Wedging Religion into Science (Again)

Answers in Genesis promotes miseducation in America

Image: Tom Toles/Washington Post
As AiG is currently attacking public science education (and, surprise, not because our science standards are ill preparing our students) I thought it would be appropriate to repost this article from the last time they tried to pull this nonsense. It's organizations like this that continue to ensure that our nation's understanding of evolution reaches a whopping 33rd out of 34 countries (just ahead of Turkey).

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Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis and creator of the Creation Museum, is currently promoting his new book by submitting sample chapters on his group's website. Entitled War of the Worldviews the book teaches Young-Earth biblical literalists strategies on how to argue against the evidence for evolution.

At the beginning of the chapter he chastises Christians for adopting “flaky evidence” to support their views.

Over the past several years, some so-called “evidence” for creation has been shown not to be reliable. Some of these are

* supposed human and dinosaur footprints found together at the Paluxy River in Texas.
* the small accumulation of moon dust found by the Apollo astronauts.
* a boat-like structure in the Ararat region as evidence of Noah’s Ark.
* a supposed human handprint found in “dinosaur- age rock.”
* a dead “plesiosaur” caught near New Zealand.

Most well-meaning, informed creationists would agree in principle that things which are not carefully documented and researched should not be used. But in practice, many of them are very quick to accept the sorts of evidences mentioned here, without asking too many questions.

Initially I was impressed. Could Ham be urging his readers to seriously engage the scientific evidence in an effort to make reasoned arguments? Alas, this was not the case. His answer to the flaky evidence that creationists have long used is, rather, don’t use any evidence at all!

When someone says they want “proof” or “evidence,” not the Bible, one might respond as follows: “You might not believe the Bible, but I do. And I believe it gives me the right basis to understand this universe and correctly interpret the facts around me.”

Let’s just apply that logic in another way, shall we? There are few scientists today who would argue that bats are actually birds rather than mammals. Pesky issues regarding bone structure and their nursing of infants make this a difficult theory to gain support for. But suppose all of the science isn’t in, the same way that all of the science isn’t in about continental drift (has anyone actually watched continents move?). Isn't there room for an alternative theory?

The Bible clearly states (Deuteronomy 14:11 & 14:18) that bats truly are birds, and they’re unclean birds at that. So by Ham's logic, this evidence deserves equal weight to that of the so-called experts. But as you’re answering a question on your zoology midterm that asks “Are bats birds?” (this is a very introductory level class) and you answer “Yes” I would encourage you NOT to attempt Ham’s suggested response to your science teacher after it's been marked wrong.

Likewise, a solid majority of astronomers (perhaps a little more) accept the evidence that the Earth spins on its axis daily and orbits around the sun. However, the Bible does clearly state that “all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.” (1 Chronicles 16:30). In fact, there are several passages that lend credence to the potentially lucrative field of Christian Geocentric Science (see Job 9:6-7; Job 37:18; Psalm 19:4-6; Psalm 93:1; Ecclesiastes 1:5; you get the picture).

So when someone claims there is evidence for this so-called Heliocentric Theory (afterall, it is only a theory and it's not as though anyone can feel the Earth move) you can simply tell them,

“You might not believe the Bible, but I do. And I believe it gives me the right basis to understand this universe and correctly interpret the facts around me.”

Is it legitimate to use such a response? Should the federal government force teachers to mention this competing theory in science classes? If your answer is yes, than you’ve probably purchased Ham’s book and added to his reported $125,000 yearly salary.

In a related note, as Ham is encouraging the Young-Earthers to back away from “flaky evidence” he might want to take his own advice. During a lecture criticizing the evidence for evolution last year Ham laid the following egg:

He pointed out cave drawings of a creature resembling a brachiosaur to make the case that man lived alongside dinosaurs after God created all the land animals on Day 6.

Cave drawings are evidence? That's what that crank von Däniken tried to pull. This would simply be comic, except for one thing. They're not in on the joke and are teaching hundreds of thousands of children at home schools across the country this very rubbish. They're forming think-tanks, founding law schools and funding politicians and they will not listen to reason. They're being taught not to.

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Intelligent Design and Pseudoscience

Michael Behe joins the ranks of UFO conspiracy theorists



The Panda’s Thumb has linked to an excellent analysis by Duquesne University biologist David Lampe on the productive scientific work of Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe. While ID has long been criticized for not generating testable hypotheses (and therefore not involving the scientific method) Dr. Lampe has now shown that Behe has done almost no science at all since his first book Darwin’s Black Box was published in 1996.

Behe has been described as “a scientist of the first rank,” however a scientist is judged by how often he or she publishes in peer-reviewed journals and how often other researchers cite those publications. In a simple test Lampe compares Behe’s work with that of the widely acknowledged “scientist of the first rank” Sean Carroll.

Since 1996 Behe has published only a single peer-reviewed scientific article, and that article didn’t even mention “intelligent design.” Furthermore, Behe’s work since 1996 has been cited a total of 99 times (mostly for his first book) and of those the majority of the citations are negative views of his work or they don’t appear in scientific journals. This leaves 11 favorable citations in nine years of a work that wasn’t peer-reviewed.

In contrast Sean Carroll has published 36 primary research articles in peer-reviewed journals that were cited 1,508 times and nearly all of them in the scientific literature.

In summation, Lampe states:

I conclude, based on the evidence, that Michael Behe is obviously not a scientist of the first rank and appears not to be doing any serious work at the present time. More to the point, ID creationism is not an important idea in science. Science is a meritocracy where ideas earn their place. Until ID shows it can be used as a productive idea to perform scientific work it should not be presented as a viable alternative to well-established evolutionary theory. Academic freedom issues are simply not germane in this context. Short-circuiting the normal process used to establish the scientific ideas we teach to students is simply dishonest.

The evidence speaks for itself. Intelligent Design has had an appalling scientific legacy. Now, before someone claims that Intelligent Design is a new line of inquiry that takes time to gain acceptance, let me point out that Sean Carroll’s work is in the brand new field of evo-devo and has had no difficulty swaying his colleagues based on the evidence alone. ID advocates have tried to sneak in through the back door by appealing to courts and politicians instead of through the legitimate main entrance of the scientific literature. This speaks volumes about their scientific integrity.

Intelligent Design proponents are nothing but pseudoscience hucksters who attempt to trump experimental evidence through emotional appeals and untested criticism. When confronted by their lack of scientific rigor they’ll whine about a vast conspiracy that prevents them from publishing their work. This is the same position that so-called ufologists and other proponents of new age pseudoscience espouse. In the relatively near future Michael Behe’s work will be dumped in the bin housing such other erroneous claims as von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods and Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.

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The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe

A plea for a new exploration, one that is within our reach



Extraterrestrial intelligence would be the single most important discovery of human existence. In many ways it is the continuation of a search for answers in the sky that began with our distant ancestors. Unfortunately the UFO mythos is lacking any evidence and scientists are having a difficult time even locating bacteria.

Recent news that Saturn's moon Enceladus is unlikely to support life is reducing the possibility even further that any living organisms will be found in our solar system. We may have to face the possibility that beyond our thin dusting of atmospheric gases lay a domain of shadows.

This demonstrates how rare and precious life can be and should generate increased concern for our fragile biosphere. UFO visitations will not save this generation any more than gods or angels did for generations past. We have to overcome our myopic vision of culture and political ideology to become a true caretaker for the myriad organisms on our planet, or at least find a way to leave them the hell alone.

Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (two powerhouses in evolutionary anthropology) predicted the ultimate legacy our current path would bring us in their 1996 book The Sixth Extinction:

Even if we take a figure in the lower range of [extinction] estimates, say thirty-thousand species per year, the implication is still startling. David Raup has calculated from the fossil record that during periods of normal, or background, extinction, species loss occurs at an average of one every four years. Extinction at the rate of thirty-thousand a year, therefore, is elevated 120,000 times above background. This is easily comparable with the Big Five biological crises of geological history, except that this one is not being caused by global temperature change, regression of sea level, or asteroid impact. It is being caused by one of Earth's inhabitants. Homo sapiens is poised to become the greatest catastrophic agent since a giant asteroid collided with the Earth sixty-five million years ago, wiping out half the world's species in a geological instant.

According to the latest WWF Living Planet Report, since 1970 as many as 1/3 of all terrestrial, freshwater and marine species have gone extinct and our current ecological footprint (the amount of natural resources used solely by humans) exceeds the Earth's ability to regenerate by 25%. This has a dramatic effect on our ability to make contact with other intelligent life. Since it's unlikely that bacteria are abundant in our solar system, the chances of finding alien intelligence is reduced considerably. However, there are quadrupedal (and sometimes even bipedal) beings with sizable frontal lobes already among us. Unfortunately they, too, may soon be unknown to science.

Last year Conservation International, the World Conservation Union and the International Primatological Society issued a report entitled "Primates in Peril." Of the 625 unique varieties of primates, 26% are at crucial risk of extinction.

They are among the most beautiful and intelligent of tropical wonders, and they are among the most persecuted — relentlessly hunted for their meat and fur, bodies broken for dubious medicines, shot for stealing crops in fields which were once their home. All the forests of the world cannot satisfy the sum of human hunger: they are cut and burned, day and night, and the remnants of their grandeur will not long survive without our intervention.

Primates are also our closest link with the natural world, they help us to understand who we are and how we came to be. As Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan so beautifully wrote in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors:

We humans are like a newborn baby left on a doorstep, with no note explaining who it is, where it came from, what hereditary cargo of attributes and disabilities it might be carrying, or who its antecedents might be.

Primates possess that missing note which should have accompanied our bassinet at the foundling home. By understanding how primates negotiate their environments, their cognitive landscape, their social and sexual lives, we can better understand ourselves. It is their mysterious intelligence that should fuel our passions. Just imagine, even if for a moment, how the world would be transformed if the patriarchs of antiquity hadn't set up conflicts between the "revealed texts" of the Bible, Qu'ran, and Hindu Vedas but looked instead at the reality in front of them. What if our common framework was simply the natural world without the flailing argument and violent retaliation in support of some unseen and unknowable skyward intelligence?

So consider this a plea for a new exploration -- a search for intelligent life in the universe and a campaign to ensure that such life remains abundant. What's more, we don't have to travel to distant stars and our plea for answers won't be returned with silence. It's simply this. Visit your local library and check out a book on our primate origins (I've offered a list of my favorites below). Then visit the web pages of the Jane Goodall Institute, the Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP), the World Conservation Union or the Bonobo Conservation Initiative (many more options are available here). Learn the current statistics and conservation strategies so you can tell your friends, co-workers or give a special presentation in your child's classroom. Find out how you can change your consumption to reduce our ecological footprint. Donate your time or money to organizations working to make the difference we all want to see.

It's a small and rather ridiculous request, for certainly that solution has always been in front of us. But so have primates. While we've searched in vain for distant intelligence to bring us "the Answer" we've always had the potential right in our backyard (cosmically speaking). But we won't for very much longer. Just as we're running out of celestial bodies that harbor extraterrestrial life, so are we losing the very life forms that could offer solutions to some of our species' most profound questions.

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