According to Gould, Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was wedded to gradualism, the idea that evolution occurs uniformly through steady but gradual transformation of whole lineages. Borrowing from Wikipedia again, “Authors such as Richard Dawkins argues that constant-rate gradualism is not present in academic literature, and serves as a straw-man for punctuated equilibrium advocates.” (Such as Gould.)

Whatever.

The most important point here, is science develops over time. Scientists do have incorrect theories that change (and improve), and they do disagree with one another. Truth in science is not declared by any particular scientist, it is discovered by the scientific process. Scientists disagree and propose alternative theories, and they try to disprove these theories, including their own. (As I explained in What is Science? in my (incomplete) series on the previous creationism seminar, one of the foundations of science is attempting to falsify (disprove) your theory. The more you fail to do so, the more you can trust it.)

If “creation science” want any respect, creationists should be trying to disprove their own theories using evidence, and they should disprove evolution using evidence, not just appealing to “authority”, especially not appealing to the “authority” of misquotes.

Getting back to Gould, he spends a lot of time arguing for punctuated equilibrium, and arguing against gradualism. Gradualism would suggest a continuous fossil record, while punctuated equilibrium would explain why transitional forms are relatively rare. In the process of doing so, he wrote a lot about the rarity of transitional forms, providing creationist quote-miners with a gold mine. From Gould’s article, Evolution as Fact and Theory:

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

Here is an example of a quote mine, very similar to one used in the slides in Dr Batten’s seminar (his slides probably didn’t have as much info, but the first sentence was key to what he wanted to communicate):

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persist as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils ….We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” – Stephen J. Gould – “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, vol. 86 (May 1987), p. 14.

Notice he is talking here about our favored account of evolution, referring to gradualism. In the creationism seminar, this quote was mined and taken out of context in order to undermine evolution as a whole. For a thorough treatment of this quote mine, explaining the context, see Quote #3.2 on the Quote Mine Project. To borrow “John (catshark) Pieret”‘s words from that page:

Gould, in this article and many more over the next twenty years, consistently and extensively explained his position and the evidence for evolution, including transitional forms found in the fossil record. The constant abuse of the body of Gould’s life’s work in the face of this is not merely dishonest, it is despicable.

Now, to Batten’s talk, using Auke’s transcription with minor corrections (Dr Colin Patterson, Archaeopteryx):

Batten: … if you go back a bit further you find a common ancestor with us, and <..> back further, you find a common ancestor with bananas, and all the way back to microbes that made themselves uh on the Earth. And so the fossils are supposed to show this process, but in fact they don’t.

As Stephen Jay Gould, a famous evolutionist, said, that, uh, the fact that the fossils don’t show evolution, is a trade secret of palaeontology, the study of fossils. If you go uh to the British Museum of Natural History, there is a palaeontologist there, by the name of Dr Colin Patterson, and he he wrote a book about evolution, but in that book he didn’t have any examples, like pictures or illustrations, of transitional fossils, of something becoming something else, and he was asked about that, and he replied and said

“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book, if I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. Yet Gould and the American museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. I will lay it on the line: there is not one such fossil for which one could make a water-tight argument.”

Another misquote? Who knows. An in-depth treatment of an attempt to investigate this quote can be found at Patterson Misquoted.

Batten:Well there are a handful that get an airing at University, to convince students that evolution is true. But the big picture is that they are missing. And the ones that have an airing now, in 20 years time, will fall of their perch and will be replaced by some other conjectural transitional fossil.

No substance in that paragraph, nothing to respond to. Just unsubstantiated sweeping claims. Or lies, even.

Batten:Let me show you what happens. This is actually a dinosaur family tree from the Chicago Field Field Museum of Natural History, and we have the dinosaur family tree there. And uh we have all these different types of dinosaurs, uh sauropods, and uh tyrannosaurs and so on, and birds, birds are in there, what are they doing there? Well, of course the latest hypothesis is that dinosaurs evolved into birds, and birds are just a feathered dinosaur. The only problem with that is that archaeopteryx, which is a real bird, according to evolutionary dating, actually precedes by a long shot any of its supposed ancestors that are being portrayed in the museums and in popular treatments around the world.

Now I don’t know much about the Urvogel Archaeopteryx and its dating, does anyone care to contribute on this claim? Of course, with creationists’ misquoting tactics and terrible scholarship, and their refusal to own up to past mistakes, I do not blindly trust anything they say. I’d need citations… Wikipedia does have some information and explanations on the “controversy” about its phylogenetic position.

With regards to dinosaur ancestry of birds, I recently came across an article that sequenced Tyrannosaurus Rex proteins, indicating that its closest living relative currently in our databases, is the chicken. (Crocodiles and alligators have not yet been sequenced.) Popular media can be misleading, ignoring that important detail in the title: Who are you calling chicken? T. rex’s closest living relative found on the farm.

Mysteries in science are abundant. Some uncertainty about a particular specimen is not a disproof of evolution. There are many ways that evolution could be falsified though: find a contradiction in the fossil record, find a Pegasus, find a reptile with nipples, a mammal with feathers, something like that.

Creationists believe God created different “kinds”, and that some speciation could occur within kinds, but that the “kinds” are not otherwise related. A bird is a bird and a dinosaur a dinosaur, with no link between them? Ditto for fish and amphibians, reptiles and mammals, reptiles and birds, land mammals and whales? If creationism requires there to be no links between “kinds”, and if creationists were practising real science, finding transitional fossils would falsify their theory. That would explain why they keep on ignoring the transitional forms that do exist, denying the evidence: do they lack the humility needed to admit when they are wrong?

From the Panda’s Thumb blog, Transitional fossils in 18 minutes. Lots of material there, feel free to make use of the pause button and Google:

“And of course, the trees of life constructed from the fossil record are the same as those constructed from genetics, anatomy, embryology, molecular biology, and any other scientific discipline.”

Now I ask: my beef here is with CMI. Shofar hosts CMI, but for now, I choose to believe they do so out of ignorance. Is there any chance that Shofar would distance themselves from CMI, or shall I just go ahead and lump them together? I can add all my Creationism posts to the Shofar category…

The short summary should come as no surprise to those used to creationist tactics: the talk consisted largely of quote mining, arguments from incredulity, and straw man arguments.

Quote Mining and Lies

I am quite reserved in my use of the word “liar”, matters pertaining to truth and lies can at times be rather nuanced. A “liar” is someone who deliberately make untruthful statements, not someone that accidentally propagate lies. Consider a friend that really and honestly believes the lie or urban legend he is sharing with you. Such a friend is not a liar, even if they may be a gullible person lacking critical thinking skills. You also get institutionalised lies that become so widespread that even a highly skeptical person ends up believing or propagating the lie.

“Quote mining” is a term referring to the practise of taking quotes out of context in order to promote views contrary to those held by the person quoted. As an act of dishonesty, it classifies as a lie when it is used to deceive. If a person uses quote mining is doing so knowingly and deliberately in order to deceive, that person should be called a liar. However, it is hard to know whether the quote mining is deliberate or from ignorance. I usually prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Stephen Jay Gould, as a proponent of punctuated equilibria rather than gradualism, has become a regular target of quote mining. Such quote mining does not mention the context of the gradualism versus punctuated equilibria debate. Writes Gould (emphasis is mine):

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists — whether through design or stupidity, I do not know — as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

Creationists have collections of mined quotes, which they pass on to one another. As such, they often become institutionalised lies, making it hard to accuse their propagators of being liars. Often they are just uneducated with regards to scholarly standards. Any scholar worth his salt knows to verify quotes from original sources, within the original context.

So that brings me to Donald James Batten, B.Sc.Agr. (Hons 1), Ph.D. Any person that goes around calling himself Donald James Batten, B.Sc.Agr. (Hons 1), Ph.D. means to claim some form of scholarly authority. Usually, such claims can be valid on the grounds that doing a Ph.D. at a reputable university requires the highest standard of scholarly research. If someone has a reputable Ph.D., it should be safe to assume they know all about verifying original sources and remaining true to the original context.

So… does everyone agree that I may hold someone flaunting his Ph.D. (claiming he’s an excellent scholar) to a higher standard when it comes to quoting? If we were able to catch Donald James Batten, B.Sc.Agr. (Hons 1), Ph.D. spreading deception through use of dishonest quotes, would you agree it is fair to call him a liar?

If anyone disagrees, speak now or forever hold your peace.

Further reading: Wikipedia: Quote Mining, The Quote Mine Project (lists examples of Creationist quote mining), Cectic (comic) on Quote Mining.

Straw Man Arguments

Creationists often misrepresent evolution, in order to make it seem illogical. Typically, they break mutation and natural selection apart, and attack them separately. This indicates either a lack of understanding with regards to what evolution is and how it works, or it is again an example of deliberate deception, aka lying.

The process of evolution uses natural selection and mutation together, in a sweet example of irreducible complexity. You cannot reduce the evolutionary process to two independent mechanisms, whether evolution is true or not. Doing so, would be spreading a lie.

Examples of the straw men used will be given at a later date.

Argument from Incredulity

The argument from incredulity: “I cannot understand how it can be true, so it must be false”. That could arguably be one of the most self-centred and conceited arguments that exists, as it seems to imply “I have the greatest intellect possible, so anything I cannot understand, must be impossible to understand”. Need I say any more? Just because we cannot understand how the Egyptians built the pyramids, does not mean that they must have been constructed by aliens. Just because a particular five year old cannot understand that daddy isn’t hurting mommy, doesn’t mean that daddy is hurting mommy. We hope the five year old will have the opportunity to grow up to eventually understand and appreciate sex.

UPDATE: (Or rather, continuation, I was in a rush when I posted this.) The point is, argument from incredulity, or argument from ignorance, does not prove anything. In fact, in cases where explanations are available for those that care to look for them, an argument from ignorance does nothing other than emphasize the ignorance of the person employing it.

But I digress. Psalm 14:1 says:

The fool* says in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;
there is no one who does good.

I’ve seen this quoted at non-theists. The theist doing the quoting typically interprets this to mean “those that say there is no God, are fools”. I’m not convinced. In particular, this talks about what the heart says, not what the lips say. Note in particular the footnote on “fool”:

The Hebrew words rendered fool in Psalms denote one who is morally deficient.

Now there is a huge difference between

1. The person that says there is no God…
   …is a morally deficient person, and
2. The person who is morally deficient…
   …has a heart that says there is no God

Understand how different these two interpretations are. Also, be sure to understand exactly and completely how one can arrive at each of these two interpretations. Also remember this is poetry.

Now this is written from a theistic worldview, in a theistic culture, with a theistic audience in mind, where “God” denotes “higher purpose”, encompasses the ideals we strive towards. (See What is God?: The Personal God for some background on this understanding of theistic language.)

Here is my translation of the first verse into non-theistic language (please excuse the bits that I lose in translation), using the second interpretation:

A morally deficient person has a heart that believes there is no reason to be good, that they can do whatever they want. They have no moral compass guiding them. With no higher purpose than their own gain, they are corrupt, their deeds are vile. They do no good.

Verse two says: “The LORD looks down from heaven / on the sons of men / to see if there are any who understand, / any who seek God.” Heaven does not exist in the material universe. Heaven is a description of an ultimate ideal, a description and an idea, i.e. something in our Meh. The ultimate love and compassion is found in this ideal. A personification of this ultimate love and compassion witnesses what we are doing in our materialistic reality, to see if there’s anyone that understands, anyone striving towards such compassion, anyone reaching out to heaven. (Talking Meh here…)

A humanist may not have a belief in the particular idea of “God” that most Christians promote, but they definitely have a belief in a greater ideal. They believe that what they do does matter. They have compassion and the golden rule as their moral compass. Their deeds are not corrupt or vile, they do good. This poem cannot be talking about them, can it? Described in theistic language, the humanist has a heart that knows God, a heart that knows good, a heart that knows compassion and cares about the oppression of the poor (verse six). Effectively, they worship a God of compassion and love, even if they don’t care much about supernatural intervention.

Now consider a particular theist that verbally announces “there is a God”, but that is in fact corrupt. Consider someone calling themselves a “Christian”, but who does no good, a theist that focuses on personal gain. I propose that this psalm speaks about such people. This psalm says that while the morally deficient theist may confess “there is a God” with his lips, his heart is saying “there is no God”, as seen through his actions.

Don’t you think that challenges your perspectives on this verse a little? Do you think this makes sense? For interest’s sake, also take a look at The Message’s paraphrase of Psalm 14.

This post is a filler, so that this blog does not sit idle until I can publish my feedback on the creationism seminar. There will be more thorough feedback than I originally planned, because I’m not alone in tackling this highly biased, unscholarly, unobjective misrepresentation of science (i.e. using straw man arguments), coupled with dishonest quote mining, and topped off with a potent dose of argument from incredulity.