Dr. Steven Novella, neurologist at Yale and president of the New England Skeptical Society (and host of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, blogger at Neurologica, blogger at Skepticblog, and blogger at The Rogue’s Gallery) has put together an excellent blog about the battle against creation science as a part of his multi-part blog on the Skeptical Battlegrounds. It is an excellent read that I highly recommend.
STATEMENT: ”Human Artifacts throughout the Geologic Column…Man-made artifacts - such as the hammer in Cretaceous rock, a human sandal print with trilobite in Cambrian rock, human footprints and a handprint in Cretaceous rock – point to the fact that all the supposed geologic periods actually occurred at the same time in the recent past.”
RESPONSE: The work cited for this claim is Carl Baugh’s Why Do Men Believe Evolution Against All Odds?. However, this claim has been disproved by scientists and, more importantly, criticized by creationists. Many creationists, including the creationist organization Answers in Genisis (AIG), have criticized Baugh, claiming that he has “muddied the water for many christian.” Don Batten, of Creation Ministries International wrote: “Some Christians will try to use Baugh’s ‘evidences’ in witnessing and get ’shot down’ by someone who is scientifically literate. The ones witnessed to will thereafter be wary of all creation evidences and even more inclined to dismiss Christians as nut cases not worth listening to.”
As to Baugh’s “artifacts,” his evidence is lacking. “In 1982-1984, several scientists, including J.R. Cole, L.R. Godfrey, R.J. Hastings, and S.D. Schafersman, examined Baugh’s purported ‘mantracks’ as well as others provided by creationists in the Glen Rose Formation. In the course of the examination ‘Baugh contradicted his own earlier reports of the locations of key discoveries’ and many of the supposed prints ‘lacked human characteristics.’ After a three year investigation of the tracks and Baugh’s specimens, the scientists concluded there was no evidence of any of Baugh’s claims or any ‘dinosaur-man tracks’” (quoted from Wikipedia page on Carl Baugh).
CONCLUSION: It is important to note that Carl Baugh is the founder of the Creation Evidence museum, the organization that has compiled this list of “evidences” for creation. Baugh’s own work has been scientifically debunked, and Baugh himself is considered to be a detriment to the creationist cause by his contemporaries. This fact alone should be enough to convince the masses not to believe in his argument for creation based on human artifacts found “throughout the geologic column.”
(Note: The geologic column in itself is a faulty argument. See Part 1 of this blog for more information.)
“I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.”
-William James
Anything is possible in science, but the degree to which a hypothesis is accepted or denied is directly proportional to the amount of evidence in support of it or detracting from it, as well as to the amount of evidence supporting or detracting from an alternate hypothesis. Creation science and intelligent design are not impossible hypotheses, but the evidence supporting them is lacking, and the evidence supporting an alternate hypothesis (i.e. evolution) is overwhelming.
NOTE: Because of the nature of the argument presented in point #4, this blog will not examine the argument sentence by sentence, but will address the argument as the whole.
STATEMENT: “World population growth rate in recent times is about 2% per year. Practicable application of growth rate throughout human history would be about half that number. Wars, disease, famine, etc. have wiped out approximately one third of the population on average every 82 years. Starting with eight people, and applying these growth rates since the Flood of Noah’s day (about 4500 years ago) would give a total human population at just under six billion people. However, application on an evolutionary time scale runs into major difficulties. Starting with one “couple” just 41,000 years ago would give us a total population of 2 x 1089. The universe does not have space to hold so many bodies.”
RESPONSE: The basis for this argument is a work by Henry Morris called Scientific Creationism. It has several flaws in it, but I will deflect to Lenny Flank, Jr., author of Deception by Design: The Intelligent Design Movement in America, who states:
“Contrary to Morris’s fanciful assumptions, there is no reason to believe that the global human population has been increasing exponentially, and good reason to believe that it was in fact stabilized by environmental factors (just like the housefly population has been) throughout most of human history, right up until the agricultural and industrial revolutions which have allowed population growth rates to climb sharply. Morris’s population argument is nothing more than an exercise in story-telling, and in it we see the basis for the other stories told by the creationists–selecting a short term trend and then projecting and extrapolating it backwards until it reaches the desired result.” (Lenny Flank, Population Rates and the Age of the Earth)
Regarding the statement about evolution, I would like to know why we must assume that we are starting from one couple 41,000 years ago. Why? Evolution does not ask that we start from one couple, as evolution is a slow, progressive process. And no one thinks that the human species originated 41,000 years ago. Actually, it is believed to have been more like 200,000 years ago. So why these arbitrary numbers? While the math they present is accurate, the argument itself is based on the false premise that population growth occurs at a constant, exponential rate. As Flank says, “While Morris’s mathematics are impeccable, the reasoning behind his argument is shoddy at best.”
“Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.”
-Stephen Jay Gould
I have nothing to add; its fine enough as it is.
STATEMENT: “Evolutionists have constructed the Geologic Column in order to illustrate the supposed progression of “primitive” life forms to “more complex” systems we observe today.”
RESPONSE: This is true, although it should be clarified that Geologists created this. There is no such thing as an evolutionist; evolutionism implies that evolution is a scientific ideology (which it is not) instead of a scientific theory (which it is).
STATEMENT: “Yet, ’since only a small percentage of the earth’s surface obeys even a portion of the geologic column the claim of their having taken place to form a continuum of rock/life/time over the earth is therefore a fantastic and imaginative contrivance.’”
RESPONSE: This is a quote from John Woodmorappe, which is a “pen name of an author who has published several articles and books with the creation science groups Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research. His main works are Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study and the The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods. He has also written several articles in creationist journals” (quoted from the Wikipedia page on John Woodmorappe). In other words, the quote used as evidence is coming from a person with the biased opinion of the creation “scientists” rather than an objective observer. Thus, this quote has little, if any, strength. Also, the geologic column is not an absolute, as is noted below (see CONCLUSION).
STATEMENT: “‘[T]he lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.’”
RESPONSE: This quote from botanist N. Heribert Nilsson is a great example of the logical fallacy “argument from authority.” Creationists make the mistake that since Nilsson was a scientist, he is an authority in his field. Nilsson was a geneticist and botanist…and a loon. His theories were quack, to say the least. Tom McIver wrote in Anti-Evolution: An Annotated Bibliography:
[Nilsson believed that] During these catastrophic periods, new organisms are created by “emication” — a drastic alteration or production of gametes. A few survive as totally new forms. Inspired by Oparin’s theory of spontaneous origin of life, Nilsson argues that these gametes, of entirely new organisms, could form spontaneously and polyphyletically, out of the mix of biocatalytic substances engendered during the catastrophic episodes. “During paleobiological times whole new worlds of biota have been repeatedly synthesized.” Nilsson declares that organisms such as orchids and elephants were “instantly created out of non-living material.”
Nilsson himself in this argument is guilty of confusing the currently unexplained with the unexplainable, which is itself another logical fallacy. Just because the “deficiencies are real,” (which they are not (see CONCLUSION)) does not mean that they “cannot be explained” or “will never be filled.”
STATEMENT: “This supposed column is actually saturated with ‘polystrate fossils’ (fossils extending from one geologic layer to another) that tie all the layers to one time-frame.”
RESPONSE: This statement is very misleading in that it attempts to say that fossils of a particular type can be found throughout the column. What is actually the case is that these fossils can be found in multiple parallel layers. This does NOT “tie all the layers to one time-frame” but ties some species to multiple time-frames, something completely different and logically feasible.
STATEMENT: “‘[T]o the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.’”
RESPONSE: This quote from E.J.H. Corner is commonly used by creationists as proof that even a botanist like Corner believes in a creation. However, this quote is taken out of context. The full quote is:
The theory of evolution is not merely the theory of the origin of species, but the only explanation of the fact that organisms can be classified into this hierarchy of natural affinity. Much evidence can be adduced in favour of the theory of evolution - from biology, bio-geography and palaeontology, but I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation. If, however, another explanation could be found for this hierarchy of classification, it would be the knell of the theory of evolution. Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition. Textbooks hoodwink. A series of more and more complicated plants is introduced - the alga, the fungus, the bryophyte, and so on, and examples are added eclectically in support of one or another theory - and that is held to be a presentation of evolution. If the world of plants consisted only of these few textbook types of standard botany, the idea of evolution might never have dawned, and the backgrounds of these textbooks are the temperate countries which, at best, are poor places to study world vegetation. The point, of course, is that there are thousands and thousands of living plants, predominantly tropical, which have never entered general botany, yet they are the bricks with which the taxonomist has built his temple of evolution, and where else have we to worship? (E.J.H. Corner 1961, from ‘Evolution’, p. 97, in “Contemporary Botanical Thought”, Anna M. Macleod and L. S. Cobley (editors), Oliver and Boyd, for the Botanical Society of Edinburgh)
E.J.H. Corner is not somebody that creationists should be quoting as believing in creation. Corner, among other achievements, was awarded the Darwin award in 1960 and the Linnaean Gold Medal in 1970 for his contributions to science. He was far from a creationist and certainly attested to the validity of evolution.
CONCLUSION: The geologic column is poor evidence against evolution because of one very simple fact: the geologic column is not an absolute, it is an abstract tool. It is a concept, not a physical thing. The column is simply an illustration of the earth’s strata in terms of a chronological order. We know this order exists, and this is what we mean when we refer to the geologic column. Different localities will display the chronological order of the strata to different degrees, sometimes not displaying a particular strata, sometimes displaying a particular one to an extended degree.
Also, the “lack of transitional series” is a bogus claim as well. Creationists will state that there is a lack of transitional fossils showing how one species could have evolved into another species. However, these transitional fossils are discovered all the time. When this happens, of course, the creationists will now claim that there is a lack of transitional fossils between the first species and the new discovered species, and between the new discovered species and the second species. Thus, two new gaps are created that now need their own set of transitional fossils. In this way, this argument is another logical fallacy; namely it is The Moving Goalpost fallacy. Basically, the criteria for proof (the goalpost) is set as needing a transitional fossil between two species. When that criteria is met, the goalpost is moved and now there is new criteria for proof. In this manner, there becomes no way to ever prove evolution.
Over the next few days/weeks, I will be looking at the ten bits listed in an article called “Evidence for Creation” on the Creation Evidence Museum website. Needless to say, the evidence given on this website is weak at best, fallacious at worst. I intend to create a new post for each of the ten items, detailing as to why each of them is incorrect.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward errors is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.
–Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
Ironic that Darwin, of all people, should have stated this. We are now nearly 150 years on from the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution in The Origin of Species. But despite this, the false views, supported only by false evidence, presented by proponents of Intelligent Design continue to do injury to science. However, the harm is great, as our young students continue to be caught in the middle where they suffer the consequences of religion…again. To starve them of the education that they and we are worthy of is a sin of the most unholy kind. I only hope that as time goes on the road to truth does, in fact, open up to the minds of all people.
Anyone who thinks that life could not have happened “by chance” is not educated on the fact that the evolutionary process that brought life to this planet and had that life eventually develop into the human species took a long long time. If that includes you, you need to get educated. This timeline lays out the process from start to current, detailing the billions of years that the process took.
