Origin of The Origin of Man

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. This month also marks the centennial of the 1909 First Presidency statement, "The Origin of Man." To mark the occasion SteveP (of Mormon Organon) and I put together a few posts. Steve's contributions are:

The Origin of Species marks the beginning of the end
Origin, ID and the God of the Gaps
On the Origin of Species is 150 years old!
Your evolution book gift giving guide for Christmas

Also, over at Mormon Insights S. Faux wishes everyone a Happy Mutability Day! (Happy mutability day to you, too.)

My contribution is a guest post at By Common Consent called Reflecting on The Origin of Man. Below I fill in a little more detail.

The end of the 1909 statement drew on an article previously written by Orson F. Whitney and published in the Contributor in 1882. In that article, Whitney discussed the absurdity of both evolution and creation ex nihilo. The end of the article is quite similar to the end of the 1909 statement. Compare below.

Elder Whitney's article (Contributor, vol. 3, June, 1882. No. 9.):

Man is the direct offspring of Deity, of a being who is the Begetter of his spirit in the eternal worlds, and the Architect of his mortal tabernacle in this. God himself is an exalted man, possessing body, parts and passions, refined and developed to the highest state of perfection. He organized the world and all that it contains, from matter; from ever-living spirit and everlasting element, which exist co-eternally with himself. He formed every plant that grows and every animal that breathes, each after the image of its own kind, and determined the fixity of their respective species. He made the tadpole and the ape, the lion and the elephant, but He did not make them in His own image, nor endow them with godlike reason and intelligence. Monkeys are the offspring of monkeys, and have been from time immemorial. Hybrids may appear, but they are without the power to propagate. There is no instance on record where a baboon ever evolved into a human being, and science in attempting to unearth a "missing link" which it is claimed will connect mankind with monkeykind, is like a blind man hunting through a haystack to find a needle which isn't there. For man is the child of God, fashioned in His image and endowed with His attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable in due time of becoming a God.

The Origin of Man:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, proclaims man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity. God Himself is an exalted man, perfected, enthroned, and supreme. By His almighty power He organized the earth and all that it contains, from spirit and element, which exist coeternally with Himself. He formed every plant that grows and every animal that breathes, each after its own kind, spiritually and temporally—“that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal, and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual.” He made the tadpole and the ape, the lion and the elephant, but He did not make them in His own image, nor endow them with godlike reason and intelligence. Nevertheless, the whole animal creation will be perfected and perpetuated in the Hereafter, each class in its “distinct order or sphere,” and will enjoy “eternal felicity.” That fact has been made plain in this dispensation (see D&C 77:3).

Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving into a God.

[This is an edited version of a previous post at Mormons and Evolution.]

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What is Carbon Dating Good For? (Not Much.)

For whatever reason, carbon dating seems to be the main radiometric dating method that people know of. They know it is used for dating ancient things, so they presume that fossils, and even the age of the earth, are dated using carbon dating. Yet in the overall scheme of the earth, carbon dating is pretty much worthless. That's because it is only good for organic material up to about 50,000 years old. In contrast, Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

I don't begrudge the fact that people don't know this; there are many things I am quite ignorant about. I do get a little annoyed when anti-evolutionists yammer on about the problems with carbon-14 dating (as if scientists are unaware of the problems and limitations) and claim that this represents a problem for determining the age of the earth or of fossils.

Anyway, for fun I decided to make a graph of the usefulness of carbon dating relative to the age of the earth, as well as a few other points of comparison.



The black lines of the y-axis are a little hard to resolve, but they represent 10 million year increments. The values for the comparisons are as follows:

Carbon Dating: 50,000 years
Age of the Earth: 4.5 billion years
Dinosaur Extinction: 65 million years
Life on Earth: 3.7 billion years
"Cambrian Explosion": 530 million years

As you can(not) see, carbon dating doesn't even show up. That's because the maximum usage of carbon dating is represented by 1/200th of the space between two lines. I think I've made my point.

So don't be hard on people who don't realize the vast time disparity between the age of the earth or dinosaurs and carbon dating usefulness. It's a simple and innocent mistake. But if they make that mistake while getting on their high horse about the problems of carbon dating, don't take them seriously either.

Note: if you would like to learn more about radiometric dating, start with Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective.

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Animal Joy

Reverend William Buckland (1784-1856) was an English geologist and paleontologist. He was invited to contribute to a series of books "on the power, wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation." In 1836 his book titled, Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology was published. In it Buckland explained that carnivores were consistent with a benevolent God, in that they provide swift death to creatures that would otherwise suffer from sickness or injury, thus reducing the aggregate amount of suffering. He concluded,

The appointment of death by the agency of carnivora as the ordinary termination of animal existence, appears therefore in its main results to be a dispensation of benevolence; it deducts much from the aggregate amount of the pain of universal death; it abridges, and almost annihilates, throughout the brute creation, the misery of disease, and accidental injuries, and lingering decay; and impose such salutary restraint upon excessive increase of numbers, that the supply of food maintains perpetually a due ratio to the demand. The result is, that the surface of the land and depths of the waters are ever crowded with myriads of animated beings, the pleasures of whose life are coextensive with its duration; and which throughout the little day of existence that is allotted to them, fulfill with joy the functions for which they were created [emphasis added].

I ran across this quote in The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins (and he got it from Nonmoral Nature by Stephen J. Gould). It immediately reminded me of the creation narrative from the temple where, as Hugh Nibley put it,

...it is the privilege of every form of life to multiply in its sphere and element and have joy therein. (Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, p. 43)

Of course, Buckland published his work before the temple as we know it existed. It is tempting to think that whoever included the sentiment expressed by Nibley into the temple narrative (Joseph? Brigham?) was importing a view of nature already prevalent in the culture. On the other hand, I don't know how prevalent such a view was, and anyway it seems to me that, in the context of the temple, it represents God's creations in a state of paradise rather than in our fallen world.

Natural theology, however, held that nature reveals the character of God, so unseemly features of nature such as carnivores had to be cast in a positive light. Gould wrote,

We may find a certain amusing charm in Buckland's vision today, but such arguments did begin to address "the problem of evil" for many of Buckland's contemporaries — how could a benevolent God create such a world of carnage and bloodshed? Yet this argument could not abolish the problem of evil entirely, for nature includes many phenomena far more horrible in our eyes than simple predation. I suspect nothing evokes greater disgust in most of us than slow destruction of a host by an internal parasite — gradual ingestion, bit by bit, from the inside. In no other way can I explain why Alien, an uninspired, grade-C, formula horror film, should have won such a following. That single scene of Mr. Alien popping forth as a baby parasite from the body of a human host, was both sickening and stunning. Our nineteenth-century forebears maintained similar feelings. The greatest challenge to their concept of a benevolent deity was not simple predation — but slow death by parasitic ingestion. The classic case, treated at length by all great naturalists, invoked the so-called ichneumon fly. Buckland had sidestepped the major issue.

Those flies made an impression on Charles Darwin too. In an 1860 letter Darwin wrote,

I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

Alas, the joy of animals notwithstanding, "the problem of evil" remains a difficult one.

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Good Riddance

October of 2002 was a scary time for my wife and I. At that time an unknown person (or persons) was shooting--usually fatally--people at random in the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area. As the days passed, another person would be gunned down and the shooter would vanish into the fall air. One of the murders occurred less than a block from where I often bought gas. Although nobody had been shot in their home, we covered some windows that allowed a view into our living room from the busy street outside, and we watched the nightly press conferences given by local law enforcement. An angel of death that seemed unstoppable roamed the area, and nobody was safe.

Finally on October 24 John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were captured, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Days later we became parents.

As I write this, John Allen Muhammad has 5 minutes until execution by lethal injection. Having been turned away from the Supreme Court and denied clemency by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, it is all but certain that Mr. Muhammad will die tonight.

I know that there are problems with the death penalty. I know that innocent people have been put to death, and I support efforts to make the application of the death penalty fair and just. However, I also continue to believe that some people deserve the death penalty, and that justice demands it. And I believe that this is one of those cases.

In the day that all wounds are healed, I hope that John Allen Muhammad will be a new person--fit to live among saints. But for now I say good riddance; let justice be done.

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To read about how the case unfolded, see here.

Update: John Allen Muhammad died at 9:11 pm.

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Doubt Is Their Product

This week I finished reading Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, by David Michaels. Michaels is a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. During the Clinton administration he served in the Department of Energy, and he is President Obama's nominee to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Here is a description of the book from its website:

"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."

In this eye-opening exposé, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats.

If you don't want to read the whole book, you can get a good feel for it from an article he previously published, "Manufacturing Uncertainty: Contested Science and the Protection of the Public’s Health & Environment [pdf]."

I am not unsympathetic to the desire of industries and companies to avoid excessive regulation and drains on productivity. On the other hand, employees, consumers, and the general public have a right, I think, to be protected from harm (or at least warned of harm). Navigating the conflict between those interests is not easy, and I'm glad it isn't my job. But although government regulation is much maligned in political discourse, a moment's thought reveals what a miserable place this country would be without them. For various reasons, Dr. Michaels argues that the balance of interests is currently tipped in the favor of industry, and gives a number of examples. In some cases, industry and government are (or have been) allied in disregard for human health.

Read the book (or at least the article) and see what you think.

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