summary of his/her paper as a Microsoft Word document, categorize it according to the Area/Sub-Area classification below, and submit a copy no later than 31 January 2012 as an attached file to an email to the Editorial Board Chairman (icctechnicalreview@creationicc.org). Early submission is highly recommended.

Wow. Two months to come up with abstracts. That's not a lot of time. I hope they get a decent turnout.

Read all the details at the official ICC website.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Creepy crawly Friday

2011-12-02T11:43:00.001-05:00

This post is supposed to be pure fun. Some of my faithful readers will not agree, since they don't like bugs or salamanders. Consider yourself warned.

A recent press release from the St. Louis Zoo announced their success at captive breeding of hellbender salamanders (see the larvae at left, photo courtesy St. Louis Zoo). Aren't they adorable!? For those unfamiliar with hellbenders, they're the biggest salamanders on this continent. They can grow up to two feet long. The Ozark subspecies of hellbender has experienced a rapid decline in recent years, and the work at St. Louis is the first time hellbenders have been bred in captivity. See the full press release for more details.

Meanwhile, from New Zealand comes the report of a living wetapunga, a giant grasshopper-looking bug native to Little Barrier Island, off the coast of the North Island. Wetapungas have been in decline for some time due to rat predation, so it was kind of a big deal to find one still alive. Check out the really awesome photos at The Sun, but be warned: If you don't like the idea of a grasshopper as big as your hand, you might not want to see the pictures.

UPDATE: According to this New Zealand webpage, wetapungas aren't all that rare on Little Barrier Island, nor is the pictured specimen all that large (compared to others of the same subspecies). I guess I should know better than to take The Sun's word for it.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Visions of Africa

2011-11-22T09:14:00.000-05:00

A recent Bryan grad did an internship in Kruger National Park in South Africa, and the Henning Museum of Natural History will be hosting an exhibition of her photography. Behold the press release:

'Visions of Africa' to be featured in Henning Museum

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Introducing the Colossian Forum

2011-11-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

I was recently contacted by a new organization called the Colossian Forum. Normally, I'm pretty skeptical of new organizations in the religion/science debate, but this one is a bit different. Actually, the Colossian Forum seems to be a lot different. They say that they do not take a particular stand on issues. Their purpose is to encourage us Christians to be more Christian in our disagreements over theology and science. I am eager to see how well that pans out.

In the meantime, I wrote an essay for them, which they've published on their website. It started out as a suggestion that I could not resist:

What I would like to hear an evolutionary creationist say

I had already been thinking about that very topic when it was suggested to me, so it sort of wrote itself. You probably won't be surprised to see what I came up with, but I'm sure it's different from what you would get from most other creationists.

Enjoy!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Snelling's report on the Not Noah's Ark C-14 results

2011-11-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

You've probably already seen this report, but just in case, check out Andrew Snelling's detailed discussion of the C-14 results from the Ararat wood that is NOT Noah's Ark:

Is the Wood Recently Found on Mt. Ararat from the Ark?

He not only explains why the results are suspect but also what kind of a C-14 date we could expect from Noah's Ark, if it ever were found.

His ideas sound very, very familiar, but with a lot more detail and authority than I could ever muster.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Signs

2011-11-09T11:58:00.000-05:00

People seem quite interested in signs. They want to KNOW that the Bible is truth. They want it proved to them. I sometimes get emails wanting to know what I think the best "evidence" for creation is. People want some evidence besides the Word of God that creationism is true. Other times, I see creationists wanting to do this or that as a "sign" of the truth of God's Word. Jesus had some very interesting things to say about signs and proofs.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from You." But He answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation demands a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah's proclamation; and look—something greater than Jonah is here! The queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and look—something greater than Solomon is here! (Matt. 12:38-42)

And in the story of the rich man and Lazarus:

Abraham said, "They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them."
"No, father Abraham," he said. "But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent."
But he told him, "If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded if someone rises from the dead." (Luke 16:29-31)

I'm not trying to make any accusations or condemnations here. I'm just saying that we ought to be careful what we ask for.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Yet another coelacanth?

2011-11-04T10:41:00.000-04:00

I have a fondness for coelacanths, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it was my adolescent fascination for all things cryptozoological. Maybe it's that mysterious creationist obsession with living fossils. I don't know, but I do like hearing about coelacanths.

Coelacanths (pronounced seal-a-canths) are weird fish that were thought to be extinct until a recently-living specimen was discovered off the coast of South Africa in 1938. Coelacanths are weird because they are lobe-finned fish. Instead of having fins typical of modern fish, the lobe-finned fish have bony structures that support their fins. Lobe-finned fish (not the coelacanth) are believed to represent the type of fish that land animals might have evolved from. Modern coelacanths are deep-sea fish, with a well-known population living off the coast of the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean (the one caught off South Africa was evidently a stray). In the late 1990s, a second species was discovered off the coast of Indonesia. Since about 2004, there have been many coelacanths caught off the coast of Tanzania. Those Tanzanian specimens are the subject of a new study by Nikaido et al. in this week's PNAS.

Looking at the mitochondrial genomes of 21 Tanzanian coelacanths, they found evidence that the specimens caught off the north coast of Tanzania are genetically distinct from those caught off the south coast and from the Comoran coelacanths. The north Tanzanian population is nowhere near as distinct as the Comoran and Indonesian species, but the DNA still suggests that the north Tanzanian coast has its own breeding population. So it's not as cool as finding a new species, but still neat to learn that the Comoran coelacanths are more widespread than we previously suspected.

Nikaido et al. 2011. Genetically distinct coelacanth population off the northern Tanzanian coast. PNAS 108:18009-18013.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

What do you want to hear?

2011-11-01T10:16:00.000-04:00

I read 2 Timothy 3, which contains the famous passage affirming the inspiration of Scripture. I was fascinated by the context of the statement:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:14-17, NIV)

I memorized that passage (vv. 16-17) as a boy (probably in AWANA), but this morning my attention was drawn by the passage that comes immediately after.

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. (2 Tim 4:1-5, NIV)

Now your average creationist reads that as a condemnation of evolution, right? That's the myth what "itching ears want to hear," or so we've been told.

But I'm not your average creationist, so I wondered what myth I've turned to instead of "sound doctrine." I think the danger is ever present, or Paul wouldn't have warned Timothy so sternly to avoid it. That means the warning is for everyone, especially for those who think they've got it all together doctrinally (like us creationists).

So here's a real dangerous question: Could our little doctrinal hobby horses that we all have be some of those "myths?" Surely doctrinal points are important, right? God wants us to have sound doctrine, right? Getting stuck on one particular issue isn't wrong?

Is it?

I see in this passage a delicate balance. Paul clearly encourages us to "correct, rebuke, and encourage," for which the God-breathed scriptures are particular good. But then he warns us not to get carried away with our "own desires," with teachers who tell us what we want to hear. See the balance?

Perhaps what we all need to do is to pray that God will create in us a desire to hear sound doctrine, so that we gather around ourselves teachers who not only tell us what we want to hear but also tell us the truth.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Random Bits #9

2011-10-28T10:52:00.001-04:00

Jim Kidder has yet another post on parallel culture, and he makes an amazingly important point. He's specifically reacting to the essay "The Evangelical Rejection of Reason" at the New York Times, co-written by Karl Giberson and Randall Stephens, who identify themselves as Evangelical Christians. Giberson, you might recall, is the author of Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution and the co-author with Francis Collins of The Language of Science and Faith. Writing about their NYT essay, Jim says that by mixing evolutionary biology with beliefs typical of liberal Protestant theology, their message about evolution will be lost. Or to quote Jim,

After reading Giberson's and Stephens' New York Times essay, why would your average evangelical even think about changing their minds about evolution?

He's completely right about that. Go read what he has to say about it. It's definitely worth it.

Some of you might recall last year that I had a series of posts about the alleged discovery of Noah's Ark by a Chinese group. See here:

Not Noah's Ark
Absolutely not Noah's Ark
More on not Noah's Ark
Randall Price's official statement
Update on not Noah's Ark
Not Noah's Ark update

Apparently, the group that made the "discovery" is still trying to promote it as the real thing, and this week, Carl Wieland posted a pretty devastating report about the C-14 dating based on information he got directly from the Chinese promoters. According to Wieland, multiple samples were subjected to carbon dating by at least three different labs. Most of the dates were recent. Only one sample came back dated as very old (2800 B.C.). Wieland charitably concludes, "it is overwhelmingly likely that these good folk have been misled." But in my view, they've been told by experts even within creationism that what they're promoting is bogus, and they keep doing it. I'm having trouble understanding how that's just good folk being misled.

Finally, here's an interesting exchange between Scientiic American blogger Janet Stemwedel and Liberty University paleontologist Marcus Ross:

Is being a good scientist a matter of what you do or of what you feel in your heart?
Methodology versus beliefs: a comment from Marcus Ross

The comments on these posts are odd. Despite openly identifying himself as a creationist, Ross is still accused of being a liar because he presents research at scientific conferences. I find that attitude completely baffling. If science is about the search for TRUTH, and what scientists say must be TRUTH, then sure, Ross is a liar. But I can't think of anyone (any thoughtful person anyway) who actually believes that science is about discovering TRUTH. Science is about developing the best explanation for data, until such time as that explanation is falsified. So why would it matter whether a scientist actually believed his argument?

I also found it interesting that Stemwedel, despite her mostly neutral discussion of Ross, still concludes, "I think it’s harder to pinpoint the crime he is committing here." So Ross is a criminal now? Nice. See why it's so hard to resolve this debate? It just keeps coming back to name-calling, even when we try not to.

Here's a nice verse from Jeremiah for your weekend:

This is what the LORD says:
The wise must not boast in his wisdom;
the mighty must not boast in his might;
the rich must not boast in his riches.
But the one who boasts should boast in this,
that he understands and knows Me —
that I am the LORD, showing faithful love,
justice, and righteousness on the earth,
for I delight in these things.
[This is] the LORD's declaration. (Jer. 9:23-24, HCSB)

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Excellence

2011-10-24T11:31:00.000-04:00

My last post got a lot of passionate responses (including one from Jim Kidder), which was a bit of a surprise to me. I guess I hit a nerve. A few were kind of miffed at me, but most were overwhelmingly sympathetic to what I wrote. So thanks for all the comments.

To those who were a little annoyed, let me clarify something very important. If you read my comments as nothing but condemnation, you've missed the point entirely. The tragedy of evangelical mediocrity is not the mediocrity itself. Every culture has its mediocre underbelly (like the vast majority of music, television, and movies). That's inevitable, I suppose. What makes evangelical mediocrity so frustrating is the fact that we can do better. That's the whole point. If evangelical Christians were mediocre, second-rate people, then sure, I could totally understand the mediocrity of our work. But we're not mediocre, second-rate people. We don't have to settle. We can be excellent.

Taking it to the science arena, I have certain limitations here at Bryan that scientists in industry or public universities don't have. Facilities and funding are big limitations for me, and a lot of my time is consumed with teaching and administrative duties. Seems like I could easily just retire from my research career altogether, but in my eleven years at Bryan, I've published 34 research articles. For someone in my position, that's pretty amazing. I don't have to let my circumstances hold me back. I can be excellent.

No, it does NOT come easy for me. I've had all sorts of journal rejections over the years. Just last year, I had two different papers rejected. One rejection was just an editorial decision that our paper was not suitable for their journal, despite the positive peer reviews. The other rejection was more irritating. I thought the reviewer was just being cranky, but as I examined our results (a DNA phylogeny for a certain plant genus) more carefully with additional sequences from GenBank, I discovered that there were some complications that we could not have anticipated when we submitted our paper (new sequences show that the genus is not monophyletic). Our results really were wrong (a point that the cranky reviewer didn't actually catch). Add to that the rejected abstract that I submitted to the CBS conference (my own conference, no less!), and you could imagine that I'd be very discouraged by all that rejection! But why? If one journal doesn't want the paper despite the positive reviews, send it to another journal (which we did). We found out that the genus we've been working on isn't really a monophyletic group, which makes for an even more interesting research focus. Yes, it's annoying that our paper wasn't published, but we can improve it with new research. Failures are not a blot on your record. Failures are opportunities to get better.

I tell the same thing to my students. When they come to me for research projects, I could easily send them upstairs to the molecular lab and have them repeat some classic experiments to give them experience in laboratory techniques, but I don't. Instead, every student working for me is working on something entirely new, usually with the aim of having the research published. This makes a lot of extra work for me, but I think it's worth it to the students. They get to see how they can make real contributions to science right here at Bryan College. They can be excellent.

When it's time to apply for grad school, any student asking my advice will get the same recommendations: Go for the best you can. Don't just settle for what schools you think you can get into. Go for your dream schools. If they reject you, then maybe you can settle for something slightly less than the top schools. If all your applications get rejected this year, find something scientific to do while you wait to apply again next year. Volunteer your time to help out on a research project. Find some way to keep your skills and mind sharp. Yes, there are people out there who will look down on you for your background and your faith, but there are also folks who will not. If you do good work and keep at it, eventually people will take notice. Why should you let the bigots hold you back? Be excellent! Don't settle for a life and career of mediocrity.

That's the point. Christians don't have to settle for second best or leftovers. You can be excellent! You don't have to keep churning out sub-par dreck and whining about how the world is discriminating against your Christian values. You can be excellent with what you have. You don't have to settle.

As for me, I read this passage in Isaiah 62 as I was thinking about excellence:

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet,
till her vindication shines out like the dawn,
her salvation like a blazing torch.
The nations will see your vindication,
and all kings your glory;
you will be called by a new name
that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.
You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD’s hand,
a royal diadem in the hand of your God. (Is 62:1-3)

Be excellent!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

On behalf of parallel cultures

2011-10-19T11:03:00.000-04:00

One of my readers asked me to comment on this blog post from Jim Kidder that also discusses the World magazine series on the Barna poll:

World Magazine on the Barna Group Results

Jim quoted a piece from the New York Times, which notes that evangelical Christians have created a "parallel culture"

...that has become the de facto culture of home school curricula, evangelical churches and Christian colleges. This is the result of what Mark Noll called "The Intellectual Catastrophe of Fundamentalism." This is not Christianity as it is practiced in either the Catholic or Eastern churches and, in many ways, it is a Christianity that is unique to the United States. It is also a Christianity that I am profoundly uncomfortable with and am becoming more so every day.

I'm not entirely sure whether he's concerned about the very idea of a "parallel culture" itself or the quality of the evangelical culture. As for developing our own parallel cultures, I would point to the monastic culture (especially medieval monasteries) as an example from a different Christian faith tradition. A crucial difference between the medieval monastery and the modern evangelical culture is that the monastic culture was compelling and appealing to people. As I understand it (and I admit that I'm no historian), the monasteries were important sources of learning and scholarship, and to some extent helped to preserve learning through the "Dark Ages." I think especially of St. Columba's monastery on Iona, which was instrumental in Christianizing Scotland through the power of learning. (I'm going to stop talking about monasteries now before I reveal any more of my ignorance.)

In some sense, I think that having a separate cultural identity is inevitable for Christians. What pains me (and perhaps Jim too) is so often how inferior and unappealing the modern evangelical culture has become. When was the last time you saw a Christian movie that didn't make you wince? I remember hearing a friend lamely trying to think of something nice to say about The Omega Code. "It had really good special effects." Uh huh. And if I hear one more person praise one of these cinematic atrocities because it had a "good message," I just might scream.

One problem is that evangelical culture is mostly reactive. Our music sounds like the Top 40 pop songs. Shoot, we even have a Christian Top 40 radio show. The very act of making Christian movies is a bad mimic of the studio movie system. When it comes to science, when's the last time you heard ICR, AIG, CMI, or RTB comment on some new creationist research or creationist breakthrough? But when's the last time you heard one of those organizations provide a spin on someone else's evolutionary research?

And then there's the mindless fads. Bible Code anyone? Prayer of Jabez? Left Behind? The list goes on. Too much rubbish is being promoted purely because it sells. Whether or not it's edifying seems to be irrelevant.

Oh sure, I know there are exceptions to everything I've said, and I can't just condemn all of evangelical culture. (Truth be told, there are some parts that I quite like, but they're usually the iconoclastic corners of evangelicalism rather than the mainstream.) In general, though, evangelical culture is a pale mimic of the real thing. I think that's the common thread that runs through all the reasons that young people give for leaving evangelical Christianity.

I would hope that everyone would realize that I don't think the solution is to adopt the secular culture wholesale. That would indeed be stupid. What I want, and what this blog has always been about, is to improve what we have. Instead of constantly tossing potshots at evolutionary biology, we need to put up or shut up. If creationism is so much better than conventional science, where's our explanation of the pattern of radioisotopes? Or distant starlight? Or the near identity of the human and chimp genomes? And why aren't we working on answers to these questions? Why are people settling for just explaining the problems away with philosophical tricks or just distracting people from the problems by pretending like everyone else has much worse problems? Take the beam out of your own eye before you pick out the speck from someone else's. That was good advice 2000 years ago, and it's good advice today.

Now before someone else can say it, I'll ask myself, "Is there a beam in my eye?" I've been pondering that question a lot lately, and I've been taking a long, hard look at my own involvement in the creation/evolution debate. I don't mind saying that I'm reconsidering a lot of things, and there will probably be some important changes coming before the end of the year. Stay tuned, I guarantee it'll be fun!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Conversing on Genesis Part 5

2011-10-18T09:50:00.000-04:00

Just a brief note this morning to alert you to the podcasts of the conference available at the Bryan website.

On Friday, we heard 30 minute basic presentations of each speaker's position, followed by a concluding panel discussion:

Opening and Richard Averbeck opening comments

Todd Beall opening comments

Jack Collins opening comments

Tremper Longman opening comments

John Walton opening comments

Friday night panel discussion

On Saturday, there were issue-focused panel discussions

Saturday Session One - Literary Context of Genesis 1 and 2

Saturday Session Two, Historical Adam and Eve

Saturday Session Three, New Testament Interpretation of Genesis1 and 2

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Is the church antiscience?

2011-10-17T11:04:00.001-04:00

World magazine has an article out on why young people are leaving the church, and it's a bit too succinct for my taste:
Casualties in the Battle between Science and Faith

The article opens with statistics from a recent Barna poll:

According to the findings of a research study recently released by the Barna Group, 59 percent of young adults disconnect from the church in their teen years. Many study participants told researchers they disagreed with the church's stance against science. Of those, ... Twenty-five percent described Christianity as "anti-science," and 23 percent said they had been turned off by the debate over creation and evolution.

Let's put that in context. Of the 59% of respondents who "disconnected" from the church as teens, 25% said Christianity was anti-science. That's 14.75% of the respondents. Not exactly a majority.

Addendum: Since writing that paragraph, I've been provided a link to a description of the original research, which I think muddles the picture a little. The Barna website confirms that "nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15." In the context of why these individuals leave the church, they say that "one-quarter embrace the perception that 'Christianity is anti-science' (25%)." What is still unclear (at least to me) is whether the 25% that think Christianity is anti-science is limited to those who have left the church or whether that's a general statistic.

Whatever the statistics, the author of the article, Caroline Ryan, interviewed a few folks at Wheaton College for a response. They immediately connect this anti-science attitude to the creation/evolution debate, which is a reasonable connection since many people believe creationists are anti-science. But what about climate change? As I look through World's archives, I see plenty of articles sympathetic to critics of human-caused "global warming" (here and here). And wait a minute, isn't this the same World magazine that named ID advocate Stephen Meyer the 2009 "Daniel of the Year?" Oddly enough, just ten days before publishing this article linking anti-evolutionism to anti-science, World also published an opinion piece titled "The consequences of evolutionary racism." So where could these young people be getting the idea that Christianity is anti-science? Where could it be coming from? It's such a mystery!

Anyway, leaving aside the painfully obvious IRONY of the article, I think Wheaton student Torunn Sweers makes a good point:

Torunn Sweers, a sophomore at Wheaton ... said church leaders should exchange broad statements about science, which almost always are negative, for more nuanced explanations of the physical world. "'Science' is not an enemy of the church," Sweers said. "[But when] the church makes a blanket statement denying the validity of "evolution" as a theory, you've just disinterested millions of students who have seen for themselves an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary."

That sounds familiar, doesn't it? Sure it does.

The article closes with some quotes from Wheaton science prof Peter Walhout. Walhout emphasizes that historically, the church has always been quite favorably inclined towards science. While I agree with that, I find it pretty impotent to refute the perception of anti-science in the modern church. All those scientist Christians like Newton, Copernicus, Boyle, Ray, Linnaeus, Owen, etc. (but not Einstein - how did he get in that article?) just make me wonder what happened to Christianity? Where did all our scientists go? (I should point out that even though I don't know Walhout, I am absolutely positive that his response to the perceived anti-science attitude of Christians is a bit more nuanced and insightful than just saying, "Hey, Newton was a Christian!")

Is the church antiscientific? I won't argue that the church is definitely perceived to be anti-scientific. I would also affirm that the church doesn't have to be anti-scientific. At the same time, I recognize a strong distrust or suspicion of science held by many (especially conservative) Christians. This attitude has taken generations to develop, from the early antievolutionism of nineteenth-century America to the later Fundamentalist/modernist controversies. It continues to be stoked by those who want to use science to argue against Christianity or those who want to use Christianity to argue against science. Is there an easy way out? Not even close. This situation will take just as many generations to resolve as to develop. My main concern is that Christians are becoming too polarized in the debate, with one faction becoming blatantly and openly anti-scientific and anti-scholarly while the other side seems content to just redefine their beliefs to accommodate whatever the latest science is. I see both reactions as unhelpful. We need a far more careful consideration of the origin of knowledge, the meaning and value of special revelation, and the inherent limitations of human discovery. Of course, if we do that, we run the risk of becoming some kind of post-modern, relativistic knowledge-deniers, and that would be a big mistake too. See? No easy way out.

But that doesn't excuse us from trying, does it? Christ calls us to follow Him, even when it seems like a completely foolish thing to do. And so we follow with faith that the foolishness of God is wiser than anything we could come up with.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Conversing on Genesis part 4

2011-10-12T11:13:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the delay in posting this final report from the recent symposium on Genesis, sponsored by the Bryan Institute for Critical Thought and Practice. Immediately after the symposium, I came down with a nasty cold, and that knocked me out for at least a week. But enough excuses, what did I really think about the symposium? (For those catching up, here are parts one, two, and three of my report.)

Did I learn anything? I was asked this question as soon as the symposium was finished, and now that I've given it a lot of thought, I'd have to say that I didn't learn very much. I was familiar with Walton's and Collins's positions from their books, and there weren't very many surprises there. I wasn't a bit surprised by any of the arguments put forward by Beall or Averbeck. The only mild surprise I had was from Longman. OK, "mild surprise" is putting it mildly. I was actually kind of flabbergasted that anyone would give any credibility to the arguments that he was using. I know that sounds derogatory, but I don't mean it to be. Look at it this way: Judging from his presentation, I think he would be equally flabbergasted at my "obvious" interpretation of Genesis as straightforward history of real events. After all, if the text is so "obviously" NOT a literal history, then how could anyone take it any other way, right? Likewise for me, if the text is so "obviously" a historical account, how could anyone seriously take it any other way? That's the sort of reaction that was going on in my head as I listened to his presentation. I hope that makes sense and isn't "obviously" insulting.

And I really don't want to be insulting, because I think it was important for me to meet and interact with Longman. You see, I've heard his position before, but in the past it's been from folks who treat me and my fellow creationists with smug contempt. The attitude I get is that "the text is OBVIOUSLY not meant to be interpreted literally, and only idiots would read it as historical." With Longman, though, I didn't detect any of that arrogance. I never even got the "vibe" that he might be looking down on me. Quite the opposite, in fact. He practically begged the audience for alternative ways to understand science from a non-evolutionary point of view. So in that respect, he's become an inspiration to me. I'm definitely giving some thought now to a formal response to Venema's PSCF paper on the human genome. (Look out, Dennis!) And I don't think I would have ever bothered to do that if I hadn't met Tremper Longman.

But what about his position on Genesis? Well, I'm not sure what to say. Seriously. At least before, when it was just smug jerks making those arguments, I could just shrug them off as rubbish coming from smug jerks. With Longman, though, he's such a decent fellow, I'm genuinely not sure what to say. I guess my response is that what is clear to him about Genesis is not so clear to a lot of fellow Evangelicals. I hate just dismissing him off as an "extreme minority," though, because that's not fair to his claims. At the same time, I hate to nitpick through his specific arguments, since the foundation of his position is definitely far deeper than whether the days of Genesis are "literal" days or not. So even if I could convince him that specific claims he made were bogus, I don't think he would really change his view.

That's true of me too. As I listened to each presentation, I found myself giving my whole view of Genesis and creationism some serious critical thought. Despite all of that self-examination, I still find myself unconvinced that young-age creationism is an incorrect interpretation. My position is not based on a single verse or a single passage. My position is based on a whole lot more than just Genesis 1. Here's what I wrote about this last year (and don't forget the followup):

In the end, I do not believe that a young-age interpretation relies on any one word or even passage. It's woven into the entire book of Genesis, and through the Fall and need for redemption, it undergirds the doctrine of salvation. So you're welcome to propose novel interpretations of Genesis, and I will seriously consider them (and I might even change my mind about some things). But it would have to be something really big to get me to change my mind on young-age creationism altogether.

Nothing I heard at the symposium was "really big." In fact, what I observed was five well qualified Old Testament scholars disagreeing on some amazingly fundamental issues regarding the interpretation of Genesis. So I can't even fall back on relying on a consensus of scholarly opinion. There wasn't one.

I still have more to say (big surprise), but this post is already too long.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Conversing on Genesis Part 3

2011-10-06T13:16:00.000-04:00

For those just joining, I'm continuing my summary of the recent Reading Genesis symposium sponsored by the Bryan Institute and held at the Chattanooga Convention Center. On the first day (Friday), each of the five speakers was allowed to give a 30 minute presentation of his position on the interpretation of Genesis 1-2. On Saturday, the presentations were thematically oriented, with panel discussions on the subjects of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) influences on Genesis, the historicity of Adam and Eve, and the New Testament use of the creation account. The Friday sessions were very well attended, probably the best attended of any of the many Bryan Institute symposia. We estimated as many as 500 people in attendance, including some 150 Bryan students. Attendance on Saturday was a bit sparser but still quite good.

All of the speakers emphasized that the ANE literature and myth was really important for understanding the Old Testament, but that the relationship was not simply one of the OT borrowing or reworking ANE myths to serve monotheistic or Israelite purposes. I was really happy for that clarification. Walton in particular had a very polished presentation on Friday, wherein he repeatedly emphasized the importance of ANE literature for understanding the OT. On Saturday, I thought he was a bit more careful to clarify that the relationship of Genesis to ANE literature was not one of obvious literary dependence. In other words, the author of Genesis didn't just swipe some myths and try to sanitize their theology. I was gratified to hear that.

On the subject of the historical Adam, there was less unity. Beall, Averbeck, Collins, and Walton all came out in support of a historical Adam, while Longman remained undecided. At the very least, Longman did not support the necessity of Adam for Christian theology. This is where the discussion turned to science and especially the evidence from genomics (which I've briefly discussed here). As an expert in genomics, that discussion was difficult for me to listen to, at least as difficult as it would be for those biblical scholars to listen to scientists debating the meaning of Genesis. But I held my tongue, so good for me. And in fairness, I thought Collins's advice that we ought to withhold judgment on the new ancestral population size estimates was sound. But yeah, theologians debating science? Ouch. Stick to the text, guys.

The final discussion was on the New Testament usage of the creation passages of the Old Testament. Predictably, it sort of came back to whether the NT writers thought that Adam was a historical individual or whether they were merely making literary references (much like one might quote Hamlet without explicitly noting that he's just a fictional character). You can probably guess the positions of the different speakers. Longman suggested that there was no need to view the references as historical citations, while the others mostly disagreed with him.

I guess now is as good a time as any to start describing my reactions, since the last discussion on NT references really struck a chord with me. As the conversation drew to a close with no clear resolution (how could you possibly distinguish between a literary reference and a historical citation when you're not part of the culture in which the statement was originally made?), I got the uneasy feeling that the debate had become almost "pharasaical." I use that term with much trepidation, because I know it can be misinterpreted in very insulting ways, but what I mean by the reference is how the Pharisees were masters at debating every little "jot and tittle" while losing track of the larger picture. I certainly don't mean to imply that any of our speakers were Pharisees in any insulting way. I just thought that everyone seemed to be losing track of the larger issues.

What larger issues? When Paul references Adam as the source of human sin and death, he explicitly draws a logical connection to Christ's atoning death. Why did Jesus die? Because of Adam's sin. Jesus died to undo the damage done by Adam. That logic works great if Adam was a real person who really did mess things up for us. But if Adam was just a fictional character, then what? Paul's argument takes a turn for the bizarre if Jesus had to die because Edmund betrayed his siblings to the White Witch.

I understand that the response is that in the first century context, it was not unusual to draw such causative comparisons between fictional and real events, but I don't think we can evaluate the Bible as if it were frozen in the first century. If it's really the living Word of God, it's given to all people, not just the first century. I know that understanding the first century culture is extremely helpful to understanding the NT, but writing off Paul's heavy emphasis on the First Adam as just a literary allusion troubles me deeply. Very deeply.

Likewise with Christ's reference to Adam and Eve when discussing marriage in Matthew 19. Jesus explicitly overruled the law of Moses to a bunch of Pharisees using the creation account. That's a staggering thing, but would it have as much force (even to a Pharisee) if he was really appealing to the ideal marriage of Fred and Wilma Flintstone? I don't think so.

So I'm not buying these arguments that Adam and Eve don't really matter and can be understood as just fictional characters (no surprises there, huh?). I see no way to read the NT references to Adam and Eve other than historical citations of real individuals, because of both the logic of the references and the consequences they have on Christian theology.

I'll have a few more comments tomorrow, then I hope to wrap this series up.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Conversing on Genesis part 2

2011-10-05T10:39:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me this morning that it might be really helpful if I just gave a brief overview of the recent Genesis symposium before launching into more detailed responses. So here goes:

The conference opened on Friday evening with 30 minute sessions from each of five speakers, wherein they were to present their own views of Genesis 1-2. We opened with Richard Averbeck from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His was the most unsettled and uncertain position. He emphasized that there really are good reasons for taking the text of Genesis 1 as a record of a real week, but there are also good reasons to suspect that there might be something more symbolic going on in the text. He affirmed that Genesis 1 speaks of the real creation of things that did not exist before," and he affirmed the physical consequences of the Fall.

Next was Todd Beall of Capital Bible Seminary. Beall emphasized his desire for a consistent hermeneutic to be applied to the entirety of Genesis. To Beall, the first chapters of Genesis serve as an introduction to the subsequent chapters and there is no clear division line between the early history and the history of Abraham and his descendants. He also emphasized that the New Testament writers refer to the early chapters of Genesis as if they were history. Beall emphasized the "literal" translation of Genesis 1-2, as opposed to a symbolic or figurative reading. He suggested that some - but definitely not all - nonliteral interpretations today are motivated by a desire to accommodate the Bible to evolutionary science, and he spent the last few minutes of his talk expressing his skepticism about evolution.

Jack Collins of Covenant Theological Seminary spoke next on his ... well, his view is hard to encapsulate in a simple descriptor. He emphasized that the days of Gen. 1 are definitely days. They're not symbols for long time periods, but Collins sees Gen. 1 not necessarily as the first days of everything but as the days wherein God made everything suitable for humans. He noted that God resting on the seventh day must be symbolic, and therefore(?) the previous six "work days" must also be symbolic (or "analogical"). I'm not sure that I strictly followed (or represented) his logic here, but that's what I have in my notes and in my personal recollection. To Collins, Gen. 1:1 describes the material creation of everything that predated the rest of Genesis 1.

Next was Tremper Longman from Westmont College. Longman affirmed that Genesis 1-2 are "obviously" not meant to be taken literally. The days must be symbolic, since there are three days with no sun or moon, and you can't have days without the sun and moon. Likewise, there is a lack of harmony between Genesis 1 and 2 that requires a symbolic reading to reconcile. He also emphasized the two sets of three days in Genesis 1 as another signal for a symbolic reading. (For those not familiar with this argument, the first three days appear to be concerned with creating realms, and the second three days occupy those realms in a corresponding order: [1] Light occupied by [4] sun to rule the light; [2] sea/sky occupied by [5] fish/birds; [3] land occupied by [6] animals/people.) The creation account of Genesis 1 is a polemic against Ancient Near Eastern mythology written in mythic terms. He also openly acknowledged his preference for theistic evolution, and he expressed concern for how to relate to Christian biologist colleagues who affirm evolution as true. Should we impose on them a particular reading of scripture and forbid them from studying the science of human origins? I should emphasize that Longman repeatedly affirmed that his view of Genesis was purely textual and would not be altered if evolution turned out to be incorrect.

The final presentation of the evening was from John Walton of Wheaton College. Walton's view is based on his reading of Ancient Near Eastern literature, since we must understand the text the way the ancients did. He spent some time discussing how the ancients viewed the world (i.e., their cosmology), and he noted that this cosmology was not peculiar to one culture but was found in many cultures. He also emphasized that the cultural setting of Genesis was not like a direct influence (as if the biblical authors were merely mimicking the cultures around them) but rather that we should see Genesis as a product of its time and setting. The main features of his view of Genesis 1 are his functional view of creation and his belief that Genesis 1 is a temple text. According to Walton, the Hebrew bara ("create") is a term of functional assignment not material origin. Thus, Genesis 1 is a text describing functional assignments rather than material origins. God's "rest" on the seventh day is a description that the Ancient Near Eastern peoples would understand as activity related to a temple. Gods rest in temples. Therefore, we ought to view Genesis 1 not as a record of material origins but as a text describing the functional meaning of the elements in God's cosmic temple.

These summaries are necessarily abbreviated, but I hope they accurately reflect the positions of each speaker. If you were there (or if you were one of the speakers) and you don't think I've represented the positions well, please let me know. I definitely want to make this summary as accurate as possible.

Since this post is already quite long, I'm going to stop, but I want to make one final comment. We creationists tend to hold onto old arguments far too long. Perfect example: the day-age theory and the gap theory. The day-age theory is an interpretation of Genesis 1 that was quite popular in the nineteenth century, wherein the creation days are viewed as corresponding to specific geological ages. The gap theory was somewhat popular at the turn of the twentieth century especially among the original Fundamentalists, and it ended up in the Scofield reference Bible. As you can see from the above discussion, these views are pretty much dead. (Yes, I know Hugh Ross and RTB won't let go of the day-age view, but they seem to be alone in that.) Modern interpretations of Genesis 1 are far more challenging and nuanced, and I suspect that the day-age and gap theories are lingering in our imagination because we creationists just won't let them die. This fall, when I gave my annual lecture on interpretations of Genesis 1, I asked the class if anyone had even heard of the gap theory. No one had. Anyone have a Scofield reference Bible? They just stared at me. I proceeded to skip quickly over the gap theory and instead focused on other forms of non-historical interpretations. Next year? I'm ditching the gap and day-age theories altogether. And good riddance to them.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Conversing on Genesis 1

2011-10-04T11:58:00.000-04:00

Right after the Genesis symposium this past weekend, I came down with a nasty cold, which prevented me from blogging much of a response. I'm feeling a little more coherent today (but not much), so I'll shoot off a few comments here and probably continue my reactions in followup posts.

As you might imagine (or maybe you've had the same thoughts), Bryan took some flak for hosting this conference. Some took the speaker roster as an official college endorsement of their positions (which it wasn't). Some felt the speakers were too biased in favor of promoting a non-literal Genesis 1, which if you think about it, doesn't make a lot of sense since having more young-age creationists would have just made for repetition of talks ("I take Genesis 1 as literal history," "So do I!" "So do I!"). Others were concerned that our students and maybe the public are just not discerning enough to be able to listen to differing views. I sympathize with that idea, but at the symposium, Bryan Institute director Daryl Charles made an important point. This question of Genesis is being debated in the public arena (e.g., in Christianity Today and on NPR), and if we are not part of that discussion, then what? We really need to be part of the discussion, and that means that we need to interact with those that we might disagree with. (I should add here that "being part of the discussion" does not include merely posting rebuttals on our personal blogs, especially blogs that don't allow reader comments. Ahem.)

I personally went into this with some trepidation. I was hopeful that the conversation would be respectful and "irenic," although I was a bit cynical on that note. I'm happy to say that everyone not only behaved themselves, but they really got along pretty well. I was also very interested to see how the science of evolution would influence the conversation, since there were only biblical scholars and no scientists. Not surprisingly, science reared its ugly head, and in some very predictable ways. Science is definitely a significant influence on the development of newer readings of Genesis, but it's definitely not the only influence.

Scientific arguments about evolution or the age of the earth were most prominent in the presentations of Todd Beall (the token "young-age creationist") and Tremper Longman (the token "theistic evolutionist"). I sort of expected it from Longman (I suppose that's my own bias showing through), but I didn't necessarily think that Beall needed to discuss it at all. Scientific arguments also figured prominently in the Saturday panel session on the historical Adam, where Longman and Jack Collins went on a long rabbit trail about genomics and Dennis Venema's paper.

To his credit, Longman seemed quite open to considering alternative science and challenged the audience to provide him with papers or books. To him, the text of Genesis truly does not address the mode of origins, so lots of scientific theories could be compatible with the text. So he didn't argue FOR evolution directly; he merely argued that it was compatible with Genesis, since Genesis doesn't say one way or the other how creation happened. That's an important distinction to make. Even though I don't agree that Genesis teaches nothing about the mode of creation.

I have to run to class now. Check back later for more thoughts, and if you're in the neighborhood, there will be several followup meetings on campus this week. Today at 5 pm, we'll be addressing these issues for students and faculty at journal club in Mercer 137. Tomorrow, a similar discussion will be held in the Spoede Lounge in the library at 5:30. I'll be at both. Stop by if you can.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Reading Genesis 1-2: An Evangelical Conversation

2011-09-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

This weekend is the big Bryan Institute symposium on Genesis at the Chattanooga Convention Center. I will be there, and I will likely (very likely) post some thoughts either during or after the event. Yesterday, I was talking with one of our Bible professors here at Bryan (not a speaker), and we both hope that this "conversation" really does transcend the battle lines of the propaganda war and become an actual conversation. Since most of the speakers have taken one side or another, I'm not sure how it will turn out. Will it be an edifying and enlightening weekend or a biblical re-enactment of the larger creation/evolution debate?

However it turns out, I wouldn't miss it, and I hope you won't either. Details on the schedule can be found here, and information on directions, parking etc. are here. There is a small cost for the events (which includes Saturday lunch), and you can register at the door.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Venema on Neandertals and Denisovans

2011-09-26T15:47:00.000-04:00

Dennis Venema and I don't exactly see eye to eye on human origins, but as fellow believers, we ought to take what he has to say seriously, even if we disagree. Dennis recently posted a piece over at BioLogos on the recent evidence of hominin interbreeding between modern Homo sapiens and Neandertals and between Homo sapiens and the mysterious Denisovans. This is crucially important stuff and deserves our careful attention.

Personally, I think this new data could potentially devastate old earth creationist scenarios for the origin of humans, and I'll be explaining more about that in my book review of Collins's Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?. Look for that in the coming months, and in the meantime, have a look at Dennis's article.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Letter to Great Britain

2011-09-21T09:57:00.000-04:00

Dear Great Britain,

Thanks to my friend Paul Garner, I have been quite interested to read of the new "Teach evolution, not creationism!" campaign, detailed at its website. I was especially fascinated to read the short position statement of the campaign, which reads in part:

The current government guidance that creationism and 'intelligent design' should not be taught in school science should be made statutory and enforceable. It also needs to be made comprehensive so that it is clear that any portrayal of creationism and 'intelligent design' as science (whether it takes place in science lessons or not) is unacceptable.

As a Christian, creationist, and science professor at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, I find this position extremely ironic. You see, the state of Tennessee tried to enforceably legislate orthodoxy in curriculum some 85 years ago. The Butler Act stated

That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

Now, I realize that the subject being enforced is precisely the opposite of what this new UK campaign is proposing, but you have to admit that the concept is eerily similar. What makes the new campaign special, though, is this idea that you can outlaw creationism "whether it takes place in science lessons or not." I wonder how you plan to enforce that? How will you decide if someone has violated the law/policy? Will they be entitled to some kind of trial? Because here in Dayton, when one of our teachers (John Scopes) "violated" the Butler Act, we had a trial that worked out REALLY well for us. We got a huge amount of publicity from the trial, and famous people like William Jennings Bryan came to visit. It was pretty exciting.

If this new law/policy is to be enforceable, you will need to specify the consequences for violating it. The Butler Act provided for a monetary fine, but I could imagine that you could take away teaching licences for repeat offenders. And for really ornery creationists, you should just take them out and burn them at the stake. Because that worked out really well when the Inquisition tried it. In fact, you could create a position to oversee enforcement of this law/policy, and you could call it the "Grand Inquisitor" just so everybody knows not to mess with that person.

Seriously though, are you kidding me with this? You really want to pass some kind of law or policy to guard against "dangerous heresy," just like misguided religious zealots have been doing for centuries? Seriously? You're really that hypocritical? It staggers the imagination.

Not only is this new policy preposterous, but it's also unnecessary. Over here in your former colonies, we've had an amazingly active and well-funded creationist movement for more than fifty years now. Each year, the top creationist organizations rake in millions of dollars in donations and produce enormous quantities of material promoting the creationist message. You would think with all that support, public opinion would be gradually swaying to support the creationist position, but that's not at all what's happening. The Gallup organization has been polling Americans about their views on human origins for 30 years now, covering much of the most influential years of creationist activism. Here's the question they ask:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings -- [ROTATE 1-3/3-1: 1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, 2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process, 3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so]?

The results of their surveys are extremely interesting. Despite millions of dollars for promotion and lots of publicity, the creationist movement seems to have had little to no impact on American opinion. In 1982, 44% of the respondents said that God created humans in their present form, but in 2011, only 40% selected the same response. In contrast, those who identified with response 2, human evolution without God at all, grew from just 9% of respondents in 1982 to 16% in 2011. It seems to me that the American creationist movement has had almost no influence on public opinion, and despite their best efforts, atheism has experienced significant growth.

So what exactly are you afraid of? Great Britain has had an active creationist movement for far longer than the US. The oldest creationist organization in the world is the British "Creation Science Movement," founded as the Evolution Protest Movement in 1932. You've had speakers promoting creationism in your country for just as long as we've had them here in the States. But now Truth in Science sends out some antievolution material to teachers, and suddenly you want to institute some kind of thought police to enforce orthodoxy? Talk about overreacting.

One final piece of advice: One thing that we religious "zealots" have learned is that efforts to stamp out ideas almost pretty much guarantee the spread of those same ideas. Even parents know this. A great way to get your teenager involved in some unsavory activity is to make a big, hysterical show of forbidding it. There's no fruit sweeter than forbidden fruit.

Now I realize you're probably just writing me off as a creationist crackpot, but that would be unfortunate. I am well-known for my vocal dissatisfaction with creationist and antievolutionist distortions of science. I am just as concerned as you are about materials that give students incorrect information about evolution and science. But I also know that passing laws and punishing people is a remarkably idiotic way to address the problem. Unless you really do want to create a society with an Orwellian Big Brother overseeing people's thoughts.

Sincerely,

Todd Charles Wood

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

This is important!

2011-09-20T14:42:00.000-04:00

Critical thinking exercise: This paper strikes me as amazingly important. Why?

Uyeda et al. 2011. The million-year wait for macroevolutionary bursts. PNAS 108:15908-15913.

Abstract
We lack a comprehensive understanding of evolutionary pattern and process because short-term and long-term data have rarely been combined into a single analytical framework. Here we test alternative models of phenotypic evolution using a dataset of unprecedented size and temporal span (over 8,000 data points). The data are body-size measurements taken from historical studies, the fossil record, and among-species comparative data representing mammals, squamates, and birds. By analyzing this large dataset, we identify stochastic models that can explain evolutionary patterns on both short and long timescales and reveal a remarkably consistent pattern in the timing of divergence across taxonomic groups. Even though rapid, short-term evolution often occurs in intervals shorter than 1 Myr, the changes are constrained and do not accumulate over time. Over longer intervals (1–360 Myr), this pattern of bounded evolution yields to a pattern of increasing divergence with time. The best-fitting model to explain this pattern is a model that combines rare but substantial bursts of phenotypic change with bounded fluctuations on shorter timescales. We suggest that these rare bursts reflect permanent changes in adaptive zones, whereas the short-term fluctuations represent local variations in niche optima due to restricted environmental variation within a stable adaptive zone.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

About those new sediba papers

2011-09-12T09:37:00.000-04:00

I read the new Au. sediba papers over the weekend, and I'm really excited to see so much in-depth analysis being published in such a timely manner. To recap: Last year, I was in the midst of preparing a paper on human baraminology when a description of a newly discovered hominin fossil was published. That fossil was dubbed Australopithecus sediba. I halted work on my paper while I added that fossil to my analysis, and much to my surprise, it consistently grouped with members of Homo rather than australopiths. Of course, other creationists weighed in with their rather strong opinions that sediba was just another ape fossil. When my paper appeared claiming that sediba was human, some creationists felt I had erred in my analysis. Responses ranged from accusing me of recklessness and arrogance to this baffling assertion in the Answers Research Journal:

Let me point out that we creationists can tell, merely from reading our Bible, that some fossils are human and some are not; we do not need statistical analysis to confirm this.

Right.

My response to these critics appeared in the first issue of the new Journal of Creation Theology and Science. Briefly, I argued that there was no theological reason to object to sediba's humanity and that criticisms against my work were not convincing. Meanwhile, I busied myself with analyzing additional information from the original paper describing sediba, but my results were inconclusive.

Now with these new papers, I can further that analysis. I'm eager to see whether these new data support or contradict my original findings. Longtime readers know what that means: I'll be withholding my judgment on the new information until I've had time to analyze it. Sorry. I'm reminded of a few verses from Proverbs:

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. (Pr 18:2, 13)

A few final words: Whether or not sediba was human is a matter of some debate among creationists right now, but it is also a matter of fact not interpretation. Whether or not sediba was human depends not at all on my understanding of Scripture or my worldview. Perhaps even more importantly, it's not really all that important either. I suppose if we cannot resolve the question, that would be quite important, but if it's human it's human, and if it's not it's not. I'm far more concerned with HOW creationists conduct this debate and analyze data. Will we settle for emotional kneejerks and childish apologetics platitudes, or will we demand a deeper understanding of the meaning of these australopith fossils?

I think you can guess what I'll be shooting for.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

All about sediba

2011-09-09T08:54:00.000-04:00

Science this week has five new papers on the marvelous fossil Australopithecus sediba that debuted some 18 months ago. There's one on the brain, the pelvis, the hand, the ankle/foot, and the date of the known sediba fossils. The verdict? From my brief skimming of the articles, sediba is a mixed bag of australopith and Homo traits (surprise, surprise). I'm eager to have a more detailed look, and I just can't wait for my fellow creationists to weigh in with their opinions. There's plenty of material here that they can selectively quote to support their claims that it isn't human. There's also plenty I can selectively quote to support my claim that sediba is part of the human family. But when it comes down to it, selective quoting isn't science. I'm eager to see if the new data actually changes any of my previous analyses (what a concept).

I'll be reading over these papers this weekend, and maybe I'll be back with a more informed commentary next week. In the meantime, Science has a nice website introducing the papers and the news commentaries.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Geocentrism in the news again?

2011-08-30T14:34:00.000-04:00

There's an odd article from Chicago Tribune religion reporter Manya Brachear on the "Galileo was Wrong" crowd. Titled "A few Catholics still insist Galileo was wrong," the article is a very neutral introduction to the modern geocentrist "revival" spearheaded by Robert Sungenis. You might recall these guys from my own visit to last year's "Galileo was Wrong" conference in Indiana in November, 2010, which I chronicled in a series of posts (one, two, three, four, and five).

What makes this new article odd is that I can't tell why the story exists. There doesn't seem to be any "Galileo was Wrong" events on the near horizon that were being promoted. The big conference was nine months ago, so it's not exactly a timely report. If it was meant as a kind of report on the movement, it's not even very accurate. Brachear claims in her article that "Hundreds of curiosity seekers, skeptics and supporters attended a conference last fall titled 'Galileo Was Wrong. The Church Was Right' near the University of Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Ind." Hundreds? Hardly. There were 100 people there at most (the crowd grew during the day, then dwindled after dinner). I should know. I counted them.

So there you go. Here's an unnecessary blog post about an unnecessary article about geocentrism. Hey, writers gotta write about something, right?

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Jon Ahlquist is coming

2011-08-29T10:51:00.000-04:00

Here's a very brief update to our journal club schedule this fall: On October 25, we will be welcoming a very special guest speaker to the Bryan College campus. Ornithologist Jon Ahlquist will be giving a presentation on his research at 5 p.m. in Mercer Hall 137. Dr. Ahlquist worked with Charles Sibley for 30 years on studies of genome similarity and bird classification and co-authored with Sibley the 1990 book Phylogeny and Classification of Birds from Yale University Press.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Denisovans in Science

2011-08-26T09:08:00.000-04:00

It's been pretty quiet around the blog lately, as I've been pretty busy in the "real world." Classes just started, I've got a busy research project, and so there's not a lot of time for blogging.

But today I see Science has two new items on Denisovans, those elusive Neandertal cousins from Siberia, and those Denisovans always get my attention. You might recall that we know quite a lot about Denisovans from their genome, sequenced and published last year. What we don't know is what they looked like. The only fossils we are sure came from Denisovans are teeth and a finger bone. So they're a genome in search of a fossil record. Kind of the opposite of what we usually have.

The first piece in Science is a report from Ann Gibbons on a July meeting of human origins researchers in the Altai Mountains at the Denisova Cave. Not a lot of earth-shattering revelations, except that one more Denisovan tooth has been identified. One of the researchers on the Denisova dig when the tooth was found is quoted as saying, "I thought it must belong to a cave bear." That's a really different kind of tooth than what is usually attributed to members of Homo. The other article from Abi-Rached et al. describes research that we've been hearing about for some time, the discovery that some very important immune receptor genes in modern humans appear to have originated in the Denisovan genome.

Some very interesting research, but many questions remain: What did the Denisovans look like? Will they be described as a new species or just subspecies of H. sapiens? How far did they range? And what happened to them?

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Fall journal club schedule

2011-08-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

Each semester, CORE sponsors a discussion group on campus to examine recent publications that are relevant to the creation/evolution debate. We meet every other Tuesday in Mercer 137. If you are on campus or nearby and you'd like to participate, we welcome you. The schedule for the fall semester has been posted at the CORE website. Check it out if you can!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Dose of reality on Adam and Eve

2011-08-15T15:39:00.000-04:00

Seems everybody's talking about that NPR story on Adam and Eve last week. I got emails, people asked me about it personally, and there were some blog posts (of course). What's my perspective I've shared my thoughts on Adam and Eve before, but there's one more point I want to make. The NPR story and the Christianity Today cover story might give one the impression that this is a major debate in evangelical Christianity. I think that's a mistake. Those individuals who now question the historicity of Adam and Eve, or rather who question the theological importance of a historical Adam and Eve, represent a minority view in evangelical Christianity. I can cite two sources to back up that claim.

First, the survey done for AIG's book Already Compromised looked at Christian college presidents, academic vice presidents, and heads of religion and science departments. The pool of Christian colleges was largely the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities, of which Bryan College is a member. The survey found that 59.6% of the respondents "believe in God creating the earth in six literal 24-hour days," 57.7% "believe the Flood was worldwide," and 42.3% consider themselves young-earth Christians. Although they didn't ask directly about Adam and Eve, those numbers suggest that a majority of evangelical Christian academics in today's colleges hold quite conservative views on the origins of humans.

Second, the survey recently conducted by the American Scientific Affiliation has preliminary results already available in PDF format. To those who might not be familiar with the ASA, they are a group of mostly Protestant Christians who are also scientists. They are widely viewed as a theistic evolution group, and though I think that classification might be a bit of an exaggeration, they are certainly sympathetic to reconciling evolution with Christian theology. In their survey, they asked respondents (of which I was one) to select their view on Adam and Eve, and only 21.6% responded that "There were no historical individuals corresponding to Adam and Eve."

I say this not to denigrate those who make these arguments or to denigrate the importance of this debate. But I also don't want to see people panicking by thinking that there is some huge shift happening in evangelical circles. This current debate is being driven by a savvy and well-funded "thinktank" (BioLogos) that represents a very minority view among even Christians in academia. The centrality of Adam and Eve to the narrative of the Fall and Curse on creation has been enshrined in countless Protestant doctrinal statements, and that's not going to change any time soon. The editors of Christianity Today affirmed the essentiality of Adam and Eve. Even within BioLogos, the historicity of Adam and Eve is not a settled issue. So please don't think this is a huge change. What we're seeing is the call of a few to re-examine these issues. They're just getting a lot of press coverage.

Where will this end? I don't know, but I'm eager to find out.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Congratulations, Paul Garner

2011-08-12T08:31:00.000-04:00

Paul Garner reports that his book The New Creationism has just been reprinted for the third time! Awesome! (That's considerably better than my one meager foray into the book publishing world.)

The New Creationism is quite a good book, and if you haven't read it, what are you waiting for?

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sympatric speciation

2011-08-10T08:55:00.000-04:00

The generation of a new species from an existing population requires, at some point, reproductive isolation. Why? The sharing of genes between different parts of the one population (gene flow) ensures that any new mutations that occur will be spread throughout the entire population. Since new species arise in part as new mutations occur, then there needs to be a way to keep those new mutations in one part of a population, the part that will become the new species. The simplest way to do this is to physically separate populations, for example by isolating part of the population on an island. That's called allopatric speciation. It is generally thought that sympatric speciation, the generation of a new species without any physical isolation, is much rarer than allopatric speciation. After all, any new mutation should be spread through a population and thereby prevent the generation of a new species. (The major exception to this is polyploidization in plants, which results in immediate reproductive isolation.)

When I was at Evolution 2011 this summer, I heard a talk by Alex Papadopulos on sympatric speciation on Lord Howe island. Here's how I described that work at the time:

Alex Papadopulos talked about sympatric speciation on Lord Howe Island. Lord Howe is a lone island in the pacific 600 km east of Australia. He's found endemic sister species of flowering plants that must have speciated on the island itself. Granted, he estimates the frequency of Lord Howe species that originated by sympatric speciation to be only 4.5-8%, but still, I'm fascinated to see any example of sympatric speciation. I should add for those in the know that the examples he discussed were not simply polyploids (the most frequent and presumably simplest form of sympatric speciation).

Yesterday, PNAS published his full paper. From the abstract:

Speciation with initially strong gene flow is thought to be extremely rare, and few convincing empirical examples have been published. However, using phylogenetic, karyological, and ecological data for the flora of a minute oceanic island (Lord Howe Island, LHI), we demonstrate that speciation with gene flow may, in fact, be frequent in some instances and could account for one in five of the endemic plant species of LHI. We present 11 potential instances of species divergence with gene flow, including an in situ radiation of five species of Coprosma (Rubiaceae, the coffee family). These results, together with the speciation of Howea palms on LHI, challenge current views on the origin of species diversity.

Check it out:
Papadopulos et al. 2011. Speciation with gene flow on Lord Howe Island. PNAS 108:13188-13193.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Coming up

2011-08-08T08:52:00.000-04:00

The summer is rapidly coming to a close. I've returned from the last of my travels, I'm seeing a lot of my faculty colleagues on campus again, and in one short week, I'll be in faculty workshop again. I didn't even get half the stuff done this summer that I wanted to. That's pretty typical though.

So what's coming up this fall from CORE? Roger and I will be working on several special issues of JCTSB, including one on the baramin. That means we'll be writing some new papers summarizing some of our research on carnivorous plants and the verbena family. I'll also be working with Marcus Ross and Paul Garner on our Avialae paper. To top all that off, I've started a significant research project as a response to Senter's criticisms. It goes way beyond dinosaurs, though, and it could potentially change everything that's been happening in baraminology over the last decade. Big stuff.

Over at the Creation Biology Society, I've already started working with my colleagues to develop the program for Origins 2012, the next big CBS/CGS conference. It's going to be big, and I will try to keep you updated on news from that front as often as I can. You won't want to miss this conference, I promise. (Meanwhile, Paul Garner has posted his reflections on Origins 2011.)

As usual, then, I've got a busy semester.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

JCTSB Special Issue on the Baramin: Call for Papers

2011-08-04T12:33:00.000-04:00

From the website of the Creation Biology Society:

Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B: Life Sciences

Special Issue: Baramins

Call for Papers

The editorial board of JCTSB is planning to publish a special issue in summer 2012 with the theme of identification of baramins. Papers suitable for this issue include reviews of the hybridization literature of particular groups or full-blown original statistical baraminological analyses. Methodological papers or critiques will also be considered. Longer papers will be published as research articles; shorter papers (e.g., former abstracts expanded to include more detailed methods, data, and results, as well as brief discussions) will be published as research reports. Each paper should be written according to the standard JCTSB formatting requirements.

We invite researchers to submit appropriate papers via the User Home Page of the JCTSB website (http://www.bryancore.org/jcts/) upon registering with the journal. Questions should be addressed to Roger Sanders (editor@creationbiology.org). To be considered for the special issue, the deadline for submissions is January 31, 2012. Submissions will be sent to a minimum of two reviewers, per normal editorial procedures. Final versions should be ready by June or July for publication.

JCTSB: The Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B: Life Sciences is edited and published by the Creation Biology Society. The journal serves as the outlet of technical research, reviews, and opinions of relevance to young-age creationist biology. As a young-age creationist journal, all submissions must be favorable to or at least respectful of creationism.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Debate gets weirder...

2011-08-02T09:42:00.000-04:00

Recently I attended Origins 2011, the annual conference of the Creation Biology Society (of which I'm president), where I presented the results of my most recent creationist research and gave a talk on the status of creationist biology 50 years after publication of The Genesis Flood. You'd think all of this creationist activity would reveal the true status of my opinions about creationism (namely, that I'm a creationist!), but some rumors just won't die.

While I was at Origins 2011, the good folks over at Uncommon Descent, the main blog for discussion of Intelligent Design (the idea that there is real, scientific evidence for design in the world) posted a piece denouncing my research on the chimp genome. The original post is riddled with errors. For example, William Jennings Bryan did not recommend the form of the Butler Act that was adopted by the Tennessee legislature. Bryan objected to imposing a punishment on those who broke the ban on teaching human evolution. Also, my research would not contradict the Butler Act anyway, since I am not a teacher in a public school and I never contradicted the biblical account of human origins, which is what the Butler Act actually prohibited.

But correcting the UD post is not my objective here. My research speaks for itself. I'm far more interested in the bizarre debate the post spawned in the comments section. You see, the original post described me as an "evolutionary biologist," which, as you might have guessed by now, is a pretty lousy descriptor of me. Certainly one that a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool evolutionary biologist would object to. In response, atheist skeptic Elizabeth Liddle posted a correction that I am instead a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) and baraminologist. Then there was a long debate, which turned out to be about whether she was just being derogatory by accurately describing my position. When the debate finally lurched and staggered to its resolution, Liddle posted this, which I thought was just wonderful (reposted with her permission):

Todd is a YEC. That’s not an insult, it’s a fact. He is also a baraminologist. That’s not an insult either, it’s a fact. So to call him an "evolutionary biologist" would not only be quite wrong, it would be rather demeaning. Todd is doing something rather remarkable – he is taking the scientific evidence for evolution, and for which he agrees evolution is a powerful explanation, and attempting to devise an alternative hypothesis that will account as well, if not better, for the data.

He is doing this because he has faith – faith that the bible is inerrant, and says the earth is young. If the earth is young, evolutionary theory cannot be true. And if the bible is true, common descent cannot be true.

And so, because he trusts God, he trusts that there must be an alternate explanation that has as much explanatory power as evolutionary theory, but which is consistent with what he believes to be the truth, which is that the bible is literally true, and that the first living things were "created kinds" not a simple cell. And he is determined to find that explanation.

He is one of the most honest scientists I have ever come across.

So if Todd says he’s found 99% similarity between chimps and humans, take him seriously. He has no evolutionary axe to grind. He just wants to know what the facts are.

Now he might have got it wrong – I wouldn’t know, I’m not a geneticist. But I suggest that people take his work seriously, even if you are not a YEC and think that common descent is well-supported.

Because if anyone is going to find evidence of design in genetics, it’s going to be Todd

Wow, that's one of the most accurate descriptions of my position I've ever read. It's almost as if someone is actually reading what I write and not trying to force me into some pre-conceived, propaganda-based category. Imagine that.

What kind of world are we living in where the supporters of ID attack a creationist, and an atheist skeptic defends him?

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011: Day 3

2011-08-01T13:12:00.000-04:00

On the final day of Origins 2011, we tried something new: a conference specifically designed for the general public. I think it went well, and we learned a lot of things that will hopefully improve next year's conference tremendously. The final panel discussion on Already Compromised was especially intriguing and eye-opening. I think folks experienced a bit of discomfort with the revelation that most Christian colleges (even the creationist ones) teach about evolution. We don't teach that evolution is true, of course, but we definitely teach information about evolution so that our students will be prepared when they encounter it after graduation.

Here's a few images from our final days in South Dakota:

Joe Francis talking about microbes (one of his favorite topics):

Some of the posters presented at the conference:

Paul Garner at Mt. Rushmore (or a reasonable facsimile thereof at the Reptile Gardens):

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011: Day 2

2011-07-30T00:09:00.000-04:00

The second day of the Origins 2011 conference was dedicated to the technical geology presentations. We got an update on the Coconino sandstone project from John Whitmore, and we had a lively session on the Flood/post-Flood boundary. Since we had a few talks cancelled, we decided to use the extra time to tour the Museum of Geology at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

We closed the day with John Morris's reflections on The Genesis Flood. That was a great opportunity to recall the importance of the book, and we learned that Walter Lammerts was tough to sit next to in the car. Who knew?

At our business meeting, we voted in a new member of the Executive Council of the Creation Biology Society: Tom Hennigan. Welcome, Tom! We also announced next year's conference venue, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA.

We've got one more day of the conference, beginning with my plenary on "Frontiers in Creation Biology."

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011: Day 1

2011-07-29T13:42:00.001-04:00

The first day of Origins 2011 was a great success! The technical talks sparked a lot of interesting discussion and debate, and Art Chadwick's plenary on his dinosaur dig at the Hanson Research Station was well received. The crowd was also one of our biggest.

Of special interest to me was Lantzer and Daniels's survey of Christian high school biology textbooks. They argued (shockingly) that when discussing origins (i.e. creation/evolution), Christian texts spend too much time on apologetics rather than science. Remedy? Talk more about science. What a brilliant idea. I'm looking forward to seeing their full paper.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011: Field Trip and Abstracts

2011-07-28T00:18:00.000-04:00

I went on my first geology field trip today, which was fascinating. Perhaps more culturally fascinating to me than scientifically fascinating, but I still enjoyed myself. (I admit that a lot of the geological detail was over my head.) Here we are at an outcropping of the "Great Unconformity:"

Speaking as a biologist, I thought the Unconformity was pretty good. I don't know about "great," but that's probably because I haven't seen it across most of the continental United States, which I guess would make it pretty great. Steve Austin interpreted the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon as the onset of the Flood, where the initial Flood waters eroded off the existing rocks from the pre-Flood world.

Meanwhile, the conference abstracts are available at the JCTS website, along with a short editorial from Tim Clarey on the launch of JCTS Series C: Earth Science.

Creation Biology Society 2011 Abstracts
Creation Geology Society 2011 Editorial and Abstracts

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011: South Dakota!

2011-07-27T08:34:00.000-04:00

Despite an unscheduled 24-hour layover in Chicago, I have safely arrived in Rapid City for Origins 2011. It's a little overcast, but otherwise fairly pleasant. In about two hours, I will head off to the Black Hills to look at rocks with a bunch of geologists, which I think will be more fun than it sounds.

Check back later for a brief rundown of the field trip, and then tomorrow we start the conference.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Another pitcher plant symbiosis

2011-07-25T07:00:00.000-04:00

Regular readers might recall my interest in carnivorous plants (see posts on toilets, bacteria, and tiny frogs). If the world was originally created with plants to provide food for immortal animals, how did we end up with plants that actually eat animals? That's a great question that I can't yet answer definitively, but I am becoming more and more intrigued by reports of unusual functions of Nepenthes pitcher plants. I previously noted the report of tree shrews using Nepenthes as toilets, with the plants getting nitrogen from the feces. Normally, pitcher plants get their nitrogen from digesting insects. Recently, there a new report of what appears to be a symbiosis between Nepenthes rafflesiana elongata and Hardwicke's woolly bat (Kervoula hardwickii hardwickii).

According to the report by Grafe et al., the pitchers of Nepenthes rafflesiana elongata are pretty poor at catching insects. They also have an unusually elongated structure, and they don't have the same smell as other Nepenthes rafflesiana varieties. But they do have bats. In their study of these plants in the wild, Grafe et al. repeatedly found bats living inside of the pitchers, perched just above the digestive fluid. They suspected that the plants were gaining nitrogen from the bats' urine or feces, so they measured the nitrogen content of Nepenthes leaves. Sure enough, the plants with bats had significantly higher nitrogen than those without bats.

So that's another example of a Nepenthes pitcher functioning basically as a toilet. Maybe that was the original point?

Grafe et al. 2011. A novel resource-service mutualism between bats and pitcher plants. Biology Letters 7:436-439.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Warm-blooded sauropods

2011-07-22T12:47:00.000-04:00

I was just reading yesterday a creationist paper skeptical of warm-blooded dinosaurs, and today, there's a new paper from Science providing yet more evidence that dinosaurs could regulate their body temperatures. From the abstract of Eagle et al.'s Dinosaur Body Temperatures Determined from Isotopic (¹³C-¹⁸O) Ordering in Fossil Biominerals:

We used clumped isotope thermometry to determine body temperatures from the fossilized teeth of large Jurassic sauropods. Our data indicate body temperatures of 36° to 38°C, which are similar to those of most modern mammals. This temperature range is 4° to 7°C lower than predicted by a model that showed scaling of dinosaur body temperature with mass, which could indicate that sauropods had mechanisms to prevent excessively high body temperatures being reached because of their gigantic size.

Now I'm off to South Dakota for a short vacation before the Origins 2011 conference. There's still time to register if you are interested in coming.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Bara min!

2011-07-21T07:44:00.000-04:00

Well, this was unexpected.

I was working on my plenary talk for Origins 2011 the other day, and I stumbled across a book called Bara Min!, written by Lin Hallberg. Oddly enough, the book is not about creationist biology. Google Translation tells me it's about:

Santos is ridskolans unruly horse. But Sofia loves him! She is saving money and fantasize about the lonely, derelict little barn by the hands cottage. What if she could buy Santos and having him there. One day an ambulance outside the indoor arena. Santos was thrown by a student and ridskolechefen talking about the slaughter ... Sofia's dream is suddenly about life and death. She must save Santos!

Apparently the title is Swedish for "Just Me!" or so says Google Translation.

And you know how reliable Google Translation is.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Senter's at it again

2011-07-20T08:00:00.037-04:00

Paul Garner points out that Phil Senter's got yet another paper out on creationism, this time from Reports of the NCSE. Here's part of Paul's reaction:

Speaking frankly, I found this perhaps the least satisfying of Senter’s recent contributions for a couple of reasons. First, to make his case Senter uncritically assumes that the conventional interpretations of the geological features described are correct and, to be fair to him, in doing so he is mostly following the lead of the creationists he cites. But I think that such interpretations demand careful investigation and it is not always wise to take them at face value. Second, I think this kind of analysis tends to miss the wood for the trees. The “big picture” of the stratigraphic record is of widespread sedimentary units of marine origin blanketing the continents and displaying evidence of rapid accumulation and long distance transport. That fits well with Flood geology and is much harder to explain by reference to modern day depositional environments. It is that bigger picture that provides the framework in which I seek to understand the features discussed in Senter’s paper.

I agree with Paul on this one. This was definitely the least interesting of Senter's steady stream of anti-creationism papers. To Paul's reasoning, I would add one additional disappointment: Senter, as most anti-creationists do, tends to treat all voices as roughly equal in creationism. I noticed this in his latest treatment of dinosaurs. He treats claims by amateurs as if they were of equal value as folks who have invested time and effort in original research. I don't value all creationist claims the same, and I certainly don't believe everything I hear creationists say. Wouldn't that be gullible!

So yes, you can comb through the creationist literature and find all sorts of contradictory opinions. I'm not the least surprised by that, but before we can conclude that creationists have falsified creationism, I think we ought to be far more careful and thoughtful about what creationists are actually saying. After all, isn't that a favorite tactic of anti-evolutionists? Quote-mining for evolutionists who disagree with other evolutionists, from which we're supposed to conclude that evolution has been falsified by evolutionists? Sorry, Phil, but I don't buy that argument from anti-evolutionists, and I'm not buying it from you.

Take away all the references to creationist acknowledgments of the challenges to Flood geology, and Phil's paper reduces to yet another paper about all the geological challenges to Flood geology, which is really not all that novel.

Senter. 2011. The defeat of Flood geology by Flood geology. RNCSE 31(3):1.1-1.14.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

From the Library: Hunter's Elements of Biology

2011-07-19T10:16:00.001-04:00

For those just joining us, "From the Library" spotlights interesting items in the library of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College.

While browsing in a local antique mall in Dayton recently, I stumbled upon a bookcase full of old textbooks. To my delight, I found George William Hunter's 1907 Elements of Biology, the predecessor to his 1914 textbook A Civic Biology that featured prominently in the famous Scopes trial. Best part? It was only $2. I love a good bargain.

I've only briefly skimmed the book, but it appears that the concept of evolution occupies a much lower place in this volume than in A Civic Biology. That's not to say that the later textbook covered evolution in great detail. Evolution appears briefly in A Civic Biology when classification and heredity are discussed.

In Elements of Biology, evolution appears to be barely mentioned. On page 7 of the introduction we read, "In the second half year the so-called evolutionary order may be followed with the animal types studied." Hunter briefly covered the evolution of the horse on pp. 315-316, where he concluded,

So ultimately by very gradual variation the present horse was evolved. This purely hypothetical history was probably repeated with variations in the case of many other species of animals.

Hunter's discussion of "Man's Place in Nature" is conducted purely in terms of classification, with no indication or implication that humans are actually related to animals. This paragraph is carried over to A Civic Biology, where it is followed by a section on "Evolution of Man," which largely reflects the racist opinions of the day.

My favorite part of this copy of Elements of Biology is the extensive inscription on the inside cover, written by a former student of this book:

This book has brought me many unhappy hours - that is, when I would study & study until my eyes have popped out, and go into Prof. M. room to recite. If I couldn't tell every word (the, it, & they) he would fuss & fuss. Thank goodness he's got someone to fuss with & he perhaps will let the students be. - I hope so.

Yikes. I'm glad to see science education has improved ever so slightly since Prof. M. was teaching!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011 Schedule

2011-07-14T14:57:00.000-04:00

The full schedule for Origins 2011 is now available at the CBS website.

Registration information is here.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Marcus Ross wants you to come to Origins 2011

2011-07-13T16:30:00.000-04:00

ORIGINS 2011 Creation Conference in Rapid City! from Marcus Ross on Vimeo.

Registration is available right here.

There's also still time to register for the CGS/CBS conference held in conjunction with Origins 2011. Register here for just the tech conference, or get a discount by registering for both the tech conference and Origins 2011.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Correction on the Y chromosome

2011-07-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

I got an email from Jeff Tomkins, wherein he pointed out an error in a previous post:

...you got your SNP data backwards regarding the 2001 Nature paper. The SNP rate is much lower (Table 1) - about 4X for the Y-chromosome. The authors use a somewhat confusing "kb per SNP" rate rather than "SNP per kb" rate, don't ask me why.

He's right. My apologies.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

One "sensible creationist" on Senter's paper

2011-07-11T10:18:00.000-04:00

As you probably know, Phil Senter published yet another paper on baraminology in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (here). AIG's Elizabeth Mitchell weighed in with her assessment over the weekend. An excerpt:

He is still misapplying baraminology to the point of absurdity. Since he acknowledges that "mathematics has no creed," he accepts the statistical aspects of baraminology. Then he analyzes the fossil record in such a way as to consider creatures with only sparse morphological similarities to be part of the same kind. He ignores all other pertinent baraminological principles to draw conclusions no sensible creationist would ever reach.

Hmmmm.... I think he's mistaken about a couple of issues, but I don't think there's anything absurd about what he's done. Quite the contrary. Here's a real scientist who has actually taken the time to read creationist literature and try to understand it from the inside. He's not just reading books, either. He's quoting from CRSQ and Journal of Creation. As far as I can tell, he's not misquoting them either. In a world where the creation/evolution "debate" is often little more than trading insults, I think Phil Senter is exceptional.

Moreover, I think his work raises some very important methodological and conceptual issues that really need to be addressed. This isn't something I can just shrug off in a blog post. His paper is worthy of very careful consideration, which I intend to do.

This "sensible creationist" wants to thank Phil Senter publicly for his work. We don't agree on much of anything about theology or creation/evolution, but he keeps me on my toes in ways the scoffers never could. I appreciate that.

For those who are wondering what my response will be, I'm going to have to give it some more thought. You know how I am about these things. I've definitely got some ideas about how to respond, but they'll take time. So please be patient, and we'll see how this goes.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sediba, Senter, and a new journal

2011-07-08T10:08:00.000-04:00

Back in February, I announced that we'd rebranded the BSG as the Creation Biology Society, since that makes more sense than an acronym that doesn't stand for anything. By dropping BSG, we also needed to change the name of our journal Occasional Papers of the BSG. We decided to use this name change as an opportunity to update the software to Open Journal Systems, and while we were making those changes, we invited the Creation Geology Society to join us in publishing this new online journal. We settled on Journal of Creation Theology and Science for the new name, with the CBS publishing JCTS Series B: Life Sciences and the CGS publishing JCTS Series C: Earth Sciences. Where's JCTS Series A? We're earnestly hoping and praying that within the next year or two, we'll be able to launch a new journal devoted to theological and biblical studies, and we've reserved Series A for that purpose.

The debut issue of JCTSB is now available (hosted by CORE at Bryan College), with the following items:

Welcome to the Inaugural Issue of JCTSB, Sanders (editorial)
Terrestrial Mammal Families and Creationist Perspectives on Speciation, Wood
Baraminology, the Image of God, and Australopithecus sediba, Wood
Book Review: The Biotic Habit, Hennigan

(I should add that JCTSC will be publishing their debut content shortly.)

The editorial by Roger Sanders explains the journal change, and the book review by Tom Hennigan is the first of the new "Media Review" section that we hope to have more of in JCTSB.

My mammal families article is a more detailed summary of work I published in abstract form at last year's CBS conference in Georgia. For those familiar with the power law size distribution of genera, this paper will be not surprising, but I've tried to make the work relevant to creationist concerns about speciation. The results are interesting, to say the least.

The sediba article is my formal response to Menton, Habermehl, and DeWitt and others. I'll probably have more to say in the future (since I'm certain this won't be the last word), but for now here's a quick summary. First of all, some of the objections leveled at my work are false. My work presents no theological problem whatsoever. None. If my critics think otherwise, they need to spell out precisely what those problems are, which they have not done. Accusations of biased data are more interesting, but the methods I used are designed to deal with the sorts of bias my critics are worried about. As I explain in the paper, I think the bias is detectable and negligible.

Regarding statistical baraminology, DeWitt raises some interesting points, but I don't think any of them are worth losing sleep over. As I understand it, DeWitt's (and others') principle objection is that some characters are more important than others for understanding what is and isn't human. That's an interesting point, and he's probably right, but what the critics haven't done is provide a detailed justification for why their favorite characteristics should define humanity. Here's the real problem: Just about any characteristic you can mention, I can show you a true human that lacks it. More importantly, if we accept at least Neandertals and erectines as human (as many creationists, including Lubenow, do), then modern Homo sapiens becomes an atypical example of humanity, at least as far as the skull goes. As anyone learns in Statistics 101, you shouldn't use the outliers to represent the group average. Just because all the humans I know have a characteristic doesn't make that characteristic universal to all humans. I would hope that would be obvious.

Of course, this is not to say that statistical baraminology is some kind of reckless "'be all and end all' human-australopith 'truth detector'." There are significant drawbacks to statistical baraminology and open questions that still need more research. I discuss some of these problems and the proposed solutions in the final part of the paper, as I did in the original paper. To be absolutely clear on this point: I am not saying that I'm infallibly correct about the human holobaramin. I am saying that there are good objections and not so good objections. And then there are objections that are little more than insults and emotional rants. I would hope that our discourse would strive for the good (and even not so good) objections rather than the other kind.

Moving on to other related topics, yesterday I mentioned that this new paper would have something to say to John Harshman's comments from Panda's Thumb:

...the biggest problem with baraminology (aside from the creationist assumption) is that they make not even an attempt to justify their methods, empirically or theoretically. Why do discontinuities distinguish baramins? We don’t know. Why discontinuities of a particular size, when even baraminology would imply discontinuities within baramins? We don’t know.

The sediba paper attempts to elaborate on that point, perhaps not sufficiently, but it's a start. I introduce the notion of the "discontinuity hypothesis" as something to be tested. This is something I've been thinking quite a lot about since 2008, when I was preparing my paper for the Genesis Kinds conference. I'd say that my paper "Natura Facit Saltum: The Case for Discontinuity" (published in the Genesis Kinds book) was the first time I explicitly posed the idea of testing discontinuity:

...the very real difference between the universal common ancestry of evolution and the origin of separate groups described in Genesis 1 might suggest that discontinuity could be more prevalent under the creationist perspective than the evolutionary. This would be especially true if somehow creationists could demonstrate the consistent presence of discontinuity around Marsh’s Genesis kinds ... George McCready Price (1938) and others (e.g., Woodmorappe 1996, p. 6; Jones 2002; Wood 2006) have suggested that the taxonomic rank of family could be roughly equivalent to the Genesis kind. Given an evolutionary model ..., there would seem to be no reason to expect discontinuity at any particular taxonomic level. Instead, we might expect to find continuity or discontinuity at any taxonomic level. Consequently, discontinuity could be detected with equal frequency around families as within families. Thus, a distinguishing test between evolutionary claims and those of creationists might be consistent discontinuity roughly around families, and the absence of discontinuity within families. (p. 116)

This is becoming my favorite way to think about statistical baraminology now, and it very much frames my response to Senter's dinosaur paper. More about that later, though. This post is already way too long.

So check out the new journal at www.bryancore.org/jcts, and let me know what you think.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Phil Senter does it again

2011-07-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

And this time, he's attracted quite a bit of attention. His latest paper Using creation science to demonstrate evolution 2: morphological continuity within Dinosauria is nicely summarized by Paul Garner at his blog. Paul says:

In the new paper, Senter applied distance correlation to even larger datasets, and concluded that indeed morphological discontinuities were found that appeared to distinguish eight dinosaur kinds. However, he suggests that this raises other problems for creationists, namely: (1) that the diversity within these kinds is enormous and extreme, (2) that some morphological gaps appear to have been filled by subsequent fossil discoveries, (3) that at least one morphological gap identified by Todd Wood was filled when using more extensive datasets from existing museum specimens, and (4) that the basal members of all the major dinosaur lineages appear to be morphologically continuous.

Senter's paper has been highlighted by the BBC (Wonder Monkey, which has spawned more than 850 comments at this writing) and PZ Myers (Pharyngula and Panda's Thumb). The comments at Panda's Thumb are definitely worth reading, especially John Harshman, from which I quote here:

...the biggest problem with baraminology (aside from the creationist assumption) is that they make not even an attempt to justify their methods, empirically or theoretically. Why do discontinuities distinguish baramins? We don’t know. Why discontinuities of a particular size, when even baraminology would imply discontinuities within baramins? We don’t know. I take this as a clue that deep down, even the best of them, e.g. Todd Wood, suspect that they are just going through the motions in imitation of science. Maybe Phil Senter might consider these questions if he wants to try it again.

Those are some very important issues that definitely need addressing.

My long-time readers know that I'm not one to just kneejerk a response, but my first impressions after reading Senter's conclusion is that there's a lot of confusion about what statistical baraminology can and can't do. And that's my fault, so shame on me. I'll be mulling over my response to these confusions in the near future. Meanwhile, oddly enough, part of my response to Harshman's question will be published tomorrow. Strange timing eh? Check back in then for my comments on the "discontinuity hypothesis."

Also note that we'll be discussing dinosaur baraminology at Origins 2011, where we will no doubt have some comments on Senter's paper.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Garner says "No Plesiosaurs in Loch Ness"

2011-06-30T13:11:00.000-04:00

Sorry, folks, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Paul Garner's latest post is aimed at the good, old Loch Ness Monster stories. He concludes:

Much as it grieves the ten-year-old in me to say it, and much as I’d love to believe otherwise, the evidence is conclusive: there are no plesiosaurs in Loch Ness.

Check out the full post at his blog.

Considering the strange and stubborn creationist obsession with cryptozoology, I doubt this dose of reality will dampen very many folks' enthusiasm, but we do what we can.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Was Evolution 2011 a waste of time?

2011-06-29T09:40:00.000-04:00

A reader wrote in recently:

Thank you so much for the blog from your time at the conference. ... Don't you leave all this and think that "Wow, are they wasting their time and efforts!" I know I would think that if I attended a YEC conference.

Wow, not at all! A lot of what is presented at Evolution conferences is pretty uncontroversial. To put it most simply, it's "change within a created kind." I'm very interested in that material, and it doesn't bother me a bit. Not all of the presentations are so creationist-friendly, of course, and those I have to think more critically about. Sifting out the useful information from what I consider to be incorrect is not that difficult or distracting. But it's still important to study this material, since this is the data that a good creationist model will eventually have to explain.

And frankly, I really like science and scientists. I even liked Jerry Coyne's talk. He's fun to listen to, and his work is great. I don't care much for his attitude about God, but personally, he seemed like a nice guy. That's not an unusual pattern, either. I find a lot of anti-creationists are a lot more thoughtful and knowledgeable and just plain friendly than you might guess. It kind of gives me hope that there really could be a resolution to the culture war. But maybe I'm naive...

One more thing: I definitely feel like I should be more active at future Evolution conferences. Maybe even give a talk? Let's call that a growing conviction. Wouldn't that be fun?

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

CBS biology presentation roster for Origins 2011

2011-06-27T10:32:00.000-04:00

A while back, I posted the roster for the geology portion of the Origin 2011 conference, edited by the fine folks at the Creation Geology Society. Here's the final roster for the biology portion:

"An ANOPA Study of Coelurosaurian Theropods," Cavanaugh
"The Hebrew Taxonomy of Living Things," Daniels
"A Just Holy War ... with Animals? Genesis 9, Deuteronomy 20, and a Conservation Ethic for a Creation under a Curse," Demme
"Balancing Imago Dei with Dominion: A Biblical Understanding of Conservation Ethics," Elaine
"Does Biblical Similarity Inform Biological Similarity?" Francis & Chou
"A Biblical View of Australopithecines and Paleoanthropological Data," Klenck
"Biological Origins in Christian Textbooks: Problems and Suggestions for Improvement," Lantzer & Layne
"Survey of Microbial Composition and Mechanisms of Living Stromatolites of the Bahamas and Australia," Purdom & Snelling
"Application of the Post-Flood Continuity Criterion to Flowering Plants," Sanders
"Creationist Interpretation of Fossil Pollen Assemblages of the K-Pg Boundary," Sanders
"The Chimpanzee Genome is Nearly Identical to the Human Genome," Wood
"The Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a Mammal," Wood
"Preliminary Baraminological Analysis of Jurassic and Cretaceous Avialae," Wood, Ross, Garner
"Detecting Discontinuity in the Dinosauria using Baraminic Distance Correlation," Wood, Ross, Garner

REMEMBER! The early registration deadline for Origins 2011 is this Friday, July 1. If you are presenting a contributed talk (on this list or the geology list) and you have not yet registered, please do so this week to guarantee the discount registration.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

What Jeff didn't tell you

2011-06-23T16:41:00.001-04:00

Jeff Tomkins has a new paper out in ARJ this week, "How Genomes are Sequenced and Why it Matters: Implications for Studies in Comparative Genomics of Humans and Chimpanzees." Jeff and I go way back, and I think it's fair to say that he helped me tremendously in learning as much as I know about genomics. So I write this post with the utmost respect - respectful disagreement, but definitely respect. His paper is a really decent summary of recent genome sequencing techniques, and it raises some interesting points about how the chimp genome sequences were obtained. He concludes:

A majority of the public and scientific community are not aware of these caveats [how the chimp genome sequence has been generated] and still told hold to the dogma that the human genome is 98 to 99% similar to chimpanzee, which is most likely not the case. The fact is that major differences between the structure of the human and a chimpanzee genomes are now being documented as the genomic resources improve.

The "major differences" he cites there is the Y chromosome, which did indeed show significant differences between the human and chimp sequences.

He does leave out one very, very important issue, however, namely that the Y chromosome is unrepresentative of the entire genome and should therefore not be considered vindication of the opinion that the chimp genome will be much more different than is generally reported. For example, in an early paper on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) discovery in the human genome, the International SNP Map Working Group reported SNP frequencies about four times higher on the human Y chromosome than on the human autosomes (non-sex chromosomes). SNPs are single nucleotide differences that exist within a species' gene pool. SEE CORRECTION We also know that the human Y chromosome is a hotbed of repetitive sequences, much more dense than on the autosomes, which leads to even more variability. So when the chimp Y chromosome was sequenced, it was not surprising to find that it was very different from the human Y chromosome.

In fact, a 2003 research paper by Rozen et al. seemed to say exactly that. Rozen et al. looked at palindromic sequences in the Y chromosomes of humans and apes - sequences that read the same forward and backward. The human Y chromosome contains eight palindromes, which are enormous as far as palindromes go. A typical palindrome sequence might be a few tens of nucleotides, but the ones on the human Y chromosome range from 9,000 nucleotides to 1,450,000 nucleotides. That's HUGE! Rozen et al. tried to find six of these palindromes in the genomes of chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla. They found five in chimps, four in bonobos, and only two in gorillas. That was the first hint that the Y chromosomes were going to be very different in the human and chimp genomes. When the final chimp Y chromosome sequence was published, it turned out to have 19 palindromes, with only 7 shared with the human Y chromosome. The key point is that this difference was anticipated because we already knew that the Y chromosome was a really variable chromosome.

Why does this matter? Because the Y chromosome is not like the other chromosomes in the human genome. The autosomes are far less variable and have less repetitive sequence. You therefore cannot extrapolate the similarity of autosomes from the similarity of Y chromosomes. So the chimp Y chromosome gives us no hope whatsoever that the true similarity of chimp and human autosomes will be very low.

I'll have more to say about the chimpanzee genome at the CBS conference. I hope to see you there!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Evolution 2011: Tuesday

2011-06-21T22:17:00.002-04:00

So my trip comes to an end once again. I had a good day and learned a lot, but nothing really grabbed me. The one talk I really wanted to hear was cancelled.

It's always kind of fascinating being the creationist at the big evolution conference. I used to be kind of nervous, but now it's no big deal. I'm sure I could get into some really heated arguments if I wanted, but I don't come to these conferences to make trouble. I come to learn.

I know some of you find that hard to believe, but it's true. I like science, and to a certain extent I like evolutionary biology. I don't agree with everything I hear (obviously), but evolutionary biology has a lot to offer to a creationist who's actually willing to listen. It's a shame there aren't more of us like that. The Geological Society of America conference has quite a creationist presence every year, but I'm still a lone ranger at Evolution meetings (as far as I know).

So what did I learn this time out? I've already described a lot of what I learned, and I've had some ideas for research that I'm going to keep to myself for the time being. That happens every year: I come home reinvigorated with lots of new ideas for research projects.

So thanks for that. It was fun. See you in Ottawa!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Evolution 2011: Monday

2011-06-20T20:26:00.000-04:00

Today's sessions had quite a number of talks that interested me. Bruce Deagle enlightened me about the stickleback species in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Sticklebacks are fish that are a pretty common model organism in evolutionary studies. He's using SNP genotyping to learn about parallel evolution in lake and stream forms, which he explains nicely on his website.

Next, Todd Castoe updated us on the progress of the python genome project. That's a really interesting system to work with, since python metabolism can change so dramatically (including drastic organ growth) just after feeding. Updates can be found at www.snakegenomics.org.

In the afternoon, I was fascinated by Julie Urban's presentation on the endosymbionts of planthoppers. The subject of her talk was the co-evolution of symbiont and host, but I was more taken with the system itself. She's looking primarily at planthopper species with more than one species of endosymbiont, and they're really intriguing. I tried to scribble down as much as I could about them, but I'm going to have to go back and look up more information about them. What struck me was the amino acid synthesis capabilities. Where one endosymbiont species would have only genes for synthesis of some essential amino acids, the other endosymbiont species could synthesize the others. So it was a complementary endosymbiosis. Really amazing stuff.

After the afternoon break, I really enjoyed the successive talks on the fish Poecilia mexicana from Rüdiger Riesch and Michael Tobler. Riesch talked about cave adaptations, and Tobler presented convergent evolution for head size in fish found in sulfide-rich springs. There's quite a lot of info on this system on their homepages: Riesch and Tobler. It's definitely worth looking into.

So that was my Monday. Lots of interesting ideas and things to think about.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Evolution 2011: Sunday

2011-06-19T21:34:00.000-04:00

To be honest, today was a bit slow for me. I guess I went to the wrong sessions. Two talks stuck out for me, though.

Jeff Johnson discussed his research on Gloger's rule in Greenland gyrfalcons. Gloger's rule states that individuals in a species tend to be more heavily pigmented in lower latitudes. Sure enough, gyrfalcons from northern Greenland are white while populations in central and southern Greenland have more grey individuals. He's only just started to work on studying why this is, but it seems to have something to do with the limited breeding season in the north. Yeah, weird, but fascinating.

The other talk that got my attention was in the session on Sex and Reproduction, given by Tara Marriage on genetic load in asexual reproduction (I'm not kidding). What made this interesting was how counterintuitive it was. Her simulations showed that genetic load (roughly the number of bad mutations a population carries) is reduced in a mixed sexual/asexual population when asexual reproduction increases. For more details, see her digital dissertation: PDF.

I ended the day with Jerry Coyne's presidential address on his research on the speciation of Drosophila santomea. It was a great talk and really interesting stuff. Basically, it's yet another example of an island endemic derived from a species that is widespread on the nearby continent, in this case from Drosophila yakuba on Africa. There were a lot of interesting twists though, including the degree to which the two species are reproductively isolated (a LOT) and the weird hybrid zone. He's got several papers on this subject linked on his website.

So that was my day.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Evolution 2011: Saturday

2011-06-18T20:36:00.000-04:00

I had a great kick off day for Evolution 2011. I started out in two sessions on plant diversification. Two talks in particular stood out. In the first session, Alex Papadopulos talked about sympatric speciation on Lord Howe Island. Lord Howe is a lone island in the pacific 600 km east of Australia. He's found endemic sister species of flowering plants that must have speciated on the island itself. Granted, he estimates the frequency of Lord Howe species that originated by sympatric speciation to be only 4.5-8%, but still, I'm fascinated to see any example of sympatric speciation. I should add for those in the know that the examples he discussed were not simply polyploids (the most frequent and presumably simplest form of sympatric speciation). For those not in the know, sympatric speciation happens when two populations that share a population range diverge into two species. The question is how this can happen, when presumably the two populations could interbreed and thereby pass incipient species differences back and forth. It's thought that most speciation is allopatric, where some kind of geographic barrier prevents interbreeding of two diverging populations while they are in the process of becoming new species.

In the next session, I thought Michael Donoghue's talk on fruit color was really fascinating. The question he's trying to understand is why there are so many different fruit colors. He looked at fruit color frequency in South Carolina vs. Maine in the US, and in Kyushu vs. Hokkaido in Japan. He found a very interesting pattern, but since this is very preliminary research, I don't want to spoil the surprise, so I won't spill the beans (as it were).

Next, I popped in for Ken Miller's talk "So simple a beginning - why evolution matters in America today," which was about what I expected from Ken Miller talking about why creationism is a terrible threat. I thought it was kind of funny when he got gasps from the audience after informing them of AIG's new Ark park project. It was nice to hear his presentation, though, since I can see why he's so concerned about the situation. If you really think that creationism is anti-science or anti-rational, then yeah, I can see that that would threaten America's prominence in the world of science and innovation. I certainly share his concern over the persistence of many really bad creationist arguments.

I spent the afternoon in a session on reinforcement before ending my day in the invert diversification session. The highlight for me was hearing about Robin Hopkins's research into reinforcement and character displacement in the Phlox drummondii/cuspidata system in Texas. The idea is pretty simple. Sometimes in the wild, we observe that two species differ from each other more when they occur in the same area (sympatric) than in populations that are geographically isolated (allopatric). Say you have two wide-ranging species of flowers that share a partial overlap in their range where they occur together. Normally, the flowers are blue, but where they occur in the same area, one species has dark red flowers. That's called character displacement, and it's exactly what you find in the case of Phlox drummondii. Where P. drummondii occurs by itself, it grows a blue flower, but where it grows next to P. cuspidata, the flowers are dark red. In a nutshell, Hopkins found that Phlox pollinators treat the two color flowers differently, thereby reducing the occurrence of maladaptive hybridization. It was a terrific study, and I'm not at all surprised to see that the editors of Nature agree.

Two final notes: If you drop by the Wiley-Blackwell booth, you can pick up a copy of the March/April issue of Journal of Evolutionary Biology, which contains a paper called "Using creation science to demonstrate evolution? Senter's strategy revisited." Check it out if you can.

Finally, I see that Jerry Coyne seemed surprised to find a prayer card on his bed when he checked into his hotel room at the conference center. For those who don't recognize his name, he's a prominent evolutionary biologist, president of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and an outspoken atheist. I have to admit that I was a little surprised to see that too, even though it was a pretty "non-denominational" prayer. But I hope he's not surprised to learn that some Christians might actually pray for him. That's part of what it is to be Christian: to pray for others. I would hope that creationists everywhere would be praying for him and for all the folks at this conference. Heaven knows we need it.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Evolution 2011: It's HOT

2011-06-17T16:58:00.000-04:00

I have arrived in Oklahoma, and it's 97 degrees here. I dawdled too long on my hotel reservation, and the conference center was booked when I tried to make my reservation. So I've got a one mile walk to get to the conference center. That'll be fun.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Creationism in Earth

2011-06-17T08:00:00.001-04:00

While I'm off to Evolution 2011 today, I wanted to point out that Paul Garner's blog directs us to an article about creationist involvement with GSA in the latest Earth magazine:

The article is written by Steven Newton of the anti-creationist organisation, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), so it’s a bit "sniffy" about it all. Still, Newton begrudgingly admits that the posters and talks "appeared to follow standard geologic practices in preparing samples and collecting data" and that the field trip leaders offered "real observations on real outcrops".

Paul's right about the tone; it's a really weird, conspiratorial way of writing. But I'm glad to see the attention. Check it out:

Creationism creeps into mainstream geology

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sediba paper and Evolution2011

2011-06-16T08:00:00.009-04:00

Longsuffering readers will be interested to know that I'm putting the finishing touches on my response to the critics of my hominid baraminology paper. Last year, I discussed several responses:
Reckless and farcical
Lubenow on sediba
Sediba, the bad, and the ugly

As I noted previously, I was given the opportunity to respond to Menton, Habermehl, and DeWitt by the editor of Answers Research Journal, but I declined. In retrospect, I'm glad I did. My intention was to allow the dust to settle, so to speak. I wanted to give the print journals (CRSQ and JC) the opportunity to put out rebuttals, and I wanted to take the time to think the issues over more carefully. Some people were pretty critical of my unwillingness to shoot right back at my critics, but I'm glad I waited. My manuscript response has now been heavily edited and modified twice, and I'm much happier with the result. So we can look forward to its imminent publication.

Meanwhile, I'm off to Evolution2011 tomorrow in Norman, OK. As in previous years, I'll be posting daily summaries of my activities, so check back this weekend for those.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

CGS Conference Roster for Origins 2011

2011-06-15T08:34:00.001-04:00

I just got the full roster of talks for the CGS portion of this summer's Origins 2011 conference. I'm really excited to see a great list of talks, especially from a lot of new names. We should have the CBS abstracts finished soon. Registration is still available at the early bird rate. Sign up here!

"Seismic and Volcanic Data Supporting a Global Catastrophic Event with Implications for Catastrophic Plate Tectonics," Cavanaugh

"Overthrust Faulting: A Mechanical Paradox Explainable Only in a Flood Context," Clarey, Strom, and Cheung

"Pseudotachylyte and Superfaults: Evidence of Catastrophic Earth Movements," Clarey and Austin

"Compaction of Sand in the Coconino Sandstone," Emery and Maithel

"Role of Aerosols in a Post-Flood Ice Age," Gollmer and Shirey

"Baraminological Analysis of the Caseidae (Synapsida: Pelycosauria)," McLain

"The Geomorphology of the Uinta Mountains and Its Implications," Oard

"Biogeography and Biostratigraphy: Coupled Constraints on the Placement of the Post-Flood Boundary," Ross

"Fractures in Central Wyoming: Indicators of a Single Orogenic Event and Its Subsequent Collapse," Thompson

"New Finds in the Coconino Sandstone, Arizona," Whitmore, Forsythe, Strom, and Garner

REGISTRATION

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Proof

2011-06-14T11:51:00.000-04:00

There was a very short letter in last week's Science that made me smile. Charles Bennet of Johns Hopkins took issue with a Science headline that proclaimed "Gravity Probe B satellite proves Einstein right." What's the problem? Wrote Bennet,

I find myself frequently repeating to students and the public that science doesn't “prove” theories. Scientific measurements can only disprove theories or be consistent with them.

Indeed. Science editor Colin Norman responded with a two line mea culpa, "... we blew it." I also reprove my students for using the word "prove" in the context of science. I remember one semester when the students kept using it in their homework even after I TWICE explained to them why it's not appropriate. So I explained the problem again and threatened to flunk the next assignment that used the word. That finally broke the habit.

Of course these interesting and valid philosophical points don't stop the editors at Science Daily. Today, they've got a story about experimental evolution in protists with the headline Proving Darwin Right. The research in question will be published in a future issue of Ecology Letters, and it's definitely interesting stuff. But just like all science, it can't possibly prove Darwin right.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Roger Sanders radio interview

2011-06-13T13:17:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let you know that CORE's Roger Sanders was recently interviewed by Bob Enyart for his program "Real Science Friday." You can listen online here:

Roger Sanders interview

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011 hotels filling up

2011-06-08T11:46:00.006-04:00

If you are planning to come to Origins 2011 and you need a hotel, you should make your reservation as soon as possible. We (at CORE) just made our reservations this week, and the hotels in Rapid City are already filling up for that weekend (not surprising).

Meanwhile, abstract editing is coming along, and we will certainly have a bigger conference than we had last year.

You can register for the conference at the Origins 2011 website.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Nutcracker Man was a grazer?

2011-06-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

This week's PNAS has a paper by Cerling et al. on the putative diet of Paranthropus boisei, previously known as Australopithecus boisei, previously known as Zinjanthropus the "Nutcracker Man." The name came from the skull's robust maxilla, which was suggested to be used for, well, cracking nuts. Cerling et al.'s stable isotope analysis shows that boisei instead fed on C4 plants (grasses and sedges). From the abstract:

Its diet included more C4 biomass than any other hominin studied to date, including its congener Paranthropus robustus from South Africa. These results, coupled with recent evidence from dental microwear, may indicate that the remarkable craniodental morphology of this taxon represents an adaptation for processing large quantities of low-quality vegetation rather than hard objects.

Cerling et al. 2011. Diet of Paranthropus boisei in the early Pleistocene of East Africa. PNAS 108:9337-9341.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Adam and BioLogos

2011-06-07T10:38:00.000-04:00

The BioLogos Foundation, which exists purely to promote belief in evolution among evangelicals, seems to be happy with the attention they're receiving courtesy of the latest Christianity Today feature article, titled The Search for the Historical Adam. When I first read the article last week, I was a bit disappointed at how mostly one-sided it was, as it focused largely on the call of the minority to abandon the historical Adam. Or shall I say, the insistence of the minority that a historical Adam is of no theological importance.

Then today, I checked the CT site again, and I found their fascinating editorial No Adam, No Eve, No Gospel, wherein the editors affirm the theological necessity of a real Adam and a real Fall into sin. From the editorial:

What is at stake?
First, the entire story of what is wrong with the world hinges on the disobedient exercise of the will by the first humans. The problem with the human race is not its dearth of insight but its misshapen will.
Second, the entire story of salvation hinges on the obedience of the Second Adam.

That's pretty much what I've been saying. If we let go of these early chapters of Genesis, and we will be letting go of the core message of Christianity. I should note that CT is not remotely going to start favoring young-age creationism, but I am pleased to see that there are some theological truths they are not willing to relinquish in the quest to harmonize science and Scripture.

The thing I really liked about the CT cover article? That image of Adam is probably the most historically reasonable reconstruction I've ever seen. Even better than the Creation Museum's.

Meanwhile, I was just alerted to this new article from the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology:

Caneday. 2011. The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis & Historicity in Paul’s Gospel. SBJT 15(1):26-59. Download the PDF.

I haven't finished reading it yet, but it looks like an interesting rebuttal of assertions made by Francis Collins and Peter Enns.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Greg Hall at Origins 2011

2011-06-03T09:35:00.000-04:00

Big news: Greg Hall, president of Warner University, has confirmed that he will be delivering a plenary session at Origins 2011 (the joint CBS/CGS conference). Dr. Hall is the co-author of Ken Ham's new book Already Compromised, which in my opinion is yet another fascinating survey of contemporary Christians' beliefs about origins. In Already Gone, the subject was young Christians who had fallen away from the church. In this new book, Ham and Hall focus on the leaders of Christian colleges. Some of their findings are exactly what I expected, but other results are really eye-opening.

Origins 2011 will be held at South Canyon Baptist Church in Rapid City, SD on July 28-30. The full conference includes a geological field trip, a technical conference (with at least 20 different talks and posters), and the concluding public conference.

Registration information can be found at the Creation Biology Society website.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Catching up again

2011-05-27T11:17:00.000-04:00

So it's been a while. I've been out for about two weeks due to a family emergency, but I'm back now. And I have lots of catching up to do. Unfortunately my CBS editorial responsibilities went by the wayside, and some of you are still waiting on revised abstracts or editorial decisions. I apologize for the delay, and I'll try to get all of that work done today.

Meanwhile, there's an announcement from GRI (in their latest PDF newsletter) of a new book from Pacific Press called Understanding Creation. It's a multi-author volume edited by Jim Gibson and Humberto Rasi. YOu can learn more at the Pacific Press website.

One more thing: Since editing across the board is taking longer than we expected, I think we'll be extending the discounted registration period for the CGS/CBS conference. It's supposed to be next week, but I think we can push it back a few more weeks without problems. I'll let you know.

Now I must get back to editing.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

About that Genesis Symposium

2011-05-17T15:17:00.000-04:00

Bryan College will be hosting a symposium this fall entitled Reading Genesis 1-2: An Evangelical Conversation. Due to the roster of speakers, we've been getting some questions about the symposium. Here's what I wrote to one such inquiry:

Thanks for writing. The Genesis symposium you refer to is hosted and organized by the Bryan Institute for Critical Thought and Practice, which is part of Bryan College. For the past six years, the Bryan Institute has organized symposia at the college focusing on controversial issues, often including disagreements within evangelical Christianity. Past symposia focused on issues like global warming, the function of music in church services, and health care in America. Here's a list of past symposia.

It's in that context that we need to understand the Genesis Symposium. The college is definitely not advocating some new way of reading Genesis, and we're not changing our position on anything. What we're trying to do with the symposium is to examine and evaluate new proposals about reading Genesis 1-2, which have become very popular among evangelical Old Testament scholars. In addition to scholars advocating these novel interpreations, another speaker will be Todd Beall, who is an Old Testament scholar who continues to advocate a traditional, creationist interpretation (as I do). You may recall his name from his chapter in the creationist book Coming to Grips with Genesis, edited by Terry Mortenson and Thane Urey. So the symposium intends to reflect a plurality of interpretations, rather than promoting "evolution-friendly" interpretations. The Bryan Institute was absolutely committed to having the creationist perspective presented at the symposium, which is more than can be said for many modern scholarly symposia on Genesis and origins.

As a college, we feel it's important that our students become aware of the full range of Christian perspectives on origins, since they will undoubtedly encounter those positions some time during their lives. The Genesis symposium is part of that educational experience. It's definitely not a sign that we've changed our doctrinal position or that we're abandoning the authority of scripture. Quite the contrary. The Center for Origins Research, which is entirely sponsored by the College, continues to do pioneering creationist research on biological topics, as we have done for the past 22 years.

I hope this will answer your concerns, but if you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Fitch and Polar Neandertals

2011-05-13T13:51:00.000-04:00

I was going to post this yesterday, but blogger.com has been out. Seems to be working again, so here goes nothing:

Science has a nice, personal obit for Walter Fitch. It's well worth reading.

Science also has a report from Slimak et al. on Neandertal tools found in the polar Ural mountains at a site called Byzovaya. This significantly extends the range of Neandertals, but even more importantly, it puts them about a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. That's a pretty cold place to live, certainly not the ideal place for a brutish, soulless animal. You'd have to be pretty smart to beat the Arctic cold. Cool stuff. Literally.

Slimak et al. 2011. Late Mousterian Persistence near the Arctic Circle. Science 332:841-845.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

In praise of the Biodiversity Heritage Library

2011-05-10T14:36:00.000-04:00

If you're not absolutely IN LOVE with the Biodiversity Heritage Library, I don't know what's wrong with you. I'm prompted to sing their praises this afternoon after discovering Edward Tyson's seminal work Orang Outang: sive Homo sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man is available for free on their website, right here:

Orang Outang

What's the big deal? Well, Tyson's work just happens to be the first formal description of chimpanzee anatomy, where he acknowledges that it's an intermediate between humans and animals, but he interprets that intermediacy in terms of design. I wrote about Tyson in my chimp genome paper:

Though the concept of transition or gradation may sound evolutionary to our modern ears, Tyson believed in a biological spectrum of form created by the Creator, rather than a temporal or evolutionary series.

Now anyone with an internet connection can study and enjoy this important work, and it's all thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Ichthyosaur healed "battle scars"

2011-05-04T13:56:00.000-04:00

For those of us interested in documenting evidence of natural evil from the fossil record, Science Daily has a report today on "battle scars" in an Ichthyosaur fossil. (You might recall that ichthyosaurs are those dolphin-like lizards shown above in a photo I obtained from Wikipedia.) According to the report:

The surprising discovery of well preserved bite marks on the bones of the ichthyosaur's lower jaw were made during painstaking cleaning and reassembly of its skeleton in the laboratory. Evidence of advanced healing indicates that the animal survived the attack and lived on for some time afterwards.
... The size and spacing of the tooth marks do match any potential predators or prey. Rather, they are most consistent with another adult ichthyosaur, suggesting that the wounds were inflicted during combat over food, mates or territory.

Science Daily's link to the journal article is presently not working, but you can find the whole paper right here:

Zammit and Kear. 2011. Healed bite marks on a Cretaceous ichthyosaur. Acta Paleontologica Polonica doi:10.4202/app.2010.0117

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Preview of Origins 2011 speaker lineup

2011-05-03T17:04:00.000-04:00

Some of you probably remember that I announced a special bonus to this year's CBS/CGS conference, Origins 2011. Here's the original announcement:

Post-Meeting 2-day Public Conference: ORIGINS 2011
Date: July 29-30 (Friday evening, Saturday)

Another exciting announcement: in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Genesis Flood, the CGS and CBS are pleased to announce their first-ever public conference. Friday night and all day Saturday, speakers in the fields of theology, biology, geology, and other disciplines will commemorate the impact of The Genesis Flood, and update the public on significant advances in young-Earth creationism. The finalized speaker list will be posted as soon as possible.

We haven't yet finalized the speaker list, but I can give you a sneak peak of what you can expect. Our intrepid conference organizer Marcus Ross has confirmed these speakers:

John Morris

Randy Guliuzza

Steven Austin

Art Chadwick

Joe Francis

We're still waiting to hear from a couple more, and I will definitely post again when the final speaker list is confirmed. In addition to all these speakers, remember that we'll also have about 25 or so technical talks from CBS and CGS members.

Where do you register? Right here:

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Monday updates

2011-05-02T09:33:00.000-04:00

For those wondering, last week's tornadoes did indeed come roaring through Rhea county. We had four tornado warnings last Wednesday, but otherwise, we're fine. A tornado went through about 7 miles west of my house, but we only lost power for about two hours that evening. Bryan College was undamaged.

Meanwhile, we got a good number of abstract submissions for this year's CBS/CGS conference, for which I am very grateful. I'll have more to say about them after the editors finish their work.

Finally, Geisler et al. just published a new analysis of crown Cetacea using a supermatrix. Their conclusions from the abstract:

The parsimony analysis of the supermatrix and the analysis of morphology constrained to fit the ML/Bayesian molecular tree yielded broadly congruent phylogenetic hypotheses. In trees from both analyses, all Oligocene taxa included in our study fell outside crown Mysticeti and crown Odontoceti, suggesting that these two clades radiated in the late Oligocene or later, contra some recent molecular clock studies.

That is consistent with my own previous analyses.

Geisler et al. 2011. A supermatrix analysis of genomic, morphological, and paleontological data from crown Cetacea. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11:112.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sediba and Flores

2011-04-29T09:07:00.000-04:00

This week's Science is reporting additional remains of Au. sediba from Lee Berger's team in South Africa. There are four individuals, including an infant. Given the controversy I stirred up this time last year when I published a paper suggesting that Au. sediba should be included in the human holobaramin, I found this little snippet extremely interesting:

The team calls the hominin an australopithecine because it had a small brain and “overall body plan” like that of an australopithecine, team member de Ruiter said in his talk.

But the fossils also show some surprisingly modern traits usually found only in members of our genus, Berger said. The two pelvises, in particular, are capacious and elongated, resembling those of Homo. In his talk, Berger ticked off a list of other modern traits, including smaller teeth, short hands, and an elongated thumb.

Last year, my critics relished pointing out all the characteristics of sediba that were very different from Homo sapiens, and yet there remain many other traits that are surprisingly "modern" (i.e., like us). So I'm eager to see the results of Berger's team's latest research. I just hope we don't have to wait years to see those papers in print.

For any curious readers, I finished my paper responding to my critics, and it's been submitted for publication. I hope that it will be published sometime this summer.

Science is also reporting more wrist bones from Homo floresiensis (the so-called "Hobbit"). There remains a bit of controversy over whether the fossils attributed to floresiensis are really a different species than Homo sapiens or just the remains of a deformed individual. The primary way to resolve that question in favor of the "new species" interpretation is to find additional individuals that closely resemble the first fossils. These new bones add to the evidence that the Hobbit was indeed a different species.

2011. A New Ancestor for Homo? Science 332:534.
Gibbons. 2011. Snapshots From the Meeting. Science 332:535.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Shhh... sleepy time

2011-04-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

I came to work a few days ago, and I found this little guy sleeping on the wall next to the museum door.

We had some pretty hard rain the night before, so our entrance way became an emergency bat shelter.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Pointed words on Ph.D.s

2011-04-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Back when I was pondering grad school, everyone told me to study molecular biology because there was a great demand for molecular biologists. So I followed that advice, and so did thousands of others. Now the job market for folks with a molecular bio background is extremely competitive, and the Ph.D. is simply not enough to ensure a successful career. The latest Nature has some articles on this problem, and they're pretty blunt. Check out Mark Taylor's take on the situation:

The system of PhD education in the United States and many other countries is broken and unsustainable, and needs to be reconceived. In many fields, it creates only a cruel fantasy of future employment that promotes the self-interest of faculty members at the expense of students. The reality is that there are very few jobs for people who might have spent up to 12 years on their degrees. ... There are two responsible courses of action: either radically reform doctoral programmes or shut them down.

They've also published a piece giving a more global perspective:
Education: The Ph.D. Factory

Definitely articles worth reading.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Gene expression noise

2011-04-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

Very interesting paper in this week's PNAS. Here's the abstract:

Impact of gene expression noise on organismal fitness and the efficacy of natural selection
Z. Wang and J. Zhang

Gene expression noise is a universal phenomenon across all life forms. Although beneficial under certain circumstances, expression noise is generally thought to be deleterious. However, neither the magnitude of the deleterious effect nor the primary mechanism of this effect is known. Here, we model the impact of expression noise on the fitness of unicellular organisms by considering the influence of suboptimal expressions of enzymes on the rate of biomass production and the energetic cost associated with imprecise amounts of protein synthesis. Our theoretical modeling and empirical analysis of yeast data show four findings. (i) Expression noise reduces the mean fitness of a cell by at least 25%, and this reduction cannot be substantially alleviated by gene overexpression. (ii) Higher sensitivity of fitness to the expression fluctuations of essential genes than nonessential genes creates stronger selection against noise in essential genes, resulting in a decrease in their noise. (iii) Reduction of expression noise by genome doubling offers a substantial fitness advantage to diploids over haploids, even in the absence of sex. (iv) Expression noise generates fitness variation among isogenic cells, which lowers the efficacy of natural selection similar to the effect of population shrinkage. Thus, expression noise renders organisms both less adapted and less adaptable. Because expression noise is only one of many manifestations of the stochasticity in cellular molecular processes, our results suggest a much more fundamental role of molecular stochasticity in evolution than is currently appreciated.

A 25% reduction in fitness? That's rather impressive.

I'd like to say more, but the full paper's behind their paywall.

Wang & Zhang. 2011. Impact of gene expression noise on organismal fitness and the efficacy of natural selection. PNAS 108:E67-E76.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Origins 2011 abstract reminder

2011-04-19T08:00:00.006-04:00

As I'm putting the finishing touches on my own abstracts, I thought I should remind everyone that abstracts for the 2011 joint conference of the Creation Biology Society and Creation Geology Society are due at the end of the month (that's next week).

CGS call for abstracts

CBS call for abstracts

You can also register for the conference or just get more information on venue, schedule, etc. right here.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Alleged review

2011-04-18T07:00:00.002-04:00

I've mentioned the new Scopes trial movie "Alleged" several times now on my blog (here and here), which led to emails from the producer and publicist of the movie asking me if I wanted a screener to review. I've now seen the movie twice, once with my wife, and once with Bryan College's resident Scopes trial expert. I think it's a mixed bag. I should warn you now that this review will contain SPOILERS, so if you don't want to know what happens in the film, stop reading now.

In an interview published by the Flint News, producer and writer of "Alleged" Fred Foote stated,

My original version was very fixated on showing every little detail I thought was wrong in the old movie [Inherit the Wind]. Then I realized storytelling isn’t about correcting someone else’s story. It’s about telling your own story... That’s when I forgot all about 'Inherit the Wind’ and made it about how the media gave the whole world the wrong story about the Scopes trial.

That really kind of sums up the movie. The Scopes trial is really more of a backdrop for the main story (let's call it Storyline A) of how small-town newspaperman Charles Anderson (an entirely fictional character played by Nathan West) was enticed by the promise of a big-city job with the Baltimore Sun, but only if he adopts H.L. Mencken's (Colm Meaney) unethical writing habits and distorts his reporting of the trial. In Storyline B, there's a little romance thrown in to bring Anderson back to the straight and narrow in the end, and if that's not enough, there's a fourth storyline involving a "half-breed" girl who is supposed to be forcibly sterilized because of her low IQ, which I think is there to illustrate what "Social Darwinism" was up to in the 1920s.

To my delight, this is not an awful movie. It's actually pretty watchable. It's directed competently, edited well, and the music's fine. Technically, this is definitely on par with most feature-length period dramas. It's not overly artistic directing; it's more similar to something made for TV than a feature film. The actors did well, particularly Colm Meaney and Ashley Johnson (playing Anderson's love interest Rose Williams). Meany has some pretty nasty lines, but he underplays his part and I think that made it more believable. The Mencken character could come across as a moustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash, but Meaney's performance prevents that. Johnson also plays her part with a quiet dignity, and she just comes across as really likable. Check out this scene with Johnson and Meaney:

Brian Dennehy and Fred Thompson also get top billing, playing Darrow and Bryan respectively, but they have comparatively minor roles in Storyline C: The Actual Trial. To be honest, I thought Thompson was the weakest of all the actors (my wife said, "He's just playing Fred Thompson, like he did on Law & Order!"). Dennehy's kind of neat to watch as Darrow, especially in the scenes where Darrow strategizes about what he'll do in court.

If my review sounds kind of surprised at how not terrible this movie is, we can chalk that up to my skepticism of amateur movie productions. Too often these personal hobby horse movies end up nearly unwatchable in their technical incompetence or overbearing ideology. When I first read about "Alleged" and learned about Fred Foote's writing and producing the movie financed by his own family foundation, I figured it was going to be yet another unwatchable mess. I was wrong. It's actually kind of entertaining.

But that's not to say it's a good movie. The weakest part of the entire film is unquestionably the script, which frequently reveals its amateur and ideological roots. It's definitely not a character-driven story. Instead, the characters get shuffled around to serve both the plot and the ideology behind it. For example, Anderson's first interactions with Mencken on screen are unfavorable to say the least. Mencken looks at articles Anderson has written and calls them "mush" and "malarkey," and then Anderson misses an appointment with Mencken when he's canoodling with Rose instead. Next thing you know, out of the blue, Mencken gives Anderson a job at the Baltimore Sun and starts talking about his natural talent. Where did that come from? I guess it provides a platform to explain how the media biased the historical reality of the trial, but otherwise I'm surprised Mencken didn't get whiplash from that abrupt plot twist.

As the movie proceeds, the plot turns get more and more unbelievable. For no apparent reason, Anderson starts following Mencken's advice, apparently without any concern for how unethical it is or how much it upsets his girlfriend. Despite alienating his girlfriend with his behavior, she goes ahead and accepts his marriage proposal, which she soon regrets. The most unbelievable twist comes in Storyline D: The Eugenics Plot. As I said, this storyline appears tacked on merely to tie the forced sterilization laws of eugenics to the social Darwinist agenda of the day. The storyline has Rose's half-sister Abigail resident at a home for the "feebleminded," where her uncle, a doctor and some kind of official at the home, wants to sterilize her because her IQ is low and her mother committed suicide. For some reason, her uncle can't sterilize her until her legal guardian Rose signs off on the procedure. "If you sign the papers, your sister can go home with you in a few days," says the evil doctor, so Rose finally signs. Then the bizarre twist comes: After Anderson sees the error of his ways, he gets Darrow to help him get an injunction stopping the sterilization of Abigail. Are you kidding me? First of all, how in the world could you get a judge to intervene on a medical procedure prescribed by a doctor and authorized by the patient's legal guardian? And not just any procedure but a sterilization that pretty much everyone in those days thought was morally right? And not just morally right but sufficiently necessary to pass laws enforcing such sterilization? And you want me to believe that Clarence Darrow of all people helped get this injunction? I don't think so. The entirety of Storyline D seems forced in to serve the ideological purposes of the movie while at the same time giving us a "happy ending" suitable to the political sensibilities of 21st century viewers.

Speaking of ideological purposes, they're pretty obvious from the very start. The movie's opening voiceover describes Darrow as "defending murderers and railing against fundamentalist Christianity," while Bryan "fought for the Bible, the working man, and women's rights." Since the voiceover was done by Anderson, I was willing to overlook it as part of his character development, but more obvious examples of bias soon surfaced. In the scene where Darrow questions Bryan, "Alleged" portrays the following exchange:

Darrow: Do you believe that everything in the Bible should be accepted literally?
Bryan: No, sir. Some of the Bible is clearly intended to be understood figuratively.
Darrow: Well, don't you think that the world was created in six days, for instance?
Bryan: No, I do not.
Darrow: Well, the Bible says it was.
Bryan: I do not think that the Bible insists that those were 24-hour days. Some men differ. I believe that they were long periods of time.
Darrow: You do not!

Ending the scene there makes Bryan sound like much less of a "Bible thumper" than he might otherwise appear had they included Bryan's affirmation of the historicity of a big fish swallowing Jonah, Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, the global flood in Noah's day, and the Tower of Babel.

The anti-evolution ideology is pretty obvious too. In addition to connecting the excesses of eugenics to Darwin, the evidence for evolution is presented as flimsy. In one scene, as Darrow strategizes with his expert witnesses, we hear this exchange:

Darrow: How much fossil evidence is there really for evolution?
Mencken: From the standpoint of the skeptic?
Darrow: From the standpoint of the average American, yes.
Mencken: What I've seen here today, William Jennings Bryan could pick the entire fossil history of mankind up with his buttcheeks in one squat!
Darrow [laughing]: I agree.

At the conclusion of the movie, we get little slides that tell us more about the outcome of the story. We're told that Nebraska Man was determined to be a pig tooth shortly after the trial, but no mention is made of the increasing quantity and quality of Australopithecus fossil discoveries, mentioned in the movie as Java Man. Thus, the unsuspecting viewer is left with the impression that the evidence of human evolution really could fit in Bryan's butt crack.

So "Alleged" is not a terrible movie, but it's not a very good movie either. It's definitely been worked into a watchable film, but its amateur and ideological roots are pretty obvious when you look for them. The main virtue of the film is how much closer to the events of the actual trial it comes than Inherit the Wind. Given the ideology behind it, though, I'm not sure "Alleged" is any less biased than its more famous predecessor. It's just biased in the other direction.

As of this writing, "Alleged" can be seen at the Boston International Film Festival on April 23 (schedule here), and it's scheduled to open the Charleston International Film Festival on May 18 (schedule here). Visit the "Alleged" website at allegedthemovie.com.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Protein evolution in BIO-Complexity

2011-04-13T11:06:00.001-04:00

I've been asked by one of my readers to comment on the latest paper published in BIO-Complexity. Longsuffering readers of my blog will recall that BIO-Complexity is an online, open access journal that "aims to be the leading forum for testing the scientific merit of the claim that intelligent design (ID) is a credible explanation for life." I mentioned this journal previously with my final comment being:

I see BIO-Complexity as a positive response to the challenge of put up or shut up, and that's good. I hope it will go beyond just anti-evolution ~~rhetoric~~ research, but I guess that remains to be seen.

Some thought I was just being snarky, but I meant that. I think the ID movement has become far too associated with (appropriated by?) populist anti-evolutionism. I think that's not so good if you really want to offer a genuine alternative model to the evolutionary model of origins. The launch of Biologic, insofar as it offers a home for genuine research, was good, and the launch of a journal dedicated to publishing the sort of research that Biologic generates is also good.

So that leads me to the latest paper in BIO-Complexity, The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway by Gauger and Axe. If you don't want to wade through the paper, here's a quick breakdown: Paralogous enzymes are presumed to share a common ancestor, even though they have different functions. The common ancestry of paralogous enzymes is inferred from their significant sequence and structural similarity. Gauger and Axe try to introduce directed mutations into one enzyme in order to convert its function into that of a paralogous enzyme. This is ostensibly a test of the feasibility of mutation and selection to produce novel functions from duplicated genes (the putative source of paralogous enzymes). Obviously, there's a lot more detail than that, but you can read that for yourself in their paper.

Having read the paper, I'm left with a lot of questions. To be honest, I'm confused. The introduction clearly laid out the goal of the paper as testing the feasibility of something called "neofunctionalization" (a word that they don't actually use). Neofunctionalization is the development of a truly new function after gene duplication. So after I read the introduction to the paper, I expected a certain type of evolutionary methodology, but that's not the style of method they used. Instead, Gauger and Axe approached the issue as a practical biochemist would: If we have two paralogous enzymes, can we interchange enough amino acids to make one function like the other? That's definitely a topic of great interest to biochemists. How does the sequence and structure of an enzyme relate to its function? But it's not exactly the way an evolutionary biologist would go about addressing the question of neofunctionalization.

If I were addressing this research problem, the first thing I would do is create a phylogeny of the enzymes in question and start trying to reconstruct putative ancestral sequences. Ancestral sequence reconstruction is an active area of research in evolutionary biochemistry (see Google Scholar), so there's plenty of precedent and methods available. This would provide me with the "best case" for the evolution of these enzymes for my evaluation. I could synthesize the putative ancestral proteins and begin studying their function, or at the very least, I could infer some likely mutational pathways that must have been taken if the enzymes had evolved.

Instead of ancestral reconstruction, Gauger and Axe focused directly on converting an existing enzyme into another existing enzyme. That left me scratching my head, since no evolutionary biologist would propose that an extant enzyme evolved directly into another extant enzyme. So they're testing a model that no one would take seriously? Hmmm...

That's not at all to say that the research was bogus or unhelpful. Quite the contrary, their work contributes yet more data to the ongoing research area of structure/function relationship. As most biochemists have found, that relationship is really complicated. I'm just not sure that this particular study has much evolutionary application, due to its non-evolutionary methodology.

In the larger scheme of things, I am sensing a discouraging pattern to BIO-Complexity publications. As I quoted above, the journal is supposed to be about "testing the scientific merit of the claim that intelligent design (ID) is a credible explanation for life," which is a great goal. But this is the fifth paper published by BIO-Complexity, and it's the fifth paper that focuses on perceived inadequacies of evolution. So when are we going to test "the scientific merit of the claim that intelligent design (ID) is a credible explanation for life?"

I don't want to be too pessimistic, though, since I am a big fan of research and technical publications. I'm genuinely happy that BIO-Complexity exists and is publishing this sort of work. I just hope that in the future, we'll begin to see some positive research for ID rather than just anti-evolution work.

Gauger and Axe. 2011. The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway. BIO-Complexity 2011:1-17.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Interesting quote from Huxley

2011-04-12T11:37:00.000-04:00

I'm doing some background research for my CBS abstracts, and I stumbled across this really interesting passage in a paper by T.H. Huxley from 1868:

And, as I can testify from personal experience, it is possible to have a complete faith in the general doctrine of evolution and yet to hesitate in accepting the nebular, or the uniformitarian, or the Darwinian hypotheses in all their integrity and fullness; for many of the objections which are brought against these various hypotheses affect them only, and, even if they be valid, leave the general doctrine of evolution untouched.

He's quite right about that. We can pick away all we want at uniformitarianism or natural selection or the Big Bang, and we won't really do much to erode confidence in the "basic doctrine of evolution," which Huxley defined as the belief

that the present conformation and composition of the earth's crust, the distribution of land and water, and the infinitely diversified forms of animals and plants which constitute its present population, are merely the final terms in an immense series of changes which have been brought about, in the course of immeasurable time, by the operation of causes more or less similar to those which are at work at the present day.

Huxley, T.H. 1868. On the animals which are most nearly intermediate between birds and reptiles. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 4th series. 2:66-75.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Kurt Wise at SAU

2011-04-11T14:13:00.000-04:00

Kurt Wise is lecturing at Southern Adventist University this week. He'll be giving a talk titled "Caves: eroded up or down?" at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 14 in the Hulsey Wellness Center. He'll also be speaking in chapel that morning (11 a.m.) on "Our dominion responsibility to the creation."

Dr. Wise is professor of biology and chair of the Division of Science and Math at Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, GA and former director of CORE at Bryan College.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Transposons and symbiosis

2011-04-08T10:05:00.000-04:00

There are a pair of really interesting articles in this week's Science. First, Fischer and Suttle report the discovery of a virophage (like a "virus" for viruses) that is a connecting link between double-stranded DNA viruses and the eukaryotic DNA transposon Maverick/Polinton. You might recall Liu and Soper's exogenization hypothesis that I discussed previously. One of my concerns about their idea was that it could account only for retroviruses rather than comprehensively explaining all viruses. This new virophage discovery doesn't rectify that problem, but it does suggest that there are more connections between viruses and genomic elements than we had previously guessed.

Fischer and Suttle. 2011. A Virophage at the Origin of Large DNA Transposons. Science 332:231-234.

Next, Himler et al. report on amazing fitness gains in an invasive fly due to the spread of a rickettsial endosymbiont. I've previously emphasized the role of transposons and other genome modifications as possible explanations for rapid speciation [PDF], but I'm beginning to wonder whether symbiosis might play a more prominent role. Food for thought.

Himler et al. 2011. Rapid Spread of a Bacterial Symbiont in an Invasive Whitefly Is Driven by Fitness Benefits and Female Bias. Science 332:254-256.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

More ant genomes than you can shake a stick at

2011-04-06T09:55:00.000-04:00

There are three ant genome sequences in the latest PNAS: the red harvester ant Pogonomyrmex barbatus, the invasive Argentine ant Linepithema humile, and the fire ant Solenopsis invicta. They've all got lots of odorant receptors and are similar to previously sequenced hymenopteran genomes from the bee Apis mellifera and the wasp Nasonia vitripennis. These ants also have the distinction of being from a single family Formicidae, which might make for interesting comparative genomics for baraminology and diversification studies. There's no direct comparisons of the three ant genomes in PNAS now, but it shouldn't take long for some researcher(s) to remedy that. The paper on the invasive Argentine ant is open access, the rest are available exclusively to subscribers.

Gadagkar. 2011. The birth of ant genomics. PNAS 108:5477-5478.

Smith et al. 2011. Draft genome of the red harvester ant Pogonomyrmex barbatus. PNAS 108:5667-5672.

Smith et al. 2011. Draft genome of the globally widespread and invasive Argentine ant (Linepithema humile). PNAS 108:5673-5678.

Wurm et al. 2011. The genome of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta. PNAS 108:5679-5684.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Dino petroglyphs again

2011-04-05T10:51:00.000-04:00

A month ago, Paul Garner drew my attention to the latest paper from Phil Senter and co-author Sally Cole, this time on a purported Native American petroglyph of a dinosaur at Kachina Bridge in Utah. According to Senter and Cole's analysis, the image that is supposed to be a dinosaur consists of both markings and natural stains. Consequently, it cannot be maintained that it is a dinosaur. Senter and Cole conclude,

Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon of perceiving significance in vague or random stimuli, e.g., seeing animals in clouds or the face of a religious figure in a food item. The results of this investigation indicate that the dinosaurs of Kachina Bridge are examples of this phenomenon and exist only as pareidolic illusions. They can therefore be added to the list of discredited evidence for the coexistence of dinosaurs and humans.

Paul Garner agreed with their analysis, and posted his own photo of the petroglyph, which frankly doesn't look like much of anything to me.

Two weeks later, much to my surprise, AIG posted a response to Senter and Cole written by Ishmael Abrahams. Abrahams goes through their paper line by line, and the main substance of his critique focuses on the methods. He is dismissive of their techniques (analysis of photographic images of the purported petroglyph), but he is most critical of what Senter and Cole call five "predictions" of the "hypothesis that a given petroglyph depicts a dinosaur." Paul Garner found Abrahams's response "superficial and unconvincing." Believe it or not, I actually think that Abrahams has a point here. Sort of.

Here are the "predictions" that Senter and Cole list in their paper:

(1) the image is a single image, not a composite of separate images, (2) it depicts an animal, (3) its features cannot be reconciled with an interpretation that it depicts a member of the non-dinosaurian local fauna that was contemporaneous with its maker(s), (4) its features depict a specific, identifiable dinosaur, and (5) it is entirely human-made.

Abrahams basically argues that some of these would not be necessary for an artist to depict a dinosaur, and he's right about that. For example, I could draw a dinosaur as a composite image, and I could use features of the rock I was drawing on to help depict that dinosaur. Similarly, I could choose to draw a dinosaur that looked like a lizard or some other common animal, and who's to say that we know all the species of dinosaurs that existed? If there were dinosaurs living with Native Americans in the old west before the white man arrived, why assume they must be identifiable with some dinosaur we know about only from fossils? Couldn't those recent dinosaurs have been a different species that we don't know about?

Insofar as Abrahams goes, I think he has a point, but I think the point only reveals poor wording on the part of Senter and Cole. The problem as I see it is not at all whether an artist could have used creative methods to depict a dinosaur unknown to modern science. Rather, the question at hand is whether a marking on a rock actually depicts a recently-living dinosaur. To conclude that the markings at Kachina Bridge are intended to depict a dinosaur, we're going to need some criteria to make sure we haven't mistaken the image for something else. Seen in that light, Senter and Cole's "predictions" actually make very good criteria. For example, their first and fifth "predictions" help us to make sure that the image didn't just happen to look sort of dinosaur-y due to accidental proximity to stains in the rock or separate petroglyphs. Likewise, "prediction" four helps us to make sure the artist wasn't just making up some fanciful image purely from imagination. "Prediction" three is necessary for us to conclude that the image is a dinosaur and not just some lizard.

Failing to meet these criteria means that we cannot say for certain that the markings at Kachina Bridge depict a dinosaur. We can't be sure that the markings were intended to be a single image or were not merely stains on the rock. We cannot be certain that this image depicts any specific dinosaur. We can't even be sure that the image depicts an animal! Consequently, we ought not promote this image conclusively as a Native American depiction of a dinosaur. All we can say is that in some photos, the markings on that rock look vaguely sauropod-ish, but in other, better photos of the same markings, it doesn't look like much of anything.

So if there's any problem with Senter and Cole's paper, it's a problem of wording, and I think that Abrahams completely misses the point. He bases his rebuttal entirely on hypotheticals - what an ancient artist might have done - rather than on what we can now reliably conclude based on what the unknown artist(s) actually did.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Arsenic-based sea monkeys

2011-04-01T10:52:00.000-04:00

Remember those arsenoDNA bacteria? Well, check out the latest product from everyone's favorite online store, ThinkGeek.com:

Arsenic-Based Sea Monkeys

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

More on the AIG homeschool convention story

2011-03-24T13:59:00.001-04:00

Great Homeschool Conventions issued a statement on the AIG disinvitation, which you can read in PDF form here. Their main point seems to be Ham's attitude:

Dr. Ham was removed for his spirit not for his message. As an invited guest, Dr. Ham’s spirit toward our convention was unkind. Dr. Ham’s spirit toward our attendees was not gracious. Dr. Ham’s spirit toward other speakers was unprofessional. In short, a proud, ungrateful and divisive spirit was projected from Dr. Ham. Regardless of the message, Dr. Ham's approach sullied the atmosphere of the convention.

(I should point out that Ham does not have an earned doctorate.) Since they got CMI's Jonathan Sarfati to substitute for Ham, it seems their claims about Ham's young-age creationist message are quite genuine.

And here's Ham's son Nathan Ham reacting in a blog post called Free love Christians:

Some Christians today are like the hippies of 50 years ago who used the word "love" to justify their fornications and sins against the word of God. The hippie culture is often pictured as a group of drug-addicted, fornicating drunks whose catchphrase "make love, not war" gave their movement a false sense of piety. But to those who know a handful of Bible verses taught to Sunday school children, their sins are as grievous as the war crimes they claimed to oppose. Just the same, these Christians like to justify their disobedience to the Bible by saying “we are supposed to love each other”.

I understand his point about love being used as an excuse to tolerate error (and I sympathize), but does Nathan's post seem just a bit over the top to anyone else? After all, they replaced Ken Ham with Sarfati, who could certainly not be accused of being a hippy Christian or being soft on biblical compromise.

I'll have more to say about this mess later. In the meantime, I have an art show reception to prepare for.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

AIG kicked out of homeschool conventions?

2011-03-23T09:53:00.001-04:00

Yesterday there was a big to-do when AIG publicly rebuked Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc. for "disinviting" them from the Great Homeschool Conventions in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. You can read AIG's version at their website, and you can read P.Z. Myers's gleeful reaction at his blog. In AIG's article, they specifically accuse noted young-age creationist Jay Wile of "personal attacks" against Ken Ham, and they also accuse Susan Wise Bauer and John Stonestreet of supporting those attacks. This seems to have been precipitated in part by a blog post written by Wile, which you can read here.

Something tells me I should stay out of this, but ... I know John Stonestreet personally; he used to work here at Bryan College. I don't think of him as making wild accusations or being overly divisive. He's certainly not a "censor" or holding a "double standard" as AIG claims. If he has concerns, they are worth listening to. ~~And his private concerns (whatever they were) certainly shouldn't have been made public on a website without his permission.~~ Correction: John told me it was just a brief comment on a post by Jay Wile.

One thing I am sure of: There is no glory for Christ in this back-and-forth blog squabbling. I pray that Great Homeschool Conventions and the rest of the accused do not respond in kind to AIG. This needs to be resolved privately first.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Kind of busy this week

2011-03-22T09:05:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of busy this week, but if you're in the neighborhood, check out the Henning Museum Art Show:

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.