Debunking Denialism

Defending science against the forces of irrationality.

Tag Archives: creationism

The Current Creationist Abuse of ENCODE and “junk DNA”

2 Comments Posted by on September 16, 2012

encode and junk

The creationist blogosphere is set ablaze by the popular media claim that “biochemical functions for 80% of the genome”. For instance, Barry Arrington at the intelligent design creationist blog Uncommon Descent calls it a vindication of intelligent design proponents.

Not so fast! An article on Nature News Blog, aptly entitled “fighting about ENCODE and junk”, clarifies the situation in detail. To make a long story short, the researchers used an extremely broad definition of functional that included almost any biochemical activity.

Here is the creationist and media narrative: Read more of this post

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Dr. Wile’s Tirade Against Evolution Continues…

2 Comments Posted by on September 15, 2012

Dr. Wile's website

Earlier this month, I wrote a criticism of a couple of videos produced by the Creation Museum that attacked a video made by the engineer and science educator Bill Nye. A commenter alerted me to a response by a Dr. Wile in the comment section on his blog. Dr. Wile is a young-earth creationist with a PhD in nuclear chemistry from the University of Rochester, who has experience with education (having written a couple of homeschooling textbooks on science as well as taught courses in science). In response, I wrote another response rebutting the claims made by Dr Wile.

Now, Dr. Wile has graciously taken the time to write a reply to my second post. It demonstrates the typical rhetoric and debating methods of creationists together with well-known evasion tactics. Let’s examine it in detail. Read more of this post

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Bill Nye Under Creationist Siege: A Reply to Dr. Jay L. Wile

8 Comments Posted by on September 10, 2012

siege

A commenter on this blog alerted me to a creationist response to me previous blog post on The Uninformed Creationist Assault on Bill Nye. It is written by the young-earth creationist Dr. Jay L. Wile, who has a PhD in nuclear chemistry from University of Rochester and can be found here. He also has experience with teaching and writing science textbooks for homeschooling.

As we will see, it is extremely generous to call it “a response”. It is mostly a garbled list of assertions (some just repeating what the young earth creationists said) with links to creationist websites that themselves have little to offer in terms of intellectual content.

Let’s take it on.

1. Denial of Evolution in the U. S.

The author tries to make an excuse for Nye’s patently false statement in the beginning. He claims, “In this sense, the U. S. stands out: despite its technological level, it has a very low acceptance of evolution.” But that’s not what Nye said. Nye said that denial of evolution is unique to the United States.

That is not only a quote out of context, it is really uncharitable to mark words and not try to understand the meaning of what is being said. To do that, context is required. Let me post what Bill Nye said, word for word:

Denial of evolution is unique to the United States. We are the world’s most advanced technological — I mean you can say Japan, but generally, United States is where most of the innovation still happens. People still move to the United States. And that is largely because of the intellectual capital — the general understanding of science. When you have a portion of population doesn’t believe in it, it holds everyone back.

So Bill Nye is not making the naive claim that denial of evolution is unique to the United States in the sense that it does not exist anywhere else, but rather the claim that United States is unique in being a highly technologically advanced society, yet have a large proportion of the population being creationist. The graph in Miller et. al. (2006) illustrates this well: despite being a large scientific superpower, U. S. finds itself among the bottom countries on the list. This is what makes United States unique. Obviously creationists exists in other technologically advanced nations, but the problem is not as big there as it is in the United States. The latest figure show that 46% of people in the U. S. is creationist (Gallup, 2012). It is this prevalence, together with being a scientific superpower, that makes the situation in U. S. unique. Read more of this post

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The Uninformed Creationist Assault on Bill Nye

4 Comments Posted by on September 4, 2012

Bill Nye

Big Think is “a knowledge forum featuring the ideas, lessons, stories and advice of leading experts from around the world”. They often post videos with scientists such as Stephen Pinker and Neil deGrasse Tyson, talking about various issues. A video was posted on the Big Think Youtube channel featuring Bill Nye, a scientist and a popular science educator. The video topic is creationism and how it is inappropriate for children. As far as I can tell, most of the things that Bill Nye said was completely rational and evidence-based. However, among young-earth creationists, this sparked vitriolic attacks, culminating in the production of not just one, but two video responses. One of them was from Dr. David Menton and Dr. Georgia Purdom at the Creation Museum. According to the video, both have PhDs in life science. The second video response is from Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum.

This post will outline the statements made by Bill Nye, the rebuttals by the young-earth creationists and why they fail.

What arguments did Bill Nye make?

More specifically, the arguments and points made by Bill Nye are the following:

  1. Denial of evolution is unique to the United States, as it is one of the most technologically advanced nations with a lot of intellectual capital in the form of the general understanding of science.
  2. Evolutionary biology is the grand unified explanation of biology much in the same way that plate tectonics is the grand unified explanation for geology.
  3. The worldview of creationists is “fantastically complicated” and “untenable”.
  4. If you want to rejection evolution, that is fine. But do not indoctrinate your children into creationism as the future needs scientifically literate individuals (e. g. “voters”, “taxpayers”, “engineers”).
  5. There is no evidence for creationism.

As far as I could tell, these were the substantive points made in Bill Nye’s video.

Were Bill Nye’s arguments reasonable?

Evolution is the grand unified explanation of life science and creationism does not reasonably explain a lot of the observations we see around us, such as distant starts or nested hierarchies, at least not without a credulous flood of ad hoc assertions. There is no evidence in favor of creationism and it seems reasonable to suppose that scientific literacy matters for the direction of a society. So far so good.

The only statement that I found to be debatable was the first. I can think of two possible interpretations: (1) creationism is unique to the U. S. in the sense that it is not widespread outside of the country or (2) U. S. is unique in being a technologically advanced society at the same time that a large proportion of the population are creationists. The first interpretation is wrong. Creationism is quite prevalent in the Middle East and creationist have a noticeable presence in other geographical areas as well, such as Australia, Great Britain, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Turkey (Numbers, 2006; Numbers, 2009). The second interpretation is more reasonable. The graph Nye is probably thinking of is the one from Miller et. al. (2006) that depicts the acceptance of evolution in 34 countries, where the U. S. finishes at the bottom of the list, just above Turkey. In this sense, the U. S. stands out: despite its technological level, it has a very low acceptance of evolution. It is not entirely clear which of the two interpretations that is closest to what Bill Nye said or meant (others like Gould and Lewontin has made the claim in the first interpretation), but one could charitably assume that it was the second.

So in summary, the claims made by Bill Nye hold up pretty well.

The creationist retorts and their flaws

The two videos made by the creationists at the Creation Museum can be found here and here. In rough order, the arguments made by the creationists are as follows:

1. The first argument is an attack on the first interpretation of the uniqueness of creationism argument. It can be countered by noting that the second interpretation is probably closer to what Bill Nye meant, and so the creationist argument is really a straw man.

2. The second argument is a standard false balance argument: children should be taught both evolution and creationism. This can be rejected by noting that it is unfair to teach scientific falsehoods as if they were evidence-based facts. As Glenn Branch explains in Scott and Branch (2006, p. 135):

The power of the appeal to fairness is so strong that it is wisest to reply in kind: there is nothing fair about the creationist ambition for public education. It is not fair to citizens of a republic in which a basic constitutional principle is the government’s religious neutrality. It is not fair to tax payers , who run the risk of footing the legal bills due to lawsuit over actions that compromise the teaching of evolution. It is not fair to teachers, who have a professional duty to teach in accordance with the scientific consensus. Most important, it is not fair to the students, whose scientific literacy is on the line.

3. The third assertion is the classic “there are no mechanisms to gain genetic information” to become more complex over time. This astoundingly erroneous assertion was delivered by Dr. Purdom, PhD in molecular genetics. Gene duplication with subsequent adaptive divergence fulfills any potentially relevant definition of “genetic information” in biology. Read more of this post

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Creationist Bodie Hodge Tries to Understand Kin Selection

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 2, 2012

morality the secular response

Mechanical Engineer and creationist Bodie Hodge at Answers In Genesis has gotten all worked up about a popular science article about the evolution of morality in New Scientist. Unfortunately, the “criticism” laid out in the article in question is an obvious creationist swing and a miss because it misunderstands the nature of science, confuses the evolution of morality with moral philosophy, optimization of inclusive fitness and/or adaptive behavior of the individual with metaphysical notions of goodness and put forward many other flawed arguments.

The New Scientist article being discussed is called “If morality is broke, we can fix it” and can be found here. It is just a short editorial about the evolution of moral behavior and how it can be augmented and improved by humans. Simple enough, yet when Hodge tries to comment, he gets it all wrong.

Science as a human endeavor

Hodges starts off by misunderstanding the nature of science.

The article says, “Science has made great strides in explaining morality.” This statement attributes human-like qualities to the methodology of “science,” which is the fallacy of reification. “Science” does not explain things; people explain things. Sadly, this fallacy is made frequently on the secular side.

“Science” in this context does not refer to a monolithic and abstract methodology, but rather the concrete human endeavor to understand the world around us. That endeavor has indeed made great strides in many areas, such as sequencing genomes, building spaceships, understanding quantum mechanics and morality.

The article goes on to say, “No longer is [morality] seen as something handed down from on high . . .” Though many secular humanists profess that morality is not set by God, the majority of people disagree and still recognize that morality does comes from God. But does it really matter what people think, or is it about what God says?

It is a description of how the scientific viewpoint has changed over time. Hodges make a curious false dichotomy here. Either morality is about what people think, or it is a matter of what a deity says. On the contrary, morality has to be about evidence and rational arguments. Also, “what people think” and “what god says” is really the same thing as religious scripture was written by people and it is people who interpret them. There is really nothing in any religious texts that could not have been invented by humans. This is clear from the many contradictions and scientific falsehoods in the texts. If a deity had written the texts, then surely, it would pass an introductory science education. Read more of this post

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Swatting through Luke Barnes’ Review of “Why Evolution is True”

2 Comments Posted by on April 13, 2012

Luke Barnes is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of astronomy at the University of Sydney. He is probably a very competent astronomer. However, he seems to have some issues with modern evolutionary biology but dislikes being labeled a creationist. Despite his statements being very carefully engineered, he repeats many classic tactics and tropes of creationists.

Barnes wrote a three-part book review of Jerry Coyne’s book “Why Evolution is True” a while back that I will take pleasure in disentangling. I’m not someone who would defend Coyne no matter what, as I have strongly criticized his anti-psychiatry stance a couple of times before on this blog.

Barnes alludes to the stereotype that physicists tend to march into a field not closely related to physics and make sweeping proclamations about conclusions and problems in that field, especially if this field is perceived as being less stringent than physics. There are a few notable examples of where this has not turned out that good such as Freeman Dyson and climate change, Roger Penrose and consciousness as well as Linus Pauling (quantum chemist) and high doses of Vitamin C.

Generally speaking, the three parts roughly corresponds to criticizing the positive case for evolution, opposing the positive and negative case against intelligent design creationism and the supposedly negative effects of evolutionary biology on society. However, I will do my review of the review in one single post because I can focus on the core claims and misunderstandings.

No flies were actually harmed during the production of this post. Read more of this post

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Funding Cut for British Free Schools that Teach Creationism

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 16, 2012

Guardian recently reported that free schools that teaches creationism or intelligent design as science will lose government funding. This is an important step in combating the encroaching of pseudoscientific alternatives to the science of modern evolutionary biology, especially since this could have been a wide-spread phenomenon in newly started British free schools.

The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. Under the new agreement, funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are “evidence-based views or theories” that run “contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations”.

They can technically teach creationism in religious studies I suppose, but it will no longer be possible to teach it as if it was a scientific viewpoint. This, of course, assumes that the government will actively be checking up on these free schools, so it remains to be see if this will be powerfully applied.

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Books on Creationism and Intelligent Design

1 Comment Posted by on December 9, 2011

This is going to be a comprehensive list of books on the religious pseudoscience of creationism and its newest reincarnation, intelligent design from various perspectives, both scientific, philosophical and religious.

Books on Creationism and Intelligent Design

1. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design is a book written by Michael Shermer. It is a great and lucid introduction to intelligent design and its scientific flaws. It also argues that evolution is compatible with religion and that science and religion represents two non-overlapping fields of inquiry and that truth cannot contradict truth.

2. Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism is a book edited by Matt Young and Taner Edis that contains several different chapters written by different leading scientists in the field responding to claims made by the intelligent design creationists, such as the evolution of the avian flight apparatus, the bacterial flagellum, the origin of genetic information and complexity and so on. This is a slightly technical book, but a must for anyone wanting to get a thorough treatment of the flaws of intelligent design creationism.

3. Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a book by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross examining the intelligent design movement. It is a deep and penetrative analysis that exposes the creationist origin of its new incarnation of intelligent design. Read more of this post

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The Creationist Quote Mine of Hawking on Expansion Rate of the Universe

1 Comment Posted by on November 16, 2011

Many creationists that are proponents of the fine-tuning argument likes to quote physicist Stephen Hawking to try and demonstrate that certain parameters of our universe is fine-tuned for life and therefore requires an intelligent designer. Victor Stenger, also a physicist, has explain how creationists such as William Lane Craig and Dinesh D’Souza misrepresent Hawking in his recent thought-provoking book The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: How the Universe is Not Designed for Us in detail, and I will just give an example of a text that this fallacy of quoting out of context occurs, what the lifted quote says, and what the context of that quote is.

A more or less representative case of a creationist who quotes Hawking out of context is the popular Christian apologist William Lane Craig. He may be the most prominent Christian apologist alive today. This does not, of course, mean that he is necessarily right, but it goes to show how popular he is and how many people he influence. Here is the relevant passage that he often repeats, almost verbatim, in many of his debates: Read more of this post

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Refuting “Radiometric Dating Methods Makes Untenable Assumptions!”

4 Comments Posted by on August 12, 2011

A very common claim of young earth creationists in trying to reject the evidence for an old earth is to loudly proclaim that radiometric dating methods “makes assumptions” and that these “assumptions” are somehow fatally flawed or not supported by evidence. These claims generally land in three different categories: (1) radiometric dating assumes that initial conditions (concentrations of mother and daughter nuclei) are known, (2) radiometric dating assumes that rocks are closed systems and (3) radiometric dating assumes that decay rates are constant. Most young earth creationists reject all of these points. As a scientific skeptics, we ask ourselves: is this really the case? Let us critically examine each of these claims and see if they hold up against the science. While doing so, we will have to learn about how radiometric dating actually works.

There are many different kinds of radiometric dating and not all conclusions we will reach can be extrapolated to all methods used. Also, different radiometric dating techniques independently converges with each other and with other dating techniques such as dendrochronology, layers in sediment, growth rings on corals, rhythmic layering of ice in glaciers, magnetostratigraphy, fission tracks and many other methods. This serves as strong evidence for the reliability of radiometric dating methods.

1. How does radiometric dating work?

A lot of atoms are stable. Some are not. There exists different versions, or isotopes of many elements. These isotopes differ in the number of neutrons they have in their nuclei. Those isotopes that are not stable decay into daughter nuclei. Those that did the decaying are called parent nuclei. If you have a rock that contains radioactive isotopes, these will decay over time. As time goes on, the ratio of the parent to daughter nuclei will change and decrease (as more parent nuclei decay into daughter nuclei, the former decreases and the latter increases). Measuring this ratio gives us an idea of how long ago the rock formed.

But wait a second! Doesn’t this assume that the rocks are closed systems? Surely, if some daughter nuclei left the rock or parent nuclei entered the rock, the dates would come out all wrong! While this is technically true, there are several mini-industries dedicated developing methods and techniques to make sure that there is no contamination and check to see if the rocks where disturbed between forming and being tested by scientists. How is this done? Let’s find out! Read more of this post

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