High school student dresses up as Jesus for “Fictional Character Day”

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Michael

I don’t know as I would have done this in high school, but I certainly would seize such an opportunity now:

A couple of months ago, Summit High School in Spring Hill, Tennessee held a “Fictional Character Day” in which students could come to school dressed as their favorite fictional character. Like the Mad Hatter. Or Darth Vader. Or SpongeBob SquarePants.

Jeff Shott came dressed as Jesus.

Before class even started that day, Shott was asked by the principal and other staffers to remove his costume. It was inappropriate, they said.

That’s sort of the default excuse the courts have given to schools, isn’t it? You want to do something remotely controversial? Nah. Sit down and shut up so you don’t disrupt anything. Or, in other words:

Here is part of what Jeff had to say about this in his own words:

I’d arrived at school this Monday before 8:15 a.m. and waited in the cafeteria until classes started, eating breakfast with friends and adding finishing touches to my Jesus costume.

The head principal, Dr. Farmer, soon came up and asked me to come to his office. The assistant principal, Ms. Lamb, and Officer Pewit, school resource officer, were waiting outside the cafeteria. Dr. Farmer asked me whom I was portraying. I told him that I was Jesus Christ. He said he had been hoping my answer would have been Zeus (or some other variation of a mythological deity).

Even though I’m typically very openly atheistic and have no problem discussing my views, I was a little distraught that all three school authority figures were addressing me at once. Dr. Farmer claimed I couldn’t have things both ways — I couldn’t complain about teachers talking about Jesus and also dress up as Jesus on Fictional Character Day.

Apparently one of Jeff’s “science teachers” is a creationist and had expressed as much, undermining the theory and fact of evolution with typical creationist tripe. Now it looks like the administration at Jeff’s school understands the constitution about as well as its teachers understand science. The fact is, whether or not dressing as Jesus is allowed on school grounds, Jeff’s teacher was promoting Christian creationism in the classroom, something which has long been established as illegal. It doesn’t matter if Jeff has a problem with that and he wants to wear a funny costume. Indeed, what a teacher tells her students and what a student wears as a costume are independent situations.

Anyway, Jeff has been given a $1,000 scholarship from the Freedom From Religion Foundation because of all this, so the end result isn’t so awful. And even better? I guarantee more students have been talking about him at school than ever would have if he wore his costume for the whole day.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Creationism, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Butchering science

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Michael

This is just a mess.

I have written in the past about Jack Hudson’s tendency to butcher science. There are a lot of examples of him doing this, but one of the most egregious was when he concluded that because fruit fly populations under laboratory conditions come to allelic fixation at a different rate and/or way than asexual populations, that must mean there is some flaw in evolutionary theory. (In re-reading his post, I’m also seeing that he concluded something else equally egregious: He said that mutations which affect mRNA structure as opposed to protein sequence is evidence that random mutations cannot lead to new traits.) In short, it is highly evident that Jack read a popularized article about a recent study, glommed a few lines from the original research, and then went about drawing inept conclusions.

And now he’s back at it.

Let me give an actual summary of this most recent study first:

Stickleback fish are found all around the world. They exist in a number of streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans due to their great ability to adapt quite quickly to their environment. This opens up a great opportunity to take a look at their genes to see just what regions are evolving.

Now, what often happens in these sort of studies is that researchers will choose selected areas or candidate genes and compare them. It’s a tried and true method, but it probably isn’t the whole picture. While researchers can grow various species (usually of bacteria), objectively know how they’ve diverged and evolved under laboratory conditions, and then compare what they know to phenotypic changes brought on by alterations in protein-coding genes, there has been a push for a long time to sequence more and more full genomes. One result has been information overload (even when the full genome of something has not been sequenced; the technology that allows full genome sequencing also inherently allows easier partial sequencing), but that’s not a bad problem to have. So for this study, the biologists sequenced 21 three-spined stickleback genomes. Their goal was to determine the underlying molecular basis for adaptive evolution in the fish: Do they evolve by way of regulatory or coding changes?

What the team found was that 147 regions vary in freshwater versus marine stickleback populations. Of these 147 regions, 17% were linked to coding genes, 41% to regulatory regions, and 42% could not be classified cleanly (though, as the neat little graph under “Proportion of regulatory and coding change” in the paper says, they are probably regulatory).

So the big conclusion is this. Stickleback evolution is dominated by regulatory changes – changes involving areas which control genes. (Coding changes are still important, but this study indicates a possible shift in focus as it becomes cheaper and easier to sequence whole genomes.) The regions prevalent in stickleback evolution are relatively few; we keep seeing the same areas get tweaked over and over, leading to independent (and often convergent) solutions for the same sort of environments.

Now let’s look at Jack’s butchery:

But these findings are actually quite contrary to the sort of evolution often advocated by Darwinian evolutionists. Instead of incidental mutations coding sequences leading to the production of new proteins (and conceivably, novel structures and systems) the researchers found that the changes were primarily to the same sets of regulatory sequences in separate populations of sticklebacks…

While the researchers continue to use the term ‘evolutionary change’, the reality is this is nothing like the sort of change described by the modern evolutionary synthesis, a theory which relies on natural selection acting on genetic mutation.

To summarize this inanity: Jack is saying that evolution predicts that changes in species should occur almost exclusively by way of natural selection working on random mutation. He’s wrong. What evolution says is that change will occur by a number of mechanisms – random drift, hitchhiking via linkage, bottlenecking, horizontal gene transfer, and others. Random mutations culled by non-random selection will result in changes, certainly. And that’s what we see quite frequently in the laboratory and nearly 1/5 of the time in this stickleback study. However, the presence of other mechanisms is not somehow counter to evolutionary theory. Indeed, I think embryologists would be rather upset to learn that their field undermines evolution since the regulation of development – not necessarily or even usually by coding regions – has a huge impact on the way species change over time.

Yet I haven’t even gotten to the kicker:

The very fact that the researcher describes these as “key genes that control evolutionary change” contradicts the ordinary notion of evolution itself, which is purportedly an unguided process.

This reminds me Mary Midgley’s complete misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. Midgley complained, chiefly, that Dawkins’ use of “selfish” was wrong because genes don’t have emotions. It was risible and I don’t know as Dawkins should have bothered responding. Naturally, I have to wonder if I should bother with the likes of Jack Hudson.

The language being employed by the scientists behind the stickleback study does not indicate that there is any guiding mechanism to evolution. They obviously are not claiming that regulatory genes direct evolution in a predetermined way. All they are saying is that these genes are a major factor in evolutionary change. It would be as if I said that my gene for lactase controls my tolerance for lactose (dairy products, more or less). That does not mean there is a little man sitting on a section of my DNA, tinkering away because he desires that I ingest milk.

Sorry to keep this going, but there are a lot of kickers in this one:

If natural selection acting on incidental mutations were actually capable of producing the radically different body plans, structures and systems we find throughout the plant and animal kingdoms, then we wouldn’t expect to see the consistent similarity of genetic modifications that we do with regard to the various populations of sticklebacks.

It would be generous to say this is a strain on logic. It absolutely does not follow that the predominance of regulatory genes excludes the importance of random mutation. Moreover, this study is not looking at millions of years, so extrapolation out that far should be constrained.

The changes wouldn’t be a matter of merely regulating extant genes, but the origination of new genetic capabilities.

Jack is, in essence, claiming that regulatory changes do not count as evolution. Unfortunately for him, we have thousands of different species of sticklebacks that attest to significant change over time – and now we know they’ve been doing it with a lot of help from their regulatory genes. So even if there was something to Jack’s claim on its own, it wholly crumbles when we hold it up to all the different stickleback populations around the globe.

Genetic sequencing continues to demonstrate that there are limits to biological variation.

This is in reference to specific creationist-proposed limitations, something not supported by an iota of this study. That is, this claim boils down to Jack saying that because sticklebacks evolve in a large number of ways by virtue of relatively few regulatory regions, species are constrained to microevolutionary changes. Again, this is a logic fail. The presence of changes by way of natural selection operating on regulatory genes does not exclude changes by way of natural selection operating on random mutation. Anyone who bothered to honestly look at this study would know that. (17% and perhaps more of the regions map to actual genes, for Christ’s sake.)

As I’ve said a few times before, what takes a creationist 30 seconds to say takes an educated person hours to untangle. And just as with my last post about butchered science, this didn’t take quite that long, but the sentiment remains true.

Filed under: Biology, Creationism, Evidence, Evolution | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Creationist logic

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Michael

via the Creationism ‘Museum’

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This is why no one respects the South

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Michael

You’d think Tennessee, of all places, would know better:

Tennessee, where the nation’s first big legal battle over evolution was fought nearly 90 years ago, is close to enacting a law that critics deride as the “monkey bill” for once again attacking the scientific theory.

The measure passed by the Tennessee General Assembly would protect teachers who allow students to criticize evolution and other scientific theories, such as global warming. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said this week he would likely sign it into law.

Interestingly, the governor is claiming that the law will basically do absolutely nothing while changing approximately zilch. The truth is different:

The bill says it would encourage critical thinking by protecting teachers from discipline if they help students critique “scientific weaknesses.”

In other words, teachers won’t be punished for telling students lies.

I think a great test of this horseshit bill would be for a teacher to go into a dead-pan routine where he questions the validity of the theory of gravity. Talk about its weaknesses, cast doubt on its validity, and maybe even propose some alternatives. Of course, those “alternatives” would need to be couched in science-y language, but I’m sure there are plenty of creationist groups out there willing to lend their expertise to those who wish to abuse science.

Filed under: Creationism, Evolution, News | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

One fact to refute creationism

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Michael

Sometimes I pity the religious for not having a person as intelligent as Richard Dawkins on their side:

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Those sneaky creationists

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Michael

Creationists tend to be very sneaky. For instance, when evolutionary research into fruit flies revealed a difference in allelic fixation between asexual and sexual organisms, creationists jumped at the chance to ignorantly declare that natural selection had failed. And then there is their general argumentation of false equivalence where they pretend that science is really just faith. Or how about that awful movie Expelled? That was that piece of trash that pretended like there was a big conspiracy in the scientific community against creationists intelligent design proponents. In other words, after failing to convince anyone in science of their garbage, and after failing to convince a single court that they aren’t just religious fanatics, creationists went to the public. And, unfortunately, they have had a fair amount of success, especially in a few hickish state legislatures. But notice one common thread here: I’ve been talking about broad trends. Misconstruing scientific research, pretending there is a conspiracy, going to the public instead of the courts – these are all things to which most creationists will adhere. Whether we’re talking about organizations or individuals, these people don’t tend to think for themselves. They haven’t the necessary skills. But that isn’t to say there won’t occasionally be a rogue. Enter former NASA employee David Coppedge:

A computer specialist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is going to court over allegations that he was wrongfully terminated because of his belief in intelligent design…

Coppedge, who worked as a team lead on the Cassini mission exploring Saturn and its many moons, claims he was discriminated against because he engaged his co-workers in conversations about intelligent design and handed out DVDs on the idea while at work.

Now hang on one second. If Coppedge believed the Earth was flat, he could have been fired just as easily and few people would say religion played a role at all. Why, he was simply fired for having a kooky belief; without the role of religion, such a firing would have been justified (presuming he was an at-will employee and his contract didn’t have specific stipulations, something he has not apparently claimed). And isn’t that what the creationists intelligent design community wants? Don’t they want their view to be treated, not necessarily as “kooky”, but as a viable scientific position? Coppedge appears to be bucking the trends and undermining the creationist intelligent design movement by going to the courts – a place that has a habit of only setting the creationist intelligent design agenda back.

It isn’t surprising that major creationist intelligent design organizations like the Discovery Institute are supporting Coppedge, but it is a little funny. After all, Coppedge is giving away the game. While all the major groups who support him insist that they are just going where the science leads them – we’re still waiting for a little original research from these guys, by the way – this fired schmuck is practically screaming that intelligent design is religious belief. He must realize what he’s doing, though, right? He preached to his coworkers and gave out DVD’s. He has probably even seen Expelled. He knows what the movement is about, so why would he undermine it by blatantly calling it what it is: religion? Well, here is where that creationist sneakiness comes in:

Coppedge’s attorney, William Becker, contends his client was singled out by his bosses because they perceived his belief in intelligent design to be religious. Coppedge had a reputation around JPL as an evangelical Christian, and interactions with co-workers led some to label him as a Christian conservative, Becker said.

Emphasis added.

No, no, no! It isn’t that intelligent design is religion. Of course not. It’s that other people perceive it to be religion. Those people at NASA probably just don’t understand science very well, is all.

I don’t know how this case will turn out. It could be that Coppedge really was fired for being a Christian, though I doubt it. Even though scientists tend to be agnostics and atheists, there is little question plenty of NASA employees are devote to one religion or another. I bet a few even wear crosses and other religious paraphernalia to work – all without being fired. So it could be that Coppedge loses this one. Who knows? About the only predictable thing here is the creationist intelligent design reaction regardless of the outcome: If Coppedge loses, not only is there a big scientific conspiracy, but we also have to do something about these activist judges. If he wins, then scientists really are the liars the creationists intelligent design proponents have been saying they are all along.

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Well, isn’t Indiana just silly

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Michael

A bunch of kooks in the Indiana state senate have decided to go ahead and try to bring an expensive lawsuit to their doorstep:

On January 31, 2012, the Indiana Senate voted 28-22 in favor of Senate Bill 89. As originally submitted, SB 89 provided, “The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.” On January 30, 2012, however, it was amended in the Senate to provide instead, “The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.”

In other words, these people recognize the fact of evolution – that fact that is supported so thoroughly, overwhelmingly, and wonderfully – is in direct conflict with their religious dogma, so instead of adjusting to the evidence, they want to ignore it, even promoting ideas that are blatantly false. It’s a good thing it is so well established that they cannot use government to do this. Not that bill sponsor Dennis Kruse knows this:

Kruse acknowledged that the bill would be constitutionally problematic but, he told the education blogger at the Indianapolis Star (January 31, 2012), “This is a different Supreme Court,” adding, “This Supreme Court could rule differently.”

It’s true that there is a reckless disregard for the constitution amongst some of the justices and political figures on the Supreme Court, but with the possible exception of worst-court-members-in-history Scalia and Thomas, no one is going to uphold the teaching of creationism in public schools. Kruse doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

If these religious zealots are so anxious to promote their doctrines and dogmas, then they can do so through dispassionate courses such as comparative religion and philosophy. That would enable them to spread their views without actively promoting them; it is active promotion that is the problem here. Of course, students will also have to deal with competing ideas, something which is antithetical to religious thought, but it’s the best that these kooks are constitutionally allowed to do with public funds – thank goodness.

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Hitler and creationism

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Michael

Associating something with Hitler does not make that something wrong. Most believers won’t preface their (incorrect) associations of Hitler and evolution with that statement; it’s basic, bald dishonesty.

That said, Hitler was a creationist. In Mein Kampf, he said this:

Walking about in the garden of Nature, most men have the self-conceit to think that they know everything; yet almost all are blind to one of the outstanding principles that Nature employs in her work. This principle may be called the inner isolation which characterizes each and every living species on this earth.

Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law–one may call it an iron law of Nature – which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind.

It is obvious that, yes, Hitler believed that species did not evolve. So what about the Nazi utilization of eugenics? Well, I’m glad you asked such an easy question.

Hitler believed Aryans were inherently superior to everyone else. This is practically identical to the beliefs of most white people (in regard to whites) prior to Darwin. That is, people have long believed their own race to be superior to other races. But Hitler also believed that breeding Aryans with each other would increase Aryan characteristics throughout the population. This wasn’t some idea that depended upon evolutionary theory. People knew for thousands of years that they could produce certain traits within animals by creating breeding programs. Besides that, they obviously recognized that their own children would inherit features from their parents. Hitler extended this common knowledge to Aryans. It had no basis in evolution. Anyone who says otherwise is either woefully ignorant or an unabashed liar.

But how is this different from the position of modern day creationists? Hitler believed traits could be passed on and come to dominate a population. At no point does this have anything to do with speciation from his perspective – nor from the perspective of creationists. This is the so-called “microevolution” that is consistent with the silly creationist view. Hitler did not merely hold it – he embraced it.

Of course, it was not that he was embracing creationism itself. Don’t get me wrong – he did embrace creationism and he was a self-proclaimed creationist many decades before his rise to power – but it was not creationism itself he was embracing. He was using every day intuition about how reproduction works. These ideas stretch back formally at least 2400 years, and probably much further informally in terms of what early humans could observe as obvious. It was day-to-day ideas Hitler was utilizing in his quest for raising the German “superman”. Those ideas really had nothing to do with evolutionary theory, and even if they did, Hitler did not accept that species evolved anyway.

Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Punching bags

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Michael

I really don’t read Neil’s blog very often. I usually scoot over there for a peak when I’m writing a post for FTSOS and I need to reference an old post. Those old posts often have links back to Neil’s and so I take a glance. And what do I see every time? Something wildly wrong:

The explicit reason for both the junk DNA error and the vestigial organs error was the need to find evidence for Darwinism in the form of stuff in life forms that doesn’t work. Without that need, these errors would not have been made. For many kids, mid-twentieth century, it was an error that resulted in needless, risky surgeries, removing supposedly vestigial tonsils and adenoids.

Neil is quoting from Uncommon Descent, a creationist blog that demonstrates the same understanding of biology as Neil has – none. That’s why this is such an easy one.

First, most DNA still is junk, i.e., non-coding and without use. It’s largely unneeded and has no developmental use or phenotypic effect. What was once labeled “junk” may have regulatory business to go about, but that is not the majority of DNA. Deal with it, creationists.

Second, I can’t believe creationists are still confused about vestigial structures. It was never the argument that these structures used to have a function and now they don’t. The argument was – and is – that they evolved to have a particular function, but they have since lost that function. They may well have been co-opted into having other uses, but that is not important to whether or not they are vestigial. Uncommon Descent and Neil ought to be hugely embarrassed.

Third and finally, tonsils were historically taken out for a number of reasons. One reason has to do with the availability of medicine to treat inflammation. It wasn’t until the middle of the previous century that penicillin and erythromycin were put into wide-spread use. Without that treatment option, surgery was a very viable solution. Second, improvements in surgical techniques plus the 19th century discovery of anesthesia made surgery that much easier. Third, long-term statistics were not particularly available concerning the effectiveness of the surgery. It was clear that it improved a person’s well being in the short-term as far as inflammation and soar throats were concerned, but beyond that it was a bit of a mystery. What was clear was that it did not pose significant long-term risks. Finally, the practice of removing one’s tonsils dates back approximately 2800 years prior to Darwin. The procedure is not based upon evolutionary thinking, nor was it ever utilized in an attempt to justify any claims about the vestigial nature of tonsils.

This is getting to be too easy.

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Punching bags

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Michael

Whenever creationists get hold of a legitimate scientific paper, I groan a little bit for at least two reasons. First, I know whatever they have to say, they’re going to mangle the science. We saw that with Jack Hudson last year (and, actually on literally every post about science he has ever made). And, of course, we also saw that with all the other creationist sites from which Jack stole his material. Second, I know I’m going to have to devote some time to reading and blogging on a paper I would have otherwise missed. It isn’t that I don’t like to read these things – I do. The problem is that it’s a time-suck when the blogging is factored in. You see, unlike creationists I actually research and verify what I have to say on any given piece of science.

Let’s start with the paper in question:

Here we report exceptionally preserved fossil eyes from the Early Cambrian (~515 million years ago) Emu Bay Shale of South Australia, revealing that some of the earliest arthropods possessed highly advanced compound eyes, each with over 3,000 large ommatidial lenses and a specialized ‘bright zone’. These are the oldest non-biomineralized eyes known in such detail, with preservation quality exceeding that found in the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang deposits. Non-biomineralized eyes of similar complexity are otherwise unknown until about 85 million years later6, 7. The arrangement and size of the lenses indicate that these eyes belonged to an active predator that was capable of seeing in low light. The eyes are more complex than those known from contemporaneous trilobites and are as advanced as those of many living forms. They provide further evidence that the Cambrian explosion involved rapid innovation in fine-scale anatomy as well as gross morphology, and are consistent with the concept that the development of advanced vision helped to drive this great evolutionary event8.

The gist of the find is this. Researchers discovered very old fossils of arthropod eyes from the Early Cambrian. They do not predate complex eyes, but they do predate similar non-biomineralized eyes. That is, trilobite eyes are made of calcite, meaning the trilobites produce the minerals for their eyes themselves. In turn, their eyes are hardened (and thus more easily fossilized). So these new fossils show a different way in which eyes could become complex. Furthermore, they showed a tight packing in the lenses, much in the way that a fly’s lenses appear to be tightly packed. They also were curved to form binocular vision, meaning there was a visual overlap in front of the body. This helps for judging distances and discerning complicated backgrounds. This creature was a predator.

But here is where creationists draw issue:

Did you catch that? If you were a high school student who trusted your teachers, you’d think they had evidence for this unbelievably rapid amount of highly complex change. But they merely assume that it evolved, so it “had” to have been a great evolutionary event and another example of “rapid innovation.” [And is thus a tautology.]

This comes from Neil who, like many creationists, was taking his cue from another site. He believes that every paper that mentions evolution must provide a detailed description of why evolution is true.

His quote was a reference to this excerpt from the paper:

[The new fossils] provide further evidence that the Cambrian explosion involved rapid innovation in fine-scale anatomy as well as gross morphology, and are consistent with the concept that the development of advanced vision helped to drive this great evolutionary event.

What this is referencing is the fact that until now advanced eye fossils were almost exclusively restricted to trilobites in the fossil record. These new fossils give evidence that, as suspected, there were other marine creatures swimming around with complex eyes. Furthermore, they show a quantitative change in the number of lenses, not the sudden appearance of these sort of lenses. (But note that we can’t expect to see a perfect fossil record. We can get a good outline, but it’s silly and really very ignorant for creationists to demand to see every intermediate organism. At some point things will have to “suddenly” appear. Of course, this is in geological terms, i.e., over millions of years.) These eyes are evidence that evolution was driven in part by the anatomical changes in vision during the Cambrian.

So it is clear that none of this is a tautology. This fossil find is further evidence of the nature of evolution and the role vision played in its creation of arms races. What we see from the creationist world, however, is an immature understanding of the science. There is no doubt that Neil never bothered to read the paper from Nature, nor have many of his creationist brethren. If any of these sort of non-academics bothered to look into the literature (or even take formal courses), they would see their obvious errors. Further, even if we are to understand this paper as Neil purports it to be, he’s still in error. That is, he believes the paper is a tautology because it assumes evolution without giving evidence for why evolution is true. This is like drawing issue with physics papers because they assume gravity is true without explaining general relativity. It’s a silly complaint to make and it only demonstrates how wildly over the head of creationists most scientific papers are.

Filed under: Creationism, Evidence, Evolution | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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