Symphony of Science: "Children of Africa (The Story of Us)"

The tenth Symphony of Science offering, "Children of Africa (The Story of Us)" has been released and is well worth a few minutes of your time.

A musical celebration of humanity, its origins, and achievements, contrasted with a somber look at our environmentally destructive tendencies and deep similarities with other primates. Featuring Jacob Bronowski, Alice Roberts, Carolyn Porco, Jane Goodall, Robert Sapolsky, Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Attenborough.

If you're new to the project, take some time to enjoy the nine previous offerings.

Miss USA 2011 — Should Math Be Taught In Schools?

The real tape of the actual Miss USA pageant contestants answering a similar question on evolution can be viewed here.

How Evolution Works, in Comic Form: So Easy a Caveman Could Understand It

Until my dream of an IMAX 3D evolution documentary is realized, we have accessible, educational, and imaginative works by artists like Darryl Cunningham

Evolution is probably the most misunderstood concept on the planet. I still have some misconceptions to this day, I'm sure. I was an English major who grew up in Southeastern US public schools. I have no recollection of evolution being taught, and have been playing catch-up for quite some time.

I never really doubted evolution, for some reason, but I just didn't totally 'get it.'  When it finally clicked for me, after a devouring a handful of well-written primers on the subject, it was as if I'd unlocked a whole new way of looking at everything. Which I had. When you fully understand that every living thing shares an ancestor with every other living thing, it has a profound effect on how you view those things.  And when you understand how biological complexity arises in nature, you start to see examples of more complex, and less complex, mechanisms all around you.  You begin to see that many of the concepts and mechanisms found in evolution also have applications in non-biological areas, such as technology, religion, language, art, etc.

A recent Gallup poll shows that 4 in 10 of Americans do not accept evolution.  Granted, most of those who deny evolution do so because of their literal readings of scripture.  But, I do believe that, in addition, part of the problem is that people have misconceptions and misunderstandings about evolution.  They either have been willfully given misinformation by an opponent of evolution, or they have been the victim of oversimplifications, or flat-out wrong assumptions, such as the much-repeated fallacy that humans evolved from monkeys.

I've often thought that evolution could really use a boost from CGI.  I realize that there have been some short, and minor uses of CGI to demonstrate aspects of evolution on television documentaries, but I would love to see either a full-length documentary or a mini-series that really plunges in depth, leaving no stone unturned.

I imagine this thought experiment passage from Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth done in CGI -- IMAX 3D, even.  Picture it:

I’ll call it the hairpin thought experiment. Take a rabbit, any female rabbit (arbitrarily stick to females, for convenience: it makes no difference to the argument). Place her mother next to her. Now place the grandmother next to the mother and so on back in time, back, back, back through the mega years, a seemingly endless line of female rabbits, each one sandwiched between her daughter and her mother. We walk along the line of rabbits, backwards in time, examining them carefully like an inspecting general. As we pace the line, we’ll eventually notice that the ancient rabbits we are passing are just a little bit different from the modern rabbits we are used to. But the rate of change will be so slow that we shan’t notice the trend from generation to generation, just as we can’t see the motion of the hour hand on our watches – and just as we can’t see a child growing, we can only see later that she has become a teenager, and later still an adult. An additional reason why we don’t notice the change in rabbits from one generation to another is that, in any one century, the variation within the current population will normally be greater than the variation between mothers and daughters. So if we try to discern the movement of the ‘hour hand’ by comparing mothers with daughters, or indeed grandmothers with granddaughters, such slight differences as we may see will be swamped by the differences among the rabbits’ friends and relations gambolling in the meadows round about.

Nevertheless, steadily and imperceptibly, as we retreat through time, we shall reach ancestors that look less and less like a rabbit and more and more like a shrew (and not very like either). One of these creatures I’ll call the hairpin bend, for reasons that will become apparent. This animal is the most recent common ancestor (in the female line, but that is not important) that rabbits share with leopards. We don’t know exactly what it looked like, but it follows from the evolutionary view that it definitely had to exist.

Like all animals, it was a member of the same species as its daughters and its mother. We now continue our walk, except that we have turned the bend in the hairpin and are walking forwards in time, aiming towards the leopards (among the hairpin’s many and diverse descendants, for we shall continually meet forks in the line, where we consistently choose the fork that will eventually lead to leopards). Each shrewlike animal along our forward walk is now followed by her daughter. Slowly, by imperceptible degrees, the shrew-like animals will change, through intermediates that might not resemble any modern animal much but strongly resemble each other, perhaps passing through vaguely stoat-like intermediates, until eventually, without ever noticing an abrupt change of any kind, we arrive at a leopard.

Various things must be said about this thought experiment. First, we happen to have chosen to walk from rabbit to leopard, but I repeat that we could have chosen porcupine to dolphin, wallaby to giraffe or human to haddock. The point is that for any two animals there has to be a hairpin path linking them, for the simple reason that every species shares an ancestor with every other species: all we have to do is walk backwards from one species to the shared ancestor, then turn through a hairpin bend and walk forwards to the other species.

Fortunately, Dawkins' thought experiment is so elegantly written that we really don't need CGI to grasp it, but then again, we have the pesky problem of how to get that 40% of Americans to pick up a Dawkins book.

There are some other really wonderful (and accessible) books by less-controversial figures, such as Jerry Coyne, Sloane Wilson, and many others.

We also have a rising number of graphic artists serving up some pretty amazing works. There's Jay Hosler's Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth and Michael Keller and Nicole Rager Fuller's Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation.

And then we have Darryl Cunningham's forthcoming book, Science Stories, which will feature a version of an amazing comic strip about Evolution (he says the version on his blog is a beta version).

What I love about Cunningham's comic is his approach from the perspective of two people who are discussing evolution. One doesn't understand it, or does not accept it, and the other is very comfortable addressing these questions (all very common questions that we see time and time again). Cunningham allows us to learn about evolution through doubt, which is really how it works in real life for so many Americans.

I hope that Cunningham's strip receives a lot of attention, and hopefully reaches a much wider audience. At least until we have that CGI IMAX 3D movie I've been dreaming about.

Here are a few frames to enjoy. They are excerpted from the middle of the piece, to demonstrate his approach. Please visit his blog for the evolution comic from start to finish:

Again, I urge you to check out the entire piece.

Miss USA - The Evolution Monologues

As you may have heard by now, the winner of the Miss USA Pageant, Alyssa Campanella (Miss California), was one of only two out of 51 contestants who fully affirmed their belief in evolution and that it should be taught in schools (Alida D’Angona, Miss Massachusetts was the other).

Via HuffPo:

The rest either confused the question with evolution of species (versus the intelligent design debate), or stated that they thought both should be taught in school, according to Scientific American.

Campanella and Alida D’Angona from Massachusetts were the only two contestants to state that they fully believed in evolution.

There had been concern, leading up to the pageant, that questions about evolution were too controversial and caused undue anxiety.

For those of you who are interested in the pre-recorded answers provided by each of the 51 delegates, the video has been released for your viewing pleasure.

You may wish to encase your skull in foam before watching. Some answers may lead to banging head on desk.

Miss USA: Some Worry Evolution Questions Cause Anxiety and Compromise

The Christian Post has a piece about the controversy over asking Miss USA pageant contestants controversial questions, including those about evolution.

Agents and pageant directors believe that forcing contestants to answer questions about controversial topics, such as evolution, causes undue anxiety and intimidation.

Past contestants, however, haven't been particularly shy about their views on evolution:

While many contestants expressed an openness to include evolution in public schools, one contestant – Miss Kentucky Kia Ben-et Hampton – said that evolution should not be taught, alluding to the differing opinions expressed in the scientific and religious communities.

Miss Mississippi Keeley Patterson discredited evolution in her answer.  "I think evolution should be taught as what it is; it's a theory, so I don't think it should be taught as fact."

A few other contestants including Miss Nebraska Haley Jo Herold, Miss Alaska Jessica Chuckran and Miss New Hampshire LacyJane Folger answered affirmatively, but expressed their desire to see the other side – such as creationism – given equal time in the classroom.

Chuckran said in her answer,  "I think it's necessary that evolution is taught in schools ... However, personally, I do not believe in evolution. I believe that each one of us were (sic) created for a purpose by God and that just gives my life so much more direction and meaning."

Miss North Carolina Brittany York responded,  "I think it's great to get both sides of the story. I'm personally a Christian so I believe the Bible's version but you can't push opinions or beliefs on children so they need to know every side that's out there. So yes, I do believe that (evolution) should be taught but so should the other side of the story."

If there were ever a perfect vehicle for showcasing the ridiculousness of evolution-denial, it's the Miss USA pageant. We learned so much about maps from Miss Teen South Carolina in 2007. Sarah Palin, with her creative interpretation of the Paul Revere ride, appears to still have quite a bit of pageant blood running through her veins.

I don't mean to be so hard on pageant contestants. I realize that many of these women are intelligent, strong, and are competing because they want to compete. But I also realize that many of them have been indoctrinated as young children.

The concept of creationism, or Intelligent Design, is also a product of indoctrination. If a child were to grow up without hearing the fantastical stories of a 7-day creation of the earth, a man and woman forged from mud and bone, and a global flood, there would be no point in their lives in which it would be necessary, or wise, to accept those stories as true.  There are no credible universities that do not teach evolution as the bedrock of modern biology. There are no credible universities that teach creationism, or Intelligent Design as a plausible theory. And after all, evolution is only a theory. Like gravity. Not that many of these creationist beauty pageant contestants are pursuing a career in the life sciences -- good luck to those who are.

So, I say, let the contestants continue to wax philosophical on the topic of evolution. It's hilarious.

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions." - Thomas Jefferson

Creationism Creeps Into Mainstream Geology

I am fairly vocal about my lack of patience for Young Earth Creationism.  There is a quote attributed to former US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan that does a good job of crystallizing my issues with these folks: "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts."

Often when I voice my concern about Young Earth Creationists and their beliefs, there are two common responses: 1) Nobody really believes that, do they? 2) Why does it matter if they want to believe that stuff?

First, yes, many people actually believe that the earth is between 5,000 and 10,000 years old and that human beings were created in their present form (Adam and Eve are, naturally, according to these folks, the universal ancestors of all humans).  Most of the time, the people who doubt that these people exist live in places like New York or Boston or San Francisco.  I invite them to come visit North Carolina sometime.   According to a Gallup poll in December 2010, approximately 40% of Americans believe in Young Earth Creationism, rising to over 50% among Republicans (but falling quickly as the level of education increases -- hmmmm).

Secondly, we should be greatly concerned that this many Americans are this misguided (or willfully ignorant, as the case may be).  This means that 40% of Americans a) do not grasp basic biology and geology concepts, and/or b) willfully ignore the evidence, as well as the not-at-all-controversial scientific consensus regarding the age of the earth. And only 700 out of 480,000 US earth and life scientists give any credence whatsoever to creationism.

Earth Magazine has an eye-opening piece about some covert ways in which Young Earth Creationism is seeping into areas usually reserved for actual science.  Young Earth Creationists are organizing "educational" science field trips. They are infiltrating science conventions (such as the annual Geological Society of America meeting). They are presenting 'scientific' posters and papers.

Their methods are dishonest and sketchy.

Earth Magazine describes one particular field trip:

Together with about 50 attendees, I attended field trip 409 at the GSA meeting last October. The trip took us from Denver, where the meeting was held, to the area surrounding Garden of the Gods National Natural Landmark in Colorado Springs. The point, according to the field trip guide, was “to observe and discuss the processes of sedimentation and tectonics at superb exposures near the Garden of the Gods.”

Many attendees seemed unaware of the backgrounds of the five trip co-leaders: Steve Austin, Marcus Ross, Tim Clarey, John Whitmore and Bill Hoesch. Austin is probably the most well-known; he is chair of the geology department at the Institute for Creation Research, which describes itself as the “leader in scientific research from a biblical perspective, conducting innovative laboratory and field research in the major disciplines of science.” Austin has been very active in promoting a Noah’s Flood interpretation of the geology of the Grand Canyon.

Ross is a former Discovery Institute fellow, currently an assistant professor of geology at Liberty University in Virginia (the self-proclaimed largest Christian university in the world). The University of Rhode Island granted him a doctorate in geology in 2006 even though he professed that Earth was at most 10,000 years old. Clarey is a geology professor at Delta College, a community college in Michigan. Whitmore is a geology professor at Cedarville University, a liberal arts Christian college in Ohio. Hoesch is a staff research geologist with the Institute for Creation Research.

During the trip, the leaders did not advertise their creationist views, but rather presented their credentials in a way that minimized their creationist affiliations. Austin introduced himself as a geologic consultant. Hoesch said he worked “in a small museum in the San Diego area” (referring to his job as curator of the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, Calif., which was founded by the Institute for Creation Research and is now operated by the Light and Life Foundation). Likewise, Whitmore did not offer that Cedarville’s official doctrinal statement declares, “We believe in the literal six-day account of creation” and requires that all faculty “must be born-again Christians” who “agree with our doctrinal statement.”

Furthermore, the field trip leaders were careful not to make overt creationist references. If the 50 or so field trip participants did not know the subtext and weren’t familiar with the field trip leaders, it’s quite possible that they never realized that the leaders endorsed geologic interpretations completely at odds with the scientific community

These folks know the deck is stacked against them. They know that the oceans of data supporting an old earth, evolutionary view crushes the sparse data they claim disproves this view. They are engaging in a dishonest, and desperate culture war designed to stealthily push their religious reverse-engineering as actual science to people who are seeking scientific information. It is their hope that if they can repeat the lies enough times to enough people then they can hold the inevitable at bay -- that evolution, and a 4.5 billion year-old earth, are completely at odds with a literal interpretation of the Bible. They believe that without a young earth, without Adam & Eve, and without The Great Flood, the whole house of cards falls apart.

They are wrong about evolution, they are wrong about the age of the earth, and they are wrong about these things being incompatible with religion. There are many who have accepted the overwhelming evidence without losing their religion.

The Good News | 6.1.11

I spend a lot of time here pointing out the bad and the ugly that I feel compelled to initiate a periodic trumpeting of the good. Despite ongoing attempts to impede progress, nice things are happening everywhere.  Behold, the good news:

• President Obama has proclaimed June to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month (WhiteHouse.Gov)

• American Muslim clerics sign up for evolution (NewScientist)

• For the first time in history, the majority of Americans favor legal gay marriage (Gallup)

• A Florida transgender teen has been crowned prom queen (Proud Parenting)

• The Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church approved a groundbreaking same-sex marriage resolution (Washington Post)

• The Southern Poverty Law Center won a major victory on behalf of cheated farmworkers (SPLC)

• New stem cell implant holds hope for diabetics (KPBS) 

• The ACLU is suing batshit Florida Governor Rick Scott over the drug testing of state employees regardless of suspicion (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

• The ACLU and PPFA have filed a lawsuit challenging South Dakota's completely insane abortion law (RH Reality Check)

• The Health and Human Services Department has told the state of Indiana that its Medicaid plan, which bans funding to Planned Parenthood, is illegal and must be changed. (Feministing)

• The kids are alright (ScienceBlogs)

Symphonies of Science: Ode to the Brain

As much as I tire of the overuse of auto-tune in pop music, I can't get enough of the "Symphonies of Science" videos.  I think what I enjoy most is the presentation of what is often considered dry, egghead-speak in the form of an easily digestible, radio-friendly musical compositions.  I'm always a fan of anyone who can communicate scientific ideas and evoke an emotional response.

Here is the latest in the series, "Ode to the Brain," described on the Symphonies of Science page as follows:

Through the powerful words of scientists Carl Sagan, Robert Winston, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jill Bolte Taylor, Bill Nye, and Oliver Sacks, it covers different aspects the brain including its evolution, neuron networks, folding, and more. The material sampled for this video comes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Jill Bolte Taylor's TED Talk, Vilayanur Ramachandran's TED Talk, Bill Nye's Brain episode, BBC's "The Human Body", Oliver Sachs' TED Talk, Discovery Channel's "Human Body: Pushing the Limits", and more.

You can view all of the videos in the series here.  They're totally worth your time. 

A Complete History of the Universe, From The Big Bang to the Internet

Historian David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. Totally worth your time.

From the TEDTalks description: "This is "Big History": an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline."

Dr. Christian recently announced his initiative, The Big History Project, to teach big history to secondary school students in Australia and the United States. We need initiatives such as this, especially at a time when Creationism incessantly tries (and succeeds) to nudge its way into classrooms.

Biblical Literalism and Circular Logic: Protecting the House of Cards

Answers in Genesis, the organization behind The Creation Museum and the forthcoming Ark Encounter theme park, are no strangers to circular logic.  It's pretty much the foundation of their evangelistic philosophy, which boils down to the following: "The Bible is literally true, because The Bible tells us it is literally true. If any of it is not literally true, then we can't trust any of it, and that's not possible."

Take Dr. Georgia Purdom's March 10 blog entry at Answers in Genesis, "Is The Virgin Birth Really That Important To the Christian Faith?"  In this entry Purdom criticizes the liberal theology of folks like Rob Bell, whose latest book challenges some of Christianity's longstanding literal interpretations of scripture.  She states: "If the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is not true, then Jesus is not God and the Bible is not true...if the doctrines of creation and the Fall aren’t true, then the whole birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is pointless!"

Earlier, on March 7, Answers in Genesis president/CEO and founder Ken Ham posted a piece entitled "Maligned by Ken Ham?" in which he defends AiG's young-earth views against the BioLogos Foundation, who are working to prove that religion and science can co-exist.  BioLogos accepts (and promotes the teaching of) evolution.  Ham writes, "If there was not one man Adam and one woman Eve, and a literal event of the one man Adam taking the fruit in rebellion and thus bringing sin and death into world, then one may as well throw the rest of the Bible away. It would mean what God wrote through Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 for instance is plain wrong. If we are not all descendants of one man who sinned, then who are we, and why are we sinners?"

A recently posted article on the historical accuracy of Genesis states: Genesis 1–11 should be understood as literal history. Jesus and the New Testament authors viewed it as such, and the internal consistency of Genesis demonstrates its historical nature. Consequently, to interpret Genesis 1–11 in the same way Jesus did, you must treat the passage as historical narrative and follow the standard principles of interpretation. When you do this, it is clear that God created everything in six normal-length days approximately six thousand years ago.  

The shorter version: Genesis 1-11 is literally true because the Bible says so.

I can't prove to you that the virgin birth did not occur any more than I can prove that Muhammad did not fly on the back of a winged horse. But given what we know about biology and the laws of physics, we can safely conclude that these incidents did not occur as reported in scripture. It's certainly not difficult for Ham or Purdom to dismiss the Muhammad claim.  In fact, I'm sure they use similar logic that I use to dismiss the Muhammad claim, which is essentially: We have no evidence whatsoever that flying, winged horses existed, and therefore we can safely conclude that this did not occur.

By the same token, we have overwhelming evidence that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old.  Even if we generously allow a margin of error of a few million years (as most scientists do), it's a far cry from 6,000 years. We also have mountains of fossil, molecular, and anatomical evidence supporting the fact that mankind evolved over millions of years from simpler lifeforms.  This leaves me with no choice but to dismiss Adam and Eve as mythology.

But to state that the virgin birth, the Genesis creation story, and the Adam and Eve narrative are true because the Bible says they are true is circular logic. The mission statement of Answers in Genesis reads, in part, "We proclaim the absolute truth and authority of the Bible with boldness."  So it goes without saying that AiG's entire existence is at stake, and any compromise on their part would threaten the organization's very existence. 

Denialism is a bitch.  Many individuals approach compromise in their faith the same way AiG approaches compromise. To admit that certain claims in the Bible are not true would mean that they have to reevaluate beliefs which had been treated as truths for a large part of their lives.  They begin to feel as if the whole house of cards might come down.

To be clear, those who deny the age of the earth are not as small a minority as one might think.  According to a 2010 Gallup poll, around 40% of Americans align with the beliefs of Young Earth Creationism (that the heavens and the earth were created by the Abrahamic God in six days approximately 6-10k years ago), rising to over 50% among Republicans. Approximately 75% of Americans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and columnist for Scientific American says, "[Denialism] is the automatic gainsaying of a claim regardless of the evidence for it - sometimes even in the teeth of evidence. Denialism is typically driven by ideology or religious belief, where the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to ensure that the belief survives intact.”  

It is our natural tendency to believe only the evidence which fits into our preconceived ideas -- ideas that for many of us were presented to us as fact while we were children, and which we nurture our whole lives.  It is a natural tendency to seek and embrace only the information which backs up these beliefs. 

It is a difficult thing to alter one's beliefs.  Which is easier -- to continue to believe everything we've been taught and to ignore nagging doubts, or to completely overhaul our entire belief system?   The former only requires compartmentalization -- perhaps some denialism.  The latter can greatly affect our everyday life.  Millions of people build their entire lives around their faith.  Their faith often forms a basis for their communities, their friends, their activities.  It is incorporated into major life events: births, marriages, deaths.  Many believe that without their faith their life lacks purpose, or that without a rewarding afterlife where they are reunited with their loved ones, the pain of death may be too hard to bear.  It is not difficult to see why people might be hesitant to deny the virgin birth, or the resurrection, or any number of scriptural claims that are central to one's faith. To do so could affect their marriages, their social life, their standing in the community, or even their careers. It can be a serious commitment to rethink one's faith. And who has time for more commitments these days?

When the evidence against the extraordinary claims of scripture is overwhelming, the only thing many have left is circular logic. If we start with the premise that the Bible is the literal word of God, then we must dismiss any evidence that does not support our premise. We see this all the time in the anti-evolution community. If one were to pore over the numerous anti-evolution articles on the AiG site, it would quickly become clear that their tactics are very similar to any denialist tactics (anti-vax, climate change denial, etc.), such as criticizing relatively insignificant aspects of the larger theory, using anecdotes (often untrue) to cast doubt, or by distracting people from the evidence with character assassination and negative associations.

The reason many religious literalists use circular logic is because, quite simply, it is the only logic they have. Talking snakes and donkeys? A talking, burning bush? Walking on water? Parting the sea? Woman from a rib? Ascending bodily into heaven? The Bible says these are true, so they must be. If they didn't happen, then the Bible is not true, and then everything is pointless.

It doesn't have to be that way. Yes, for some (myself included), admitting that parts of the Bible are not true may lead to eventually leaving religion behind altogether. But even more have found a way to see these stories as literature, poetry, myth, or parable, and still retain their belief in a God, and remain a follower of Jesus's teachings. And to those folks, I can imagine that the beauty of evolution is a much more satisfying and awe-inspiring origin story than a dude made out of dirt. I also imagine that viewing the virgin birth as myth doesn't take away from the beauty and kindness associated with the Christmas holiday.

But it's starting to get a little silly, in this age of accelerated scientific discovery, to embrace claims that would be silly under any other circumstances, simply because the source of those claims claims that the claims are true.

Why Do Creationists Play The Hitler Card?

Sid Galloway speaking at LSU

Creationists love to play the Hitler card when critiquing the theory of evolution.  Ken Ham, of the Creation Museum, loves to bring up Hitler when discussing Darwin.  It is tirelessly trotted out in court cases deciding whether or not Creationism should be taught in school. The argument essentially is an effort to vilify the teaching of evolution by linking Darwin, and his conception of natural selection, to Nazi eugenics efforts. 

I was reading an article in LSU's Daily Reveille, published on Sunday, about Sid Galloway presenting his "Evidence — Answers Seminar" at the Chapel on the Campus.  In his seminar, Galloway, who is a zookeeper, a biology teacher, and a family counselor, suggested that evolution fuels racism, stating:

"If you read [Charles Darwin's] ‘Descent of Man,' it's obscenely racist," he said. "At the core of Hitler's belief was evolution."


The article continues:

Galloway, who believes the universe is thousands of years old, not billions, said evolution directly contradicts Christianity, because suffering would have existed in the world long before Adam and Eve bit into forbidden fruit.
"They cannot both be in harmony," he maintained. "They are incompatible."
 
The use of the Hitler card, when critiquing evolution, is not unlike the mudslinging in political campaign seasons.  It is a tactic used to distract and to sully by association.  The difference here is that whether or not Darwin's theory of evolution inspired Hitler, it does absolutely nothing to detract from the soundness of the theory. 

Imagine a seminar being given by a figure who denied the germ theory of disease.  Suppose this figure stated that Agostino Bassi's and Girolamo Fracastoro's work on this theory inspired the weaponization of tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, and botulism toxin.  Sure, this is an ugly, destructive application of the concepts of the theory, but is anyone less likely as a result to believe that the germ theory of disease is sound? 

Is the theory of gravity any less true, or less palatable, because millions of people have put to death by hanging? 

Like the politicians that sling mud during campaign season, the Creationists who use this tactic only draw attention to their own desperation, slinging mud against the wall in hopes that something sticks. 

A Sequence of Lines Traced by Five Hundred Individuals

One of the most common statements from those who deny Evolution is: "How could something so complex start from something so simple?" Part of the difficulty lies in the inability for most folks to fathom millions of mutations over millions of generations.

This below video does a great job of demonstrating how, over time, something simple can evolve into something unrecognizable. The premise is simple: One person draws a straight line. The next person is asked to trace the previous line. And so on -- like a game of Telephone. Although this model doesn't actually demonstrate how evolution works, it is remarkable in its ability to distill a simple evolutionary idea into something compelling and eye-opening.

A Sequence of Lines Traced by Five Hundred Individuals from clement valla on Vimeo.

On Being Perceived as a Condescending Elitist When it Comes to Religion

I think we owe it to ourselves to lift up the hood and really take a look at what we believe, and why. It's never pretty when we are honest about belief. It's easy to hit a nerve, and it's hard to not resort to verbal aggression when nerves are struck. I know. I do it all the time.
 
I get in a lot of discussions about religion, including my lack of it, its encroachment on public policy, or its frequent role in denial of basic human rights around the world.  I am misunderstood a lot of the time. this religion stuff is complex, and i have very complex feelings about it. It's easy to be misunderstood, and i realize that goes both ways.

Although folks like Hitchens would disagree, I never in a million years would believe that religion is a poison or a cancer.  to believe that would be to deny my very existence. I firmly believe that religion has been a powerful force in the shaping of human societies. I firmly believe that without religion, I would not be here writing this right now. I know that religion, along with evolved moral codes, has allowed many societies to become more cohesive, to flourish, and to survive. yes, religion has also been a great force of suffering in history. Nothing is black and white. Everything that is good in our world can also be bad, and every shade in between.

I do not for a second believe that religiosity cannot coincide with intelligence. Some of our greatest minds have been devoutly religious. My parents are two of the wisest and most intelligent people I know. My family members, relatives, and many good friends who are religious are way more intelligent than i could dream of being. I also know many non-religious folks who are morons. Quite a few.

Religion covers a broad range of ideologies and belief systems. And certainly we cannot talk about religion without talking about evolution. After all, everything evolves, including religion. It began somewhere, just like anything else. Not only did it evolve, but it played a role in our evolution. This is true and we have the evidence to prove it. As such, I find it just as open to study and dissection as the fields of geology, biology, cosmology, psychology, anthropology, or sociology. When we do look at religion from this perspective, and looking at the vast range that religion covers, we can make the association of certain religious beliefs to knowledge. We know for a fact that religion evolved partially as a means to understand the world in which its practitioners lived. When humans could not understand weather events, the reasons behind night and day, or why people get sick, they explained them with religious beliefs. throughout history, even as we gained more understanding about life and the cosmos and stopped believing that the gods controlled lightning or that demons caused malaria, we still looked to religion to explain more complex things that elude(d) our understanding. Even today, as sore as it makes people to hear or read it, there is research that shows the associations between broad ranges of religious belief and knowledge/education. As un-PC as it may be to point out, the more primitive fundamentalist beliefs (whether Christian, Muslim, Judaism, etc.) are more often associated with the less educated. The less primitive the beliefs, the more educated the believers (or non-) are. There is data to support it. To deny the connection of these associations is to deny that practitioners of currently practiced tribal rituals to oust an illness-causing demon are doing so partly due to lack of knowledge about human illness and biology. We also have to understand that way before the Abrahamic god came on the scene, there were countless primitive religions that covered the earth. Why is it that it took so long for monotheism to take hold if we are to believe that the Abrahamic god himself created us in his own image to follow him? That is a long, crooked path (with endless forks and dead ends) away from him to only come back in the last few thousand years (mere seconds in the time-line of human history).

You can infer what you will from the above statements. Do I believe that believing in the Genesis creation story (in a literal sense) is due to stupidity? No. Do I believe that believing in the Genesis creation story shows a lack of knowledge about what we have learned about life, the earth, and the cosmos? Yes. I believe mostly, however, that people cling to literal biblical interpretations mostly because of willful ignorance. people do not want to invest in understanding the oceans of data supporting evolutionary theory and natural selection. They do not want to consider the mountains of transitional species in the fossil record. They do not want to appreciate the vast, unimaginable stretches of time involved in evolutionary change. It is difficult for people with our lifespans to envision even 1,000 generations, much less hundreds of thousands, or millions. We look at our own children as they grow and do not notice how much they have changed until we look at a photo from the recent past. the change that occurs so slightly from generation to generation over millions of years is impossible for us to fathom.

We are usually told the stories of religion at a young age. We believe them because they are as true to us at that age as is the sky being blue. As we grow older, to unlearn certain stories, or even the literalness of certain stories is like denying our very existence. We fear we will slip down the path to not knowing ourselves; admitting one thing in the Bible is not true will make the entire house of cards collapse before us. This does not have to be true. Francis Collins of the NIH, and former head of the Human Genome Project consistently speaks of the coexistence of religion and evolution.  He is at once an Evangelical Christian and a staunch proponent of evolution.   These things are not irreconcilable. 
 
I realize that the above could further cement the impression that I believe that fundamentalist Christians (or Muslims, etc.) are ignorant, and that I am evolved and more knowledgeable. I don't know why I am how I am. but I can say that I have gotten here not without an incredible amount of research, soul-searching, self-education, and a daily thirst for further understanding the mechanisms that dictate the way life works and how the cosmos behaves.

I would never say that there is not some supernatural force out there that has set it all into motion. I do not know this. There are always things that humans will not understand about the cosmos and about life. But because we cannot explain things does not mean that we must ascribe those things a supernatural origin. I don't know for sure that pixies do not live in the forest, but I have to assume that they do not until I have something that proves to me otherwise.

But the fact that I don't entertain supernatural explanations about the world does not mean that I believe that anyone who believes in demonic possession, or ghosts, is not intelligent. They're certainly entitled to believe those things. I may wonder, however, if they have really ruled out all other possibilities. I may get upset if my tax dollars go to fund ghostbusters, and I may become vocal when public school science teacher teaches my child that ghosts may be just as good an explanation for why a door closes on its own as changes in air pressure. I may even ridicule him. But that doesn't make me a condescending elitist.  However, that will not stop the ghostbusters from thinking I believe they are stupid. 

And so it goes.



This piece appeared previously on happyrobot.com.