Yet Another Failure of “Geological Column” Reasoning

Skeleton of the titanosaur Epachthosaurus at the National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic. Note the plant, a cycad, in the display. (Click for credit)

If a display of dinosaurs or dinosaur skeletons includes plants, it usually shows the dinosaurs walking among ferns or cycads, like the picture shown above. There usually aren’t any grasses in the display. Why not? Because according to the geological column, grasses and dinosaurs didn’t live at the same time. After all, dinosaurs mostly died out by the end of the Cretaceous period, which was supposed to have closed about 65 million years ago. According to You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe, grasses didn’t evolve until much later:1

Rabbits and hares appear 55 million years ago. The Himalayas begin to rise 50 million years ago. The face of the earth looks recognisably as it is now, except that Australasia is attached to Antarctica. Bats, mice, squirrels, and many aquatic birds (including herons and storks) appear during this period, as do shrews, whales, and modern fish. All major plants make their appearance and grasses evolve.

Notice how certain the author is. He is telling you the story of the history of life as if he is watching it happen. According to his “observations,” grasses didn’t evolve until about 50 million years ago, long after the dinosaurs went extinct.

This kind of certainty is rampant in evolutionary writings. For example, The Encyclopedia of Earth tells us:

The evolution and spread of grasses UNDOUBTEDLY resulted from their ability to adapt to seasonally dry habitats created as tropical-deciduous forests developed in the Eocene (58 to 34 mya, million years ago). Considering their importance and taxonomic diversity, grasses have a relatively poor fossil record. While the earliest potential fossil grass pollen was described from late Cretaceous sediments, the oldest reliable megafossil grass fossils were spikelets and inflorescences from the latest Paleocene (about 58 mya). These were PRIMITIVE proto-bamboos with broad leaves, QUITE UNLIKE the narrow-leaf modern grasses of desert grasslands and deserts. (emphasis mine)

Of course, as is often the case, current research is demonstrating just how wrong this evolution-inspired reasoning is.

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Science Will Survive. In Fact, It Might Even Improve…

Steven Newton is the Programs and Policy Director at the National Center for Science Education. He has a B.A. in History from the University of California at Berkeley and a M.S. in Geology from California State University at Hayward. Most importantly, he is a fervent believer in evolution. Because of this, he tends to watch trends in science education as well as the scientific community. His observations recently led to a very interesting article in New Scientist.

The article discusses the fact that young-earth creationists have been presenting at scientific conferences and publishing in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. Since he is a geologist, he is focused on meetings of the Geological Society of America (GSA), where young-earth geologists have presented papers and led field trips in recent years. While he thinks that this is a bad thing, he rejects calls to ban them from the meetings. He says:

Scientific organisations will continue to experience creationist infiltration; this week’s GSA meeting will include several presentations by creationists. But it is important for scientists not to overreact and to remember that science is far stronger than any creationist attempts to undermine it.

While his reasoning is deeply flawed, his final conclusion is correct. As a result, we should at least give him partial credit for his endeavors.

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When You’re Desperate, Anything Is Plausible

A commenter left this link on an unrelated post. Since the commenter has, in the past, tried to support several unscientific positions, I assume he or she thought that the experiment demonstrated the plausibility of abiogenesis, the the idea that life might have emerged through a series of incredibly unlikely interactions between nonliving chemicals. Of course, such an idea contradicts everything we know about the study of life, since all life we have ever studied comes from other living things. I have written several articles (here, here, here, here, here, and here) that demonstrate how the data speak against abiogenesis, but those who want to ignore the scientific evidence desperately hope for some special time in the past when all our current evidence doesn’t apply and life could actually spring from nonliving chemicals.

One of the many, many problems associated with any naturalistic origin-of-life scenario is that of stereoisomerism. As I explain here, there are certain biological molecules that can be formed in two different ways. They have the same chemical formula and form mirror images of each other. However, these mirror images are not identical. Think about your hands. When you hold them palms together, they are mirror images of one another. However, no matter how you tilt or turn it, you cannot make your left hand look identical to your right hand. If you put the palm of one hand on the back of the other hand, for example, one hand’s thumb will be where the other hand’s pinky finger is. So while your hands are mirror images, they are not identical. There are many biological molecules that are like that, and we call them chiral molecules. The two mirror images that are formed by a chiral molecule are called enantiomers.

All origin-of-life scenarios start with simple molecules that do not form enantiomers. We call these achiral molecules, since they cannot form two mirror images that are different from one another. This is a problem, because in the lab, when achiral molecules react to form a chiral molecule, an equal amount of each enantiomer is formed. As a result, you end up with a mixture that is 50% one enantiomer and 50% the other enantiomer. We call this a racemic mixture. The problem is that life isn’t like that. In most chiral molecules of life, only one of the enantiomers is used. We call this an enantiopure compound, since it is purely one enantiomer, without any of the other. So any origin-of-life scenario has to figure out a way of producing just one enantiomer, or it has to figure out a way to get rid of the other enantiomer once it has formed.

This is a major problem, of course, and the link that the commenter left claims that a “plausible” solution to this problem has been found. Of course, when you look at the actual paper you find that the process is anything but plausible in an origin-of-life scenario.

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This is a Christian University That Gets It

When I got my PhD, I started on the typical “professor track.” I got a postdoctoral position at Indiana University, eventually was appointed to the faculty there, and then transferred to be on the faculty at Ball State University. However, I found that I enjoyed writing more than teaching and research, so I eventually started a publishing company to sell the textbooks I was writing. A few years ago, I sold the publishing company, and even though I planned to stay with it for another 10 years, I could not support the direction taken by the new owner. As a result, I resigned from the company.

Once I resigned, I prayed and thought about what God would have me do in this next chapter of my life, and one idea that popped into my head was to go back to the university and start teaching again. However, since most secular universities are terrified of serious scientific debate on the origins issue, I knew that my reputation as a young-earth creationist textbook author would make it very unlikely that a secular university would hire me. Thus, I decided to apply to a few Christian universities, and it was a rather disheartening experience.

You see, most Christian universities have this long list of beliefs and practices to which their professors must subscribe. For example, I applied to one fairly well-known Christian university, and their doctrinal statement (a statement to which all their faculty are asked to adhere) detailed the university’s stance on a number of issues about which many serious Evangelical Christian theologians disagree. In addition, they had a “community covenant” that prohibited all sorts of activities, including one in which Christ Himself engaged: the drinking of wine! Finally, the chairman of the chemistry department informed me that if I was to be hired by this university, I would have to change the type of church I attend, since my current denomination (Free Methodist) is not on the list of approved denominations!

So in order to teach at this university, I would have to subscribe to a long list of beliefs, agree to a long list of behaviors, and I would have to go to a different kind of church. Even if I already did believe everything on this long list of beliefs, and even if I already did conform to the behavioral expectations of the university, and even if I already did attend an “approved” church, I could never be part of such a university. Why? Because one of the the purposes of a university is to engage in an honest search for truth. If I am forced to agree to a long list of “truths” upfront, how in the world can my search for truth be an honest one? It seems to me that in order to be a honest investigator, I must be open to the idea that I might actually be wrong on a few issues. Most Christian universities don’t seem to allow that of their faculty members!

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Just Making Sure That Horse Is Really Dead…

I have written two posts about people who have mischaracterized the views of C.S. Lewis when it comes to evolution (you can read them here and here). At the risk of beating a dead horse, I want to write one more.

In both of my previous posts, I mention an article by Dr. Jerry Bergman. In that article, Dr. Bergman tries to make the case that C.S. Lewis is a “creationist and anti-evolutionist.” I think that my posts have done a good job of showing that Dr. Bergman is simply wrong. Dr. Lewis cannot be described as either a creationist or an anti-evolutionist. I have shared my posts with the author and with the people at Creation Ministries International, the organization that runs the website that published the article. Unfortunately, neither the author nor Creation Ministries International feels the need to retract it. Indeed, in a personal communication with Dr. Bergman, I was told that he had found C.S. Lewis scholars who agree with him. He did not provide the names of those scholars, however, even though I asked for them.

As a result, I decided to see if I could find any C.S. Lewis scholars who agree with Dr. Bergman on this issue. I went to the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s website. This is a wonderful organization that “…is dedicated to advancing the renewal of Christian thought and creative expression throughout the world of learning and the culture at large.” As a part of meeting that mission, the foundation has a study centre at “The Kilns,” Dr. Lewis’s former home in Oxford. I sent Dr. Bergman’s article to the foundation, asking them to have one of their scholars review it to see if it was a reasonable discussion of C.S. Lewis’s views on evolution.

A few days ago, I received a wonderful reply to my question. The author was humble, gracious, and very insightful. It started with these words:1

I am not entirely sure if I should be described as a “Scholar”, in fact I am pretty sure that I should not, but the folk at The Kilns have sent your question on to me.

He went on to give me his answer, some of which will appear below the fold. In that answer, he referred to Dr. Lewis as “Jack.” This is what his close friends and family called him, so as I read the message, I assumed that this man knew C.S. Lewis really well. As I reached the bottom of the message, I read his name: Douglas Gresham. If you don’t recognize the name, it is C.S. Lewis’s younger son. Lewis adopted both Douglas and his older brother, David, when he married their mother, Joy. When Joy lost her battle with cancer, Lewis continued to raise Douglas and David. He dedicated The Horse and His Boy, one of the books in his acclaimed Chronicles of Narnia series, to both of them. Douglas is a producer for all the Chronicles of Narnia movies, and he strives to make them follow the books as closely as they possibly can. He also appears as a minor character in each movie.

I think it is safe to say that Mr. Gresham is probably one of the few people alive today who knows what C.S. Lewis really believed when it comes to all manner of things, including evolution. Do you want to know what he said about Dr. Bergman’s article?

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Add Water’s Quantum Forces to the List of Things that Are Finely-Tuned for Life

Waves on the surface of water (click for credit)

Water is a strange chemical. It’s molecular formula is H2O, but it is quite different from other chemicals that have a similar formula. For example, the chemicals H2S, H2Se, and H2Te are all gases at room temperature. However, H2O is a liquid at room temperature. Why? Because unlike similar molecules, water molecules are strongly attracted to one other. This causes them to stay unusually close to each other. While a small amount of energy allows similar molecules move far from one another, water molecules like to “snuggle close.” As a result, it takes a lot of energy to pull water molecules away from each other. This makes water a liquid at temperatures where most similar chemicals are gases.

In addition, water has the unusual property of expanding when it freezes. Most chemicals shrink when they freeze, which means that the solid phase is more dense than the liquid phase. As a result, the solid form of most chemicals will sink in the liquid form of the same chemical. Not so for water. Instead, solid water (ice) easily floats in liquid water. It turns out that this is really wonderful, because when a lake freezes, the ice floats on top. As the ice layer gets thicker, it insulates the remaining liquid water below. The practical upshot is that as long as a lake is deep enough, it will never freeze completely solid. That’s nice, because it guarantees the lake’s fishes have somewhere to go, even in the coldest of weather.

If water didn’t have such nice properties, life as we know it would not be possible. Exactly why does water have these properties? Because of a phenomenon called hydrogen bonding. In this process, a hydrogen atom on one water molecule is strongly attracted to the oxygen atom on another water molecule. As a result, the hydrogen atom on one water molecule and the oxygen atom on another water molecule tug on each other, pulling the molecules close to one another. In other words, a weak “bond” develops between two different water molecules. This hydrogen bond is very effective at keeping the water molecules close together. In fact, it is so effective that water molecules must actually pull away from each other a bit in order to form the structure necessary to make ice!

While this is the explanation given in all relevant textbooks (including the ones I wrote), there has always been a bit of a mystery associated with it. Now, this mystery seems to have been resolved.

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Another Point About C.S. Lewis

About three months back, I posted an essay about how people mischaracterize the views of C.S. Lewis to make it look like he agreed with them on some issue. In that essay, I cited Dr. Michael L. Peterson, an evolutionist, who deliberately edited a quote by C.S. Lewis to make it sound like he was an ardent evolutionist. I then cited Dr. Jerry Bergman, a young-earth creationist, who ripped several of Lewis’s quotes waaayyyyy out of context to make it look like C.S. Lewis was an anti-evolutionist. As I said in my essay, neither of the authors is correct. In fact, C.S. Lewis was an evolutionist, but his faith in evolution was never very strong. He thought it might not be the last word on origins, and at minimum, it would require direct intervention by God at certain key points.

I have gotten some flack from a few of my fellow young-earth creationists for calling Dr. Bergman out on his mischaracterization of C.S. Lewis. However, I am very familiar with all of Lewis’s published works, and there is no doubt that Dr. Bergman was simply not being honest in his portrayal of Lewis. The problem is, most people are not very familiar with Lewis’s work. As a result, it is hard for the average reader to notice when people like Dr. Bergman and Dr. Peterson quote him in such a way as to mischaracterize his views.

Well…there is a popular expression: “Actions speak louder than words.” As I was searching for something in a book I read years ago, I stumbled across the fact that C.S. Lewis performed a specific action which definitively shows, contrary to Bergman’s claims, that C.S. Lewis was certainly not an anti-evolutionist.

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Making Something 100% Efficient Is No Problem For God!

A model of ATPase. The rotor portion (purple) turns as H+ ions pass through, and the synthesis portion (green) uses that energy to force two molecules (ADP and P) to join together to make ATP. (click for credit)
When you eat food, your body digests it, sending chemicals from the food to your cells. When your cells receive simple sugars like glucose, they are burned for energy. However, that energy is mostly produced in one part of the cell: a small organelle called the mitochondrion. The cell needs energy in many different locations, however, so the energy that comes from burning simple sugars is “packaged” into smaller units that can be distributed throughout the cell. The units are stored in molecules called ATP. When the cell needs energy, it breaks down the ATP, releasing the energy that has been stored there.

So a cell takes the energy that comes from burning simple sugars and stores it in small units that are held in a molecule called ATP. The ATP is then shipped to where the cell needs it, and when that part of the cell requires energy, ATP is broken down so that the energy is released. The two molecules into which it is broken down (ADP and P) eventually make their way back to the mitochondrion, so that they can be put back together to store another unit of energy. The process by which all this is done is mind-bogglingly complex. Ask any biochemistry student who is required to memorize all the chemical reactions that take place in order for this to happen in a cell!

Now we know that this process is not only mind-bogglingly complex, but part of it is nearly 100% efficient!

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A Positive Step for the National Science Foundation

Since 1979, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been producing a study entitled Science and Engineering Indicators. It is a quantitative review of science and engineering progress in the United States and the rest of the world. One chapter from that report is called “Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding,” and it attempts to assess how the people of the United States view and understand science compared to the people in the rest of the world. The way they try to gauge the public’s understanding of science is to produce a survey that asks questions such as, “How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun?” and “True or False: The center of the earth is very hot.”

For 20 years now, two of the True/False questions on that survey have been:

Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.

The universe began with a huge explosion.

According to the journal Science, two expert panels formed by the NSF’s governing body, the National Science Board, have suggested changing these two true/false questions to:1

According to evolutionary theory, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.

According to astronomers, the universe began with a huge explosion

The National Science Board has decided to ask the NSF to make that change on half of the surveys given out next time to see what effect it has on the results. This suggestion has infuriated some, but I see it as a very positive step for the NSF.

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So Far, It’s Hard To Find Negative Effects from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

This mangrove snapper (Lutjanus griseus) is a member of one of the species whose population has increased since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (Click for credit)

I have posted three separate articles (here, here, and here) about how the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has recovered remarkably well from the Deepwater Horizon disaster that dumped about 140,000 tons of oil into it. The bacteria that have been designed to remove oil from the ocean have done an amazing job at cleaning up the mess we made. Of course, just because the oil is mostly gone, that doesn’t mean there won’t be serious, long-term consequences to the gulf. Thus, there is still a lot of scientific evaluation to be done on the matter. As a result, some scientists are hard at work trying to discover what they can about the current ecological health of the GOM.

Marine scientists F. Joel Fodrie and Kenneth L. Heck Jr. decided to see if there were any consequences to the populations of important fish in the area where the oil was spilled. To do this, they tallied the numbers of juvenile fish retrieved from that area by marine research ships between mid July and late October for the years 2006-2010. Since the oil spill occurred in April of 2010, many of the juvenile fish retrieved in 2010 would have been hatched from eggs that were laid in the oil-polluted waters. In addition, once those eggs hatched, the fish larvae would be swimming around in oil-polluted waters. As a result, the scientists thought that there would be a noticeable drop in the number of juvenile fish retrieved in 2010. As they note:1

We hypothesized that the strength of juvenile cohorts spawned on the northern GOM continental shelf during May–September 2010 in the northern GOM would be negatively affected by egg/larval-oil interactions. Oiled seawater contains toxic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which, even after weathering, can result in genetic damage, physical deformities and altered developmental timing for fish eggs/larvae…Additionally, emulsified oil droplets could mechanically damage the feeding and breathing apparatus of relatively fragile larvae and further decrease individual fitness.

Was their hypothesis correct? Not even close.

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