Are Crocodilians one thing? Part II

As a general rule, I try to present someone else's position as accurately as possible.  Therefore, I read a lot of creationist materials.  In January, Tom Hennigan posted two more papers on estimating "kinds": An Initial Estimate toward Identifying and Numbering the Ark Turtle and Crocodile Kinds and An Initial Estimate Toward Identifying and Numbering Amphibian Kinds within the Orders Caudata and Gymnophiona.

I have enjoyed reading these papers and they have actually helped me freshen up on my taxonomy.  I have written about these types of papers elsewhere and do not wish to rehash old posts.  You can read The Kind of argument we are having and Avian Kinds for more details.

I just wanted to call attention to two things. A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of blog posts about Carl Kerby in my view misrepresenting a phylogenetic chart. In Are Crocodilians one thing?, I dealt with Kerby's claim that Crocodilians, now called Crocodyliformes, are "one thing."  Below is all the diversity that Kerby allows in this kind.  (Image drawn by Darren Naish and can be found on his blog)

Hennigan chooses to deal only with Crocodylia and this is probably due to AiG's hesitance to speak to fossil kinds in these initial papers.  While Lightner tends to accept broad genetic relationships and create large kinds, Hennigan tends to be more narrow.  While he admits that all Crocodylia may have had a common ancestor, "the kind is delineated at the family level because of their strong cognita, interspecific hybridization reported within (but not across) some families, and the need for more understanding of what the molecular data mean."

In his paper on salamanders, he does the same thing.

Family Plethodontidae is the largest salamander group with 27 genera and 431 species having an average total length of 10 cm...The family is quite diverse, for example, some can ballistically project their tongue to catch prey while others have web feet. Until further research sheds light on why they are so diverse, I default the kind to genus. It is probable that many will eventually be lumped into larger taxa in the future.

 Remember, the diversity is a problem for the "biblical creationist", because they only have the 4000 years since Noah's Ark to account for the diversity.  While Lightner is more willing to appeal to supernatural mechanisms, Hennigan does not wish to go down that route, at least not initially.

People need to watch more Dinosaur Train

Recently, an author going by Scordova wrote something for the blog, Uncommondescent.com.  Uncommondescent markets themselves as an intelligent design blog and like most in the intelligent design movement, they have a biblical creationist (young earth) bent.  In this particular entry, Scordova relies heavily on two articles written on Kent Hovind's Creation.com.  Neither site has proven to me their trustworthiness and this post is no exception.  

Scordova starts by listing Bill Nye's request for a mammal to be demonstrated in the "trilobite layers" (the Paleozoic).  This author seems to be one of those creationists that denies the geologic column (unlike many creationists), so one wonders if he understood Nye's request.  When he begins to present his evidence that would absolutely change Nye's mind, we know that he did not understand Nye's request.  Quoting extensively from Calvin Smith's The so-called ‘Age of Dinosaurs’ at Creation.com, he begins to attempt to prove that mammals are contained in "dinosaur rock".

"Dinosaur rock"?  When Nye said "trilobite layers", he clearly understood that he was talking about the Paleozoic Era.  Dinosaurs and mammals first show up in the beginning of the next era, the Mesozoic Era, which Smith refers to three times as "dinosaur rock".  So what is the big deal? Google Books has a book from 1979 called Mesozoic Mammals and those authors note a 1854 discovery of a Mesozoic mammal.  This is not even listed as the first discovery.   I grew up on PBS, Discovery Channel, Walking with Dinosaurs, and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.  My children watch a PBS show called Dinosaur Train which teaches about these mammals along with dinosaurs and birds.  

Well, according to Smith, unlike my family, "Many people are surprised when they hear of these creatures being buried together and wonder why they never heard of it before."  Good question, why are the public not as educated on this subject as maybe they should be?  Perhaps, the Mesozoic needs to be taught better in schools.  Perhaps more children need to watch Dinosaur Train.  Well as you may expect, Smith has another answer quoting from one of Carl Werner's interviews.  Dr. Donald Burge notes that he does not have the time to process the fossils.  Burge specializes in reptiles and dinosaurs so he does not have the time or expertise to sort through the extra 20,000 pounds of clay containing mammal fossils.  

In his book, Werner argues that Mesozoic mammal fossils are constantly misidentified, because they actually belong to Cenozoic families.  Werner draws his conclusions not from professional research, but from combing through tens of thousands of photos his wife took at museums.  The 2001 Burge quote suggests to Werner and Smith that there are fossils of modern mammals coexisting with dinosaurs and they are just falling through the cracks due to massive evolutionary bias.  In the Uncommondescent blog, Scordova demonstrates his lack of understanding by taking it a step further.

So is there a possibility anomalies are edited out and instead a practice of false reporting (perhaps innocently done) has been perpetuated. They probably think something like: “We found a mammal, that’s clearly contamination because we know mammals aren’t in that era”. So thus we never hear official reports of the anomalies because the anomalies are regarded as contaminants since according to the false narrative, certain creatures didn’t live in certain eras.

Again, Mesozoic mammals have been known for at least a century and a half.  In the comment section of Smith's article someone makes this point.  Smith responds with this anecdote.

Your statement "...this comes as no surprise to anyone." is absolutely incorrect. I can tell you from personal experience that I have met many hundreds of people (both creationists and evolutionists) that have been exposed to this type of information at CMI presentations that were completely surprised by the fact that birds like ducks and mammals like platypus and beavers etc lived with dinosaurs.

Maybe these people should watch more Dinosaur Train?  Museums are filled with fossils that need to be studied.  I have little doubt that there are more people digging up mammal fossils than there are qualified researchers studying them.  However, the claim that paleontologists are missing modern mammals, this I doubt.  I'll deal with the following misconception in my next blog.

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!

Darwin helped put an end to polygenesis

Polygenesis is the idea that the races are so different that there must have been created separately by God.  Ken Ham has argued for a while that the Bible teaches one race, but this has not always been the consensus.  Thanks in large part to Darwinian evolution, polygenesis did not survive the 19th century.

Finally, we may conclude that when the principles of evolution are generally accepted, as they surely will be before long, the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists will die a silent and unobserved death. ~ Darwin - Descent of Man

Blount wants to know if Fabich even read his papers

Lenski has issued a response through one of his co-researchers against what they call Ham's and Fabich's misrepresentations.

"Both Ham and Fabich asserted that the Cit+ function did not evolve because using citrate did not involve 'any kind of new information … it’s just a switch that gets turned on and off.' (Fabich went on to state that this “switch” is what we reported. That is emphatically not true. It beggars belief that anyone, much less a trained microbiologist, could actually read our 2012 paper, where we reported the genetic basis of Cit+, and come away thinking this.)"

Creation Orchard to Nowhere

I just want to make a point about the Creationist Orchard.  When a biologist draws a phylogeny; the lines mean something, whether species, families, or even classes.  When Ken Ham presents this chart, he's just drawing lines.  

There is no fossil record for any canids or apes until after the cretaceous.  There have been more than 214 species of canids throughout history 37 of them exist today.  177 of them are known only from the fossil record. All 177 of them are found in the Cenozoic fossil record, which Ham believes happened after Noah's flood.[1]  The earliest canid does not appear until the Eocene, but earliest ape does not appear until the Oligocene.  Those pre-Cenozoic branches come out of inspired imaginations.  Likewise there are no Cenozoic ceratopsians in the fossil record.  Those also originate in inspired imaginations. 

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

What would it take to change your mind?

Image Source: American Atheists

I haven't seen the whole debate, but I was watching semi-live at this point. I find it interesting how Mohler and Golden describe Nye's response. (This takes place at 2:03:00 of the debate. One to be fair, Ham is cut off a bit short, he goes on to say that he doubts the models that are created around the Bible. Also, he tries to assert that like his mind, Nye's mind could never change.)

Mohler described it this way.

This is where the debate was most important. Both men were asked if any evidence could ever force them to change their basic understanding. Both men said no. Neither was willing to allow for any dispositive evidence to change their minds. Both operate in basically closed intellectual systems. The main problem is that Ken Ham knows this to be the case, but Bill Nye apparently does not. Ham was consistently bold in citing his confidence in God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in the full authority and divine inspiration of the Bible. He never pulled a punch or hid behind an argument. Nye seems to believe that he is genuinely open to any and all new information, but it is clear that his ultimate intellectual authority is the prevailing scientific consensus. More than once he asserted a virtually unblemished confidence in the ability of modern science to correct itself. He steadfastly refused to admit that any intellectual presuppositions color his own judgment.

Golden describes it this way.

Nye surprisingly said, however: “I would just need one piece of evidence” to have his mind changed. But in reality, Nye is not interested in evidence that will disprove evolutionary ideas. He would like to see a ministry like Answers in Genesis fail in its mission to reach and equip families with the truths of Genesis 1–11.

Now to be fair, Nye talks about evidence that would convince him.  Half of these are not things that "biblical creationists" believe.

• Fossil in a different than predicted layer:  This is a bit of a strawman, because many creationists believe in hydraulic sorting. Tyrannosaurs would all be found in the higher layers, because they would have fled to the higher elevations.  However, this is an insufficient explanation.  One, it maintains that all known members of created "kinds" on multiple continents coincidentally did the same thing.  There should only be a greater statistical chance of finding Tyrannosaurs in the Mesozoic instead of the Permian.  There are some creationist claims about finding fossils in the wrong strata, but for some reason, they never meet the burden of proof.
• Evidence the Universe is not expanding.   I am sure that there are "biblical creationists" that do not think the universe is expanding, but they are so few that I don't know of any.  
• Stars appear far away, but are not.  Creationists gave up the idea that the universe was only 12,000 light years in diameter around the time that Uranus was discovered.  Distant star light is still a problem, but one they are working on.
• Evidence that all the rock layers could form in 4000 years.  I think Nye and I would argue that for a variety of reasons, the evidence presented so far is insufficient that most of the rock layers around the world were deposited in about a year by Noah's flood. 

Beck 2010: The country will be washed with blood

As Beck gets into the news more, I cannot help but remember the following quote that he said back in 2010.  

As I stood at the Lincoln Memorial today, and I … I read the words. Could you get a second inaugural address for me? Stu, Lincoln’s second inaugural address. We’re going to take a break and I am going to read what I saw on the wall. I will read his exact words, but in a nut shell, God will wash this nation with blood if he has to, but he doesn't have to. He doesn’t have to. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are forces…we are not fighting against Barack Obama, we’re not fighting against the democratic party. We are not fighting something that simple, oh how I wish we were. We’re not. I told you after September 11th there is a perfect storm formulating and it is here and I have begged…if you’d, if you’ll listen to me as the market started to melt down…I told you, I begged you then. Please, please get off of this party thing. Please and let’s have real conversations, for the love of Pete let’s please come together. Why? Because I said at the time we are passing all of the exits. Gang, there is one exit left. There is one exit left and it is God. Everything that is coming our way is too big to handle on our own. If we do not put God at the center of our own personal lives and the center of our country, we will not survive. The country will be washed with blood and someone will have to start over and God only knows how long that takes.

Now in fairness to Beck, Lincoln does use the word "blood" once in his second inaugural address.  In the middle of this short address, Lincoln turns the subject to theodicy, pondering why God has permitted this horrible war among two groups of his worshipers.  Near the end, he wonders if the South has a debt to pay the Almighty for slavery.

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."3 Then Lincoln ends with the unforgettable conclusion.  With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Lincoln does suggest that God might have a blood quota that needed to be satisfied, but nowhere does Lincoln talk about washing the nation in blood.  There is a difference.  The one is blood for blood, instead of bloody annihilation. Elsewhere Beck has had bloody dialogue with American History.  Earlier that year in May of 2010, he said the following:

I just the other day read a letter between Thomas Jefferson and James — or John Adams. It was 1920 — 1823, 1824. And they were going back and forth and they were talking about, wow, this is going to fall apart at some point. And Thomas Jefferson said, yes, yes. But if they lose freedom — he's speaking of us — future generations, if they lose freedom, there will be rivers of blood.

I mean, he talks about rivers of blood three or four times before we finally gain freedom back. Boy, I hope that's not true. But I can tell you there will be rivers of blood if we don't have values and principles. Second attempt, third attempt, fourth attempt — it's going to take a while to turn it back around.

You must see yourself as guardian, somebody who will preserve what is true and pass it on. Be a guardian. We don't need militants or revolutionaries. We need guardians. We need leaders.

This is how the Library of Congress describes the letter.

"Rivers of blood must yet flow"

In a letter to Adams, Jefferson asserted that self-government in Europe and Spanish America would require a long and bloody revolution: "all will attain representative government, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to be a necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate. to attain all this however rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over."

Here is a link to the full letter, read it for yourself.   Beck took a letter arguing that a bloody revolution was needed to establish European liberty and said it meant that there would be rivers of American blood if we "lose freedom".  Beck put his own words in Lincoln and Jefferson's mouths. Whose blood was Beck thinking about?  Who was Beck's God going to slay?

Recently Beck apologized for being divisive.  It is about time that he came to that conclusion, years after he argued God was going to wash the nation in blood.  Also, he has reported that the feud between Hannity, Levin, and him has ended.  According to Beck, a mutual acquaintance was trying to divide the Tea Party by spreading discord among them.  Good for him, but it might be a while before these quotes are not the first things that come to mind.

America the Beautiful, Coke, and Wikipedia

Normally I do not approve of wiki vandalism, but this is pretty funny. It will probably be gone by tomorrow. In the America the Beautiful entry, the last line under History reads, 

"During the NFL Super Bowl 48 commercial in 2014, Coke made many uneducated people mad because they were reminded that other countries exist in the world, and that some of those people live in the same country as they do."