More creationist compliant than you might think

Tyrannosaurus rex VS Struthiomimus by haghani on deviantART

Oddly enough this picture is more creationist compliant than many creationists might already know.  Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell has speculated that ornithomimids might actually have been birds and have had feathers.

Extraterrestrial Iron

But the LORD selected you and brought you out of Egypt's iron furnace to be a people for His inheritance, as you are today." ~ Deuteronomy 4:20 

I thought this was strange to mention iron furnaces during the Bronze Age, but it is cooler than that. By 3200 BC, Egypt had begun smelting iron meteorites, 2000 years before they figured out how to smelt native iron.

Lately I have been watching Derren Brown's Messiah again

In Derren Brown's Messiah, Brown poses as a man with supernatural powers to psychics, a Christian, Atheists, a New Age author, an author on alien abduction, and someone who claims to be able to talk to the dead.  He attempts to prove that experts in their fields do not vet the information they give to people.  Only one expert, a Christian evangelist, refused to endorse him, because he wanted a second meeting.

Whether we believe in psychic ability, crystal energy, alien abduction, talking to the dead, or Christianity, we are rightly or wrongly buying into a very powerful belief system. Now I am not interested in attack anyone's belief, but I think as intelligent human beings we should be prepared to question our beliefs and the people who encourage us to make our life decisions based on the information they give us. That's what this show is about...You're sharp enough to question what I do, because you know I deal in illusion. It's all about questioning. But there are beliefs we are not encouraged to question and these are often the beliefs upon which we are asked to make important life decisions. These are the areas where we should test and look for misinformation and where the big names in those fields should apply the same rigor, because often we are making those life decisions based on the information we get from those people. - Mentalist Derren Brown - Messiah

People's beliefs are not the issue, it is the way we relate to those beliefs and certainly the people out there who have those beliefs, the people who are getting their information, and forming those beliefs and living those lives; they're not the people "to have a go at them" or to laugh at. The people who are putting the beliefs out there, the industry behind them as it were. [We're] just taking a look at them. ~ Mentalist Derren Brown - Messiah

Beth Moore is just another degree

[The following is something I wrote in response to a great blog Beth Moore Prophesies a Coming 'Outpouring,' Warns of 'Scoffers' written by Erin at Donotbesurprised.com.]

"The astute viewer will notice that the message Moore is sharing allegedly was given to her directly by God, thus it cannot be questioned lest we question the Lord Himself."

In Lynchburg and at Liberty, we were taught to have these experiences. Now some would chide experience for being unbiblical or that it needed to be reigned in by biblical teaching, but few were the ones that would dismiss them. I remember one pastor doling on about how you don't question the postman, because he had a message from God. Then when he finally started his message, he took a verse out of context, so I immediately started questioning this postman. God "told" people everything from quitting the football team to real time messages for someone in the congregation. At Liberty and then at Calvary Chapel, they would describe experience as the muscles and the Bible as the bones and then argue about who had the correct balance.

But I am generally alone when I question their God. Generally everyone, is like I used to be, questioning the postman. Everyone makes mistakes, I hear. (Nowadays I think that you can use God claims to question the validity of their God.) We live in this plural evangelical culture advocating this experience (generally your personal one) and perhaps obliviously throwing out the experiences of most of the world. Like Moore though, these are supposed to be beneath scripture.

"The scoffers, I believe that God put on my heart, please test the spirit, pray and see if this is confirmed to you in prayer and in the study of the word."

If one does not buckle and tries to defend their experience, they say test it with prayer and the Bible. Unfortunately, they never say test it against reality, but then again most experiences stay away from being testable in that way. Word salads like "spirit", "downpour", and "revival" are great, because you can say them and listeners hear different meanings. Moore is just another degree of this issue.

h/t Here I Blog

Why are Australian marsupials more closely related?

Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson does a great job laying out the differences between evolutionary hypotheses and creation hypotheses in his new article New Genetic Findings Tackle the Toughest Evolutionary Questions.  Evolutionary theory predicts that Australian marsupials should be more closely related to each other than placentals even though they have similar adaptations.  The fossil record shows marsupials migrating from North America to South America to Antarctica, and finally settling in Australia which became a genetically isolated continent.

Just like the fossil record and taxonomy predicted, genetics established that a marsupial mole is more closely related to a kangaroo than a European placental mole.   This seems like an open and shut case.  Three lines of evidence seem to demonstrate that the Theory of Evolution best explains Australian marsupial diversity.  

In his article, Jeason fields probably the second most common creationist apologetic to this conclusion.  "Perhaps wombats and kangaroos are similar at the protein level because the sequences that were compared between these two species play a role in marsupial physiology."  Jeason does a great job of explaining why this is not probably the case.  The proteins that are used for this genetics testing perform the same function in cells.  It would be useless to test a protein that could vary depending on the length of an animal's nose.  The ones with similar noses would appear more closely related.  

After explaining this, Jeason goes on to say that this is exactly his hypothesis.  First, he tried to model genetic variation over time and determined that under that model marsupials should appear more distantly related than closer.  Then he had the following insight.

This negative result was actually the first step toward discovering new insights into DNA function, and it turned the tables on the evolutionary argument. By eliminating the hypothesis of functionally neutral change over time, I was able to clearly identify the hole in modern molecular biology thinking. Though each protein has historically been thought to perform a single function inside the cell—like energy transformation—these negative results required a modification to this rule. Combined with preliminary data from the secular literature, these results suggest that each protein might perform several functions. For example, proteins involved in energy transformation in fish might also play a role in fin formation and underwater respiration. It’s as if a light switch were designed not only to control electricity but also to simultaneously support the ventilation system, maintain the foundation, and repair the roof.

Hypothesizing multi-functional proteins stretches the imagination and even seems to strain credulity. But the Master Designer has no such intelligence limitations, and He appears to have designed numerous proteins for multiple purposes.2

 He goes on to say that genetic relationships strongly correlate with taxonomic relationships.  According to him this provides another line of evidence.  So who has the better hypothesis?  The evolutionary hypothesis is held up by the fossil record, taxonomy, and genetics.  Plus it is predictive.  Jeason's hypothesis is held up by maybe taxonomy and does not explain the fossil record.  Also Jeason even admits that he at this junction has not found any other functions for these proteins.  He is just hypothesizing that they might be there.  Jeason hints that he may provide more evidence at a later date.

In a future issue we’ll tell you about a startling discovery we made when comparing genetic similarity among members of the same kind.

There was already over 80 comments, so I thought that I would respond here.  Someone in the comments is hailing this as the "right answer".  This same person says that the evolutionary explanation has been "refuted".  Let's be clear, Jeason has not demonstrated that he has the "right answer" and has not "refuted" the evolutionary explanation.  He has merely guessed that the proteins used in genetic testing have many other functions.  Until he manages to demonstrate these functions for these proteins he has not refuted anything.

Let's address one last comment.

This is not really anymore of a challenge than explaining similarities between a kangaroo and a kangaroo rat.  Convergent evolution produces similar traits through similar mechanisms.  In fact, the stinky striped possum is related closely to the Sugarglider.  As far as I can tell, unlike a skunk, striped possums stink, but do not spray.  Even Lightner places them into the "Gliding and striped possum kind".  So according to AiG, they are the same kind as a gliding marsupial.  

Correcting my orchard post

I try to be fair with people I disagree.  On that note, I want to publish a correction to a previous post about the creationist orchard.  You can read the full post by clicking on the next link.

Creation Orchard to Nowhere

...I am unclear about the bird.  Certainly there are pre-cenozoic birds, and some that would fit into one of the avian kinds. 

Correction 3-6-14:  Originally the last sentence said that no Mesozoic bird would fit into one of the avian kinds.  However, this probably is not true.  The entire order of Psittaciformes is considered the "Parrot Kind" by Lightner.  A Cretaceous parrot was found in 1998.

Also, a fossil Anseriformes has been found.  Here, it gets more complicated.  Lightner divides the order Anseriformes into three kinds.  While the fossil appears more closely related to the family Anatidae which Lightner calls the "Duck Kind" it is unclear if Lightner would place the fossil in this group.  In fact, the initial kind estimates as a rule tend to avoid all fossils.  Also, if there were Cretaceous Anseriformes, that seems to suggest that there were Cretaceous Galliformes, because molecular data suggests that Anseriformes and Galliformes both belong to the clade Galloanserae.  Lightner, of course, believes that Galliformes coexisted with dinosaurs, but for other reasons.  While she subdivided the order Anseriformes into three kinds, she kept the order Galliformes as one created kind.  She was forced to do this, because four of the five families have examples of cross family hybridization.   

[1] Wang, Xiaoming and Richard H. Tedford Dogs Their Fossil Relatives & Evolutionary History (New York: Columbia Press, 2008) 23

People need to watch more Dinosaur Train II

The more I read some blogs, the more I thank my High School English teachers for all their emphasis on reading comprehension. Simile is not a declaration. If you say that something is like something, you are categorically saying that that thing is not that something, just like that something.

One of my last blogs was about how watching Dinosaur Train could correct the following misconceptions about mammals in the Mesozoic Era.

Many still think that mammals and dinosaurs, for example, never coexisted, or if they did it was only for a short period when only small shrew-like mammals were present.

Read People need to watch more Dinosaur Train for a brief overview why this supposed popular misconception has been known to be wrong since at least the 1850's.  Most mammals in the Mesozoic were small with the largest known fossils being about the size of a badger, but they were contemporaneous throughout the age of dinosaurs.

Werner argues in his books that modern animals are found in the Mesozoic fossil record.  Smith and Scordova share this view, Scordova being of the impression that mammals would be glossed over as contamination.  I do not have ready access to Werner's books, but his method strikes me as suspect.  Apparently, he is mainstream in creationist circles, both Creation.com and Answers in Genesis sell his work.  With all the millions of dollars at the disposal of Liberty University, Answers in Genesis, and Creation Ministries International, we have some guy going to museums taking photographs.  If this had merit could not a scientist have done comparative analysis from the peer reviewed publications.  Perhaps when I get a chance I will watch his full presentation.

Smith was kind enough to footnote his claims so that I can easily analyze them.

To the surprise of many, ducks,1 squirrels,2 platypus,3beaver-like4 and badger-like5 creatures have all been found in ‘dinosaur-era’ rock layers along with bees, cockroaches, frogs and pine trees. Most people don’t picture a T. rex walking along with a duck flying overhead, but that’s what the so-called ‘dino-era’ fossils would prove!

Let's look first at the duck.  Vegavis iaai was uncovered in 1992, but the concretions delayed its description until 2005.  As far as I can tell from the paper the V. iaai has 20 points in her skeleton that are only found in Anseriformes.  While there seems to be some controversy, I am willing to concede that V. iaai seems to be a true water fowl and that there were probably some ancestors of Galliformes in the Cretaceous.  However, I would not know how Smith would make such a prediction.  One, to call V. iaai a duck, seems to allow for more diversity than creationists normally allow in their "kinds".  Two, the prediction about galliformes assumes a genetic relationship between Galliformes and Anseriformes.  Three, it is important to note here that V. iaai, is a duck only in the broadest sense like geese are ducks.

Let's look at the squirrel.   Volaticotherium antiquus did actually make an appearance on Dinosaur Train as Vlad the vampire like mammal.  Just look at those canines! He wants to suck your blood! Wait! Do squirrels have canines?  Actually, one of the reasons that V. antiquus is not a squirrel is his presence of canines which most rodents do not have and no squirrel has.  V. antiquus actually was not a member of the order Rodentia, but a member of an extinct order of mammals called the Eutriconodonta which do not appear in the Cenozoic fossil record.

According to Smith, this is not common knowledge, but I have grown up knowing that platypuses are living fossils.  Among other things, they lack nipples and lay eggs.  However they are very poorly represented in the fossil record.  Like Anseriformes, monotremes have possible cretaceous fossils.  While molecular biology studies put platypuses and echidnas diverging 10-80 million years ago, the fossil evidence pushes this back 40 million years into the Mesozoic.  While it is surprising that platypuses may be older than we think, these possible monotremes are still 100 million years younger than the oldest mammals.  Yet as I read this article Smith uses at a source, I see a bit of a problem with his conjecture that "many more tens of thousands of fossil mammals in ‘dinosaur rock’ are likely being similarly ignored in other parts of the world, with the likelihood of finding even more representatives of the same kinds as modern-day mammals."  Consider this paragraph.

Tom began digging along the south-eastern coast of Victoria some 25 years ago in his original quest to find Australia’s oldest mammals. He kept finding dinosaur bones, but in 1996 the first mammal jaw finally turned up, causing international scientific headlines when it was published in 1997 in Science.

At the time of this article, Dr. Tom Rich had been digging in Australia for a quarter of a century looking for mammal fossils.  While dinosaurs may be more in vogue, there are certainly paleontologists researching Mesozoic mammals.  Also, a cretaceous (pre-flood) platypus may not help Smith, because now an Australian platypus needs to migrate to the Ark and then coincidentally migrate off the Ark back to Australia.

I'll deal with the rest of the claims in another post.