Awesome: Dan Osman Soloing Lover's Leap

What Every Creationist Has to Deny

A while ago, I was composing a list about what you would have to deny to believe in creationism. It became very long and dry, so I never posted it. This video however is much more pleasant to follow:


They also have to deny gravity:

Tasmanian Devils And The Evolution Of a New Species Of Parasitic Tumour

Creationists love to misrepresent evolution and have an inordinate fondness for strawmen. These include:

1. Evolutionary change requires in increase in “genomic information”
2. Evolution only occurs within “kinds”
3. Speciation does not occur (incompatible with 2).

Number 1 would imply that genome size correlates with complexity. It does not. The largest known genome belongs to the single celled Amoeba dubia at about 600 billion base pairs. This is 200 times larger than our own genome. Even the lungfish Protopterus aethiopicus has a genome 50 times larger than ours. See here for phyletic comparisons .

This strawman also ignores the reality that some genes such as Abd-a can inhibit the development of complex structures such as abdominal appendages in invertebrates. Furthermore, subtle changes in regulatory sequences can affect morphological development that is controlled by genes already present. An example would be the expression of Bmp2 in the developing forelimb of bats .

One final problem for creationists is that natural or experimental deletions of parts (or the whole) of Alx-4 (loss of “information”) increases digit number in mammalian limbs – ie, less “information”, greater “complexity”.

Number 2 is just absurd as the spatio-temporal distribution of any number of transitional fossils shows. The creationist concept of “kind” is also confused.

Number 3. It happens! Deal with it creationists!

Now to the point, Jerry Coyne has posted this fascinating summary of work on tumours of Tasmanian Devils. It is significant because the tumours seem to have originated in an individual Tasmanian Devil and are now transferred from individual to individual by bite. Thus, making it a new species of parasite that is derived from the host species. It has obvious implications for all three points above. It is well worth a read.

Happy New Year

The Cobbler (aka Ben Arthur) from Ben Lomond on Friday

Happy New year

The Evidential Problem of Evil

One of the most frustrating things about reading many theistic arguments is their need to take things in isolation and hold it up as evidence that their god has properties “X”,”Y” or “Z”. Apart from the fact they are ignoring all that evidence that contradicts their claim, they make the mistake of assuming such qualities can only come from a deity.

The loving god that many Christians believe in is one particular example that leaves me wondering why the Christians cant see the problem. They usually quote things like rainbows, flowers, medicine and your favourite food as evidence that god is a loving one. I then feel compelled to point out flood, carnivorous plants, disease and poisonous organisms. Much in the same way that Darwin wrote: “I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

At the end of the day, for something to survive, something else has to suffer – be it a parasite eating the living flesh of its host, or me eating a cheeseburger. The bottom line is that something must die for me to live. It is this fact that Christians overlook in their arguments.

Stephen Law exemplified this brilliantly in a recent post about the fine-tuning argument where he made a comparison with a concentration camp. He wrote:” Alister’s [McGrath] position, it seems to me, is like that of someone who wanders into a concentration camp, notes the stoves designed to provide meals and warmth and the mattresses designed for sleeping on, and concludes that not only was this camp designed by an intelligence with some interest in sustaining human life, it actually “points towards” a wonderfully loving and benevolent designer.”

We would never assume that a place where there is so much evil as there is in a concentration camp was evidence of a designer who had the captives best interest at heart. Why then do Christians feel that a planet where people can and do build concentration camps is evidence that there is a loving god?

At best, all that can be claimed is that the universe points to a god who is indifferent about human suffering. Christians then get in all sorts of knots trying to explain away this “evil”. Arguments then make assumptions about god’s nature and motives. These can not be backed up by observable facts – which was what the Christian was trying to do when he showed you a fluffy basket of puppies – ignoring the fact that there is a sack of kittens at the bottom of a canal somewhere.

Suffering is best explained by competitive survival between individuals and species.

Letter To the Metro: Exposing Creationist Lies

There has been a flurry of creationist nonsense in the metro recently. The depressing thing is that it’s the same thoroughly refuted nonsense that keeps coming up. This time they have claimed that no transitional fossils exist and that speciation does not occur. As a result I got this letter published.

“Let me expose some creationist lies. 1. No transitional forms exist. This is rubbish! Transitions have been found for all major vertebrate groups. For example, for the evolution of whales, we have Sionyx, Pakicetus, Indohyus, Kutchicetus, Ambulocetus, Rhodocentus, Miacetus, Protocetus, Basilosaurus, Dorudon, Squalodon and Ceitotherium to name a few. They have also been found in the right places in rocks of the right age and show a gradual progression to more whale like animals. Furthermore, DNA evidence confirms their relationship to the proposed ancestral group.

2. Speciation does not occur. This is another lie and it has actually been observed. Try the Madeira island house mouse for example.

Creationists have no evidence of their own and rely on promoting the above lies and then denying the facts. Strangely, they think their ignorance of biology is evidence of their position.”

One has to wonder how these people have bypassed all the evidence at school and seem to quote lies and ignorance from fundamentalist sites. Is it a failure of our education system? They are very easy to shoot down though, but that won’t make a difference to them. I expect replies of “it’s still a mouse” (even though it is a new species) and the fossils are not complete (something I dealt with here) or the good old where are the transitional forms for the transitional forms? chestnut.

Concurrently, there is some joker claiming that Darwinism gave Hitler his justification – groan!

Flu For Jesus

Young Earth Creationism Is a Pain

I'm suffering from the cold just now and a simple refutation of the YEC position popped into my mind. If the Christian god supposedly created us in a perfect world with no pain or suffering, where Dinosaurs supposedly ate tofu , then why do we experience pain? Without going into the details, our bodies have complex pathways to perceive pain and produce painkillers (like endorphins). So, why can we feel pain and possess mechanisms to modulate it?

Closely associated with this is tissue damage. Why do we have complex repair mechanisms and the blood clotting cascade? Interestingly, Michael Behe claims that the blood clotting cascade is irreducibly complex and could not have evolved. Creationists want it both ways it seems. This idea is of course nonsense and is refuted here.

Here's an amusing if not painful song.

Zombie Jesus

I've been pretty busy recently, but here's a little something to keep things ticking over. Let's hope that one day we discover a cure.

Metro: Follow Up Letter

I thought I would follow up yesterday's letter and challenge the ideas of "normality" and "natural". I got this letter published today:

"To those still using the fallacious normality argument, I suggest that you google "lesbian Bonobos". Homosexuals can help raise the children of siblings - something also seen in nature. I presume you think infertile couples are bad people too? What about people wearing glasses or with congenital birth defects? Surely that's not normal. They must be bad people. There is also an Asian couple in my street. Everyone else is white. Therefore, they are not normal for the street. Should I gather an angry mob and hound them out of the street?"

I wonder if it will have any effect.

EDIT: Looks like bloggers formatting has gone all screwy again!

More Letters In Metro

There have been a few religious bigots popping up in the letters page of the metro after this article appeared about trying to "cure" homosexuals. It's the usual it's unnatural or "it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" bollocks. I've commented on the "not natural argument" before. Anyway, I got this letter in today.

"Monday Man, am I to assume that the only reason you are a homophobe is because you actually believe a discredited bronze age fairy tale? One about a man and a woman who got punished for eating a fruit, even though they did not know what right and wrong was until after they ate it? As for the "arguments" about normality, that's the argument from democracy fallacy. It's a bit like saying gang rape is acceptable because 9 out of 10 participants report a positive experience of it."

Forward Planning Chimps

I came across this interesting article. It shows that chimps can plan forward and that they have the ability to foresee particular mental states. This also implies that they are self aware. This is one of the last areas that the religious have clung on to in a vain attempt to claim that humans are somehow special and outwith the rest of nature.

Book Club Chapter 3: Immortal Genes.

In this chapter, Carroll introduces a group of organisms called the Archaea and makes a good point about how the study of these obscure dwellers of hot springs has lead to a revolution in molecular biology and biotechnology, spawning a multi billion pound industry.

Part of the chapter deals with the basics of the genetic code (see here for more) and makes the point that some genes are shared between all major groups of organisms. These genes (about 500) are called immortal genes. Within the proteins encoded by
these genes, there are some “immortal” letters. These are basically amino specific amino acid residues that don’t vary and indicates a selective pressure to maintain these amino acids. He introduced a historical belief that by today’s standards seems obviously absurd – that it was once thought that mutation would rewrite the gene sequence over time. There reason that does not happen is because the functions of proteins are dictated by the chemical and physical properties of the amino acids that make them up. Some amino acids for example are essential for accepting or donating electrons or forming covalent bonds with other molecules. Similarly, some amino acids like proline are essential for sharp turns in the protein structure. So, the fact that some amino acids must not vary is not surprising. Because there is more than one way for DNA to encode a specific amino acid (see here), there is more mutational freedom in the DNA sequence than the protein sequence, and this can give a better idea of the relatedness of organisms.

Carroll ends the chapter by presenting evidence that the conventional view of life branching from a single common ancestor may not be true. He proposes that the Eukaryota (the group we belong to) probably arose from a fusion of the geneomes of a bacterial and an Archaean ancestor. He cites other examples of genome mixing such as horizontal gene transfer (a way to introduce new genetic information into organisms) and the endosymbiotic relationship between eukaryotic cells chloroplasts and mitochondria. Whether the bacteria Archaea have independent origins is still debatable though.

Book Club: Chapter 2: The Everyday Math of Evolution

In this chapter, Carroll introduces the role of probability into evolutionary theory, although, he accidentally displays how probability is often misused. It may be true that the chance of being eaten by a shark is 1 in 300 million – if 300 million people actually exposed themselves to shark attack each year. In reality, it is only those who enter shark populated water that are actually at risk – therefore, the real risk to those putting themselves in harm’s way is actually higher. This may seem to be a minor point, but it serves as a reminder of the misuse of probabilities by creationists. They often build straw man arguments to claim that evolution is mathematically impossible – usually involving inane positions that pretend 300 amino acids randomly coming together to form a functional protein.

Carroll does however convincingly demonstrate using models and real studies that evolution can produce new traits in a population in a relatively short time. He cites the change in the peppered moth population from light coloured to dark coloured in response to environmental pollution darkening the trees. This has probably happened on at least 4 separate occasions, as there are 4 known different mutations that cause the dark phenotype. He also gives a more recent example of pigeon populations developing a white rump. This gives them an advantage when it comes to avoiding attack by falcons; perhaps by momentarily confusing the falcon as the pigeon rolls to avoid the attack.

The rate of change in the population is proportional to the selection coefficient, and his example of mouse populations becoming all black in less than 2000 years is discussed here. He makes the point that not all individuals survive and that this is determined by the advantage/disadvantage a particular gene confers on its owner. There is also some discussion about whether natural selection acts on small or large differences between organisms. He comes down on the side of small changes. However, I would argue that it acts on both, as small changes in genes can actually cause a big difference in a characteristic. An example would be the genes controlling the sizes of tomato plants.

He introduces the idea of plasticity in species at the start of the chapter (and its role in Darwin forming his ideas of evolution) and ends with listing some of the possible types of mutation that occur – insertions, deletions, inversions, duplications, cut and paste, single nucleotide substitutions etc and will discuss some of these later in relation to evolving new functions. He also attacks the notion that all mutations are harmful. Some are actually beneficial (see above and here) and some a neutral and have no effect on function. This latter type of mutation can be used to study the effect of selective pressures on the rates of gene changes – by providing a reference point to the effect of random cumulative mutation.

Spiders On Drugs

The fact that drugs can affect personality and cognitive processes is good evidence against the idea that the mind is something other than physical. Anyway, here is an amusing video

I'll get the next chapter of the book club up by Sunday - the dog ate my computer.