The Church recently added a new entry to its Topics and Questions section of the Gospel Library titled, Religion and Science. It is significant in that it is the most positive collection of statements for general membership about science that I have seen in a long time. Mostly, it just tries to keep the peace by remaining neutral and giving people room to sort through scientific and religious truths on their own. This paragraph is typical of the tone and content:
The Church does not take a position on most scientific matters. Instead, the Church focuses on teaching revealed, spiritual truths and helping God’s children live by those truths. At the same time, many Latter-day Saints seek to understand and contribute to scientific knowledge, following the Lord’s invitation to Joseph Smith to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”
However, the following statement caught my eye. Not so much because of its implicit acceptance of an old earth (which has generally not been a major sticking point for Church members), but because of what it says about how we know the earth is old.
Using reliable methods of measurement, such as radiometric dating, scientists currently estimate the age of the earth to be approximately 4.5 billion years.
To understand the significance of this, you need to know that rejection of scientific chronology is a cornerstone of fundamentalist young-earth creationism and they have invented a number of excuses for disbelieving radiometric dating. To the extent that Church members align with creationism, they import (sometimes without knowing) the arguments of fundamentalist creationism into their own thinking. Moreover, an LDS twist on this comes in the form of the so-called "Heartland Model" of Book of Mormon geography, which relies on a young-earth creationist paradigm. Although Book of Mormon geography would seem to have nothing to do with the age of the earth, the connection comes from trying to torture DNA data into showing that Native Americans are decendants of ancient Israel. The problem is that the particular DNA marker in question was present in native populations thousands of years before the Book of Mormon events took place. Thus, the need to deny scientific chronology.
For the Church to call radiometric dating a "reliable method of measurement" breaks a lot of brackets, so to speak [1].
Then there is the section on evolution: "Over the years, Church leaders have expressed differing views about evolution. However, the Church takes no position on the topic."
This also breaks brackets. I can't remember the number of online arguments I have seen (or occassionally participated in) where LDS critics of evolution would insist that the Church DID in fact have a position on evolution. They would lay out a variety of Church teachings about the Fall and so forth, including the 1909 First Presidency statement, "The Origin of Man", and then conclude that whether or not the Church said so explicitly, its teachings clearly excluded evolution. If you pointed to the First Presidency's instructions to General Authorities in 1931 that struck a neutral balance, they would counter that the statement had never been published to the general Church membership. Well, now it has been (in at least three separate places within the Gosepl Library), and the Church here explicitly says that it takes no position on evolution.
Perhaps the best thing about this new topical entry is that it can be used to defuse attacks based on General Authority quotes. As I previously wrote,
Although pronouncements by authorities do not determine the truth or falsity of a proposition (hence the logical fallacy), we look to the prophets and apostles as a source of truth, and their thoughts deserve consideration. This style of argumentation, where one is made to feel like s/he is rejecting the prophets, can therefore be quite difficult and frustrating to grapple with because, in its strongest form, there can be no counter-argument. Attempting to do so only validates the perception that you reject the prophets. And yet, we who defend science cannot remain silent or else the authoritarian bullies will be the only ones heard. So what can we do when confronted with such material?
Well, now you can just point to this entry in the Gospel Library.
Notes:
1. I'm using predicted March Madness college basketball tournament brackets as a metaphor.
In this strange era of 'fake news,' where truth is discounted as lies, and lies are accepted as truth [1], I've found myself wondering how we got to this point. There are many factors, to be sure. However, my mind has been drawn to the long history of creationism. Perhaps a quick review is in order.
Although belief in a creator God extends back millenia, creationism in the modern context refers to a reactive movement within conservative religions to scientific fields dealing with the origin of the earth and life on it. It is historically rooted in fundamentalist Christianity, and in the U.S. the two are usually associated together [2]. A century ago, the Seventh-day Adventist, George McCready Price, pioneered creationist arguments against evolution and geology and published widely. Coming from a somewhat marginalized Christian tradition, his influence was less than it might otherwise have been. (It was enough, however, that Joseph Fielding Smith cited him in his own writings [3].)
John Whitcomb and Henry Morris are credited with successfully injecting modern creationism into Christianity with the publication of their book, The Genesis Flood in 1961. Whitcomb and Morris built on the foundation that Price had laid to argue that, not only is the Bible inerrant and accurate in its description of Creation and the Flood, but that science itself supports the Bible and that scientific arguments to the contrary are based on false and biased presuppositions. This basic thesis has been the dominant theme of creationist arguments ever since, and their writings have labored to show the scientific legitimacy of creationism. And while most of the court battles over the role of creationism in public education were settled decades ago, support for creationism remains strong, as evidenced by two creationist-themed parks in Kentucky.
As a result of this history, generations of conservative Christians have been trained to believe that mainstream scientists hold to ideas that are transparently stupid and are therefore either themselves evil, or dupes of the forces of evil. Adding insult to injury, the purveyors of these ridiculous ideas are upheld by public institutions and even the State. This training has put these Christians at odds with an increasingly secular culture--not just (or even primarily) in terms of how one should act in the world, but in understanding how the world works. Arguments over the age of the earth may seem quaint and unimportant, but they quickly impact decisions of which authorities we should trust and with whom we identify. (That, to me, explains why so many conservative Christians are also hostile to the concept of anthropogenic global warming, where virtually no theological beliefs are at stake.)
We may worry about the way in which media outlets, reinforced by social media, have divided us into bubbles of alternative facts and realities. And we may wonder how Evangelical Christians (and some of their fellow travelers) can have such strong support for a President from whom falsehoods so freely flow. However, if the history of creationism has shown anything it is that the very categories of truth and falsehood are contestable because they exist within a context of assumptions and prior beliefs [4]. Moreover, the resilient creationist bubble has existed for a long time. Perhaps we should not be that surprised that the insurgent bubble has expanded to other areas of science, economics, and any other subject where prevailing authority runs counter to group identity. Facts, especially complicated facts, are often no match for a simple story [5], and persecution narratives and conspiracy theories spread easily.
When it comes to your cause, accuracy and consistency is of less importance than utility. That's one of the lessons of creationism, and a lot of people seem to have learned that lesson.
Notes:
1. Actually, this problem is as old as humanity. I think it's just more noticeable right now.
2. Christian creationism has been imported and adapted into the Islamic world as well.
3. James E. Talmage tried in vain to warn him against accepting Price as an authority on geology.
4. If that sounds like the kind of relativism that conservative Christians hate so much, welcome to one of the ironies of creationism.
5. Creationism is but one manifestation of this very human problem.
While surfing the Internet I came across a new scientific article describing progress in characterizing the donkey genome. This reminded me of a brief conversation I had last year at church where someone asserted that the fact that mules (the product of mating horses and donkeys) are sterile is evidence that, in contrast to evolution, God created various kinds of animals that reproduce after their own kind [1].
I don't know where the notion that mules represent evidence against evolution came from, but it has been around for a long time. For example, Joseph Fielding Smith wrote in Man, His Origin and Destiny (1954):
There are various breeds of dogs, but they do not breed with cats. The cat family, composed of the domestic animal and the wild varieties, may mix. The horse and the ass are not of the same family and while man has been able to obtain from them the mule, the mule is rudely and humorously spoken of as being "without pride of ancestry and hope of posterity." The Lord decreed that they should not mix. This determining factor is a sufficient answer to organic evolution [2].
What's strange about this is that reproductive isolation is the expected and required outcome of evolution, not a barrier to it. It's a confusion of the outcome with the input [3]. Reproductive isolation occurs through a variety of mechanisms and sends the genetics of two proto-species on their own trajectory. Once separated, the two gene pools may eventually go on to further sub-divide through reproductive isolation. One species becomes two, then two become four, and so on. At some point, descendants of a lineage can no longer interbreed with their cousins in the other lineage and the genetic isolation is complete. Along the way, the different pools accumulate different variants, leading to differences in shape, color, physiology, and lifestyle. At a simplified level, this how evolution works and how the variety of life on earth has come to pass.
Just limiting ourselves to currently living animals we can see reproductive isolation in various stages of progress, and it's the reason that defining what constitutes a species can be difficult. For example, giraffe and okapai are separate species with a common ancestor of about 11.5 million years ago. But based on genetics there is now good reason to consider giraffe as four different species (even though they can interbreed in captivity) with a few sub-species, rather than one species with nine to eleven sub-species. (This is the kind of thing taxonomists fight over.)
Back to my conversation, it was a group setting and the topic of evolution was a distraction from the business at hand, so I didn't get much chance to respond. Next time I hope to be quick enough to turn the tables and say something like, "the fact that mules are sterile is evidence for evolution, not against it." That will probably cause some surprise, and will hopefully lead to a deeper discussion.
Notes:
1. I have addressed this issue before (link). Also, did you know that the phrase "after their own kind" is not found in the scriptures? Also, there have been a few documented cases of fertile mules.
2. In fairness to President Smith, the field of genetics came into existence around the time that he became an apostle, and the molecular structure of DNA had only recently been determined when this was published. Biology has come a long way since then.
3. This is really a generalization about animals. New species of plants have been known to form through hybridization. And all kinds of things happen with microbes.
Last week, while on vacation, my attention was called to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune: BYU and UVU scientists question research offered at a conference on the Book of Mormon. The article described the reaction of BYU and UVU scientists, as published in the BYU student newspaper, The Daily Universe, to a then-upcoming conference called the Firm Foundation Expo. In a word, they were horrified.
I've mentioned FIRM before. Although the organization, led by Rod Meldrum, is primarily interested in Book of Mormon geography, it pursues the subject through a young-earth creationist lens (which is required in order to make their ideas work). This kind of science-bending thinking often leads to the proliferation of nonsense, which is what the BYU and UVU scientists were reacting to. Specifically, they responded to Dean Sesson's "Universal Model" that posits that Earth is filled with water. I grumbled a little to myself and thought it might make for an interesting blog post, and then mostly forgot about it.
I'm late to the party, but last night I saw that Ardis Parshall covered the Firm Expo at her blog, Keepapitchinin. She went so that we wouldn't have to, although she ultimately gave up because she couldn't stomach any more.
Her comments are here: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Don't be intimidated; most of the posts are pretty short. However, if you don't read anything else, read the last part and her comments below it! But since I know you probably won't, I'll reproduce a few salient quotes after I share a few thoughts.
I try not to get too worked up over this stuff. After all, there is seemingly no end to the the kinds of nonsense people will push (and it sure seems like nonsense is the order of the day!), and my impression is that while many people may entertain wrong or crazy ideas, most of them don't take them too seriously [1]. Based on the program, it is clear that the FIRM Expo is fine example of crank magnetism -- which is the tendency of people with crank ideas to accumulate more crank ideas. Alternative science, alternative medicine, doomsday predictions, alternative economics, government nuttery, conspiracy theories...they're all represented. Hopefully the collective craziness is enough to warn most people that the Firm Expo is not a good source of information.
I'm sure that seeing that many crank-adherents concentrated in one place is depressing, but I think they are generally diluted to low-harm in the general population. That this kind of stuff takes place under the banner of more-faithful-than-you Mormonism is also depressing, but my general attitude toward people who think their purity of religion is better than mine (especially based on science) is to ignore them. Nevertheless, I salute Ardis for her effort and highlight some of her writing below.
My few hours at the FIRM Foundation Expo were a distressing mix of intellectual dismay at the continuous denial of the scientific method, and profound depression at the misuse of scripture – the misleading of Latter-day Saints by Latter-day Saints – that I could not bear any more of it.
To claim that you will always side with revelation against science when the two are in conflict implies that your understanding of both science and revelation is adequate – that you sufficiently understand the claims of science, and that you truly understand what revelation teaches. What I heard at this conference did not meet those criteria.
The conspiracist mindset somehow grasps the “truth” first, and then searches for data points to support the conclusion (whereas a scientist, who may well have a hunch to guide his initial research, reserves his conclusions until his observations are made and analyzed, and contraindications are addressed). That conspiracist mindset was on full display in the session about the origin of the Earth and its life: We were told first that the Earth is a sack of water, then were treated to a torrent of “data” supporting that conclusion – no coherence, no attempts to test the notion, but merely a flood of mishmash of sources: scripture taken out of context, somebody’s lawsuit about something, pictures and bits of text from sources that might have been reliable and might have been reported accurately but sometimes sounded as if they came from the Weekly World News for all the credibility they carried, rhetorical questions presented as evidence (“What if I told you that …” and “Have you ever thought about …”), and always – always – the scoffing at mainstream scientists for being wrong about this and that and not even looking for proof of this other thing.
Then there’s the bone-deep skepticism of “the world” as a place and a philosophy of deception and wickedness, and a confidence — exaggerated, in my view — that as the people of God we have all the answers to all of the great questions, and those answers do and must stand in opposition to the vain philosophies of men. That is, we simply know better … even, apparently about matters which God has not revealed. I think that generally unexamined belief runs very deep through Mormonism, although it is a byproduct, a misapplication, of Mormonism rather than anything intrinsic to it.
To declare that you will “stand with the Church” in a supposed science/revelation dispute, especially while failing to recognize that the Church has taken no stand, or that you will “stand by revelation” when you rely solely on a knee-jerk fundamentalism that doesn’t bear scrutiny, is no credit to the Church or to revelation.
Notes:
1. Lest someone accuse me, a Mormon, of writing that sentence without any sense of irony, I do see the irony. But that's a discussion for another day.
While browsing The Guardian today, I came across a fun creationist smackdown. An article from the Institute for Creation Research (one of the larger, well-known creationist organizations) suggested that evolutionary presuppositions led to the initial incorrect judgment that pterosaurs could not fly. Paleontologist Dave Hone, who studies pterosaurs, would have none of that and effectively shows not only that the article is wrong on historic grounds (i.e. the history of science), but that it was actually creationists of the time who originally thought pterosaurs couldn't fly. Speaking to creationists and referring to current knowledge, the last sentence sums it up nicely:
It is scientific researchers who got us here, not you; those outmoded ideas you are sneering at as having come from incorrect preconceptions came from your philosophical ancestors, not ours.
I have a long-standing rule of thumb that creationists simply cannot be trusted, and it is because of things like this. That's not to say that everything mainstream scientists write is 100% accurate (scientifically or historically), but I find that it's best never to accept a creationist argument at face value. The moment you think that a creationist has a good point is the moment you should be very cautious.
When Darwin first proposed the idea of common descent there seemed to be no evolutionary connection between humans and apes. Then the bones and fossils of extinct Neanderthals and other human/ape-like creatures began to come forth--some more like humans, some more like apes--providing confirmation that Darwin was on the right track. Meanwhile scientists began to discover that the proteins of humans and other apes were similar. When the structure and coding of DNA was worked out, scientists began determining the sequence of genes, culminating in the sequencing of whole genomes in the last 15 years or so, including that of Neanderthals. What scientists found in genetic sequence solidified the inferences already arrived at by other means: that among living species, humans are most closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas, with which they share a common ancestor. The evidence for common descent contained in our DNA is rich and multi-layered.
Creationists, however, counter that similarity of DNA is not evidence for common descent. Rather, it is evidence of common design. The basic idea is that since humans and chimpanzees (or any other grouping of species) have similar anatomy and physiology, it makes sense that the Designer would use similar genetic sequences. This assertion certainly has a commonsensical appeal since it casts biology as an extension of human experience in the modern era of mass production, computer programming, and bio-engineering.
The central paradox of this assertion is that in attributing commonalities to common design, one must also attribute to design many ordinary and mundane genetic characteristics that are otherwise explainable on principles of microevolution. Those who make the common design assertion rarely address the patterns of both similarities and differences.
The ABO blood system makes for an interesting case study. The system is a classic example of genetic co-dominance that is often taught in high school biology class, and is also a classic example of the need for matching in blood transfusions or organ transplants. The basis for the system is the pattern of certain molecules expressed on human blood cells and other organs and tissues. Everyone expresses the basic molecule called the H antigen, and if your blood type is O, that's the end of the story. People with A, B, or AB blood-type also have genes for glycosytransferases, which are enzymes that add an extra sugar molecule onto the H antigen--kind of like topping off a Christmas tree with a star, or adding a cherry to an ice cream sundae. The difference between A and B is the type of sugar molecule added to the H antigen. The A enzyme adds one kind, the B enzyme adds a different one. People with type O don't technically lack the transferase genes, they just have versions that are broken due to mutation, though there are no known diseases associated with this. The immune system of people with O or A type will react against type B antigen as a foreign invader, and the same applies to people with O or B in relation to A antigen. People with both genes (A and B) will make both antigens (A and B), and therefore their immune system will not react against A antigen, B antigen, or H (O) antigen.
The A and B glycosyltransferases are actually extremely similar. In fact, there are only four amino acids different between them, and only two of those determine which sugar the enzyme adds to H antigen. I have aligned the protein sequences [1] of the A and B transferases in the following figure. Letters are standard abbreviations for different amino acids (building blocks of proteins), and periods represent identical amino acids. I have highlighted the four differences, and the blue arrows point to the two key amino acids that determine which sugar is added:
If we were to look at the DNA sequence we would see seven differences, instead of just four. However, three of those differences do not change the amino acid sequence. The reason is that many amino acids have several three-letter DNA codes (codons), so changing one of those DNA letters may simply change the three-letter codon to an equivalent codon. Such mutations are called silent because they have no effect on protein function. In contrast, in the four highlighted examples the change in the underlying DNA resulted in a codon for a different amino acid.
These two sequences are so similar that it shouldn't surprise you to learn that scientists believe that one of them originated from the other. At some point one of the genes was duplicated (a common occurrence), and mutations gave one of the two copies a different specificity. And the changes didn't stop there. What I have shown are the two most common sequences for A and B, but some people have variants (alleles) that have other mutations. Most of those mutations are silent, but some of them do change amino acids in various parts of the protein.
The ABO blood groups have been looked at in other animals, and primates have the same basic system. The following (modified) figure shows the evolutionary relationship of various primate species and the blood types that have been found [2]. (Click for bigger image.)
The ABO types are found in varying combinations among hominoids, old world monkeys, and new world monkeys. Previously it was thought that the B alleles were re-created from the A allele in several different lineages. However, a more recent study [2] found that the A and B alleles of the various species are more closely related to one another (A to A, B to B) than any of the A alleles are to the B alleles (with the apparent exception of orangutans). This implies that both A and B were present in the ancestor of primates, and that in some lineages one or the other has been independently lost. In contrast, the O alleles are not all closely related to each other (since there are many ways to break a gene).
Remember, the part of the protein that determines whether the transferase acts as type A or B is dependent on those two amino acids. Interestingly, some primates have a silent mutation in their A gene at one of the important amino acids. I have illustrated this difference with the following figure (compare to the blue arrows in the first figure above):
For each transferase gene, A and B, the DNA sequence is given with the amino acid translation below. The A gene has two versions of the DNA sequence, with the silent mutation (T) in red. Although you might expect CTG and TTG to code for different amino acids, a quick consultation of a codon table shows that both code for leucine (L).
Now here's where things get interesting. Let's look again at the figure showing primate evolutionary relationships, but this time I'll show it without modification [2].
It turns out that the silent mutation in the A gene is only found in old world monkeys; hominoids and new world monkeys have the other version (CTG). Overall, hominoids are more closely related to old world monkeys than new world monkeys, as shown in the figure. But for this piece of the A gene, old world monkeys are different. The simple evolutionary interpretation is that the silent mutation, which is probably selectively neutral, occurred in the lineage of old world monkeys just after they split away from the hominoid lineage. An alternative explanation is that there were multiple independent mutations in the old world monkey lineage. Clearly, several different species independently having the exact same mutation arise and become dominant in the population is of much lesser probability.
So What?
With all of that as background, let's turn our attention to the assertion that similar DNA represents similar design rather than an evolutionary relationship. If the Designer was using similar genetic sequence to make similar organisms, why make a silent DNA change only in old world monkeys?
There are three basic creationist responses that I can think of. First, it could be that each old world monkey species with type A independently had that mutation arise and become fixed in the population. This is essentially the same alternative that was rejected above.
Second, a creationist might argue that the pattern of A alleles represents a sense of whimsy and artistry by the designer. After all, sometimes we do things just because we feel like it. That such alleged artistry happens to also fit an evolutionary scenario might give us pause. At any rate, if the defense of someone's hypothesis when contradicted by the data is simply to assert that the Designer just felt like it, they clearly are not engaged in a scientific discussion and are instead simply seeking to rationalize a conclusion they have already made.
A third creationist argument is more subtle. He/she might note that silent mutations can have an effect on the efficiency with which a protein is made. So perhaps that silent mutation in the A gene actually plays an important role in the context of old world monkey gene expression and physiology. This argument contains at least a grain of legitimate science. That this one silent mutation affects the efficiency of gene expression is highly doubtful, but is testable in principle. However, the notion that it is important for the long-term survival of old world monkeys becomes absurd when you consider that:
1. Like humans, not every member of a particular old world monkey species will have the A gene. Whatever effect the mutation has is irrelevant for those individuals.
2. At least two old world monkey species have apparently lost the A gene altogether! Clearly the mutation has no relevance for those species.
3. As mentioned above, there are other alleles of the A gene found in humans that contain other mutations, and the same holds for old world monkeys. Natural mutations clearly do occur in the A gene. How can naturally occurring mutations be differentiated from designed ones?
Conclusion
Here we summarize and circle back to the paradox of the common design argument. Considering the variability of the presence of A and B genes within individuals, populations, and species, and considering the fact that various polymorphisms exist within each species (some of which are silent, some of which are not), can the difference of a single silent nucleotide really be justified on principles of common design?
Recently I became aware that the evolutionary history of whales is based on fraudulent information. At least that seems to be the common belief of creationists. We might expect them to be resistant to the fossil and genetic evidence for whale evolution, but what makes it fraudulent?
Some Background
First we need to step back a few decades to get some historical perspective. Prior to 1979 very little was known about the early evolution of whales. Mammals evolved on land long before whales appeared in the fossil record. Therefore, since whales are mammals, you would expect whales to have their evolutionary roots in land mammals. However, there wasn't much fossil evidence to go on. That started to change when, working in Pakistan, paleontologist Philip Gingerich discovered the skull of a land mammal that was similar in form to a wolf. Gingerich noticed a couple of grape-sized bones of the middle ear that were only known to exist in cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc). This strongly suggested that the newly discovered animal, Pakicetus, was a relative of whales. Over the next few decades, Gingerich and his former student, Hans Thewissen, discovered a number of other related fossils showing various degrees of adaptation to water, and each with the distinctive cetacean middle ear bones.
Scientists initially believed that whales were most closely related to a group of extinct mammals called Mesonychids, which are related to Artiodactyls (cattle, pigs, hippos, etc). However, most experts now believe that whales are more closely related to Artiodactyls based on two principle lines of evidence [1]. First, in the late 1990s a Japanese group found that whales and hippos share some common genetic markers (LINEs and SINEs) that are not shared by other Artiodactyls, suggesting that they share a common ancient ancestor that is not shared by other Artiodactyls or Mesonychids. Second, some of those fossils discovered by Gingerich and Thewissen turned out to have an ankle bone (double-pulley astragalus) that is a defining feature of Artiodactyls.
Let's pause for a moment to make this clear. We have fossils that have one feature diagnostic for cetaceans, and another feature diagnostic for Artiodactyls. Also, modern whales share some unique genetic markers with hippos (which are Artiodactyls). It's almost as if...whales....evolved from....a group of ancient Artiodactyls [2].
The Fraud
So where does the fraud come in? A creationist named Dr. Carl Werner (apparently a physician by training) interviewed some of the paleontologists that study cetacean evolution, especially Gingerich (2001) and Thewissen (2013). Werner produced an anti-evolution video series and published an accompanying book titled, Evolution: the Grand Experiment, with one chapter devoted to whales. For the 2014 third addition of his book, Werner produced a press release that breathlessly lays out the main charges, even though much of it pertains to information over a decade old. During his filmed interviews, Gingerich and Thewissen spilled the beans on how shaky the whale evolutionary scenario is. These amazing revelations included the following:
1. Although the tail of the ancient cetacean Rodhocetus has not been found, Gingerich initially speculated that it had a fluke at the end of it. Also, initially the limbs were not recovered so he speculated that Rodhocetus had flippers. Limbs were later recovered, leading Gingerich to doubt that they were flippers, and ultimately doubt that it had a tail fluke. However, various museums were still displaying drawings of Rodhocetus with flippers and a fluke. Somehow all of this disqualifies Rodhocetus as a transitional fossil and serves as evidence that evolutionary scientists freely spread misinformation.
2. When Thewissen discovered the skeleton of Ambulocetus, part of the upper jaw was missing, along with the nasal opening. The remaining lower jaw allowed him to judge how long the upper jaw would have been. However, the location of the nasal opening is not known. Thewissen's model placed the nasal opening a few inches back from the end of the snout. Since the actual location of the nasal opening isn't known, Thewissen's model is biased and misleading.
3. In discussing the middle ear of Ambulocetus, Thewissen acknowledged that a part called the sigmoid process, which was previously thought to be diagnostic for cetaceans, was 'questionable'. This admission revealed that there was no basis to consider Ambulocetus a cetacean. When combined with #2 above, it was clear that Ambulocetus as a transitional whale fossil was a figment of wishful thinking.
More to the Story
When I first came across these claims I did some Internet searching to see if there was any response. These charges were clearly popular because all kinds of creationist websites dominated my search results. Eventually I found an anonymous message board where one of the participants claimed to have contacted Dr. Thewissen and received a reply, which he posted. Thewissen confirmed that Werner did interview him.
He had me answer the same question a number of times. Usually journalists do this when the answer that a scientist gives is too technical, so usually the scientist rephrases the answer in a more simple way. When Werner shot in my lab, he would ask the same question multiple times, and I simplified my answers more and more each time he repeated a question. He then put my answers together in a creative way that makes it all look pretty silly....
The written piece that you sent me, I had never seen before. It does not discuss the critical piece of information that shows that Pakicetus and Ambulocetus are whales: the thick inner part of the tympanic bone of the ear, called the involucrum. It is not clear to me why this is not presented, as scientists agree that this is the most critical feature. Instead, the video focusses on another part of the tympanic bone, the outer part, which indeed is different in shape in different whales, and occurs in some whale relatives too (artiodactyls are the closest relatives to whales, no wonder that their ears have similarities). So, that feature needs to be qualified when it is explained. In a simple sound bite such as the ones that Dr. Werner presents, those qualifiers are not present and that causes that particular feature to look pretty inconclusive in the way it is presented there.
Since this comes from some unidentified person on a message board, you might be skeptical that it actually came from Thewissen, as you should be. However, the response also drew attention to a video that Thewissen made to help clarify the issues around Ambulocetus, though without direct reference to the creationists. Indeed, the YouTube video does exist! And it's worth watching.
Let's return to the issue of the sigmoid process and the involucrum for a moment. Werner's website quotes a 1998 publication by another whale expert (Zhe-Xi Luo) as follows.
"Other diagnostic characters, such as the sigmoid process as discussed below, are now open to question in the wake of the new fossil evidence from Pakicetus...[The] sigmoid process [in Pakicetus] is a simple plate [and is] equivocal, [since it is also] present in the artiodactyl Diacodexis...compromising its utility as a "dead ringer" apomorphy [unique trait] for cetaceans."
However, this editing leaves out an important preceding sentence from the original publication (a book, by the way, that was edited by Thewissen) (bolding added).
Cetaceans including pakicetids have only one unambiguous bullar synapomorphy that is absent in all noncetacean mammals--the involucrum, or the pachyosteosclerosis of the medial margin of the bulla. Other diagnostic characters, such as the sigmoid process, as discussed below, are now open to question in the wake of the new fossil evidence from Pakicetus and Ichthyolestes.
Luo's argument is rather technical, but the gist seems to be that the sigmoid process should not be considered a definitive sign that an ancient fossil is a cetacean. However, as stated by Luo, that still leaves the involucrum! I wonder if Werner missed that sentence.
Summary and Conclusion
So let's summarize the answers to the supposedly devastating admissions by Gingerich and Thewissen, numbered as above.
1. So far as I know, Gingerich never responded to Werner. Paleontologists often do not recover all of the bones of a fossil skeleton, so their reconstructions sometimes contain some guesswork based on other information. Carl Zimmer's book, At the Water's Edge, which profiled Gingerich's work, stated that most of the tail of Rodhocetus was missing, "preventing [Gingerich] from knowing whether it had grown flukes at its tip." Zimmer's book was published two or three years before Werner interviewed Gingerich, so Gingerich was hardly making a new admission to Werner. Werner's complaint has some justification as far as accuracy of reconstructions go. However, that does not negate the features that make Rodhocetus a cetacean that could function both on land and in water. Rodhocetus retains its place in the evolutionary transition of cetaceans from land to water.
2. Although Thewissen did not know exactly where the nasal opening of Ambulocetus was, its close relation to another fossil suggested that the opening had migrated a bit from the tip of the snout. The exact location of the opening is not important. When you look at the broad picture of cetacean evolution, you see the nasal opening migrate back from from the tip of the snout toward the eyes, where we know it in modern cetaceans as the blowhole.
3. The sigmoid process is a strong indicator of being a cetacean, but is apparently now considered not entirely definitive. However, the involucrum is considered definitive, and all of the fossils in question have an enlarged involucrum.
There are other issues I have not addressed, on both sides. Werner and other creationists have a few other criticisms that I haven't run down, some of which are rooted in a cartoon version of how evolution or science works. Similarly, there are other evidences derived from both living and ancient cetaceans that yield further evidence of, and insight into, cetacean evolution.
In conclusion, the notion that evolution, both in general and as applied to whales, has fallen like a house of cards remains a creationist fantasy. Nor is there any evidence of actual fraud; only some perhaps ill-advised artistic license. In this case, Werner has employed classic creationist tactics of selective quotation and ignoring important context. The evolutionary history of whales remains in good shape.
1. There are actually a number of other characteristics that support the relationship, but they are more subtle.
2. Either that, or God created whales on the fifth day of creation, some with a distinctive ankle bone they hardly used, if at all. And then, for some reason, He created a bunch of land Artiodactyls on the sixth day of creation with that same ankle bone, and in a few cases threw in the whale-like middle ear for good measure.
No one seems to care about the difference between observations (or 'facts') and inferences like creationist-types do. That's not to say that the distinction is unimportant or that scientists don't pay any attention to it, but creationists really care about it. That's because in order to make the world fit within their scriptural boundaries they have to discount large amounts of science from a variety of fields. However, they can't just dismiss science without looking like medieval relics, so they take upon themselves the task of separating 'true science' from 'false science' so that they can appear to be sophisticated lovers of science. One of the simplest ways to make that separation is to insist that the unacceptable parts of science are actually stacks of unreliable and/or un-provable inferences. Thus any statement about the ancient past or processes that occur over long periods of time can be met with the simple question: Were you there?
Before getting to my main point, I can't help but comment on how radically skeptical such people would be in general if they were more consistent in their pedantry, because inference is everywhere. Nor, I think, do they realize how many unobjectionable 'facts' are actually built on inference. Pick up any molecular biology journal, for example, and you will find lots of measurements. But those measurements are often done using indirect methods (because nobody can directly observe a molecule) [1], and the phenomena they measure are often correlates or indicators of broader phenomena. However, today's inferences become tomorrow's facts as they are demonstrated to be reliable and useful in advancing knowledge. As Stephen J. Gould put it, "In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.'" Occasionally accepted facts are revised as their underpinnings are probed in more detail--often because of advancements in technology. It's just the nature of the beast. Or life in general, really.
That brings me to my main point. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) advocates and provides support for teaching evolution and, more recently, climate science in schools. Their most recent Reports periodical has a fun article, Yes, We Were There, by a physicist (and Christian) named Antoine Bret. After setting up the 'Were you there?' issue, Bret describes several interlocking observations that show that the laws of physics have been constant for over 30,000 years--less than a drop in the bucket of the accepted age of the universe, but more than the Biblical age of the Earth.
The progression of his argument is as follows:
1. Stars have been measured to be 30,000 light years from Earth by the parallax method, which is based on trigonometry. Approximately 30,000 light years away is the limit of detection for this method, but he chose it because it is the most direct method in terms of observation.
2. We can measure the spectra emitted by the elements in those stars, which match those of the elements on Earth. The signature spectra are explained by quantum mechanics, in which the speed of light is a key component. This shows that the speed of light has not changed in the last 30,000 years. So unless you want to say that God created the universe with light already in transit (something hardcore creationists believe), these observations show that the universe is at least (!) 30,000 years old.
3. Various types of supernova beyond 30,000 light years away have been observed, and the nuclear decay of their elements tracked. The rates of radioactive decay match those on Earth.
Bret concludes:
Physicists do not hold that the laws of physics haven’t changed over the last 30000+ years because of a uniformitarian prejudice. They hold it because this is what they observe....for all practical purposes, “we were there” to see it.
I suspect that it might be more accurate to say that physicists had no reason to think that the law of physics had changed, but that these observations simply add direct support to their confidence.
So does this argument prove that the laws of physics haven't changed? I'm sure there are counter-arguments to be made. For example, I guess you could argue that the Earth was in a special bubble where the laws of physics were different from those of the stars. But where are the observations that would substantiate that?
Notes:
1. I'm thinking of things like western blots, ELISA, or especially flow cytometry. We run various controls to be confident in the results, but the end result is technically an inference. Similarly, blood cholesterol is measured via a series of chemical reactions that result in a color change, which is measured by light absorbance. Is your LDL number really a fact? You can see how this game can be played to the nth degree.
About a month ago I was browsing through Science and noticed a review of a recent book by historian Peter Bowler. (The review requires a subscription, so instead I'll direct interested readers here for a roughly equivalent review.) His book, Darwin Deleted, imagines a world where Darwin did not exist, as a device for illuminating other ideas about evolution. Apparently he argues that if Darwin had not existed, evolution might not have been as contentious of an issue. This is because, while many religious people weren't particularly thrilled with the idea of evolution, it was natural selection as a mechanism that really got their dander up. It was just too materialistic--even for some scientists. In fact, during the early twentieth century natural selection took a back seat until the modern synthesis of the 1940s put it back in the center. As I understand it, Bowler imagines a world where evolution was accepted relatively peacefully, with natural selection being discovered later.
Bowler also argues that the atrocities of World War II would still have occurred without Darwin. This seems completely obvious to me, but a staple of anti-evolution propaganda is to blame Darwin for Hitler. In fact, just last week the Discovery Institute posted a video on YouTube doing just that. At first glance you can see why the argument appears convincing. Darwin said that evolution occurs by survival of the best adapted, so Hitler took Darwin's theory to the logical conclusion by attempting to eliminate the weak.
I can accept that some people just repeat this kind of thing because that's what they heard, but it's harder for me to believe that thinking people take such things seriously. It seems transparently nasty and dumb to me. For one thing, even if Darwin did serve as a source of Hitler's inspiration, that fact wouldn't have any logical consequence for the validity of Darwin's ideas about how nature works. (I bet the German artillery loved Newton's ideas too!) Moreover, we could hardly hold Darwin responsible for the deeds of a future sociopath. But what I find more annoying is that people who say this must ignore or forget known facts and social currents that existed independent of Darwin.
For example, animals were bred for desired traits for centuries and millennia before Darwin. Darwin himself drew on artificial selection--i.e. breeding--for his insight of natural selection. Consider the following quote:
… Experience has long since taught mankind the necessity of observing certain natural laws in the propagation of animals, or the stock will degenerate and finally become extinct. But strange to say, in regard to the human animal, these laws, except in certain particulars, are more or less disregarded in these latter times. The inevitable consequence is, the race is degenerating, new diseases are introduced, while effeminacy and barrenness are on the increase: and worse than all, this evil condition of the body has its effects upon the mind…
That was George Q. Cannon writing in 1857, three years before he was called as an Apostle and a year before Darwin published Origin of Species. You could just as easily say that Hitler was applying widely accepted principles of animal breeding to humans. It simply doesn't take a theory of species formation to decide that your race (however defined) is better than others, or to hate Jews, or to be nationalist, or to think the "weak" are a drain on society, and so on. The Nazis appropriated anything that seemed to lend support to their ideology. If Darwin's theory was one of those, then that's unfortunate but it's hardly Darwin's fault (he died in 1882, for heaven's sake) and means nothing for its validity as science.
One more thing: the idea that species progress was not Darwin's. Darwin understood that natural selection would result in adaptation to environmental circumstances, not the production of some kind of platonic ideal. Thus, to argue that elimination of the weak was necessary for human evolutionary progress would be a bastardization of Darwinian evolution. As I mentioned above, Darwinian evolution was eclipsed for a while by other ideas about evolution, some of which involved progress. (If blame is to be laid, I would bet those ideas had more influence.)
In their zeal to cast aspersions on evolution, anti-evolutionists also often go a step further and say that Darwin himself was a supporter of social Darwinism. To the extent that is true it is unfortunate although, again, it doesn't matter what Darwin thought with respect to the validity of his theory. But although he was a product of his time, Darwin was relatively progressive in some of his views (eloquently opposing slavery, for example) and it seems that detractors have a difficult time making their case without distorting his writings. For example, in The Descent of Man he wrote:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.
Oh, that's terrible! Except when you look at the context you see that the sentence is the first half of a hypothetical he uses to make a point about how extinction erases the gradations between species. And considering Europe's colonial enterprise Darwin's statement probably seemed like an unremarkable prediction [1]. It's rather uncharitable to rip that sentence out of context and present it as though Darwin hoped for the extinction of other races, as the DI video does, but that's the kind of garbage I've come to expect from them.
Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement, to say nothing of the Nazis, were wrong. If we pawn it all off on Darwin, however, then we miss important lessons about the naturalistic fallacy, the naive application of science, human rights, ethics, the golden rule, economics, and so on. When it comes to Hitler, Darwin is a distraction.
Over at Interpreter, Gregory Smith has written a longish review of several books on the theme of evolution and religion. I haven't read his review in detail, but my skimming (and past experience) suggests that Smith has what I take to be a pretty healthy view on the issue. One of the books reviewed was written by William Dembski who, although I don't hear much about him anymore, was once one of the leading lights of Intelligent Design at the Discovery Institute. Several of the comments below Smith's review are supportive of ID, with one person wondering why LDS scientists don't align with ID more than they do.
It has been a while since I have mentioned ID. Although it hasn't gone away, it is much less of a public issue lately than it used to be. Nevertheless, I thought I would take a moment to review why I do not accept ID (something I first articulated here.) For fun, I have arranged it in a question-answer format.
Q: Isn't Intelligent Design a scientific idea?
A: ID is more of a religious/cultural movement than a scientific one. Defenders of ID complain about ID being lumped together with young-earth creationism and assert that it has secular intellectual merit on its own. However, it is a matter of historical record that the ID brand, so to speak, was formulated as a response to court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism in public schools, and as a weapon in an ideological battle against naturalism. The scientific component of ID has always been minor, which is to say that scientific research has not been a focus of ID proponents. ID is mostly polemics, and it was the Discovery Institute that sought to introduce ID into public schools notwithstanding the fact that it had scant support in higher education and among professional scientists. When the background of ID and its proponents are considered, it becomes clear that ID is a religiously/ideologically motivated movement.
Q: Don't some scientists advocate Intelligent Design?
A: There are a few practicing scientists, such as Michael Behe, who openly advocate ID, but most ID proponents tend to be non-scientists (e.g. lawyers, philosophers, mathematicians, etc). Others have an educational background in science, but did not pursue a career in science. For example, as a member of the Unification Church with a Ph.D. in religious studies, Jonathan Wells went on to obtain a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology with the specific intent of fighting against 'Darwinism,' and has spent his career doing so. Again, ID is not really a scientific movement.
Q: OK, but if we put aside motivations and history, couldn't Intelligent Design have some merit?
A: Sure, any part of this world and life on it might have been designed, but ID arguments for such have been unconvincing. Usually the arguments boil down to simple disbelief that things found in nature could have been produced by nature. Many biological features that appear designed can be understood in the light of normal biological principles, although the exact step-by-step history may forever remain unknown. That is simply not good enough for ID proponents like Michael Behe, who once demanded each mutational step,
And not only a list of mutations, but also a detailed account of the selective pressures that would be operating, the difficulties such changes would cause for the organism, the expected time scale over which the changes would be expected to occur, the likely population sizes available in the relevant ancestral species at each step, other potential ways to solve the problem which might interfere, and much more.
In other words, ID is impossible to falsify. So sure, it could be true on some level, but so could many other unprovable or unfalsifiable propositions.
Q: Well what is the harm in just having another perspective to consider?
A: None, as far as it goes. However, in advancing their arguments, ID proponents seem to chronically either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent mainstream science. One gets the sense that they must do this in order to make their arguments look strong by comparison. As Nick Matzke recently wrote in a review of Stephen Meyer's latest book,
To anyone familiar with [the science], it is simply laughable and pretty much insulting to see Stephen Meyer proclaim throughout his book that fossils with transitional morphology don’t exist, that the Cambrian body plans look like they originated all-at-once in one big sudden step. These statements don’t respect scientific process, they don’t respect the peer reviewed literature, they don’t respect the intelligence and knowledge of people who actually do know what they are talking about, they don’t respect the hard work of all the scientists that went out in the field and found these fossils, and then spent countless hours preparing them, describing them, inspecting them in microscopic detail, coding them in a morphology database, and analyzing them, all with care and effort and detail never taken by any creationist/IDist writer in any effort of comparative biology. And most importantly, Meyer’s statements don’t respect the data. They don’t follow the evidence wherever it leads, mostly because Meyer is ignoring most of the evidence.
In my experience, Matzke's critique applies more generally to many ID proponents. They not only spread an idea that is scientifically dubious, they damage scientific understanding in the process.
Conclusion:
My basic conclusion is that ID proponents are, to be frank, mostly a bunch of hacks and cranks. The hacks have all the characteristics we see in political hacks: they stick to a central message, they never admit to being wrong about anything substantive, and they distort facts and knowledge to support their talking points. It is therefore entirely appropriate that the main driver of ID is a think tank. The cranks are less evil, just obtuse. They seem simply to enjoy being in an intellectual insurgency, while overestimating their grasp of science. Neither group is interested in genuine scientific and intellectual inquiry. This is not to say that all people who are attracted to ID are hacks and cranks; I have no doubt that many who find ID persuasive are thoughtful and honest people. But this is certainly how I feel about the leaders of ID at the Discovery Institute.
Perhaps my favorite feature of Provo Canyon (right) is the bent rock layer toward the southern end of the canyon. How can solid rock bend like that? How, indeed. Young-earth creationists point to these kinds of geological features as evidence that the strata were laid down during Noah's flood, adding that no human alive was there to observe the process. It's easy to imagine wet earth bending and then solidifying into rock, which is perhaps one reason why this view of geology is common in the U.S. But things aren't always as they seem.
In 1927 a professor in Australia heated pitch--basically asphalt--and put it into a funnel. Pitch shatters if struck with a hammer, yet it also flows as a liquid...very slowly. In the intervening time, drops of pitch fell from the funnel about once per decade. Predicting when exactly that drop would fall was difficult, and until a couple of weeks ago the actual drop had never been witnessed. (It had been missed by as little as 15 minutes.) However, this time was successful; the drop was observed by both human and electronic eyes. Go read this Atlantic article for a more complete and interesting tale.
Seeing the pitch drop helps make the folding of rock layers in Provo canyon and elsewhere easier to imagine. When exposed to heat and pressure, they become more malleable than we would otherwise think, and over millions of years the rock can be bent and folded. Of course imagination does not constitute evidence, but a little real-life demonstration can help make abstract concepts, developed based on multiple lines of evidence, more concrete (ha!).
So the next time someone expresses incredulity at the proposition of rock layers bending and folding, point them to the pitch drop experiment. And as a bonus, when they say that you weren't there millions of years ago to observe geological processes, you can point out that for almost 70 years nobody was there to see the pitch drop either.
A little over a decade ago I purchased my first book on Mormonism and science, The Search for Harmony. It contains a number of classic essays, and it will always have a fond place in my heart. However, as I have revisited it from time to time, I've noticed that it has a somewhat gloomy tone as various authors express their sadness that the Church has betrayed its original openness to truth and marginalized supporters of science. Given that most of the essays were written during the 70's and 80's, this is understandable. After all, it was 1980, for example, when Apostle Bruce R. McConkie included evolution in his talk, "The Seven Deadly Heresies."
As I look back at the essays in that book, I don't share the sense of gloom. Most Church members and leaders are perhaps not as enlightened on scientific topics as I wish they were, or think they ought to be, but more and more I sense a return to the spirit of President Heber J. Grant's admonition to leave science to scientists.
As evidence, I would like to highlight the Summerhays lectures, a series of talks given at Brigham Young University by faculty on science and religion between 2003 and 2008. In 2011 the lectures were published by both the Religious Studies Center (a publishing arm of the BYU religion department) and Deseret Book. The RSC has since made the book available for free on its website. The lectures themselves are not all that remarkable--some are better than others--but I believe that their very existence, combined with the publishers standing behind them, make them important. The book models the attitude expressed in a Church Newsroom commentary last July that,
Mormons welcome truth from whatever source and take the pragmatic view that where religion and science seem to clash, it is simply because there are insufficient data to reconcile the two. Latter-day Saints approach such tensions as challenges to learn, not contradictions to avoid.
Contributors include Terry Ball (dean of Religious Education), Robert Millet, (former dean of Religious Education), and Michael Whiting (evolutionary biologist), and their essays anchor the book (in my opinion). Each contributor presents his own view, but collectively the lectures contain positive comments on the role of BYU in education in the sciences, critique of creationism and defense of Darwin's character, an overview of the BYU Evolution Packet with a link to where it can be found, calls for peacemaking and a "healthy agnosticism," and more.
Below I excerpt parts that I liked, or think important. I also have some criticisms and additional comments, but I'll save those for a separate post.
Ball:
Rather than adding to the tension that some individuals and institutions create between science and religion, a Brigham Young University education should help students increase their understanding and appreciation for both. ...we should not only avoid alienating secular learning from spiritual development but also endeavor to avoid compartmentalizing and departmentalizing the two. Spiritual development can and should occur in all classes taught on the BYU campus, and secular learning may indeed find application in Religious Education classes.
How tragic it would be if a BYU student who had the potential to become a James E. Talmage or a Henry Eyring never reached that potential because some teacher, purposefully or unwittingly, convinced that student that one must abandon faith in God in order to be a credible scientist, or conversely, that one with a testimony of the restored gospel cannot accept the tenets of science. It is imperative that as a community of learners at BYU we work to avoid such a tragedy.
Millet:
More times than I would like to remember, during the decade that I served as dean of Religious Education, I received phone calls from irate parents who simply could not understand why Brigham Young University was allowing organic evolution courses to be taught. They would then ask what I planned to do about it, as though I were the head of the campus thought police. I would always try to be understanding and congenial, but I would inevitably remark that such things were taught at this institution because we happened to be a university; that what was being taught was a significant dimension in the respective discipline; and that we certainly would not be doing our job very well if a science student, for example, were to graduate from Brigham Young University and be ignorant of such matters.
I must admit sadly that when I was a student here at BYU and even in my first years as a faculty member, it was not uncommon for ideological grenades to be flying back and forth between the Joseph Smith Building and the Eyring Science Center. This person was labeled as godless, and that one was categorized as ignorant or naive. This faculty member hustled about to put forward his or her favorite General Authority quote, while that one relied upon a Church leader with a differing perspective. Thereby authorities were pitted against one another. Very little light, if any, was generated, but there was a great deal of heat, including much heartburn for university and college administrators. And of course the real losers during this “war of words and tumult of opinions” were the students. They admired their science teachers and valued their opinions but did not want in any way to be in opposition to what Church leaders believed and taught. They trusted their religion teachers but were not prepared to jettison their field of study. Further, such standoffs did something that for me was even more destructive: they suggested that one could not be both a competent academic and a dedicated disciple—one had to choose. And such a conclusion is tragically false. It defies everything that Brigham Young University stands for.
It is wrong to hide behind our religious heritage and thus neglect our academic responsibilities; there may have been a time when some faculty members at BYU excused professional incompetence in the name of religion, on the basis that BYU is different, that it is a school intent on strengthening the commitment of young Latter-day Saints. This was commendable but insufficient. It is just as myopic, however, to hide behind academics and thus cover our own spiritual incompetence. We can be thoroughly competent disciples and thoroughly competent professionals. We do not hide behind our religion, but rather we come to see all things through the lenses of our religion.
If my Latter-day Saint colleagues and I can enjoy such a sweet brotherhood and sisterhood with a growing number of Evangelical Christians—a group with whom we have been in intense dialogue since 2000—then surely it is possible for men and women of faith who labor in varying avenues of science to enjoy cordial and collegial relationships with those involved in the study and teaching of religion, especially at Brigham Young University, the best of all worlds. Our epistemological thrusts may be different. Our presuppositions may be different. Our tests of validity and reliability may be different. But our hearts can be united as we strive to look beyond the dimensions of our disciplines toward higher goals. Some things we may and should reconcile here and now, while other matters may await further light and truth and additional discovery.
Whiting:
I am not aware of any other scientific idea that has generated as many diverse views in the Church as evolution has, and very often the discussion of this wide range of ideas has resulted in more heat than light. When I teach evolution in the BYU classroom, I must often curtail students who begin selectively quoting their favorite General Authorities and pitting the quotations of one against another, as if one General Authority could beat the other up. While I am grateful that the Church has never expressed the same extreme views about evolution as have other religious denominations, there still persists a belief that evolutionary ideas and Church doctrine are fundamentally hostile to each other and that the full acceptance of one requires the compromise of the other.
I, of course, recognize that there are ideas in evolutionary theory that can be spun in such a way as to be in direct conflict with the doctrines of the Church, and unfortunately some prominent evolutionary biologists have gained great fame by doing so. Likewise, I recognize that there are interpretations of Latter-day Saint scripture that can be formulated in such a way as to contradict current ideas in evolutionary theory. What I would caution against is forcing a Joshua ultimatum here with “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Joshua 24:15), as if these are fundamentally and diametrically opposed views of creation with no degree of overlap and no possibility of reconciliation. In my experience, students who continue to think of this as a dichotomy will either have their faith so shaken when they learn the evidence for evolution that they drift away from the Church, or they will simply shut their eyes and their minds to what I consider to be a glorious way to view creation.
Ball:
In recent times, religious scientists not only have had to defend their faith in God and revelation, but also frequently find their commitment to scientific principles unjustly questioned. A Georgia judge, arguing against the teaching of evolution in school, offered an overzealous polemic that illustrates the point well. Making absurd accusations about the effect of Darwin’s theories on society, the judge claimed that the “monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types.” Such pejorative and irrational rhetoric only serves to fan the flames of hostility between science and religion while deepening the dilemma for men and women devoted to both disciplines.
Whiting:
I might mention here that some portray Darwin as a man eager to destroy faith and tear down religion. These people are like the detractors who paint Joseph Smith and the history of the Church with similar brushstrokes. Within the Church, I have occasionally heard members equate Darwin with Korihor, the anti-Christ from the Book of Mormon. But these caricatures are too simplistic and not true to the record. (It seems to me that members of the Church should be particularly sensitive to the misrepresentation of mid-nineteenth-century historical figures in order to push a particular agenda forward.) Certainly the ideas that sprang from Darwin’s work had a profound influence on religious thought and still continue to do so, but by all accounts Darwin was a loving father and a kind man, afraid of confrontation, and someone who would much rather study the mining habits of earthworms than be involved in a debate over science and religion. Darwin was a complex man, and many lengthy biographies have delved into factors in his life that may have influenced his scientific ideas, including his faith, but at his very core, Darwin was simply a scientist trying to explain patterns in the natural world, and the notion that he had a hidden agenda to destroy religion is simply wrong.
There has been a temptation for some members of the Church to place us in the same category as religions that identify themselves as creationists. I tell my students that Mormons are creationists in the same way we are born-again Christians. Does the Church have a doctrine of being “born again”? It certainly does, but it is so radically different from churches that label themselves as born-again Christians that we have not adopted the name because we do not embrace the dogmas associated with being “born again.” Likewise, the Latter-day Saint doctrine of creation is sufficiently distinct from those religious groups that label themselves “creationists” that I am grateful the Church has not adopted this label.
Intelligent design is based on the (flawed) notion that there are certain features in the biological world that are too complex to be explained via evolution and that the probability of evolution giving rise to complexity is so vanishingly small that it is simply not possible. Consequently, they argue, the only scientific explanation for biological complexity is that there must be an intelligent designer working behind the scenes. The attempt to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in public schools led to a lengthy trial centered in Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2004. The overwhelming evidence during the trial established that intelligent design was a mere relabeling of the type of creationism described above and that it [is] not a scientific alternative to evolution. So while the Latter-day Saints do indeed have a doctrine of creation and certainly a belief in a Supremely Intelligent Creator, we are neither creationists nor proponents of intelligent design because both labels come with unwanted and uncomfortable doctrinal baggage.
Flood Geology is the Young-Earth Creationist (YEC) version of geology that seeks to put the geological and paleontological record into the context of Noah's flood. Originally, Whitcomb and Morris (and George McCready Price before them) attributed the whole fossil record to the Flood, but over the years a number of creationists have obtained advanced degrees in the pertinent fields and sought to bring their knowledge and training to bear on the topic.
The latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education has an article by biologist Phil Senter where he looks at what Flood geologists have said about how the various strata and geological periods relate to the Flood. Through a collective process of elimination, Flood geologists have whittled the influence of the Flood to practically nothing. This is illustrated by the following figure from the article:
On the left are the names of the various geological divisions. All those symbols in the center-right represent different reasons for eliminating those periods from flood activity. These include raindrops, charcoal (i.e. fire), animal tracks, etc. From the article:
Several Flood geologists have presented geologically sound reasons why strata assigned to specific parts of the geologic column cannot have been deposited during the Flood year or at least during the part of it when the entire planet was under water, hereafter called the PWS (period of worldwide submergence). In fact, compilation of such studies shows that together Flood geologists have eliminated the entire geologic column as having any record of a PWS.
Further:
This means that—according to the results of the studies by Flood geologists themselves—if the Flood occurred during Phanerozoic time then all Flood deposits are stratigraphically sandwiched between a pair of non-Flood deposits within the stratigraphic span of a single one of the geologic periods. If this is the case, then the Flood left little if any geologic evidence of its occurrence. Flood geologists have difficulty accepting that a worldwide cataclysm would leave but a small geological scar, but they themselves have provided evidence that either such is the case, or the Flood was pre-Phanerozoic, or it is mythical.
It seems to be dawning on at least some Flood geologists that they have a problem. I wonder if perhaps we may be coming full circle. People forget that it was believing Christians who figured out the problem of geology for the Flood in the first place. They gave rise to mainstream geology, but Creationists convinced themselves that mainstream geology was just ideologically anti-Bible. Perhaps the cycle will repeat. At any rate, I expect that this will have little effect on regular folks, for whom nothing but the Bible matters anyway.
By the way, this kind of treatment is not a first for Senter. He has published two articles in the past year (one recently) in scientific journals that undercut Creationism using Creationist methods.
While waiting at the airport for a flight, I was catching up on some of the blogs I keep tabs on. One blog led to another and soon I was reading about David Barton and Christian nationalism. Barton's basic claim is to have collected many documents from the founding of the U.S. that show the true Christian character of it. To put it in poker terms, he'll see your Thomas-Jefferson-was-a-deist and-cut-out-the-miraculous-material-from-the-New-Testament and raise you a document signed by Jefferson with, "in the year of our Lord Christ [1]."
I had seen Barton on the The Daily Show and he is a fast, confident, and likeable talker who really seems to have the evidence on his side. He apparently has been a consultant on a number of court cases as well as to members of Congress of both parties, and has been involved in history textbook selection for Texas. He has been enthusiastically promoted by Mike Huckabee and Glenn Beck. Part of his appeal, as described by Huckabee, is that he just lays out the documentary evidence for all to see.
Historians are quite critical of Barton. It's not that every claim he makes is false (although many of them are), it's that he distorts history in a way that serves his own religious-political agenda, which is apparently to give Christians a sense that they have been betrayed and marginalized by a government that has lost its way from the idyllic days when it protected and promoted them, as desired by the Founders. But who cares what those irreligious historians think, anyway? In the words of one historian,
That's why historians' takedown of his ahistorical approach ultimately won't matter that much. Nor will historians' explanations of his presentism, and his obvious and unapologetic ideological agenda (albeit considerably muted for his appearance on The Daily Show). While historians' refutations are good and necessary, ultimately they won't matter for the audience which exists in his alternate intellectual universe, one described in much greater detail in my colleague Randall Stephens' forthcoming book, The Anointed: Evangelical Experts in a Secular Age.
There is a connection here to science, most directly to the evolution-creationism battles, but also to other public controversies over scientific issues. It seems to me that Barton is the history counterpart to creationists Ken Ham or Kent Hovind, but more charming and politically powerful. They are not in the business of making intellectual arguments and establishing truth. They are in the business of pushing a religious/political view (the Truth) and marshaling science or history in the service of that view, and doing so in a way that makes serious study look superfluous or even dangerous. After all, if the so-called experts can't see what is staring them in the face then that just goes to show how biased or deluded the academy has made them. Evangelicals like Barton, Ham, and Hovind are not the only ones constructing an alternate intellectual universe (creationism of the kind that claims to offer a decisive refutation of evolution is a growing problem in Muslim culture, and there are also various anti-medical or technology groups as well) but the population they represent is a significant one in the U.S. and I wonder how far and deep these divisions will go, and at what expense to truth and the public's understanding of it.
Back to Barton, my airport blog-browsing led me to history professor John Fea and his book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?. It seemed legitimate and was recommended by what seemed like knowledgeable and intellectually honest people. I like to think that I have developed a nose for discriminating good sources of information from bogus, but I'm not a historian--how do I know whether Fea is an ideological crank or not? I happened to come upon a list of historians who approved of the book, including (drum roll.........) Richard Bushman. In fact, he wrote this blurb for the book:
This is a book for readers who want a credible account of how religion affected the settlement and founding of the United States. It brings out the indisputable importance of religion without claiming more than sound historical scholarship can support. Its most original feature is the fascinating history of the long campaign to defined the United States as a Christian Nation.
So now the book is on my Amazon wish list.
Coincidentally, after I had written most of this post the following video clip was brought to my attention. In it, Barton claims that the evolution-creationism debate extends back to the Founders and that even Thomas Paine agreed that creationism should be taught in public schools.
This is absurd on its face since Darwin didn't publish Origin of Species until 1859, not to mention the paucity of public schools back then.
This is kind of nuts, but also illuminating. Barton has emerged as a force by bridging two sometimes disparate strains of conservatism—the Chamber of Commerce crowd with the Christian Coalition crowd. In his lectures, they become one: Jesus opposed the minimum wage; Jesus opposed the progressive income tax; etc. You can only imagine the fervor with which Jesus would have endorsed the Paul Ryan budget. When someone like Bachmann says, as she famously did earlier this year, that the Founding Fathers worked to abolish slavery, Barton is where it starts. When Texas Gov. Rick Perry, another potential GOP presidential candidate, says we need to return to our Biblical principles to escape from our current system of economic slavery (yes, he really said this), he's channeling Barton.
I don't think truth, science, or religion (to say nothing of politics) are well served by this kind of stuff.
Notes:
1. The words, "in the year of our Lord Christ" were part of a pre-printed form letter that Jefferson signed as President. Somehow that makes Jefferson an orthodox Christian rather than a deist.
Argument from authority: "Appeal to authority is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative."
One long argument: Phrase used by Darwin in the final chapter of The Origin of Species to describe the whole book.
A couple of months ago I highlighted a harsh review of Rod Meldrum's publications and talks that was published in the FARMS Review. Although the main focus was the Book of Mormon, evolution was dragged into the discussion.
Meldrum's website has a number of free downloads, including a handy little compilation of many of the bad things past prophets have said about evolution. In some cases (e.g. Joseph Smith) the statements are not directly about evolution, but are nevertheless used as ammunition. In other cases (esp. Joseph Fielding Smith), statements and writings before their becoming president of the Church are grandfathered in. Also, someone has helpfully underlined and bolded all of the important parts, in order to assist hitting you over the head.
The document is said to have been compiled by one James Stoddard, who is the president of ZionVison. In case you need further bludgeoning, check out their video, Creation and Evolution: A Witness of Prophets. You can get a taste of it by looking at these trailers. You can also read a transcript of the video here.
In addition to argument from authority, the video is long on another logical fallacy: appeal to consequences. In classic form, the video blames evolution for various evils in society, such as Hitler and the Columbine massacre. There is also a little bit of traditional quote-mining--more likely recycled quote-mining (example).
I think my favorite part is where it refers to BYU zoologist Duane Jeffery as "one modern biologist, who rejects the miracles of the scriptures," and who "has spent much of his life promoting the theories of Darwinism while belittling the words of latter-day Prophets of God." One wonders how he hung on to his job all those years! Of course the movie doesn't mention his career at BYU. More on that in a minute. The movie charges,
He has given this rationale for his rejection of the miracle of the flood: “Can one really fit ten million species onto a single ocean-going vessel, feed and care for them all with their often very restrictive diets or living conditions (many of which we are helpless to duplicate even with modern systems), and keep it all going with just eight people for an entire year? The answer, plainly, is no.”
I'll bet that's the least of the reasons Jeffery rejects a universal flood. (For more on the flood, see here.)
Toward the end, the movie starts to really lay it on thick. We are told that there are only two forces in this world (presumably good and evil). Then the law of witnesses is invoked along with woe pronounced against those who reject such witnesses. Speaking of witnesses, it's interesting to note how the power of General Authority quotes can be shaped by how they are introduced. "Elder so-and-so stated his opinion that..." doesn't quite pack the same puch as, "Elder so-and-so testified..." or "Elder so-and-so gave his witness..." So naturally, the movie describes the quotes with these terms.
There is no mention of more moderate sentiments expressed by Church leaders like David O. McKay, Heber J. Grant, Stephen L. Richards, James E. Talmage, or John A. Widtsoe, or even some of the allegedly hostile leaders, nor of the views expressed by such prominent Mormons as Henry Eyring. You also won't learn from the video that evolution is taught at BYU. Not only taught, but researched as well. These factors may or may not weigh heavily in how a person views evolution, and given the polemical agenda of the movie their absence is understandable. However, they do tend to undercut the implied message of the movie that the fate of your soul hangs in the balance based on your view of the science.
There is obviously some kind of affiliation between ZionVision and Brigham Young Academy.org (which, in case you are curious, is a sister to the Joseph Smith Academy.org, both of which are divisions of the Joseph Smith Foundation. None are affiliated with the Church.) They have compiled an impressive polemic of an FAQ on evolution, some of which contains exact passages from the movie. It's NDBF on steroids! (No relationship; I checked.) These folks are hard-core; they even call out FAIR (arguably the best LDS apologetic organization out there) and accuse it of mocking, ridiculing, and fighting against "the clear scriptural teachings and witnesses of the Prophets of God." Other honorees include Michael Ash, Steve Peck, and David Bailey. If they wanted to be thorough, they really should have included Hugh Nibley, too. (Yours truly somehow didn't make the list, in spite of almost six years of blogging. Do I have that little influence? I guess I can take some consolation that Mormons and Evolution, a group blog that I participated in for a while, is listed.)
Dealing With General Authority Statements
Although pronouncements by authorities do not determine the truth or falsity of a proposition (hence the logical fallacy), we look to the prophets and apostles as a source of truth, and their thoughts deserve consideration. This style of argumentation, where one is made to feel like s/he is rejecting the prophets, can therefore be quite difficult and frustrating to grapple with because, in its strongest form, there can be no counter-argument. Attempting to do so only validates the perception that you reject the prophets. And yet, we who defend science cannot remain silent or else the authoritarian bullies will be the only ones heard. So what can we do when confronted with such material? Here are a few suggestions to consider.
1. Recognize that these lists of General Authority statements are not merely intended to be informative. They are compiled in such a way as to give rhetorical advantage, and they are often embedded within an implied overarching narrative. Different statements could be strung together for a different effect (example). Consideration should be given to the full range of views expressed along with historical and cultural context. Resist efforts to reduce everything down to a simple black-and-white, good-and-evil story.
2. The cover letter to the BYU evolution packet, prepared in 1992 by the Board of Trustees (which includes the First Presidency), states: "Various views have been expressed by other Church leaders on this subject over many decades; however, formal statements by the First Presidency are the definitive source of official Church positions." Don't feel a need to reconcile every statement--even those by prophets.
3. When you dig below the surface of General Authority statements critical of evolution (or other science), it often turns out that they are actually defending some deeper principle such as the existence of God, morality, inspiration of scripture, etc. Be clear that you agree with the deeper principle.
4. Recognize that the zeal of the anti-evolution crusader is not reflected in the broader Church program. Many people who accept evolution serve as bishops and stake presidents, evolution is taught without apology in the science classes at Church schools, and Church-owned Deseret Book occasionally publishes books that are friendly--or at least moderate--toward evolution (eg. Mormon Scientist, Of Heaven and Earth, and Lenthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball).
5. Study and use the example of Henry Eyring. During his life he successfully navigated these waters and is still held in high esteem in LDS culture.
Posts
