On Dating

Sorry, no discussion of courtship here. Rather, this is about the tools that scientists use to determine how old things are. I recently came upon a couple of websites that discuss different methods and thought I would draw attention to them.

Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective discusses radiometric dating as well as other dating methods including dendrochronology (tree rings) and ice cores. (Note: Ice cores were discussed in a semi-recent FARMS article in an attempt to support the hypothesis that the destruction described in 3 Nephi was due to a volcanic eruption. Sum-up: the data are somewhat supportive. I think the pdf version has a picture of an ice core, if you are curious.)

This link, which I think is called Darwiniana and Evolution, has a brief discussion of dating methods with links to other resources. (Actually the website is much broader than just dating.)

So have a look. I'll probably add at least one of these to the links on my sidebar.

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Genealogy Gets Juicy

A couple of days ago at the conference of the Mormon History Association, one of the speakers dealt with possible children of Joseph Smith via plural marriage. See Justin's post at Mormon Wasp for more details. The summary is that out of nine known potentials, three males have been voted off the island, I mean ruled out by genetic testing. (I wonder how they feel about that.)

I can't help but note the irony: DNA testing is needed to determine whether certain people are descended from the man who restored the spirit of Elijah.

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Joseph F. Smith vs Ernst Haeckel?

In reading the 1909 First Presidency statement, The Origin of Man, part of an oft-quoted section stood out to me.

True it is that the body of man enters upon its career as a tiny germ or embryo, which becomes an infant, quickened at a certain stage by the spirit whose tabernacle it is, and the child, after being born, develops into a man. There is nothing in this, however, to indicate that the original man, the first of our race, began life as anything less than a man, or less than the human germ or embryo that becomes a man.

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What are they talking about? With a few caveats, your genes are the same from the moment of conception until you die. No life-form begins life as something other than what it is (if you don't count metamorphosis), so what is the point of this paragraph?

The answer, I think, is that it is a reaction to outdated and erroneous ideas about evolution. I welcome correction, but I think specifically this paragraph is in response to the ideas of Ernst Haeckel and his "biogenetic law" (although saltationism is another possibility.) Haeckel's idea was that during development, embryos pass through stages that represent adult organisms of evolutionary history. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." So an embryo would have gone through the stages of fish, reptile, and "lower" mammals, until it finally reached human form. Although lessons can be learned from comparative embryology, such a simplistic progression does not occur and the ideas about genetics that formed the foundation of the idea have long been known to be false.

Haeckel's ideas have been a blight on biology and he has been repudiated. Even before 1900, criticisms of Haeckel had been advanced, but his ideas still hung around in some circles, apparently giving inspiration to Hitler. So this paragraph from the First Presidency is correct. Readers should know that it addresses ideas that have been discarded based on contrary evidence.

(Read more here and here.)


(Haeckel's drawings of embryos have been discredited.)

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Interspecies Relationships May Be Over-rated

There has been some discussion at No Death Before the Fall about conditions in the Garden of Eden, and those that will prevail in the millenium. When I saw this article, about a rhino and a goat bonding, the scriptural passage about the lamb and the lion came to mind. In fact, the article cites a few cases of lions "adopting" baby antelopes. The end of the article had a suprising twist, though:

In 1998, an elephant that was abandoned by its mother became best of friends with a sheep at a South African research center.
That friendship ended tragically when the elephant accidentally crushed the sheep to death, probably when it rolled while sleeping.

Reminds me of the rhyme: Fat and Skinny went to bed. Fat rolled over and Skinny was dead.

The millenium notwithstanding, some species may not want to lay down together.

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Elder Packer on Reason and Revelation

On a couple of blogs that I frequent, there have been a lot of quotes from Elder Packer thrown around lately, so I'll join in the fun. Here are a few that I like, derived from a BYU Devotional:

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There are two opposing convictions...On the one hand, "seeing is believing." On the other, "believing is seeing." Both are true! Each in its place. The combining of the two individually or institutionally is the challenge of life...

They mix the way oil and water mix--only with constant shaking or stirring. When the stirring stops, they separate again. It takes a catalytic process to blend them. This requires the introduction of a third ingredient, a catalyst, which itself remains unchanged in the blending process.

Each of us must accommodate the mixture of reason and revelation in our lives. The gospel not only permits but requires it. An individual who concentrates on either side solely and alone will lose both balance and perspective...

I spoke of the catalytic process where two seemingly antagonistic influences can merge and each give strength to the other. The essential catalyst for the fusion of reason and revelation in both student and faculty is the Spirit of Christ. He is "the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (D&C 93:2). The blending medium is the Holy Ghost, which is conferred upon every member of the Church as a gift...

On the one hand is reason: the thinking, the figuring things out, the research, the pure joy of discovery, and the academic degrees man bestows to honor that process. On the other is revelation, with the very private and very personal, the very individual, confirmation of truth. The combining of them is the test of mortal life! (BYU Devotional, 1991, italics in original.)

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On the Number of New World Founders

Via Dienekes' Anthropology Blog I ran into this paper (On the Number of New World Founders: A Population Genetic Portrait of the Peopling of the Americas) with this commentary.

The sum up:

His [Jody Hey's] analysis suggests that only about 70 individuals left their ancestral Asian population, estimated at about 9,000 individuals, to reach America 7,000 to 14,000 years ago. Archeological evidence places the earliest American inhabitants in the New World at around 14,000 years ago. Though Hey’s estimates are more recent, they also indicate a high probability at this time period. Hey did not include genetic data from Eskimo-Aleut and Na Déne speakers, so the number of migrations was not addressed. But with this new approach, researchers will be able to explore this and many other questions to fill in the details of the first American immigration.

I'm not a population geneticist, so I'll leave it at that.

Update: Additional commentary at John Hawks Anthropology Weblog.

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The New Yorker on Intelligent Design

Philosophy of Biology alerted me to an excellent article in The New Yorker about the intelligent design movement. PofB declined to give any excerpts because the whole thing is worth reading. I agree, but I'll give a few excerpts. You can view it as a teaser, or pandering to couch potatoes too lazy to click a link and read a full article.

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First of all, intelligent design is not what people often assume it is. For one thing, I.D. is not Biblical literalism. Unlike earlier generations of creationists—the so-called Young Earthers and scientific creationists—proponents of intelligent design do not believe that the universe was created in six days, that Earth is ten thousand years old, or that the fossil record was deposited during Noah’s flood. (Indeed, they shun the label “creationism” altogether.) Nor does I.D. flatly reject evolution: adherents freely admit that some evolutionary change occurred during the history of life on Earth. Although the movement is loosely allied with, and heavily funded by, various conservative Christian groups—and although I.D. plainly maintains that life was created—it is generally silent about the identity of the creator.

The movement’s main positive claim is that there are things in the world, most notably life, that cannot be accounted for by known natural causes and show features that, in any other context, we would attribute to intelligence. Living organisms are too complex to be explained by any natural—or, more precisely, by any mindless—process. Instead, the design inherent in organisms can be accounted for only by invoking a designer, and one who is very, very smart.

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It’s true that when you confront biologists with a particular complex structure like the flagellum they sometimes have a hard time saying which part appeared before which other parts. But then it can be hard, with any complex historical process, to reconstruct the exact order in which events occurred, especially when, as in evolution, the addition of new parts encourages the modification of old ones. When you’re looking at a bustling urban street, for example, you probably can’t tell which shop went into business first. This is partly because many businesses now depend on each other and partly because new shops trigger changes in old ones (the new sushi place draws twenty-somethings who demand wireless Internet at the café next door). But it would be a little rash to conclude that all the shops must have begun business on the same day or that some Unseen Urban Planner had carefully determined just which business went where.

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As it happens, the idea that Darwinism is yoked to atheism, though popular, is also wrong. Of the five founding fathers of twentieth-century evolutionary biology—Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, Ernst Mayr, and Theodosius Dobzhansky—one was a devout Anglican who preached sermons and published articles in church magazines, one a practicing Unitarian, one a dabbler in Eastern mysticism, one an apparent atheist, and one a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and the author of a book on religion and science.

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Amylase and the Power of Molecular Biology

In preparing for a presentation recently, I came across these two papers: (Here and here--the papers are old enough that they are available for free.) I think they are rather interesting, so I'm going to do my best to tell you about them in layman's terms, although it will help if you have a basic grasp of biology.

Amylase is an enzyme, made in the pancreas of all vertebrates, that helps to break down complex sugars. It is also made in the salivary glands of some mammals. The human genes that code for amylase have a interesting story to tell.

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This image is a schematic representation of the DNA just in front of the human amylase genes:



The first thing to note is that there are five genes: AMY1A, AMY1B, AMY1C, AMY2A, and AMY2B. The AMY1 genes are all expressed in the saliva. Only one representation accompanies them because they are all essentially the same. The AMY2 genes are expressed in the pancreas. However, the DNA in front of the two genes has some differences. Let's look at each structure in more detail.

AMY2B: The arrow at a right angle is showing where transcription starts, which means this is where the cellular machinary starts reading the genetic code for making the protein. It has a "Pan," indicating that this occurs in the pancreas. To the left is a shaded box labeled "gamma-actin". This is a pseudogene that inserted just in front of the amylase gene. (Pseudogenes are copies of genes that are re-inserted into the genome, but lose coding function due to mutation.) The letters and arrows underneath represent primers used in PCR--they need not concern us, so ignore them.

AMY1A/B/C: This schematic is similar to the one I just described. In this case, transcription starts a little upstream, and the "Sal" indicates expression in the saliva. The shaded box again indicates the presence of the gamma-actin pseduogene, but it has been interrupted by the insertion of an endogenous retrovirus. As part of their replication cycle, Retroviruses (such as HIV) integrate their genomes into the host genome and are flanked by Long Terminal Repeats (LTRs) when they do so. If the integration occurs in a germline cell, the viral genome will be passed on to progeny as part of the host genome. In other words, this viral genome is now part of your DNA. Over time, mutations occur which can disable the viral proteins. Evidently a retrovirus, whose proteins have likely lost function, integrated in the middle of the gamma-actin pseudogene.

AMY2A: This schematic is similar to the first two (this gene is expressed in the pancreas) except that most of the retrovirus is gone--there is just one LTR in its place. The two LTRs are made by the virus, and are identical to each other at integration. Because of this, sometimes homologous recombination between the integrated LTRs occurs which results in the removal of most of the viral genome, leaving only a solo LTR behind.

Now it is rather unlikely that a pseudogene would independently insert (5 times) in the same place in front of multiple amylase genes. Again, it is unlikely that a retrovirus would independently integrate (4 times) in to the same place in multiple actin pseudogenes. The most likely explanation for the pattern we see here is that there were duplication events within the genome.

This figure shows a proposed sequence of events (click to enlarge):



An actin pseudogene inserted in front of the original amylase gene. This new formation was duplicated within the genome. One of those is what we know as AMY2B. The other went through additional modifications. First was a deletion of part of the pseduogene (look at the first figure and you'll see that the pseudogene box is longest in AMY2B). Then the retrovirus inserted into the pseudogene and this formation was duplicated. In one case, the LTRs recombined to remove the viral genome, giving us AMY2A. In the other case there were two more duplications to give AMY1A/B/C. Using sequence differences between the five genes, estimates of the times of these events are given (mya = million years ago).

How do we know that the amylase gene did not start out with the actin pseudogene in front of it? Well the pseudogene is not present in other animals such as rodents or New World Monkeys (ie. American). This is shown in the next figure:



Squirrel monkeys are New World Monkeys and do not make amylase in their saliva--only the pancreas--which is why it is being compared with human AMY2B. There is no sign of the actin pseudogene in front of their amylase gene.

Now it gets interesting: New World Monkeys lack the pseudogene and do not make amylase in their saliva; Old World Monkeys have the pseudogene (one copy has a deletion) and do make amylase in their saliva; Apes and Humans also have the pseudogene, as well as the retrovirus, and they both make amylase in their saliva. This is represented in the following figure:



Noted in the figure is a portion of the retrovirus which is sufficient to target gene expression to the salivary glands (this has been done experimentally in mice) but it cannot account for all salivary amylase production because the Old World Monkeys also make amylase in their saliva.

These data are most consistent with the following scenario: Ancestral primates (and other mammals) simply had an amylase gene that was expressed in the pancreas. After New World Monkeys and Old World Monkeys diverged, the gamma-actin pseudogene inserted in front of the amylase gene and a duplication occured. In one of the copies a deletion occured in the pseudogene. After the Apes and Old World Monkeys diverged, a retrovirus integrated into the pseudogene in Apes, leaving Humans and Apes with similar structure in their amylase genes. (Look carefully and you can transfer in information of figures 2 and 4 onto one another.)

Remember I said that there are a few other animals that also make amylase in their saliva. This appears to be a feature that is independent from primates because the regulatory DNA responsible is totally different.

There are several lessons in all of this. First, none of this makes sense outside of the context of common descent. Second, it is an example of gene duplication--the geneology of genes within the genome--and their ability to take on slightly different functions as a result. (For another example, see here.) And third, it shows how pseudogenes and retroviruses can interact with and shape genomes, and that they are powerful markers of relationships.

Postscript: Just for fun, I went to the website that hosts the human genome, which is freely accessible. I was able to zoom in on the part of chromosome #1 that contains the amylase genes. On the left you can see a larger map of the chromsome. The amylase genes are just on the upper arm of the chromosome, toward the middle (centromere). On the right you can see the designation of the amylase genes I discussed. If I were to zoom in closer, I could look at the actual DNA sequence. Interestingly, there is something called "AMYP1". This is an amylase pseudogene--ie. a non-functional copy of one of the amylase genes, which means it is presumably "junk DNA".

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Base Closings and AFIP

If you are not in the military, or do not professionally interact with the military, then the recent results of the Base Realignment and Closure 2005 probably passed by you unnoticed. A number of military bases will be closed or altered, and those in the nation's capital did not ecape.

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Walter Reed Army Hospital is going to be closed and transfered to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. NNMC will become the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. (I really, really hope they have traffic solutions in mind.) This will not be a simple transfer of operation; some of the programs currently at Walter Reed will be moved to other places.

One casualty in the process is the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). According to a news report on the Science website (subscription proabably required),

...the pathology institute, with a current 820-member staff that includes about 120 scientists, would get lost in the shuffle. It began in 1862 as a museum for specimens from Civil War casualties. In 1946, Congress created AFIP, which specializes in diagnosing difficult disease cases for both military and civilian doctors. Its experts were "among the giants of pathology," and training there was "legend," says pathologist Fred Gorstein of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Recently, AFIP scientists fingered the virus that caused the 1918 pandemic influenza, identified victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and helped investigate the 2001 anthrax poisonings.
Staffers have known for a few years that DOD might close AFIP as part of efforts to eliminate civilian services, and some have moved on. Under the plan, only AFIP's renowned tissue repository and the flagship National Museum of Health and Medicine, with its displays on Civil War medicine and preserved body parts and fetuses, will remain. Diagnostic pathology tasks will be outsourced, and DOD will shift its DNA repository and forensics to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware [where the Columbia astronaut remains were identified].

I'm not sure where they intend to put that museum. I've been to it once--I can't imagine it gets much traffic. Let me just say, though, that it was a little creepy. Something about the lighting, the quiet, and exhibits on disease and deformities made the place feel a little strange. My wife told me about a ward leader who took the 11 year-old girls to the museum. I told her I didn't think that was a good idea. "That's what she said," my wife replied.

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Strong Drinks Were Good for the Body

This news article from National Geographic describes findings that suggest that ancient beer had a very modern benefit--antibiotics.

The [human] bones, the researchers say, contain traces of the antibiotic tetracycline. Today tetracycline is used to treat ailments ranging from acne flare-ups to urinary-tract infections. But the antibiotic only came into commercial use half a century ago. So how did tetracycline get into the Nubian bones?

Armelagos and his team say they found an answer in ancient beer. The brew was made from grain contaminated with the bacteria streptomycedes, which produces tetracycline.

Read the rest, if you are interested. As a side note, I think it is a mistake to retroactively apply the prohibitions of the Word of Wisdom on ancient civilizations. We don't need to make excuses for the ancients and their wine/strong drinks. The Word of Wisdom is particularly for our dispensation.

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A Correlated Viewpoint

Over at Mormons and Evolution we had a number of comments, and a guest post, from Gary Shapiro. We don't see eye to eye on everything, but his contributions were instructive. I already knew about his original website, but yesterday I discovered that he started a blog as well called No Death Before the Fall. I'm not sure if this represents a long-term committment to blogging or not.

Gary is certainly a champion of correlated Church publications. Whether you share Joseph Fielding Smith's views on science or not, you may want to keep tabs on his blog.

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Links to Light Up Your Eyes

Here are a couple of links that you may want to check out. First is a post at Pharyngula that gives a mini-lesson on the fossil and geological history of Kansas. The mini-lesson serves as a contrast to the recent antics over Kansas science education. He makes an interesting comparison, which I can personalize from my own experience. In former times I've toured prestigious natural history museums with an ill-informed attitude of, "well that's interesting, but they don't really know what they are talking about." Now my eyes increasingly light up at what I see. (Read the post, and you'll better understand what I'm saying.)

Then, via Pharyngula, there is an interesting 3-part mini-lesson on hominin (the lineage separating us from chimpanzees) evolution at Unscrewing the Inscrutable (Part 1, 2, and 3). In additon to the narrative there is some interesting comparative anatomy shown, including dental features (for you dentists out there), in each part.

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The Intersection of Art and Science

While browsing CNN.com I found this story about illustrations possessed by the Smithsonian Institute. They have set up a web-gallery here. The site features a few illustrations, with more to come, as well as information about art preservation.

I'm not much of an artist (understatement), but for those of you interested in art and science, there just might be a career for you: paleontological illustration (see the website.)

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Template Trouble

I think my blog has demons or something. For reasons unknown to me, the template stopped working today. I have not changed anything for at least a week, so I don't know what is going on.

I therefore took emergency action and changed the template. I actually kind of like it and may keep it, with some modification. So if things look a little strange or out of place, you'll know why.

(I think something may be wrong with the MainOrArchivePage or ItemPage tags, because implementing expandable posts, as I've done it in the past, breaks the template. Anybody else having trouble?)

Update: Well it turns out that I had a formatting error in my last post. This is partially why I got out of computer science. I still kind of like this template though. I may adjust the colors, but it is roomier. I think I may keep it. Anybody have strong opinions?

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Pheromones and Homosexuality

A new study suggests that humans respond to pheromones. Not only that, but the response differs based on sexual orientation. A news summary of the study says:

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The scientists exposed heterosexual men and women and homosexual men to chemicals found in male and female sex hormones. One chemical is a testosterone derivative produced in men's sweat. The other chemical is an estrogen-like compound in women's urine.

These chemicals have long been suspected of being pheromones, molecules emitted by one individual that evoke some behavior in another of the same species. Pheromones trigger basic responses, such as sexual attraction, in many animals.

But scientists have long debated if humans respond to pheromones. The new study suggests that pheromones indeed play a part in making humans sexually attractive to one another.

In a previous study a few years ago, the Swedish researchers showed that the brain's hypothalamus region, which is involved in sexual behavior, becomes activated when men smell EST (the estrogen derivative) and women smell AND (the testosterone compound), but not vice versa.

For their new study, the scientists added a sexual-orientation element, which revealed a difference in the brain activity of gay and straight men.

The researchers found that the testosterone compound activated the hypothalamus in homosexual men and heterosexual women, but not heterosexual men. Conversely, the estrogen compound activated the hypothalamus only in heterosexual men.

I'm not a neuroscientist so I cannot analyze the paper, but I took a quick look at the conclusion section of the paper. The authors list several issues that need to be considered. First is the issue of whether the response is a result of hardwiring in the brain, sensitization, or association. Second is how the pheromone is detected; the authors think that the timing suggests detection in the nose. Third whether the concentration of the pheromones in the experiment are physiologically relevant.

The issue of why homosexuality exists is a contentious one. My own [non-scientific] opinion is that the answers are complex and cannot be easily catagorized. I'm comfortable with some having a strong biological basis for their orientation, others having a social or psychological motivation, and others being somewhere in between. Biology is resistant to pigeon-holes.

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Polio Outbreaks

This week's Nature has a news article reporting on some recent polio outbreaks:

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Polio is spreading to countries previously considered free of the disease, following a vaccine boycott in Nigeria in 2003. An outbreak in Yemen has sparked fears of an epidemic in the poorly immunized Middle Eastern nation. And the virus has now reached southeast Asia, with four cases confirmed in Indonesia last week.

Polio has not been seen in Yemen and Indonesia for a decade. Genetic analysis shows that the virus appearing in both areas is similar to the one that caused a 2003 outbreak in Nigeria. Polio vaccines were rejected in northern Nigerian states after Muslim clerics claimed they had been contaminated with HIV and contraceptives. Sixteen 'polio-free' countries have reported cases since 2003.

Fortunately, according to the article, it looks like Yemen and Indonesia are taking this seriously and acting. There is no more information about the bone-heads in Nigeria. The spread appears to be a result of Muslim travel, either for work or pilgrimage.

This is another lesson in why we continue to vaccinate against diseases like polio. With the continual churning of people around the globe, we can't consider ourselves safe until the diseases have been eradicated from the earth. Even then, we'll want to keep a look out over our shoulder.

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A Moment of Gloating: High School Rankings

Newsweek has a list of the Top High Schools in the U.S., and I'm happy to report that my alma mater has done very well. It has been ranked #1 at least once in the past few years, and although it didn't quite get there this year, it still has a ranking to be proud of.

Since I've chosen to remain semi-anonymous I won't name the school. I'll just say that there's a low likelyhood that your high school was ranked higher than mine. Yes, this most likely makes me better than you--I'm sorry.

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Humor at the Expense of Kansas

Hearings are underway in Kansas where the board of education is hearing arguments about teaching evolution. Most scientists who would defend evolution have boycotted the hearings because they believe it to be set-up. Evolution is being defended by one lawyer who is donating his services to cross-examine critics of evolution (which includes people from the Discovery Institute). See The Pandas Thumb for updates.

There is some humor to the situation.

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Red State Rabble, run by a Kansas resident, is covering the events and has these images on the blog (go there to see larger versions):









Also via Mike the Mad Biologist is this one
(which is about Georgia, but just as applicable):

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The B.H. Roberts Episode

The circumstances surrounding the efforts of B.H. Roberts to publish his book, The Truth, The Way, The Life, are an interesting episode in Church history. Discussions of the relationship between science and the gospel frequently refer to the controversy and its outcome. It is beyond the scope of this post to recount all of the details of the episode; I only intend to highlight a few facts and what I consider to be reasonable conclusions. I recommend reading the resources I link to at the end of this post so that you can form your own opinion.

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B.H. Roberts intended his book to represent the summation of his thinking on the gospel. It was anticipated that the book would form the basis for a priesthood study manual. A reading committee, consisting of members of the Quorum of the Twelve (including Joseph Fielding Smith), was assigned to preview the manuscript and determine its fitness for publication. The committee objected to a number of items in the book. Most prominently, they objected to Roberts' interpretation of the creation, especially his discussion of a pre-Adamite race. The committee asked Roberts to remove the offending passages, which he refused to do. President Heber J. Grant agreed with the decision of the reading committee that the Church could not publish the book without modification.

Roberts apparently had been teaching some of his views in public. In response, Joseph Fielding Smith gave a speech where he said that pre-Adamites and death of life forms before the Fall of Adam were contrary to the doctrine of the Church. This speech was later published. Roberts was upset that Smith's views had been published while his book had not. Roberts protested Smith's views and asked the First Presidency whether they constituted the position of the Church.

The Quorum of the Twelve heard Roberts' case and later heard Smith's response. They then refered the matter to the First Presidency. The First Presidency responded with a memo to the General Authorities (available below) indicating that the Church had no position on the existence of pre-Adamites, and a further admonition to avoid speculative topics.

Because Smith's views attacking science had been published, there was concern that some would think that the Church was opposed to science. James Talmage gave his speech, The Earth and Man to counter-balance some of Smith's views. The speech was published by the Church.

A number of interesting points should be made about this episode:

1. Roberts did not argue for evolution. In Roberts' view, the proposed pre-Adamites were not ancestors of humans, but life-forms that existed before the Adamic dispensation and that were eliminated by a cataclysm. Thus most concepts belonging to evolutionary theory were not discussed at all.

2. Although there is no mention of it in the First Presidency memo, Joseph Fielding Smith sought to support his views by arguments from The New Geology, by George McReady Price. This book contained creationist arguments that sought to support traditional Christian views by exposing weaknesses in scientific theory.

3. Talmage was not on the reading committee--he became involved during the hearings before the full Quorum. Talmage was trained as a geologist but had been out of the field for a while. He wrote his son, also a geologist, in order to better defend geology and to discredit George McReady Price. In a letter to his son, Talmage related that in a quorum meeting he defended geology and attacked Price. He also said that he had examined the stones that were identified as belonging to Adam's altar, and that the stones contained fossils--therefore, there must have been death before Adam.

4. The controversy was largely non-personal. Neither side expressed personal hostility, although discussion was apparently heated at times and Roberts was somewhat disrespectful toward Joseph Fielding Smith in his letter to the First Presidency.

5. Concerning whether there were pre-Adamites, the First Presidency said that neither the views of Roberts nor Smith were official doctrine. President Grant's journal shows that he thought Roberts and Smith were both dealing in mysteries.

6. The 1931 letter asked the general authorities to avoid mysteries and leave science to scientists.

7. Talmage understood this to mean he should not discuss speculative issues concerning the gospel and science anymore. The exception was the talk The Earth and Man, as explained above.

8. The 1931 letter is out of context as used in the article on evolution in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism (although it still may be wise counsel).

9. In considering this episode, it is inappropriate to choose heroes and villians. The disagreements that were present were honest ones.

It is not clear how President Grant's admonition should be interpreted. Some have seen Joseph Fielding Smith's later book, Man, His Origin and Destiny, as a violation of President Grant's instructions. In fairness, however, it should be kept in mind that by this time John A. Widtsoe had published articles in the Improvement Era and his book, Evidences and Reconciliation, in which he gave some treatment to evolution and pre-Adamites. Given their extensive service in the Church, it is probably inappropriate to attribute impure motives or disobedience to either man.

In general Church discourse the views of Joseph Fielding Smith have been dominant, which some see as vindication of their correctness. Certainly they are more consistent with a straightforward reading of the scriptures. In contrast, mounting scientific evidence appears to contradict these views, which some may see as vindication of their view. One of the lessons that can be gleaned from this episode is that disagreement can be maintained without calling into question motives, intelligence, testimony, or commitment. President Grant's admonition is, at its roots, a call for patience.

References

The following sources are available on the internet (Note: Some of the articles erroneously place the Roberts episode in the context of evolution. However, they are still worthwhile and informative.):

1. The Story of the Truth, The Way, The Life, by James Allen.

The two following articles were published in Dialogue, then combined for printing in the book The Search for Harmony:

2. We Can See No Advantage to a Continuation of the Discussion: The Roberts/Smith/Talmage Affair, by Richard Sherlock

3. Discussion Continued: The Sequel to the Roberts/Smith/Talmage Affair, by Jeffery Keller

4. First Presidency 1931 memo

5. An edited version of the memo is also available here.

6. The Earth and Man, by James Talmage

7. Seers, Savants and Evolution, by Duane Jeffery

8. The Mormon Myth of Evil Evolution, by Michael Ash, as printed in Dialogue 35:4.

9. BYU Evolution Packet, including the evolution article from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.

10. Can Science Be Faith-Promoting, by Sterling Talmage contains correspondence from Sterling Talmage, James Talmage, and Joseph Fielding Smith, including letters from Joseph Fielding Smith to George McReady Price.

11. This post is an outgrowth of comments to Gary's guest-post.

12. More of Gary's arguments are found here.

[This is a cross-post from Mormons and Evolution. Please comment there.

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Disturbance in the Geological Forces

Volcanoes are powerful forces of creation and destruction. They can cause new islands to appear and old islands to disappear. Perhaps not due to a volcano, but for some geological reason that is unclear, this blog has been changed from an "isle of the sea" to an "island or atoll"--at least according the geologists over at LDS Blogs.org. Hopefully their measurements don't indicate a trend predicting that this blog is heading toward the sea floor.

Back to volcanoes:

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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) today released the first ever comprehensive and systematic review of the 169 U.S. volcanoes and established a framework for a National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS) which calls for a 24-hour seven-day-a-week Volcano Watch Office and enhanced instrumentation and monitoring at targeted volcanoes...

According to the USGS report, since 1980, 45 eruptions and 15 cases of notable volcanic unrest have occurred at 33 U.S. volcanoes. About half of the most threatening U.S. volcanoes are monitored at a basic level and a few are well monitored with a suite of modern instruments. However, the report cautions, monitoring capabilities at many hazardous volcanoes are sparse or antiquated, and some hazardous volcanoes have no ground-based monitoring whatsoever. This poses a threat to people on the ground and in the air. Flying into an ash cloud can cripple a jet aircraft in flight. Tens of thousands of people fly over U.S. volcanic regions every day. (Source link)

I'm an east-coast guy, so I didn't realize that we have that many volcanoes. Apparently volcanoes are pretty predictable when monitored correctly--much more so than earthquakes. From news@Nature.com, here are the top ten priority volcanoes:

America's 10 most hazardous volcanoes

The score shown below is arrived at by looking at both the destructive capacity of each volcano, along with the people and property at risk.

1. Kilauea, Hawaii erupting now
2. St Helens, Washington erupting now
3. Rainier, Washington
4. Hood, Oregon
5. Shasta, California
6. South Sister, Oregon
7. Lassen Volcanic Center, California
8. Mauna Loa, Hawaii signs of unrest
9. Redoubt, Alaska
10. Crater Lake, Oregon

By the way, how would you like the job of monitoring a volcano? Seems kind of boring to me, but it might be offset by the fact that you could call yourself a volcanologist [vul'-can-ologist].

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We're Better Off With Blinders On

Some people, such as those at the Discovery Institute, believe that methodological naturalism limits the discovery power of science. After all, if we rule out supernatural explanations from the beginning, how will we ever find them? They argue that we need to take our blinders off.

Alright, let's take our blinders off for a moment and investigate the supernatural with a thought experiment. Now we believe that we are the true church right? If miracles (no philosophical arguments about whether miracles are "supernatural" are needed for this discussion) actually occur, of all people, we should be able to produce them. What kind of miracles should we look for? How about those associated with priesthood blessings, specifically the healing of the sick?

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Does this strike you, in your gut, as a bad idea? If so, it is probably because you have hit our first overriding assumption. And that is that God is willing to "play our game". When exercising the priesthood we are actually using His power, so in order for this study to be successful, we need His cooperation. Can we safely assume that He doesn't view this whole operation as sign seeking, the equivalent of giving in to the temptations of Jesus, and an abomination? Well for purposes of discussion, let's pretend that Pres. Hinckley has given us approval.

Now we get into the logistical problems. How are we going to set this thing up? We have several variables at play: the faith and righteousness of those administering the blessing, the faith and righteousness of the recipients, and the will of the Lord. We have no reliable way to determine any of these. Should the blessings be combined with medical treatment? How will we measure outcomes? Should we compare the outcome with the wording of the blessing? How long should we follow the status of the recipient of the blessing? How will we control for the placebo effect?

You can see we have a lot of problems with designing the study. But for the sake of argument, let's say that we figure something out and we see that people who have blessings do much better than people who don't. The next question to look at is what exactly happens. Can we only detect priesthood power by its effects, or can we measure something like electromagnetic waves? How are the cells of the body affected? What kind of changes in gene expression and physiology occur? We're entering into molecular biology here, which we can't really study in humans in any practical/ethical kind of way. We're going to have to move to either animal models, or perhaps tissue culture. Will moving the study away from humans ruin the whole thing? Do blessings only work on people? Maybe we could step back a bit and just "command the elements." What kind of "commands" will we give to animals or cell culture?

By now you are probably tired of this whole exercise--I think my point is made. There are a great number of places our experiments might fail--would we then conclude that blessings have no miraculous effect? For the believer, a more prudent conclusion would probably be that the tools of science are of limited use in this area. Spiritual phenomena are quite personal and generally not open to external study and verification. In fact this seems to be what the scriptures have taught all along. We've now wasted a lot of time and money.

So perhaps we are better off with our blinders on after all.

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