Researching Creation

Scientific American's 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

JB — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 12:51:00 +0000

I was online, and someone posted an old Scientific American article titled "15 Anwers to Creationist Nonsense". Since I am a creationist, I thought I would take a moment to respond, and respond here, so that I don't have to re-type it later if someone reposts it.

One thing that was problematic about the whole article is they they never reference who they are quoting. This fact alone makes this whole article somewhat of a straw man since it means that they can make the claim mean whatever they want, because they don't reference any particular person so someone can go and check to see if that is what they really meant.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

They are correct on this one. Most people misunderstand the relationship between hypotheses, theories, and laws. However, most evolutionists are also wrong because they think that "theory" attributes some special status. It does not. A law is a mathematical expression of a relationship. A theory is a conceptual expression of a relationship. A hypothesis is the presumed outcome of an experiment. A conjecture is an educated guess. There is both a theory and a law of gravity. The law is the mathematical equation. The theory is how it is presumed to work. However, what most evolutionists don't point out is that it is the law of gravity, not the theory of gravity, which is solid. That's because conceptual categories are much more fungible and harder to test. Most of the "laws" in evolution are actually population genetics laws, and population genetics is actually an outgrowth of creationism (most don't realize that Mendel's paper on pea plants was explicitly anti-evolutionary).

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

They are wrong on this one, and the funny thing is they don't even really try to disagree. In fact, they completely unlink fitness and survival in the last sentence: "The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances." If fitness and survival are not linked, how does that help natural selection at all?

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

They start off with a straw man, by saying that the field is dividable into microevolution and macroevolution (do you remember the days when it was claimed that "only creationists separate micro- and macro-? I certainly do). Obviously the claim is meant to apply to macroevolution, and to imply otherwise is simply a straw man. Interestingly, they go on to acknowledge that it is a straw man, so it is unclear why they mentioned it to begin with, except to poison the well.

They are correct that there are ways in which historical hypotheses are testable, but they fail to mention that these are epistemically less reliable types of tests. The reason why operational science is stronger epistemically than circumstantial evidence is because, first of all, a claim to understand a process requires that I know enough about it to recreate it. This is something evolutionists have failed to do. Second, in operational science any part of the process can be tested by a third party who changes different values than the original experimenter. Therefore, if someone says, "well, it *looks* like X, but I think the real cause is Y", then, since it is repeatable, the person can perform the experiment and see, changing only the variable they believe is the cause.

In historical sciences, dealing with circumstantial evidence, this is not the case. You only have the evidence that history already left, and they are never controlled for a single variable. Unless you can recreate the presumed history in the lab, the things that make operational science epistemically reliable simply aren't there for historical science. There are analogs to these, but they do not have the same epistemic import.

It should also be noted that evolutionists themselves have pointed out how fungible evolution is. One evolutionist asked his colleagues about two sets of "data" (that he made up) which were the opposite of each other. His colleagues said of both sets, "of course, it was because of X". In other words, it doesn't matter what the data is, some evolutionist has a story they can tell you about it.

Then Scientific American talks about how it could be tested. Of course, the data they are talking about doesn't actually exist, so, as it stands, it is untestable.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

They are wrong here in two ways. First of all, they interpreted "doubting the truth of evolution" as being equivalent to "embracing creationism". This is false. What most people actually say is that more and more scientists are rejecting Darwinism, and that is quite true, with such ideas as Shapiro's Third Way.

However, there is also an increase in scientists following both creationism and Intelligent Design. I know this because I know them. The author uses as "proof" a search of scientific literature. However, that scientific literature has a policy of rejecting papers that directly point to Intelligent Design or creationism, which might be one reason why the aren't there. Scientists are threatened with their jobs if they publicly support creationism. A friend of mine had several million in grant money, the BBC had done a documentary about him, and he lost his job when it came out that he was a creationist.

In addition, there is a growing body of technical literature by creationists. First of all, creationists are publishing in the technical literature papers with obviously creationist interpretations, but without the label creationism. See this paper for instance. Also as proof for the claim of people getting fired, this person got fired for publishing this paper. Also, you can often tell a closet Creationist or ID-er in the technical literature, as they refer to both Wallace and Darwin as the founders of evolution.

Second, creationists publish in their own technical literature. Some evolutionists call foul on this, but it is no different than other fields which have their own journals. And, given the fact that the volume of papers is increasing, and most of those papers come from qualified scientists, one could rightly say that the numbers of creationists are increasing.

So, we have more creationists, they are publishing, they are getting fired for being creationists (which skews the numbers), and they get fired for publishing papers which have obviously creationist interpretations. And even with this persecution there is an increasing number of scientists accepting creation or ID positions.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.

This shows that evolutionists are less philosophically inclined than creationists. The problem is not that there are disagreements, it is that the disagreements are on fundamental issues, with each position having significant evidence against it. If every position has significant evidence against it, why is there a need to exclude options? The current crop of bad solutions that are counter to the evidence aren't being excluded, so why try to exclude others that you think are bad? This is totally unreasonable, but is the stance of most evolutionists.

If scientists are debating a process because there is substantial evidence against *every* current solution, then it is in fact reasonable to propose a different alternative, even if it is unpopular.

Also, the author mentions creationists quoting Gould. Again, he fails to provide specifics. He fails to mention that Gould, while being an evolutionist, actually did doubt much of Darwinian orthodoxy, and punc-eq was not his sole point of disagreement. I don't see how, if one is pointing out problems with evolutionary theory, it is wrong to refer to Gould. It would be wrong to say that Gould supported creationism, but it would not be wrong to point to Gould's criticism of evolution as part of a larger support of creationism.

In fact, it is normally considered a very strong case if you can make your case relying only on witnesses that are predisposed to agree with you. Creationists often do this because it is, in fact, a more powerful way of making your point. Evolutionists call foul if you quote an evolutionist in support of a point because they don't agree with the rest of your points. They then call foul even stronger if you quote a creationist in support of a point because they do agree with the rest of your points. As you can see, they just don't like hearing creationists talk.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

I've heard this one, too. In fact, it is a really terrible argument.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

They basically tried to sidestep this, but I'm calling foul on that. Universal Common Descent is very tied to the concept of abiogenesis, and the specifics of how it works. If Scientific American doesn't care about Universal Common Descent, then the idea of them "disagreeing" with creationists is actually wrong - they would then fail to have any substantial disagreement with creationists.

I've written more about this here. Basically, to claim that two things must have shared an ancestor, you have to have reason that they didn't arise independently. In order to do that, you have to know whether or not the similarity could have been produced by arising independently. In order to do that, you have to have a theory of abiogenesis. If you don't, then most of evolutionary theory goes out the window.

Naming Infinity

JB — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:16:00 +0000

Someone posted a link to a book that looks fantastic -- Naming Infinity. I'm a big fan of infinity (both in philosophy and mathematics), and have been learning more about it. This looks like a great contribution to the discussion.

A friend of mine posted this review of it.

Martin Luther King on Intelligent Design

JB — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:11:00 +0000

UncommonDescent just posted a great review of Martin Luther King's thoughts on Intelligent Design.

Taxonomy vs Common Descent

JB — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:47:00 +0000

I am posting this mostly so I remember it later on - this is a great article on UD about the relationship between taxonomy and the concept of common descent. The point is that what the nested hierarchy shows is specifically *not* Darwinian. Excellent post with excellent argumentation followed by an excellent discussion.

Engineering and Theology Unite

JB — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:18:00 +0000

For those interested in engineering and theology and philosophy, this conference is for you! I've got two talks slated for the conference - come and listen! Lots of fascinating stuff from a number of disciplines:

www.eandm2012.com

You can see the abstract list here and the conference flyer here.

Special Creation Research Society Discount for Students

JB — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:39:00 +0000

For those interested in joining the Creation Research Society, they are running a special membership drive at a steeply discounted price:

See here

The Doctrine of Creation and the Making of Modern Biology

JB — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:24:00 +0000

I just posted a new article on the Classical Conversations website - check it out!

On Being an Amateur

JB — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:54:00 +0000

I'm posting this mainly because I was thinking about it today, and it took me over an hour to find it. So I'm saving it here for future reference. Biblo at Telic Thoughts put up some excellent thoughts about being an amateur ID proponent. I also added the following comment:

I think it is dangerous for any discipline to reject the criticisms of amateurs out-of-hand. I have been programming computers for 25 years, have a book on programming that is used at Princeton University, have taught programming, and have numerous papers and articles on programming published by IBM and others.

Nonetheless, I still, often, have customers who come up with ways of doing things that I don't think of – customers who have never programmed a day in their life. I know many people who dismiss their customers ideas out-of-hand because they don't believe that non-programmers have valid input. That is total B.S. The fact is, being a non-programmer gives someone an outside look at the issues that aren't obscured with all the things us programmers normally worry about that, and sometimes that opens their minds up to possibilities that we don't see.

It doesn't mean that I take their ideas without criticism – there are more bad ones than good ones (which is expected, because they are outside the field, and aren't familiar with the issues). But nonetheless, I would be a lesser developer if I used the fact that these people are non-experts as a reason to dismiss what they had to say.

This also often requires translating what the have to say. Non-experts often use terms wrong, have a bad understanding of the way certain concepts work together, and the like. But *my* job is not to use my expertise as a way of beating their ignorance over their heads, but rather to *translate* their conceptualizations of their ideas into full-fledged, implementable ideas. So, rather than using my expertise to knock down, I use it to build up – to find a way to understand the non-experts in the most gracious light, and find a way for them to be right.

Doing so improves us both.

New Book - Sacred Cows in Science

JB — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 04:00:00 +0000

The book Sacred Cows in Science was just released. This book is a compilation of issues from 17 authors in 3 countries which each challenge some aspect of science that normally goes unchallenged. I have a chapter in it, so please take time to purchase a copy! My chapter is on genetic mutations and whether they are accidental or not (or both).

The book covers a lot of territory, including astrophysics, biology, sociology, and other topics. Many of the topics deal directly or indirectly with creation and evolution but not all. Anyway, the chapters are all very different, some lay-oriented and some that are more technical. Anyway, purchase a copy today!

A Theory of Undesign

JB — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:51:00 +0000

One thing that is often missing in ID contexts is a theology of "undesign". That is, if we are going to take our design inferences seriously, that means that there needs to be a real category of "undesign". Yet, if we take our faith seriously, then we also need to understand God as the designer of the whole universe.

David Snoke takes a pass at working through this issue in a paper titled "Defining Undesign in a Designed Universe". Well worth your read.

Wooden Ships the Size of Noah's Ark

JB — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:30:00 +0000

Ian just pointed me to an excellent link about Chinese Treasure Junks. These are ships built in the 15th century that have approximately the same dimensions as Noah's ark, and built out of wood. Pretty amazing! I wonder what these could teach us about the ark itself, if anything, and if perhaps the technology to build these came from the ark itself.

Please vote for the Little Light House

JB — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:26:00 +0000

Please vote for the Little Light House to receive $500,000 from Kohl's Cares. This is a wonderful organization which benefits special needs children without taking any payment whatsoever. They have been a lifesaver to me and my family.

Creation Q&A Day on Facebook

JB — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:32:00 +0000

For any of you with questions about creationism, I encourage you to come and ask questions at Creationism Q&A Day on Facebook with Creation Nation X. Our friend Ian hosted the last one, and I'll be hosting this one with a focus on biology.

Random Thought on Diversification

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 03:29:00 +0000

I was reading Gene Conversion in the Rice Genome, and noticed this:

Pseudogenes in the rice genome with low similarity to Arabidopsis genes showed greater likelihood for gene conversion than those with high similarity to Arabidopsis genes.

While arabidopsis is probably a different created kind than rice, it got me wondering - what if, when two species enter into symbiosis, one species transfers pseudogenes to another, which are then used in gene conversion to set up the biochemical pathways for the symbiosis?

Thus, pseudogenes might act like a symbiosis integration script, giving a template for interacting with it. The other organism then takes that template, and, through gene conversion, uses pieces out of it to alter its own genome to match the symbiosis?

Anyway, that might be an interesting path to look down.

Why Online Conversations Are Hard

JB — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:27:00 +0000

I was having a conversation with someone about fitness functions, who asked how someone could sneak information into a fitness function. I responded. Of course, someone else then asked about how evolution worked in cases where information wasn't snuck into the fitness function - the answer - it is usually snuck into the parameters of evolution! But I hope you can see why online discussions are hard (for any issue). People take the answer to a single *aspect* of the issue to be a universal answer to the whole deal. They mistake the fact that you are having a conversation with a specific person about a specific thing to be a general public service announcement. We can't spend our lives speaking in qualified statements, but we do need to be aware that people listening in aren't familiar with the full context of the conversation.

The Mind

JB — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:30:00 +0000

[WARNING - this post may not make any sense until I give my BSG talk - sorry - I'll refer back to it later after I describe that talk]

In preparation for my BSG talk on creationary cognition models, I was digging through some papers, and ran into a whole collection of papers on the Gödelian argument against the physicalism of the brain. Would someone please take these papers to the theology departments? Anyone?

This whole area of research seems completely unknown outside of a few specialists (though Penn State seemed to have a lot of contributions, or at least a lot of archived papers that Google Scholar pointed to).

Anyway, when I had started my research in seminary, I thought that my Gödelian argument for the soul was at least somewhat unique. I had read Voie's use of Gödel, but did not realize that there was an actual literature on the subject. I have to say I was a little disappointed when I found Robertson's paper on free will. I realized my argument wasn't brand-new.

Anyway, I found one paper that comes at least a little close to what my BSG presentation will be on - Copeland's Turing's o-machines, Searle, Penrose, and the Brain. On the one hand, even if I didn't add anything to the conversation, I think just popularizing these ideas is worthwhile. However, my goal is to begin a research program to systematize these ideas as part of a general cognitive studies program. I think one reason why these ideas aren't getting as much play is because they are being relegated to philosophy. What we need to do is to start experimenting - then we can put them into practice.

Some interesting and related papers I found in Google Scholar:

BSG/CGS 2010 Meeting Speaker List

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:16:00 +0000

Todd just posted the talk list for the BSG/CGS meeting. It looks to be a really exciting time, and I have no idea how they are going to fit so many talks into a day and a half - probably switching to a multiple-track format. Anyone who wants to interact with creation research should come here. Here's the link to register. After this week the registration price goes up.

Here is the list of talks:

Biology

Bartlett - Estimating Active Information in Adaptive Mutagenesis
Bartlett - Developing an Approach to Non-Physical Cognitive Causation in a Creation Perspective
Demme - Grasses and Shrubs or Grain and Thorn-bushes? The Vegetation of Genesis 2.5
Francis - Use of Halobacteria as a Model Research Organism in the Undergraduate Research Laboratory
Sanders - Baraminological Status of the Verbenaceae (Verbena Family)
Wilson - Revisiting the 'Clear Synapomorphy' Criterion
Wise - Dominion: Human raison d’être, Foundation of Bioethics, Foundation of Environmentalism
Wood - Species and Genus Counts for Terrestrial Mammal Families Reveals Evidence for and against Widespread Intrabaraminic Diversification
Wood - A Re-evaluation of the Baraminic Status of Australopithecus sediba Using Cranial and Postcranial Characters

Geology

Austin - Submarine Liquefied Sediment Gravity Currents: Understanding the Mechanics of the Major Sediment Transportation and Deposition Agent during the Global Flood
Cheung, Strom, Whitmore - Persistence of Dolomite in the Coconino Sandstone, Northern and Central Arizona
Garner - Permian Cross-bedded Sandstones and Their Significance for Global Flood Models
Gollmer - Deep Ocean Interaction in a Post-Flood Warm Ocean Scenario
Hutchison - Potential Mechanisms for the Deposition of Halite and Anhydrite in a Near-critical or Supercritical Submarine Environment
Oard - Dinosaur Tracks, Eggs, and Bonebeds Explained Early in the Flood
Ross - YEC Geology in the Classroom: Educational Materials, Challenges and Needs
Snelling - Radiohalos in Multiple, Sequentially-Intruded Phases of the Bathurst Batholith, NSW, Australia: Evidence for Rapid Granite Formation During the Flood
Snelling - Radiocarbon in Permian Coal Beds of the Sydney Basin, Australia
Stansbury - How Does an Underwater Debris Flow End? Flow Transformation Evidences Observed within the Lower Redwall Limestone of Arizona and Nevada
Whitmore, Strom - Clay Content: A Simple Criterion for the Identification of Fossil Desiccation Cracks?
Whitmore - Preliminary Report and Significance of Grain Size Sorting in Modern Eolian Sands
Whitmore, Maithel - Preliminary Report on Sorting and Rounding in the Coconino Sandstone

Sanford Publishes New Bioinformatics Tool

JB — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:47:00 +0000

John Sanford, a young-earth creationist biology professor at Cornell, just published a bioinformatics paper describing his new genomics tool, called skittle with a bioinformatics graduate student Josiah Seaman. You can read the paper here. The tools allows you to color the genome and experiment with alignments to visualize patterns that are not detectable by other methods.

You can download the program from Skittle's website on sourceforge., or find more information about the program at dnaskittle.com.

It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

This tool allows us to detect a number of new patterns in the genome. Not only does it help to find tandem repeats, it also helps to find structured variations in those repeats.

This holistic approach to genome analysis is precisely the sort of research that IDers and creationists are interested in. The reductionist approaches of the last century were useful for digging deeper, but they often blinded researchers to the larger-scale activities of what was happening.

From the paper:

As we have been able to better visualize tandem repeats using Skittle, we have seen a surprising amount of internal complexity. Some of this complexity seems to be easily understood in terms of point mutations and indels, but a great deal of the complexity appears to provide an intriguing array of "puzzles" which invite further study. These puzzling patterns include co-varying deviations from a repeating theme, and internal patterns that are not simply "repeats within repeats". For lack of a better term we are referring to these patterns as structured variation.

If tandem repeats have any function, the "structured variation"
described above could conceivably carry information. A perfect repeat cannot contain any information beyond the base sequence and copy number. However, a repeat with variation can contain considerably more information. Each of the three types of observable variation (substitutions, indels, and alternating repeats) has a direct analog in electronic information technology (amplitude modulation, phase modulation, and frequency modulation, respectively).

And then later, he mentions something interesting about the alignments:

Interestingly, the self-adjusting cylinder alignment, which was designed to simply optimize local alignment as would be expected in vivo, causes a marked increase in the visual coherence of all complex tandem repeats. This suggests to us that such coherence might reflect a minimal energy state, and may reflect actual structure in vivo, and might even reflect an unknown biological function. Logically, such coils could change circumference in multiples of the repeat length and so might modulate local genomic architecture.

Anyway, I am really excited about this, and hope to dig more into this as I have time.

Thanks to Sal for pointing this out to us!

Todd Wood on Owen's Resolution to the Form/Function Debate

JB — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:11:00 +0000

Todd Wood has an excellent introduction to the form-vs-function debate, focusing on the ideas of Richard Owen. From his post:

Owen's eclectic embracing of functionalism and structuralism were answers to different questions: 1. Why are organisms so well-adapted? and 2. Why are there homologies?....Organismal similarity was to Owen based a [sic] natural law of the archetype. The differences Owen attributed to functional requirements. (Thus he saw two answers for two different questions.)

Creation Research Society Conference

JB — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:49:00 +0000

It's the conferencing time of year! The Creation Research Society is putting on their conference this year at University of South Carolina Lancaster July 23-24. Here is a preliminary list of the talks that are going on (i'll post again as this is updated):

Mark Armitage - Some Unusual Tiny Plants
Charles McCombs - Mutations and Natural Selection: A Population Genetics Study using Mendel's Accountant
Douglas A. Harold and Lindsay N. Harold - Origins Research Group Involving Current Students in Creation Research
Joel David Klenck - Genesis Model for the Origin, Variation, and Continuation of Human Populations
Charles McCombs - Reality of Chirality
Jeff Tomkins - Plant Cold Tolerance Research at ICR: An Intriguing Venture in Irreducible Complexity and Intelligent Design
Cheng Yeng Hung - Concurrence between Science and Bible on Our Immediate and Original Ancestors
Raúl E. López - The Paleolithic Archaeology of Palestine: A Biblical View.
James J. S. Johnson and Nathaniel T. Jeanson - What is a created 'kind' (mîn), as that term is used in Genesis, and from where do the 'kinds" we see today originate?
Thomas J. Foltz - The Creationist's Silver Bullet: Information, Origins and the Impossibility of Macro-Evolution
Joel David Klenck - Genesis and the Gardens of God
Joel David Klenck - Geographical Locations of Genesis Gardens
Samuel R. Henderson - A Theoretical Extension to Newtonian Gravitational Theory
Mary Beth De Repentigny - Looking for the "God Particle" at the Large Hadron Collider
Patricia Nason - What "Science" Is Being Taught in Our High Schools?
Don Moeller - Craniofacial / Dental Mutations in Zebrafish and Mice Disprove the Ability of Evolutionary Genetic and Developmental Biologic Models to Substantiate Functional Structural Intermediates in Craniofacial/ Dental Evolution
Ronald C. Marks - Science Worldviews Impacting Science
Eugene Chaffin - The Carbon Isotopes and the Strength of the Nuclear Force
Cheng Yeng Hung - Reevaluation of Earth Age Using Hung's Geochronological Dating Model
S. G. Smith - Men, Memes, and Metaphysics
Richard Overman - Evaluation Of The Ar/Ar Dating Process
Wayne Spencer - Extrasolar Planets and Creation
Keith Davies - The origin of the distinctive patterns of element abundances in the sun
Ronald G. Samec - Astrochronology: Toward a Maximum Apparent Age of the Time Dilated Universe
Danny R. Faulkner - Is the Flood Memorialized in the Constellations?
Michael Oard - Dinosaur Tracks, Eggs, and Bonebeds Explained Early in the Flood
Mark Armitage - The anatomy of light production in Photinus pyralis

Quite a list! I wish I had time to go to both this and the BSG conference, but funds are limited this year. Hopefully next year I can go to both, and maybe a a secular conference or two.

In any case, you can register for the conference here ($55 for CRS members, $90 for non-members).

In addition to all this, Danny Faulkner will be hosting a free field trip on Sunday, July 25 to Wood's Bay State Park, one of the Carolina bays.

Sounds like a lot of fun! As I mentioned, I'll update this when I get a finalized list of speakers, and I will also post the BSG schedule when it is available. You should come to one (or both) of the summer conferences!