By decree, we decided on Bones, Rocks and Stars by Chris Turney. I propose we start with this book on 13 July. Hopefully I’m not busy referring to myself in the plural.

It is a thin little book, 180 pages, but I’ll still carve it up into little bits: about 30 pages per blog post, which is two chapters, spread over six blog posts. What time frame this will be, I’m not sure. (Spread over six weeks?) It is my intention to write an intro blog post giving a brief overview of the contents of each section, then we can have discussions in the comments.

If I choose to write “independent” posts about the things we learned, I will do so after we’ve had our discussion. The purpose of such posts would be to have something to point other people to: future visitors of the blog that have not read the book. Such posts should provide a brief overview of the important bits to get people up to speed, but for more in-depth details, they would probably refer to either the book, or to our discussion, or to other useful material we identify. Rewriting the book would be silly. This “distillation into an overview” will certainly be a struggle, maybe our discussion can help hack out the important details.

13 July is a Monday. I’m open to shifting it to another day: would you prefer the end of the week? Publish on Friday mornings? We don’t need to rush the discussion… Whatever we decide in the comment thread below, the next post will be with the expectation that participants have read the introduction and the first two chapters: “The ever-changing calendar” and “A hero in a dark age”.

I’m taking two weeks’ vacation before then. The book will go with me, for the plane, the airport, or other idle moments. Thus, the “deadline” we choose really shouldn’t be making any whooshing sounds on my side…

Below are the strategies I could think of. Note that while Genesis (by names in various languages) forms part of many of the Abrahamic religions’ sacred texts, I am coming from a Christian angle, addressing primarily the Young-Earth Creationist strains.

Hypothesis: Satan Deceives!

Many that subscribe to a strong deity-dualism (namely God and Satan as two supernatural entities duking it out) consider lies as “belonging to Satan”. (Traditions with a more poetic understanding could say the same thing, but without a conscious entity actively bringing about deception, and a non-literal appreciation of the “poetry” in Genesis, will not have a problem anyway.)

So what is the problem with this hypothesis? The evidence contradicting the young earth view is everywhere. It is in the fossil record, in the cosmic background radiation, in our understanding of globular clusters and nuclear physics, in the speed of light, and the distances between galaxies… If all of creation is deceptive in that regard, and all deception is the work of Satan, this seems to indicate Satan is the creator. That would be in direct contradiction to the primary message of Genesis 1, the affirmation of Israel’s God as creator, author of fossils and stars. That is the primary message according to both literal and poetical readings.

(Scholarship indicates [citation needed] Genesis 1 was probably written during Israel’s exile in Babylon. During such times, when a tribe was defeated by another, the tribe’s identity, religion, faith in their deity, typically suffers. In that context, Genesis 1 is a defiant call to maintain tribal unity, religious identity, faith, through radical monotheism.)

Hypothesis: (a) the fossils are just there to Test Ya Faith! *or* (b) fossils et al provide an interesting back story

(a) Um, what’s with this hypothesis? Doesn’t this make God a liar, another thing that is explicitly contradictory with Christian theology? (Who can provide a reference to the verse that says God cannot lie?)

(b) Also known as “Last-Thursdayism”, there is nothing logically inconsistent with believing the world was created as-is last Thursday. The question, though, is why, if the universe has this interesting and consistent 14 billion year back story, should it be treated any differently to something that really is 14 billion years old? If you were created last Thursday with all your memories intact, does that really make any difference to your life, which you would live as though you are many years old?

The Wikipedia page on this, the Omphalos hypothesis, has some very interesting insights. I love controversial Rabbi Natan Slifkin’s response:

God essentially created two conflicting accounts of Creation: one in nature, and one in the Torah. How can it be determined which is the real story, and which is the fake designed to mislead us? One could equally propose that it is nature which presents the real story, and that the Torah was devised by God to test us with a fake history! One has to be able to rely on God’s truthfulness if religion is to function. Or, to put it another way—if God went to enormous lengths to convince us that the world is billions of years old, who are we to disagree?

Strategy: “there is no evidence of an old-earth!”

I’m not calling this one a hypothesis. This is a strategy, a choice for ignorance. For many stuck in conflict, this is actually the strategy I’d propose! If your religion is important to you, if you find real value in your religion, what difference does it make how old the earth is? Could you not choose ignorance, explicitly? Accept that you don’t know, and don’t care, and aren’t interested in discussing it? This may be a controversial statement for me to make, amongst my scientist friends, but there is of course an important side-effect I’m also aiming for: leave the debates and arguments to those that study these things.

Not that many strongly-convicted evangelicals would take me up on that offer, since they often perceive science as a threat to their belief system and detrimental to their evangelising. Of course, there is an opposite argument using the same rationale. Quoting the church father, St Augustine, whose theology laid foundations used by most Christians today, explained it as follows:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

– De Genesi ad literam 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]

(Taken from Wikipedia, here’s another translation.)

The much uglier version of the “choosing ignorance” path, in my opinion, is where the ignorance is outsourced to authority figures (like Adam blaming Eve for the apple ). This is the business model on which creationist organisations and websites like Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International (now creation.com, used to be creationontheweb.com) operate: they use “claims of authority” to win the trust of those with a strong authoritarian style of deciding what to believe. Deferring to authority lets you “escape” responsibility… Is it that much harder to simply say “I don’t know” and leave it be?

Alternatively, take the non-literal stance on Genesis 1-11

This makes most sense to me. (Naturally, I don’t read Genesis literally, that much should be clear. ) Of course, if the only thing that keeps you “believing” is the lack of acceptance of evolutionary theory, you will starting on a path to de-conversion. (Is it worthwhile to believe in a God that only exists on condition that evolution is impossible? Is that your God?) However, don’t let the Christian fundies or the atheists fool you, de-conversion is most certainly not your only choice!

You could read up on Theistic evolution. You could buy e.g. The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth, a book by evangelicals, maybe after reading the wonderful review on Exploring Our Matrix. Or you could go for some free ebooks by an online evangelical community — (1-4, 5).

Have an interesting conversation!

And feel free to ask! If you need some help or conversations to help you embrace more science in your worldview, I have a couple more references up my sleeve which I’ll customise to your needs as best I can, there are more “theistic evolutionists” hanging out here, and there’s my little network of friends, pastors and theologians that I could consult for advice on your behalf. We also have humanists, with varying amounts of secularity, if you find yourself or your worldview drowning in all the new info and need to chat to some people to help you find something to hold onto while the dust settles. (Dust and water, mixing my metaphors here? )

(There’s even one or two “Real Live PhD Scientists” that occasionally take part in discussions, to the detriment of their research!… because they also have a passion for education, for sharing knowledge. Of course, that doesn’t make them the authority figures to be obeyed, it just makes them the knowledgeable bunch that know what’s cutting: within their fields of study, they’re experts on the evidence and the tentative conclusions drawn from that evidence, by the process known as science…)

Additionally, I (we) will be starting our first attempt at a thinktoomuch.net book club in July. I (we) will be reading (and blogging and commenting on) Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened — this is much thinner than “The Bible, Rocks and Time”, but sticks to science and doesn’t cover Christian theological concerns.

BACK TO YOUR MAKER

Valued Visitor,

It is 2009, Darwin Year. Exactly a hundred and fifty years ago, scientist Charles Darwin published his seminal book “On the Origin of Species“, wherein he introduced the theory that the evolution of species is driven by natural selection. Darwin’s evolution theory departed from the then-reigning belief that God created the earth, with all her species, in six days. Consequently, even many Christians no longer believe the Biblical Creation story. However, one man from Urk [Ed: The Netherlands], Kees van Helden, together with a number of creationist organisations, want to blow new life into the Creation story.

This month about 6 million homes in The Netherlands received a one-sided [biased] pamphlet “Evolution or Creation” from the Actie Comité Schepping [literally: Action Committee Creation?] in their mailboxes. According to van Helden and his supporters [colleagues? friends? ilk?] Creationism deserves, in 2009, a serious place in Dutch society. These blogs are protesting against this 250,000 euro costing pamphlet-campaign.

This pamphlet is unwelcome in our homes, since we can think for ourselves just fine. In addition, we find it highly objectionable that a religious opinion is forced beyond our front doors. Our plan is thus: Send the pamphlet back to its creators [makers]! Let the religious fanatics know that they must stop with pushing their indoctrination into our homes.

On this site you can find an accompanying material to send with the pamphlet, written by the columnist Luuk Koelman. You’re welcome to modify the letter as you like, so that you can add your own message.
Show your support for this action by signing. If you have a website, place a banner that links to this site and let us know.

The wording of that site feels a bit more aggressive than I typically aim for in my blog posts these days. This post’s purpose is informational in nature, sharing some of the conflict also happening in Europe; the above is a (translated) quote. The friend that informed me of this, also provided a link to an annotated pamphlet (in Dutch) [pdf... Linux/Gnome users: the annotations don't seem to work in evince 2.22.2]

Bear in mind: 6 million homes is effectively all homes in The Netherlands, which has a population of ~16.5 million people. And I hear this is a relatively uncommon occurrence, the fundies there aren’t usually as in-your-face, and the “rationalists” don’t typically respond to provocation. But won’t it be fun if the person sending out the flyers/pamphlets were to receive even just… <thumb suck> five thousand returned copies? I’d love to see a photo of that!

For that reason, I will also not have time to attempt a similar treatment of the Noah’s Flood seminar, so instead I’m just providing a link to Auke’s transcript. (A friend pointed out she — if I correctly remember who it was — opposes the use of the word “seminar” for these things. I suppose I could rather call them “talks”?) Auke’s hope is that some scientists in relevant fields will be able to give a thorough response to such nonsense from their areas of expertise.

You may wonder: “does it really matter if some people take some mythological stories literally instead of metaphorically?” Well, imagine the potential impact when a science-denying creationist is appointed dean of a faculty of Natural Sciences at an otherwise excellent university. Even if he is able to keep his own beliefs out of the picture, it could affect e.g. funding decisions. So the fight for a good education continues, and we continue to hold thumbs for the appointing of a good dean. (Without taking a thumb-holding superstition seriously: it’s merely a figure of speech. M’kay? You got that?)

The previous CMI-in-Stellenbosch seminar was given in March this year, by Don Batten from Australia. I made eight posts in which I addressed every part of the seminar, thanks to the transcript provided by Auke. Below is the full index of my posts related to the seminar (copied from a previous post, dropping the fluff), followed by some discussion about Noah’s flood.

Posts Related to the Batten Seminar

• A Creationism Lunch Hour – the announcement.
• Creationists and Liars – a general piece about quote mining and two logical fallacies, things used in the talk
• Creationists Believe Lions Originally Ate Plants – bleh, I don’t think much of this post. Just me ranting about “no death before the fall”. Mostly written due to my frustration at fumbling questions at such seminars.
• Incorrect Creationist Calculation: Likelihood of Formation of a Particular Protein – A piece debunking Batten’s final calculation, his attempt at a “climactic end” for his seminar. Explains some of the probability elements of mutation and natural selection, i.e. evolution.
• Batten #1: “Defining” Evolution?
• Batten #2: Transitional Fossils and Quote Mining
• Batten #3: Science versus Wishful Thinking
• Batten #4: Intelligent Design and ATP Synthase
• Batten #5: Junk DNA, Vestigial Organs, Kinesin, Intelligent Design
• Batten #6: “Information”
• Batten #7: Natural Selection
• Batten #8: The Incorrect Calculation
• Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Matie – A letter by Kenneth and Maud, and an article by Ivanka van der Merwe.
• Batten Seminar Coverage in By

– Jurie van den Heever

• Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Burger

– Johannes de Villiers, Francis Collins

• More Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Matie – three letters: a creationist’s response to Kenneth and Maud’s original letter, and two letters responding to that one

Noah’s Flood

In preparation for the upcoming seminar, which may (or may not) deal with the flood…

In the Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Burger, Jurie van den Heever wrote about Noah’s Flood. Duplicating the relevant content here:

Despite Don Batten’s supposed “scientific” approach, in 2001 he wrote in an article in a creationist magazine where he claims all humans on earth, except Noah and the rest of the Ark-family, were wiped out in a flood approximately 4500 years ago.

The interesting thing about this is that the Egyptians that lived in the neighbourhood simply continued with their lives without noticing that they’re drowning in a flood. Also, the famous pyramids of Giza near Cairo that were completed approximately 500 years earlier, was left unharmed by the flood.

Other older inhabitants of the old Middle-East, for example the Babylonians, had the nerve to only record a local flood, wherein featured their own Noah and a much smaller ark.

Considering the Judaeans spent a particular period of time living in banishment in Babylon, and that the oppressed usually incorporate some elements of the oppressors’ life- and world-view into their own, this is likely the true source of the mythical flood and ark story in Genesis, irrespective of Don Batten’s declarations.

For in-depth detail on the flood story, I recommend taking a look at The Talk.Origins Archive: Flood Geology FAQs, in particular the first link, Problems with a Global Flood. For a quick reference to typical claims, see the Flood section of the Index to Creationist Claims (a wonderful resource by the way, certainly a nice collection to spend some of your procrastination time on).

Then there’s always Wikipedia’s entry on Noah’s Ark, which gives a decent overview on various traditions’ perspectives on the story, the history and present state of literal, metaphorical or mythological interpretations of the story.

The first, published in Die Matie on 9 April, in response to Kenneth Oberlander and Maud Bonato’s letter in the 19 March issue:

Evolution hardly ‘factual, observed, …tested’

THE POINTS listed by Kenneth Oberlander and Maud Bonato in their letter “Creationist’s message misleading” (Die Matie, 19/03) are really contestable.

They claim that genetics, physics and mathematics support evolution. Wow, where in physics and mathematics does one come across evolution? My husband is a theoretical physicist and not an evolutionist. Suddenly biologists tell us that all of science agrees with evolution! Yet the laws of thermodynamics are in direct competition with the ideas of evolution. The second law says that the universe tends to greater disorder (entropy), and that “in an isolated system, a process can only occur if it increases the total entropy of the system”. evolution requires the establishment of order.

Evolution claims that organisms started as perhaps a bubble in the ocean (Biology by Raven and Johnson) and over millions of years grew to the great complexity we see today. Thus immense order supposedly came from nothing! How can this be “factual, observed multiple times, tested, altered, expanded and tested again for over 150 years by thousands of scientists…”?

Kenneth and Maud state that evolution is a fact. They then go on to say that its theories have been tested. Is this not oxymoronic? A theory or model will stay that, and is not a fact.

One notable example where scientists have been wrong before is the idea that there is “junk” DNA in the human genome. It’s now been discovered that this “junk” has functions they just didn’t know about or understand.

Kenneth and Maud say Dr Don Batten may have been “actively deceptive” in his talk. I know about the hoax of the Piltdown man, where the archeologist Charles Dawson, in an attempt to prove human evolution, fused together a modern day human skull, orangutan jaw and chimpanzee fossil teeth to serve as the missing link. It was believed as science for over 40 years!

They also claim that the examples used by Batten contained “gross errors”. I was familiar with all the examples and state here that they were correct. it’s strange that Kenneth or Maud did not mention these “gross errors” at the talk.

They ask if Batten knows the religious beliefs of scientists, and then claim that they do, and that many scientists see their work on evolution as an attempt to glorify their respective Godheads.

Now is this true? According to a survey in the USA published in Nature, the statistic is that four out of ten scientists believe in God! What is the probability that this 40% are the evolutionists?

What the theory of evolution does do, is say that Genesis is not completely true, that God didn’t make man in one day, that he cannot just speak things into being.

The authors ask why we may be so scared to accept evolution. I feel no fear. Many evolutionists used the idea of evolution as a proof for there being no God. Is it not they who are afraid or unwilling to submit to a Creator? Evolution is supposed to be a chance happening, and does not require a Creator! Thank you, God, that I know You made me. I am from Adam, but I am in Jesus! Adam was not an ape! he was made in your image!

Tracy-Lee van der Ventel
Dept of Chemistry

To avoid confusion, it should be noted that Tracey-Lee is not a post-graduate student or staff member of the Department of Chemistry, but is currently an undergraduate student with a major in chemistry.

The following edition of Die Matie, published on 23 April, had two letters responding to Tracy-Lee’s letter. The first:

False science misused to influence masses

CERTAIN debates have been raging wildly in our campus newspaper. After taking a passive observer’s stance in the past, I have now reached a point where I feel the need to get some things off my chest. Let me place a disclaimer to fend off violent responses: My intent is neither to attack anyone’s opinions, nor to impose mine. Nonetheless, as an aspiring scientist I feel the obligation to point out one or two things.

In the letter “evolution hardly ‘factual, observed, … tested” (Die Matie, 09/04) Tracy-Lee van der Ventel writes: “the laws of thermodynamics are in direct competition with the ideas of evolution”.

From my limited exposure to the field of science I have learnt at least this: it is dangerous and possibly foolish to invoke or quote scientific laws which one does not fully understand.

As Van der Ventel points out quite correctly, the second law of thermodynamics describes the behaviour of entropy in a closed system. Two things should be noted. Firstly, a biological cell is hardly a closed system. It is in continuous interaction with its incredibly complex environment. Thus arguing that the evolution hypothesis is flawed on grounds of this particular thermodynamic law is entirely unreasonable.

Secondly, entropy is not exactly analogous to disorder. In fact there are systems where a more “ordered” structure is entropically favoured. The bottom line is that using the laws of thermodynamics to dispute the “order from disorder” aspect of evolution theory is scientifically false.

I’d like to share my perspective with you. One problem with this evolution versus creation debate is that people frequently misinterpret scientific laws, at times even misquoting them intentionally in order to sway the opinions of others. (I must state that I am not accusing Van der Ventel of doing the latter).

As an example I mention a particular series of pro-Creationist DVDs by “Dr” Kent Hovind, who, for instance, totally abuses the law of conservation of angular momentum to “prove” that the big bang theory is false.

As I have watched several of these videos, I have witnessed this phenomenon repeatedly. What infuriates me is not only that people often abuse science, but that they frequently succeed in influencing the opinions of the masses with false scientific arguments!

As tragic as this is, the explanation is simple: Humans are easily persuaded by “scientific” arguments which conveniently seem to lend credibility to their cause. They do not bother to question the reliability or motivation of these arguments! I agree whole-heartedly with Claude Bernard’s statement: “true science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.” The operative word here is “true”.

I perceive this entire debate to be approximately as useful as a third nipple, since it is not being handled in a rigorous manner. It angers me when people bastardise science, using it as leverage on people who do not understand it.

In addition I often wonder why creation and evolution are generally seen as being mutually exclusive. But I guess that that is to be expected, considering that lack of thought seems to be the entropically favoured state of mind.

Chris Rohwer

Chris Rohwer is busy with his Honours in theoretical physics.

The second was Maud and Kenneth’s reply:

THE RECENT letter protesting our critique of a misleading creationist presentation is emblematic of the ignorance about evolution among non-scientists. it is deeply saddening that such misrepresentations of evolution are still circulating among the general public, let alone among fellow members of the Faculty of natural Sciences. We feel compelled to correct these unsupported beliefs.

“Many parts of science don’t support evolution”: there is not a single discipline within science that is incongruent with the occurrence of evolution on this planet. Physics, chemistry, geology, palaeontology, astronomy; all are consistent with, if not actively supportive of, evolution.

“The second law of thermodynamics contradicts evolution”: this is an old favourite among anti-evolution fans. The law states that entropy cannot decrease in a closed system. What anti-evolutionists ignore is that the earth and living things are manifestly not closed systems. the small increase in order that represents life is massively offset by the entropy increase in the sun, so that the total entropy of the earth-sun system doesn’t decrease. raven and Johnson have an admirable description of this second law and evolution (page 430, 8th edition).

“Evolution can’t explain the origin of life”: Scientists don’t expect it to! the origin of life is conceptually and evidentially distinct from evolution. these are different subdisciplines of science. Unlike evolution, how life arose is still controversial. Despite multiple theories for the origin of life, the evidence currently does not overwhelmingly support any particular theory, including the “bubble” theory alluded to and grossly oversimplified by our critic.

“Science proves things”: this claim gets things backwards. Science deals in testing ideas (hypotheses) against reality. it does so by disproving these hypotheses against the data. Proofs are left to mathematicians. Science constantly self-criticizes and self-corrects hypotheses using evidence, which is why both “junk” DNA and “Piltdown Man” have been discredited, publically, by scientists. So much for hoaxes and secrets.

“Evolution is just a theory”: another favourite. evolution is both a fact and a theory. Evolution (defined as the change in organisms over time) has been observed; scientists have seen it happening. The theories of evolution account for how evolution has occurred. We use evolutionary theory to describe and test evolutionary fact. Our previous letter was perfectly consistent in this regard.

“Evolution is a chance event”: the worst misconception of the lot. No, no, no, a thousand times no! A major component of evolution, mutation, is indeed basically random. But evolution isn’t just mutation! Selection acts upon those mutations in a way that is the very opposite of chance. Selection winnows out unsuccessful mutations, and favours successful ones. That is the basic idea behind evolution.

It really is that simple.

Maud Bonato & Kenneth Oberlander
Department of Botany and Zoology

Maud is busy with a Ph.D. in behavioural ecology, and Kenneth Oberlander is busy with a Ph.D. in plant systematics.

An index to all my Batten-related posts can be found at Do Any Shofarians Care About Science?

Irrespective of whether creationism is true or false, I’d hope my series of posts on the Batten seminar could serve to demonstrate why Batten’s teachings are misleading and based on falsehoods. If you disagree, then go ahead and challenge the points I made. So far I have not received any responses in defence of Batten’s lecture.

Here is the complete series of Batten-related posts:

• A Creationism Lunch Hour – the announcement.
• Creationists and Liars – a general piece about quote mining and two logical fallacies, things used in the talk
• Creationists Believe Lions Originally Ate Plants – bleh, I don’t think much of this post. Just me ranting about “no death before the fall”. Mostly written due to my frustration at fumbling questions at such seminars.
• Incorrect Creationist Calculation: Likelihood of Formation of a Particular Protein – A piece debunking Batten’s final calculation, his attempt at a “climactic end” for his seminar. Explains some of the probability elements of mutation and natural selection, i.e. evolution.
• Batten #1: “Defining” Evolution?
• Batten #2: Transitional Fossils and Quote Mining
• Batten #3: Science versus Wishful Thinking
• Batten #4: Intelligent Design and ATP Synthase
• Batten #5: Junk DNA, Vestigial Organs, Kinesin, Intelligent Design
• Batten #6: “Information”
• Batten #7: Natural Selection
• Batten #8: The Incorrect Calculation
• Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Matie – A letter by Kenneth and Maud, and an article by Ivanka van der Merwe.
• Batten Seminar Coverage in By
• Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Burger
• More Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Matie – three letters: a creationist’s response to Kenneth and Maud’s original letter, and two letters responding to that one
• Future Post 2? – Future Posts will be made as necessary, this post will be updated to include the full series.

Such nonsense lectures are not limited to Batten. Gary Bates’ seminar last year was worse. Much worse. (OK, that depends on how you measure. There was less abuse of hard-to-grasp science, but more pure tripe.) I could give it the same treatment as Batten’s seminar, but would that really be of any use to anyone?

Now we have Shofar organising such seminars on Stellenbosch University campus. They associate themselves with tripe, they are evangelising ignorance. Shofar would do well to not get involved with such anti-science nonsense.

Also interesting to note, from Batten’s biography, it seems Batten does not believe in current day miracles:

I came to see, after considerable prayer and study, that evolution is really a belief system parading as science. It is an alternative religion designed to banish the creator God to the realm of abstract philosophy only.

It seems he believes that if you accept evolution, all that is left of God is abstract philosophy. Shofar, on the other hand, believes God makes himself known personally, performs miracles, etc. Is it necessary for them to associate themselves with CMI’s misleading and dishonest lectures? (And just for the record, he is wrong about evolution, it is not a belief system. But anyway, this post is not the place to discuss that.)

The point is this: whether creationism is true or not, false or misleading teachings should not be encouraged. I’d recommend Shofar stops inviting CMI creationists to give embarrassing lectures. The name of the person at Shofar who organises these talks is De Villiers. Would it be worthwhile to sit down with him and discuss these seminars in great depth, explaining why they are giving Shofar a bad name? If De Villiers stops organising such seminars, will someone else simply take over? De Villiers, if by any chance you end up reading this, what do you say?

Shofar’s theology is intimately connected to young-earth creationism. However, not all attendees and new members are expected to immediately accept the young earth viewpoint when they join. Obviously Shofar would want everyone to feel welcome there, and to attend regularly. Over time, they can then try to win them over to the unscientific viewpoint…

A Completely Crazy Wishful-Thinking Idea

I had an idea, that I think is completely silly. However, I thought I’d put it out here, and see if there’s anyone else that is interested in proving it isn’t silly…

My curiosity insists on wondering how many Shofarians care about science, and realise that accepting science makes it impossible to accept a young earth stance. I then wonder how many of these people would actually be prepared to stand up for what they believe, despite being a minority group that could feel oppression from their peers. (Sounds like early Christianity, does it not?) Thus…:

Never mind evolution and all that stuff, if you are a Shofarian and you know that the earth is much, much older than ten thousand years, with a most likely age of a couple of billion years, please consider joining the Facebook group: Members or attendees of Shofar that are not Young-Earth creationists.

What would be the point of that group? It would be to break down stereotypes. In particular, the stereotype of all Shofarians being anti-science young earthers. Hopefully it could make Shofar more aware that their congregation has diverse viewpoints, and ideally more aware that the seminars they are organising are nonsense. It can also create a support group for people that like being a member of the Shofar community, but want to point out that that does not mean they also reject science.

If such a group were to be successful, We’d have to hack out some ground rules: It must not be a place to debate the age of the earth. It must not be a place where “young-earth holier-than-thou, real Shofarians” come to try to convince the scientifically minded Shofarians to “get with the program”. Like Paul’s advice to the Thessalonians, to avoid being socially dislocated and “persecuted” by other Shofarians, I’d also have to advise such Shofarians to not make any waves. It would not be about fighting Shofar’s official position. After all, membership is subject to submission to authority on matters pertaining to church doctrine.

If it happens that, by taking a pro-science stance, you are forced to forfeit your membership, well, then we’ll have good reason for the creation of a support group for “persecuted” ex-Shofarians. Pick up your cross and carry it with pride.

The article starts out discussing Andrew Snelling. A few years ago, he gave a talk about his PhD research at the geology department at Stellenbosch University on a Friday, talking about a geological specimen a couple of thousand million years old. The following day he gave a talk in Table View titled “Dinosaurs in Genesis”, claiming the earth is only a few thousand years old, and that humans and dinosaurs existed together.

The wider implication of creationists’ claims are that science as a whole is incorrect, especially astronomers and physicists’ calculations of the age of stars and other heavenly bodies (which has nothing to do with biological evolution).

Snelling’s activities led to a condemning article by an Australian scientist, Will the Real Dr. Snelling Please Stand Up?

At the end of the first column, following further discussion of Dr Snelling’s dishonesty and cognitive dissonance, Van den Heever turns to Don Batten. He points out that his talk was full of misrepresentations and obvious errors.

Batten’s true colours began to show when a science student with fundamentalist leanings asking how he should react to lectures on evolution. Without a second thought, Batten suggested the Snelling method. The student was encouraged to remain silent about his anti-evolution attitude and simply give the desired answers in tests and exams, so that he can obtain his degree. Because the university is testing knowledge and not beliefs, he can simply ignore rational facts and believe what he wants. Again, cognitive dissonance.

A specific religious conviction is not needed for a career as researcher. What is important is a healthy curiosity and an ability to investigate the natural world in a rational way.

Other requirements include dedication and honesty. If you are dishonest enough to remain silent despite believing you’re busy with nonsense, you should rather consider changing careers. On the other hand, once you have your degree, you can also [manhaftig?] declare that you are a scientist (which you are not), that the creation account of Genesis is literally true (which it isn’t), and that consequently evolution is false (which it isn’t).

I particularly liked the ending of his letter/article:

Despite Don Batten’s supposed “scientific” approach, in 2001 he wrote in an article in a creationist magazine where he claims all humans on earth, except Noah and the rest of the Ark-family, were wiped out in a flood approximately 4500 years ago.

The interesting thing about this is that the Egyptians that lived in the neighbourhood simply continued with their lives without noticing that they’re drowning in a flood. Also, the famous pyramids of Giza near Cairo that were completed approximately 500 years earlier, was left unharmed by the flood.

Other older inhabitants of the old Middle-East, for example the Babylonians, had the nerve to only record a local flood, wherein featured their own Noah and a much smaller ark.

Considering the Judaeans spent a particular period of time living in banishment in Babylon, and that the oppressed usually incorporate some elements of the oppressors’ life- and world-view into their own, this is likely the true source of the mythical flood and ark story in Genesis, irrespective of Don Batten’s declarations.

Van den Heever draai nie doekies om nie…

So today, for thoroughness, I’m sharing an article published in the By on 15 March. The By is a weekly addendum (?) to Die Burger, possibly the biggest Afrikaans newspaper. (Correct me if I’m wrong?) To read it, you’d have to know Afrikaans, and have good eyesight to make out the letters on the “Large” size of the photo below:

If you have trouble reading it, you could encourage me to get a Pro flickr account, then you can see a higher resolution image that should be easier to read. Or alternatively I could split the photos into two halves, each viewable at 1024×768. Or you can just sit back and think “darn, I should subscribe to Die Burger”. (There, I plugged the newspaper, to soothe my ponderings about copyrights and uploading photos of it. Now I can also say that Die Burger just isn’t what it should be. The articles disappoint too often. In fact, sometimes, Die Burger simply sucks. But the By is cool…)

What was quite sweet, was that the previous two pages featured an article/interview with Dr Francis Collins, who is a famous religious scientist. Strong scientists with strong religious faiths, making strong statements against creationism and intelligent design, is much what the highly religious South Africa needs. Many simply won’t listen to science evangelists that are openly and publicly atheistic.

The Francis Collins interview:

Creationist’s message misleading

THE RECENT talk titled “Evolution – a Dark age for Science and Society?” by dr Don Batten is an example of a particularly worrying type of anti-science rhetoric.

We wish to respond to this dangerously misleading presentation’s message by mentioning four points, which should be relevant to all who attended and anyone who sees a conflict between science and religion:

1) Nearly every slide contained a gross scientific, logical or factual error. Worse, the talk was peppered with quotes from famous scientists who appear to slag evolution, without considering the context in which those quotes were made.

If this sounds contestable, please read a textbook on evolution, or the easily-accessible books by these authors. Most of them uniformly support evolutionary theory and such quotes should strike one as odd.

Batten twisted well-established concepts in genetics, physics and mathematics in an active attempt to undermine evolution, yet all these disciplines uniformly support it.

A completely random example: Yes, natural selection can and will decrease genetic diversity in dogs exposed to a new stimulus such as a cold environment, but it doesn’t generate that diversity – that’s the province of an entirely different mechanism: mutation. It is mutation that can lead to things like featherless chickens, long-haired dogs and variation among humans. Conflating natural selection and mutation in such a way is either deeply ignorant or actively deceptive.

2) Evolution is a fact. It has been observed multiple times. The theories about evolutionary change have been tested, altered, expanded and tested again for over 150 years by thousands of scientists from a variety of cultures and religions, yet the core concepts of evolution have never been disproven.

3) Batten argued that evolutionary theory led to the great ills of our times, including that usual gem: Hitler! Hitler misunderstood the concept and used it to justify his own megalomania. how is that relevant to the truth claims of evolution?

Of course the world was utopia before the publication of the Origin of Species. Try living without domesticated crops and animal foodstuffs, vaccination, biological control over pests and diseases or without the joy of pets and gardens. These all involve organisms modified by human-induced evolutionary mechanisms. Utopia?!

4) More than once, Batten referred to some shadowy Illuminati-type cabal of scientists (invariably atheist) who are “trying to take over the world” and are responsible for the social and moral decline that inevitably accompany evolution, leading us straight to Armageddon.

Does Batten know the actual religious beliefs of scientists? Many scientists are highly religious and see their work on evolution as an attempt to glorify their respective Godheads. The majority of Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and members of other major religions have no problem with evolution.

Why is Batten so scared of a human discipline that, by its very admission, cannot judge on the existence of God?

KENNETH OBERLANDER AND MAUD BONATO
Dept of Botany and Zoology

There was also an article on page five:

Creationist hosted by Shofar Church
Ivanka van der Merwe

DR DON Batten, a creationist research­ scientist, gave an interesting and controversial
speech about creation and evolution in a packed Sanlam Hall last week Wednesday.

Batten, who holds a PhD in Plant Physiology and works for the Creation Ministries International in Australia, was hosted by Shofar Christian Church. Flyers around campus proclaimed that his speech, titled “Evolution – A Dark Age for Science and Society?”, would hold “solid answers for the real world!”

He began his presentation with the famous Gerald Massey quote, “They must find it difficult … those who have taken authority as the truth rather than truth as the authority.” He subsequently criticised schooling systems for teaching the theory of evolution “as if it were factual”.

He said, “Dating techniques rely on assumptions about the past that you cannot prove and are thus unreliable as you can do experiments on the present but you can’t do an experiment on the past.” He said anyone who claims evolution is the truth is “simply daydreaming about the past.”

Batten used many examples to illustrate his views on creationism, especially man-made marvels such as Mount Rushmore in the USA. He compared them to biological things we take for granted – DNA or the seemingly “simple” nucleotide ATP, which functions as an energy transporter within cells.

He then asked why, if we can attribute an unknown intelligent designer to the former, would it be so unreasonable to attribute such a designer to the latter, a far more complex thing?

Although he produced many arguments against the theory of evolution, Batten failed to back them up consistently with scientific evidence. Flyers advertised that he would answer the questions “If God is love, why do bad things happen?” and “What’s the point of life anyway?” along with many other that he simply never mentioned in his speech.

Although he is a scientist, Batten did not operate strictly according to the scientific method, which entails (amongst others) that one aims to replace current theories with newer, better ones. His talk focused on denouncing evolutionary theory, yet he mentioned very little about how an alternative theory might look.

Many of his arguments relied on creating reasonable doubt and then presenting that as evidence. He concluded that due to the complexity of even the simplest of cells, it is “the height of wishful thinking to think that natural processes produced life” and made the controversial statement that “evolution is anti-science”.

He did not go on to back up these statements with empirical evidence.

At the end of the speech there was an opportunity for the audience to ask questions, which Batten answered one by one and in straightforward terms.

When asked what intention God could have had in creating dinosaurs (since Christianity is a teleological religion, God must have known that they would die out), Batten responded that God created them as an expression of His supreme presence “for all to marvel at”.

In a further question about where the dinosaurs fit in on the 6000 year time-scale adhered to under Creationism, he explained, “Humans did live together with dinosaurs and there had been sightings in the past, but people referred to them as ‘dragons’ at that time.”

Batten has been involved with the Creation Science Foundation in Brisbane since 1994 and has coauthored books like “15 Reasons to Take Genesis as History”. The literature on sale after the speech attracted a very interested crowd.

That is a pretty sweet article from a journalistic perspective, touching on motives, emphasizing empirical evidence and the lack thereof in the seminar, and discrepancies between the advertising for the seminar and the seminar itself.

And yet, one wonders whether publicity is a good thing or a bad thing for these people. Fundies love publicity and controversy. They typically think that means they are battling the forces of evil, fighting them around every turn. It reinforces their belief that only they are right, and everyone else is deluded: newspapers, universities, scientists…

Not that there’s much you can do for fundies without an extraordinary amount of effort. It’s the fundie-leaning (but not quite fundie yet) people that I’d be careful about. That’s the kind that PZ and Dawkins may end up pushing over the edge, potentially polarizing the landscape further.

Whether that’s good or bad, would depend on the size of each of the groups in question.

UPDATE: What happens when you don’t research your claims properly? The “Expelled” movie is finding out. By using the “Hitler was inspired by evolution” angle, they opened a whole can of worms, big fat juicy worms, long slim slimey ones… Skeptico takes them to task, picking apart the nutritional value of this particular can: Evolution Not Responsible for Hitler.

Now here is the piece that I explained in Incorrect Creationist Calculation: Likelihood of Formation of a Particular Protein. Please go read that to see why this calculation is hogwash:

Well, someone says, well, given enough time, anything’s possible? That’s the usual argument, isn’t it? Probably running out of time for doing all that because I want to leave some time for some questions, um, the um, but let’s let me just show you quickly, um, how much time would you like, 14 billion years? If there are 10^80 atoms in the universe, how many experiments are possible?

Well lets assume every atom is an experiment. Is that enough experiments for you? Every atom in the universe is an experiment, over every millisecond of 14 billion years, is that enough experiments? Of course, that’s totally unrealistic, there can’t be that many, but just just for the sake of the exercise, given enough time, anything is possible.

OK, that’s, if you want to check that maths, and you’ll have to use logs unless your calculator does powers to power of a 100, 4.4 x 10^100 experiments, that’s a few experiments. OK, look at one protein by chance. One average protein, say 300 amino acids, which is probably understating it but lets say 300, assume there are only 20 amino acids present, 20 different ones, actually stacks of them, hundreds of them, but only 20 different ones available, which is impossible to get by natural processes, but let’s humour the evolutionary story by assuming they only had 20 different ones, and the right ones there, assume they are all optically pure, which you can’t get by natural processes without enzymes, we don’t yet have enzymes remember. Assume they amine bonds without enzymes which they won’t, but lets make all these assumptions favourable for formation of one protein. How many possibilities are there? 10 to the power of 390. How many experiments do we have? 10 to the power of 100. We’re a long way short of having any possibility of getting even one protein, even with that wholly unrealistic scenario. Folks, it is the height of wishful thinking to suggest that natural processes produced any protein, let alone life, let alone the complexity of life that we see in the world today. You can talk about whatever evolutionary process you like. Natural processes will not produce the incredible information we see in living things.

Invalid arguments. Now he wraps up his talk with silly claim reversals:

[43:34] I would submit, this. People say, how can you be a scientist and be a Christian? I would say, how can you be a scientist and not be a Christian.

Suppose one does believe there’s some guiding hand of some sort… how does one specifically jump to Christianity, exactly?

The truth of the matter is rather the question: how can you be a scientist and not be awed by the universe? From there, you get something like Einsteinian religion, which I do believe to be rather common amongst scientists.

In fact, look at this vase of flowers. No-one would suggest that the vase made itself, but we are told that the flowers in the vase, which are far more complex, did.

No one suggests flowers made themselves, they suggest flowers evolved though. The reason flowers can evolve and vases cannot, is because the vase is not alive.

Dja.. The Bible says in Romans chapter 1 verse 20, for the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, that is god, being understood by the things that are made, in his eternal power and godhead, so they, that is we, are without excuse.

We are without excuse when it comes to a sense of awe at the majesty of the universe. Humans find it hard to relate to something that is not human, so we personify things. Many of us direct our awe and thankfulness about this remarkable existence towards a personified idea of something greater, and we call this “God”. It is beautiful, and it is poetic. God is the great big poet, the artist, the very idea… Creationists like Dr Batten worship the God of the Gaps. About that god, I’m also an atheist. My God is bigger than that.

Why don’t people accept that? Because it requires if god owns us, if god made us, he owns us, if god owns us, we’re accountable to him and therefore, we cannot possibly accept that there is a creator.

Another sweet piece to quote mine.

Dr Batten claims atheists are atheists because they don’t want to be held accountable. There are enough atheists reading this blog that can thoroughly debunk that claim. Feel free to have a go at it, but try to keep it concise.

However, Romans 1:20 still doesn’t have anything to do with whether evolution is true or not.

In fact, C S Lewis said…, this, C S Lewis was an atheist who became a Christian, and he said this, he said

“Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism which permeates our University environment depend not on positive evidence, but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice? Was it devised not to get facts in, get in facts, but to keep out god?”

CS Lewis accepted science, an old earth, and I’m pretty sure he accepted evolution, based on my impressions of Mere Christianity.

I’ll leave it open to questions.

I’m not tackling the questions, I’m tired, and I’m going on holiday. (Actually, by the time this is published, six days from now, I’ll already be on holiday.) Or maybe I’m just embarrassed about how I fumble questions when confronting creationists. I mentioned that briefly in Creationists Believe Lions Originally Ate Plants.

You know, if you got a mutation that put feathers on reptiles, which is supposed to have happened in the past, that would be impressive evidence for evolution. But you don’t find those sorts of mutations.
In fact, Carl Sagan, who was an evolutionist until he died, said,
“mutations occur at random and are almost uniformly harmful – it is rare that a precision machine is improved by a random change in the instructions for making it.”
Yet, he was an atheist, so he had to believe that evolution worked.

Dr Batten still has his causality mixed up. All evolutionary scientists, including the religious ones, know that mutations are “almost uniformly harmful”. Almost. But natural selection, excuse me while I repeat myself, natural selection selects for the beneficial mutations, and filters out the harmful ones. Carl Sagan didn’t believe in evolution because he’s an atheist, just like Francis Collins doesn’t believe in evolution as a result of atheism (he’s a Christian). However, if you are arguing that God only exists if evolution is false, you’re busy arguing for atheism. Creationism is thus a force for atheism.

Please see the Index for Creationist Claims: CA602. Evolution is atheistic, which points out:

Anyone worried about atheism should be more concerned about creationism. Creationism can lead to a crisis of faith when people discover that its claims are false and its tactics frequently dishonest. This has led some people to abandon religion altogether (Greene n.d.). It has led others to a qualitatively different understanding of Christianity (Morton 2000).

[35:57] Dr Lee Spetner, was a information bio a bioinformatics expert, that’s on how to store all the biological information and deal with it, and he studied at Johns Hopkins University, he said
“All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not increase it…”
It’s going in the wrong direction. You can get dogs with mutations which create all sorts of varieties but they are mutant dogs. You can get mutant bacteria which are antibiotic resistance, for example, but its due to loss of control in enzymes production, its due to a loss of a cell <..> transport function. Or its due to transfer of DNA from other species that already have it.

*sigh*, this is getting monotonous. We already have Dr Batten admitting that some mutations are beneficial, but then he continues burying it in this tripe.

[36:45] What about natural selection? Does it help? Well, natural selection doesn’t create any information, it just sorts it out.

Exactly! But now watch as he trots out further misunderstandings of evolution. Let me remind you of the definition (that he didn’t give): Evolution occurs when these heritable differences become more common or rare in a population. The key here, is that we are talking about a population of a particular species, not one or two individuals. Watch:

But let’s have a look at this. Uh, we have these two friendly looking wolves here, dogs, bears, whatever you like {laughter} but uh these little red things here represent the genes, the pair of genes, that determine hair length. So I’ve drawn them here with uh one .. one here produces long hair, this one produces short hair, of course they look nothing like this but it makes it easier to understand. Uh and uh of course with recombination, which evolutionists often say helps evolution, uh you can get uhm different combinations of these genes, up to 20 thousands pairs of genes, but only a couple of pair perhaps determine hair length, and this one here says make long hair, .. make short hair, if you’re a geneticist these are co-dominant, if you’re not a geneticist I didn’t say anything {laughter} and so we get a combination of a short-haired gene and a short-haired gene, from mum and dad, and you get shorter hair than the parents. Now Darwin saw that sort of variation and thought that was evolution in action, because you had something present here that’s not present in the parents. New information – wonderful! But in fact, Mendel, the creationist, geneticist, showed that in fact the genes were already present in the parents, there’s no new information involved. So Darwin was confused by that. And then you can get genes just like mum and dad, the same combination as mum and dad, which gives you medium length hair. And then you can take the two long-haired genes can get together and you get a longer-haired wolf {laughter} And then of course you get ice age where <...> at high latitude and cold air you’re better adapted with long hair, the ones with the short and medium length hair get killed off in the cold and so then we only we’re only left with the long haired wolves and they can reproduce and they can only produce long-haired offspring and you have a variety of wolf, or a species of wolf, which is adapted to cold conditions. But you lost the gene for short hair. In fact, natural selection gets rids of genes. So mutations destroy the information, and natural selection destroys the information. They’re the two heroes of the plot.

What Batten does here, is explain why you need a big population to get a good, viable gene pool. Only two specimens begs for all sorts of problems. And yet, Batten et al argue for a literal world-wide flood, with Noah’s ark having only two specimens of each species on board. Doesn’t that boggle the mind? I’m hoping someone else will give a more in-depth break-down in the comments of the problems in this paragraph.

[39:05] Somebody will say, what about genetic drift? Well, genetic drift is a lot of hand-waiving, uh, based on probabilities. But it doesn’t explain the origin of complex biological information. Genetic drift can be a factor in small populations, but the trouble is with small populations is the probability of getting any mutations to do the right thing are even less than a big population, if you got a big population then you increase the chances of getting a mutation that does the right thing, then genetic drift doesn’t work. So, uh, there’s a bit of a problem for the whole scenario.

It sounds like Dr Batten is arguing for Gould’s punctuated equilibrium here: relative evolutionary stability, until a change in the evolutionary landscape causes a period of more intense natural selection.

Uh, so, we get lots of genes. So you get varieties of people, varieties of frogs, horses, things, but you don’t get things changing one into the other. Its just like the Bible says, in Genesis chapter 1, god made different kinds of things to reproduce after their kind. So as George Gable Miklos, uh an evolutionist said,
“We can go on examining natural variation at all levels … as well as hypothesising about speciation events in bed bugs, bears and brachiopods until the planet reaches oblivion, but we still only end up with bed bugs, brachiopods and bears. None of these body plans will transform into rotifers, roundworms or rhynchocoels.”
Whatever rhynchocoels are, you might say.

If someone wants to look for context for this mined quote, Dr Batten cites “George L. Gabor Miklos, ‘Emergence of organisational complexities during metazoan evolution: perspectives from molecular biology, palaeontology and neo-Darwinism’, Mem. Assoc. Australas. Palaeontols15, 1993, p. 25.”

40:19 It’s like this. The evolutionary story is there’s a big tree, going back to a common ancestor of all living things that made itself in a warm pond on Earth or by some other mechanism. And in biology classes they caricature what creationists believe by saying, “We believe that God created everything just as you see it today back in the beginning”, which is a lie.

You have to commend Dr Batten for having the balls to make that quip about caricatures of creationist beliefs, after what he’s been up to in this seminar. Sheesh…

So you’ve got this creationist <..> caricature idea, um, but in fact creationist biologists believe that God created different basic kinds of animals and plants which are capable of adapting to different environments, and so you have variation within a kind, you have speciation within a basic kind. The kind is usually at the level of family. And so studies of mutations, natural selection, and things, work well at that level. But go beyond that, they don’t work.

More statements, but of course, still no proof. And we’re approaching the end of the main body of the seminar. Quote mining “evolutionists” does not count as evidence.

[28:58] I want to show you why evolution is an impossible process. Here we have a bacterium, and if your going to specify a bacterium, you’d need about one book of information written on the DNA to specify a bacterium, a simplest bacterium, very complex coded information but about one book of information.

But if your going to change a microbe into say a horse or a human, you have to add stacks of information. A horse, how much, well, perhaps a thousand books. Humans? I’ll mention that in a minute.

What do I mean by information, though? Information specifies something.

You see, you look at a pile of sand, and that’s complex. If you’re going to describe that uh pile of sand in detail, it would take an enormous amount of information in the sense of describing the shape and uh position of every sand grain. Now that is complexity. But its not specified complexity, because it doesn’t say anything, it doesn’t specify anything, it doesn’t stand for anything. There’s nothing about the pile of sand which which suggests that its other than a natural thing. Except that its a cone, that might suggest that somebody was responsible for pouring it out <..> in a heap. But other than that, it doesn’t say much at all.

But if you look at a silicon chip, which you make from sand, and you look at the pattern on a computer chip, there’s something about that specifies something which is not intrinsic to silicon. Silicon doesn’t arrange itself into that pattern. It has to be imposed upon it by intelligence. It stands for something which is actually over and above the silicon.

[30:49] You think about language for example. And I know its probably most of you speak Afrikaans I’m afraid my knowledge of Afrikaans is fairly limited. But let’s stick to English.

“She has an automobile” has 21 letters in English, including the spaces. And in Shannon information, which evolutionists like to talk about like Ri-Richard Dawkins, that’s 85 bits and but the specificity or meaning of this sentence is fairly low because and but its even lower if we randomise the letters, So we randomise the letters, we still have 21 letters, we still have 85 bits of Shannon information, but zero specificity, because it means nothings.

Now he trots into a big discussion of Shannon information. Having not yet read books that talk about it in the evolutionary context, I’m not quite sure what he’s trying to prove here… However, he is also wrong. Human language is not a very good metaphor for information. The information referred to, has nothing to do with human meaning. We’re talking a very formal definition of “information” here.

Sticking with the formal definition, “She has an automobile” is information. It is a collection of letters, it can be represented by a particular collection of bits. To describe “aioeho aSuh stenm lba” does require the same amount of “information”, and it is still very specific. It is “aioeho aSuh stenm lba”, after all.

Where he confuses the audience, and is probably confused himself, is with how humans assign meaning to a particular piece of “information”. To the information, the collection of letters “automobile”, we assign the same meaning as to the information “car”. This says more about human language than it does about formal information and the impact of random shuffling.

Now on to the rest of this seemingly meaningless rhetoric:

We can go further and say, “She has a red automobile.” Now we’ve actually added a bit of specificity, haven’t we? Not just an automobile, but it’s a red one. So we’ve increased the specificity, higher specificity, higher meaning, uh Shannon information now 97, well it’s gone up, so it’s the right direction, the number of letters is 24. So the evolutionists have argued, there you are, see Shannon information measures information.

Shannon information, by the way, is it was devised a concept devised to determine uh what was the minimum number of bits required to transmit information electronically. That’s the idea. And uh but if you look at this, “She has a red Porsche” – who’d like to own a red Porsche? Ah, the’re only a few, uhm, you have 21 letters, same as up here, but you have a lot more information, because you specified its red and you specified which what sort of automobile, so its the highest amount of information, but its still the same Shannon information. See, Shannon doesn’t measure actual specificity of complex complex information at all, of specified complexity.

And “She has a car” that’s actually less letters than here, 13, less Shannon information, but it actually is the same amount of information as the first sentence here. So in fact Shannon information doesn’t measure information, so don’t let people fool you with that.

What we’re talking about is specificity, the more specificity, the more information there is. Well, how much information in the human DNA because the human DNA DNA specifies the order of the amino acids on the proteins. And not only that, it specifies the sequence of events during embryo development, and much else that we’re yet to discover. We have the equivalent by the way information is independent of the carrier or the medium, so you can write information on paper, you can write it in CD, you can write it on a flash drive, there are all sorts of ways in which you can store information, it’s independent of the medium. Like you can take the DNA information, you can store it electronically, you can store it in books, uh, its information, independent of the medium, there’s nothing about the DNA that assembles itself into information, its independent of the DNA, uh the chemistry of it.

He is still incorrectly referring to the functional value of particular sequences in DNA as “information”. The functional value of DNA is very directly connected to the information they contain, whereas the way we assign meaning to words is much more loose, more arbitrary. The metaphor would be suggesting that there exists a protein defined by a longer DNA sequence (automobile), that can be functionally identical to a protein that’s a third as long (car). Even if you could find proteins that serve similar functions (or enzymes, e.g. simpler or more complex ATP synthase), they are still not functionally identical. They still do not contain the same information. In particular, they do not have the same mutating potential…

(The whole idea of comparing the usefulness of a particular gene sequence to human language, is preposterous.)

[33:51] Uhm, How much information in a human? We’re talking about a thousand books, a wonderful achievement of modern science to decode the human DNA. Well how do we get from one book in a bacterium, to a thousand books in a human? Well they say the mutations created all the new information.

Misleading.

As I understand it, for formal definitions of information, a mutation does indeed create new information. This “new information” is not necessarily useful though. It is the process of natural selection that filters out the useful information from the worthless information. Or in Batten’s terminology, I suppose you could say it is natural selection that selects for “specificity”.

Typical creationist tactics separate mutation and natural selection, while the pair form an “irreducibly complex” system in the context of evolution. By breaking them apart, creationists deceive their audience with a straw man misrepresentation of evolution.

What are they? They’re copying mistakes when you copy the information from one generation to the next. Now you’d expect copying mistakes to actually wreck the information, that’s what they do. In fact, here’s an example of a mutant, a TNR mutant, this is very technical, for you art students, its “totally naked rooster” {laughter} A mutation in the information to make the feathers results in a rooster that can’t make feathers. Now mutations are good at doing that sort of stuff. In fact there’s a whole there’s a website devoted to the mutations that cause human disease. There are over ten thousand mutations that are known to cause human disease, things like cystic fibrosis, and haemophilia, and stacks of others. Mutations cause disease. They wreck the information. Now, evolution doesn’t need mutations to wreck things, it needs mutations to create things, to add 999 books of information to a bacterium to make it into a human. But mutations don’t create that sort of information, they wreck it. Sometimes, they are beneficial, but they wreck the information.

Now what does “wrecking information” mean? This demonstrates what happens when you use and think with incorrect metaphors. Yes, the majority of mutations may be harmful, but Dr Batten agrees that there are beneficial mutations. So how do beneficial mutations “wreck” the information? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s illogical and preposterous. And again, these beneficial mutations are selected for through the process of natural selection.

A Japanese scientist suggested this was a rotary motor and he was scoffed at by the establishment, the scientific establishment. Why was he scoffed at? Because they said it couldn’t evolve. A rotary motor couldn’t evolve, therefore its not a rotary motor. This is why I believe evolution is actually anti-science.

[20:47] In fact, evolutionists also said, years ago, that no more than 1 or 2 percent of the human DNA could be functional, because even with their best possible scenarios, the best possible assumptions, they couldn’t account for more than 1 or 2 percent of the functional DNA. So <198> 98 or 99 percent of the human DNA must be junk.

And this was believed for many years, and impeded the understanding of this so-called junk DNA. Well, when people started investigating cancer and various genetic diseases and so on, have started to find that mutations in the so-called junk actually cause disease. And little bit by little bit, people started to realize that the junk wasn’t junk after all, and bit by bit, more and more of it started to realize, more and more people started to realize that it wasn’t junk.

In fact, a big project, called the encode project, published ah a lot in the last six months, shows that 90 percent of the so-called junk DNA is functional. So what’s this say about the evolutionary reasoning that said it’s junk? In fact, evolution is anti-science.

No, it says that the people that claimed it has no function was wrong, it doesn’t say evolution is wrong.

[22:03] Going back earlier, we had 150 uhm so-called vestigial organs, left-overs of evolution. Yeah, you probably heard in biology class that your tonsils are a left-over of evolution, or your appendix is a left-over of evolution. This is absolute rubbish. It doesn’t even fit an evolutionary pattern. But this is the idea… they had 150 organs which were supposed to be left-overs of evolution, and that impeded research into what they did. Things like the thymus gland, when.. oh, you don’t need this, we’ll take it out, the person died, woops, its important. {laughter}

That still doesn’t have anything to do with whether evolution is correct or not.

[22:44] Well also have not only linear motors but oh sorry not only rotary motors but linear motors. This is kinesin, this is on the Harvard Medical School website, and you can look up the Inner Life of the Cell animation, its about six minutes the full one, go and watch it, and ask yourself, is this something that you expect to rise arise by natural processes, or does this speak of intelligent design? In fact, this is made up of about 300 amino acids and it walks along road networks inside your cells, made of microtubules. This needs one ATP ah molecule for each step, and each step is 8 nanometres. So its 125 thousand steps for a millimetre. It drags this big bag behind it. What’s the bag? It’s a bag of proteins. That bag of proteins is assembled in the Golgi apparatus. When I was a student, an undergraduate student at <..> University Golgi apparatus no one had any idea what it did, it was just this sort of funny folds in the cell when you looked at it under <..> under a electron microscope. But in fact, Golgi apparatus assembles these bags of proteins and puts a label on them which says take this to a particular destination. This guys like the postman doing a delivery, or a stevedore. And all this just made itself by natural processes.

Absolutely stunning and remarkable, isn’t it?

Folks, it defies logic. It defies logic. How did this come about by some step-wise process, to use a pun. It had to be all functional for it to be working. And it had to run the right run the right direction. I mean, if its sortof woops I’m going the wrong direction it’s not gonna help much, is it?

Many things in science defies logic, yes. That doesn’t make it wrong. God also defies logic, y’know? Does that make God wrong?

(This section referred to a 3D computer animation of cellular mechanics. As an artificial representation, I think it served as a bit of a straw man. The real molecular mechanics look a lot more messy, don’t they?)

So, in fact when you look at living cells, you find that func function after function after function requires whole suites of proteins, enzymes, all working together. You take one part of it out, it doesn’t work. There’s no step-wise process by which you can get one of the proteins, let alone all of them, working together. Things like ah apoptosis, by which you get fingers uh in the embryo. You form a plate, and then apoptosis, death of the cells in-between the fingers, results in the fingers being separate, toes begin separate. But apoptosis is also involved in avoiding cancer, when cells go haywire, our bodies, normal bodies, have a way of detecting they gone haywire and they self-destruct. They send up a flag and say, I’m out of control, get rid of me {laughter} And uh and the killer T-cells, and all that incredible complex uh immune system, that actually keeps us healthy, if you have mutations, in one of the several different uh systems involved there, you can end up getting cancer. Cancer is an indication, in fact, that you have something wrong with your systems which eradicate cancer.

He was doing well, until he made a sweeping statement: there’s no step-wise process by which…. Really? How does he know? And if someone like Richard Dawkins explains a step-wise process by which this could happen, would he admit he was wrong? (Nope, I doubt it. He generates income from spreading evolution denial.)

Uh, blood clotting, a whole suite of different things required. Protein synthesis, incredibly complex, about a 100 different proteins, enzymes, involved in manufacturing proteins. Cell division itself, requires incredible suite, just mind boggling, numbers of things involved. And of course reproduction, the simplest cell is not simple. Its far more complex than the most complex machine mankind has ever made.
Sometimes, there’s candour amongst uh evolutionary scientists, about the difficulties in explaining these things. Just sometimes. Very rarely at university undergraduate courses, because they’re interested in making you making sure you believe the status quo, generally speaking. Of course, university is supposed to be about critical thinking skills and questioning and things like that, but in fact if you question, in most courses, you get marked down, not rewarded, specially if you question the materialistic status quo.

In undergraduate courses, students are introduced to the stuff that is generally accepted. The difficult to explain stuff is the cutting edge research that you do in postgraduate work. Dr Batten, if you try to associate your seminar with critical thinking skills, you are gravely mistaken.

But here’s a statement by Franklin Harold, The Way of the Cell, he’s an evolutionist, and he said

“we should reject as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design, for the dialogue of chance and necessity, evolution. We must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

A quote mine. This is a quote mine made to imply evolutionists are unfairly biased against Intelligent Design, when it is actually stating the basic principles of science. Yes, Intelligent Design is rejected as a matter of principle, because it cannot be investigated scientifically. We have covered this already. See the whole Intelligent Design section of the Index to Creationist Claims.

But we are told at university that evolution is a fact. That only an idiot, an uneducated idiot, like a creationist, like Dr Batten, would think otherwise.

Ooh, it is oh so tempting to quote mine that statement.

[27:20] Here’s another statement, Scott Todd, Kansas State University.

“Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”

Who decided that science can only speak of naturalistic things? The atheist decided that, that’s who.

Wrong.

Well, we see there’s plenty of evidence that scientists <..> accept design where it suits them. But what about biology? Uh-uh. Not allowed to have design. No intelligence allowed in biology. No, no, never. Why? Because the intelligent designer for biology must be super natural. Not just a human. Not just a little green men. But someone far beyond our capacity is involved in <...> the designing of life, its incredibly complicated, incredibly complex.

We’ve covered this. If the supernatural is supposed to be scientifically testable, as in, potentially disprovable. Please tell me how you would go about testing, in an attempt to disprove, God’s influence in creation?

So science, what is it? Is science the search for naturalistic explanations, or is it the search for logical explanations? I would suggest that a creationist, someone who believes there is a creator, actually has a much more open mind than a materialist. Because we are allowed to follow the data wherever it leads. If it leads to the idea there is an intelligent designer behind something, we can recognize that. If it says that natural natural things are responsible for it, we can recognize that. But an atheist can only allow there to be natural processes. Its a closed mind, in fact.

Science is the search for empirically testable facts, not the search for easy answers easily grasped by limited minds. Quantum physics is in no way logical, for example, but it is testable. Batten seems to be worshipping the God of the Gaps.

I don’t feel like stooping to the level of arguing about closed and open minds right now. Maybe I should just leave you with a thought: An excessively open mind is effectively a closed mind, because it is closed to any element of uncertainty. The open/closed idea forms a circle. (I don’t much like Dawkins’ linear model, whereby he argues that your mind shouldn’t be so open that your brains fall out. It’s too black-and-white, too linear for my tastes.)

[11:13] Well what about biology, we got a lot of a lot of biological science is experimental science, but there’s a whole element of it that’s historical science, that’s the whole evolutionary idea that everything made itself over millions of years. But what about real biology? Living things that we studied, and things that I’ve studied? Is there design or evidence that they are made by an intelligent designer? Or is the evidence consistent that they are made by uh natural processes?

Well, Richard Dawkins says, that uhm

“biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having being designed for a purpose.”

Well, Richard Dawkins has written several books, quite a few books, trying to explain away the design that we see, try and explain how natural processes could produce things that look like they were designed.

Richard Dawkins has written several books trying to explain evolutionary theory to those who are not experts in the field. These explanations are either good enough, or not good enough. If they’re not good enough, explain why they’re not good enough, rather than doing this:

But perhaps a good scientific approach would be to suggest, that because they look like they were designed, maybe they were designed. Maybe we don’t shouldn’t be trying to explain away design, but recognize it and deal with it.

Perhaps a good scientific approach would be to suggest, that because it looks like the sun circles the earth, maybe the sun does circle the earth. Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to explain why the orbits of the planets don’t quite work with geocentrism, and instead recognise it and deal with it? C’mon… please.

So what is a good scientific approach? A good scientific approach is one where we try to find flaws in our theory, where we try to disprove it. Failing that, we will have a more reliable theory. As such, a good scientific approach would be for creationists to go and figure out ways that their theories can potentially be falsified. If they cannot do that, they are not doing science, never mind “good” science.

(Corrected a couple of grammatical typos here)

Well, what do we mean by design? Intelligent design concept is that life is too complex to have arisen by natural processes, and the evidence demands the involvement of intelligence. Well, we’re told that science can’t deal with intelligent design, that it’s outside of science, it’s religion. But in fact, where is suits scientists, scientists are ready to recognize design. For example, in forensic science, we find somebody with strychnine in their stomach, it didn’t happen by chance, somebody is responsible, an unseen intelligent agent was responsible for the strychnine being in a persons food or drink. So consequently we recognize an unseen intelligent agent. You can’t do experiments on the intelligent agent, but you can see the effects of the intelligent agent. You see, when it suits scientists, they are willing to recognize intelligent agents.

Another example is archaeology, where you find these axe heads here, and we say, well, they’re not the sort of thing that would happen because a stream rumbling rocks along the bottom of the stream. That would demand intelligent agent. Somebody did it. An unseen intelligent agent was responsible for this. Now, if we’re kooky, we might suggest that they are Little Green Men. But most archaeologists would suggest that they are humans who did this. No ape would be expected to do it. Humans did it. In the past, some humans were involved in creating these axe-heads.

From CI191. Archaeologists and forensic scientists can detect design in the Index to Creationist Claims:

The methods of archaeology and forensics are unrelated to any methods proposed by intelligent design advocates. Archaeologists and forensic scientists look for patterns that they know, from prior observation, are the sort of patterns that human designers make. The same goes for all other sciences that detect design. ID theorists have no prior observation of other designers to go by.

<..> the SETI program, listening in outer space for a signal on the radios beams, which says this comes from an intelligent source. If science can’t detect intelligence, or <..> intelligent source, or something which results from intelligence, how would you ever know that the radio signal from outer space came from an intelligent source. What is it about things that indicate that intelligent source?

CI190. SETI researchers expect that they can detect design:

SETI researchers do not expect to find recognizably designed messages in the signals they are looking for; in fact, they expect that the signal modulation would be smeared out and lost. They are looking for narrow-band signals, which are what people build and are not found in known natural radio signals (SETI Instutute n.d., Shostak 2005).

Look at DNA for example. A tiny little pinhead full of DNA. It’s an information storage system like we can only dream about. In fact, that pinhead full of DNA, if you stored books on that DNA, which you could do, it would take that pile of books, from here to the moon, over 240 times, would fit in a pinhead full of DNA. And if you bring it up to date with CDs, you’re looking at pile of CDs 18 hundred km high would fit into a pinhead full of DNA.

Where did DNA come from? Oh it just made itself in a warm pond on Earth {audience laughter}.

Ridiculing a straw-man, ignoring mutation/natural-selection. CF003. How could information, such as in DNA, assemble itself?

Well, think about this, with the SETI program. A simple message on a radio signal would indicate an intelligent source, it wouldn’t take too much, just like something SOS or something like that, something which couldn’t be explained by natural process.

SOS? You’ve got to be kidding me. What a feeble straw man!

Well, what about the information on the DNA? Surely that speaks of much much more int uh incredible intelligent source.

I would not argue with this statement if you call the evolutionary process intelligent. (If your measure of intelligence is the classical Turing test, you are defining intelligence by the result, by the consequences, and evolution could be described as “intelligent”. Of course, alternatively, evolution can be a counter argument for the Turing test, effectively another form of the Chinese room argument. But then our brains could also be Chinese rooms. Whatever. Our experience of “mind” exists in Meh, not in Lah.)

I love Marcus Borg’s use of the word “incredible”. It helps me see humour in cases where other people describe not-credible things as incredible.

Look at these ah mountains here (slide of Mount Rushmore, USA), you know, I look at that, and I say, look at what the rain and the wind and millions of years have created {audience laughter}. Well, of course not. But what is it about those rocks, those mountains, that specifies its intelligent design? The rocks actually specify something that is actually not possible for the matter itself to create. It stands for something, is stands for something, I’ll get back to this in a few minutes, the concept of intelligent design.

But Darwin said, that, if <..> something existed, if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly be formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down, he said. I can find no such case. Then following on from him, famous evolutionist from the last century, one of the formulators of the modern theory of evolution, J B S Haldane, acknowledged that various mechanisms such as the wheel and the magnet, would not arise by natural processes, because they wouldn’t, ah, they wouldn’t be any use until they’re fairly perfect.

The idea of evolution is that a lucky accident can create a little bit of functionality and a little bit of information, and then uh natural selection selects it, ah, or just by chance, by genetic drift, it happens to get fixed in the population, but it gets fixed there, and then another little lucky accident adds another little tiny bit more, you know, its preposterous to suggest that a whole swag of information that codes for muscle, for example, or bones, or something, to come into being just like that, so there has to be some series or sequence of lucky little accidents that add up to complexity. And J B S Haldane recognized that a wheel or a magnet wouldn’t arise by this process, because they’d have to have, well for example, if you had the spoke arise.. if the spoke arose, just the spoke, you wouldn’t have uh any functionality, you need a full wheel, the whole thing has to be present.

Well in fact magnets have been found in living things, and wheels have been found in living things, in fact incredibly complex wheels, like the bacterial flagellum, uh, a rotary motor like, uh, we can only dream about duplicating in terms of its miniaturization and efficiency, and uh this is incredible, about 30 different protein components make it. There are other rotary motors, bacteria have, some bacteria, have this one, but there’s another one, ATP synthase. And ATP synthase is in all living things, and its a rotary motor, and its spinning around inside you right now. In fact I know that your motor is working fine because if it wasn’t you’d be dead, and I see most of you look rather alive {audience chuckle}. Now this this ATP synthase is made up of proteins, its opened up so you can see the action in the middle, and its 10 nanometers across, and you can’t imagine what a nanometer is, neither can I, but if I tell you that 100 thousand of these motors could sit side by side in a millimeter, you starting to get a concept of how small this is.

Many people these days say that Microsoft Vista needs at least a gigabyte of RAM (that is 1024 megabytes, or 1048576 kilobytes). This is clearly an incorrect statement, because Bill Gates himself said no one will ever need more than 640 kilobytes. (That back in the 1980’s, I believe.)

The point? People make mistakes. So J B S Haldane made a mistake. If Richard Dawkins wrote a book that neatly explains how magnets and wheels could evolve in living things, it would refute Haldane’s comments. Haldane would say “ah, I was wrong”. Dr Batten would continue ignoring Richard Dawkins’ books.

And so creationists continue poking at cutting-edge science, rather than trying to explain flood geology, cosmology, or any of the other well understood sciences. Why? Why focus on cutting edge science where we do not yet understand specific details, and use that to argue that the world is six thousand years old?

Now, those of you who are not scientists, I’m just going to give a brief explanation of how these components are made. [19:00] Each of these coloured components, different colours <...> different proteins. Proteins are made of amino acids. There are twenty different amino acids. Amino acids are strung together hundreds at a time, sometimes thousands, not often thousands, but hundreds at a time, in the right order, to get the characteristics of each of the proteins. If the order of the amino acids is incorrect, the protein doesn’t work. Now all that is coded in the DNA. So the DNA code codes for each of those proteins, hundreds of amino acids in the right order, uh, and they’re manufactured <...> other proteins are involved in actually assembling this motor in the cell in the membranes in the cell, and it’s driven by a hydrogen ion current, a positive current, a proton current, [19:47] and generates ATP, which is the energy currency of all living things, from bacteria to humans. Now indications are, that in fact the first life had to have this functioning right at the start. Because if you’re going to actually manufacture proteins, you need ATP; if you’re going to copy DNA you need ATP; if you’re gonna blink your eyelid, move your muscle, you need ATP. But the first living thing had to have this, along with a whole suite of other complex biochemical pathways.

Now its actually preposterous to suggest such a thing could make itself, by natural processes, step by step or any other way. It had to go “boomp”, its already there.

As preposterous as to suggest that atoms are made up of sub-atomic particles that are smaller than light particles by which we see? As preposterous as suggesting that these light particles are both particles and waves? As preposterous as suggesting that light has a maximum speed and that, when looking at stars, we’re looking at the distant past? As preposterous as suggesting the earth revolves around the sun when we can clearly feel that it is quite stationary? Eh?

And of course, still the biased “makes itself” rhetoric. Either way, does anyone reading this blog know much about what’s necessary to copy DNA?

Wikipedia’s article on ATP synthase says “These enzymes are of crucial importance in almost all organisms, because ATP is the common “energy currency” of cells.” (Emphasis mine.) Almost? I’m most curious about the implied exceptions. How about someone add a “citation needed” note to that article? Further down the article mentions the different kinds of ATP synthase (more complex and less complex), and a suggested evolutionary pathway.

I wish we could put together a good database of all the similar sweeping claims creationists made ten or twenty years ago that no longer hold.

And the first life did not have muscles, and did not blink pathways. Still his biased and misleading tactics.

A Japanese scientist suggested this was a rotary motor and he was scoffed at by the establishment, the scientific establishment. Why was he scoffed at? Because they said it couldn’t evolve. A rotary motor couldn’t evolve, therefore its not a rotary motor. This is why I believe evolution is actually anti-science.

Humans can be anti-science. I don’t see how theories can be. Theories do not have opinions about science, they are either scientific or not, and they can be right or wrong. The fact that some humans scoffed at another human’s idea is what is potentially anti-science. I don’t see how a theory can be anti-science, but it is interesting to note that Dr Batten believes evolution to be anti-science. What does that tell us about Dr Batten?