Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Dr. Ned Bowden, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Iowa, has written a piece for a university magazine, Campus Voices, that is one of the most ill-informed and wrongheaded articles I’ve seen in a publication by a reputable university. Let’s call it a “formerly reputable” university, for I have no idea what the school was thinking when it okayed Bowden’s piece, “Common ground: a case for ending animosity between science and religion.” Yes, Bowden has the right to publish anti-evolution views, and yes, Campus Voices has every right to publish them, as it has every right to publish defenses of astrology, homeopathy, and the accounts of people abducted and sexually molested by space aliens. But this was deeply unwise, for it just tarnishes the reputation of Bowden’s university, and makes the man look deeply foolish.
The magazine has a disclaimer, of course:
Campus Voices is a place for faculty, staff and students to share ideas, views and information about issues that matter to them personally and professionally. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the University of Iowa.
But when you read Bowden’s piece, which I’ll put in its entirety below, you’ll see why this issue doesn’t matter to anyone except creationists. Its title implies that it’s just another accommodationist article, but it’s really far more than that: it attempts to show that a). the Genesis story mirrors what scientists know about evolution; b). that there are huge gaping holes in the modern theory of evolution; c). that science can contribute to religion, and vice versa; and d). that “a.” shows that God used evolution as a way of accomplishing his aims.
The man doesn’t know evolution, and apparently doesn’t know his Bible, either. But read it (I’ve put a crucial paragraph in bold):
In our era of punditry, it seems that only the loudest, most extreme, and most intransigent voices are heard. It’s not enough simply to have an opinion; you must shout down anyone expressing a different view to demonstrate the “right-ness” of your own.
I wish more people could stop to see that seemingly opposite views do not necessarily cancel each other out. It is possible for different world views to exist simultaneously and even support one another, if we only can ask and answer questions honestly and without name-calling.
Take for example a perceived conundrum in two fundamental areas of my life: science and religion.
I know some scientists who think we can understand everything in the universe without God. I know some Christians who think we can understand everything in the universe without science.
They’re both wrong. It’s unfortunate that so few take the time to consider that science and faith do not have to be mutually exclusive but can support one another.
Let’s consider one of the most contentious “battles” between science and religion: creationism vs. evolution. Think of all the energy that has gone into knock-down, drag-out, red-faced shouting matches between these two camps. But if you examine both ideas side-by-side, the creation story in Genesis is remarkably consistent with what we believe as scientists.
If we throw out our modern definition of a day as a 24-hour period, Genesis tells us that on the first day, “God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void…”
When this story was written 4,000 years ago, they didn’t have the language to talk about things like the Big Bang theory and subatomic particles. But whether you take the Big Bang or “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ ” it says the same thing.
We can argue whether this happened 5 billion years ago or 10,000 years ago, but really, what’s the point? I have utter confidence in radioactive dating and no doubt that our universe represents more than 10,000 years of history. But I’m perfectly willing to engage with someone who believes otherwise under the premise that at the moment of creation 10,000 years ago the earth was created to appear much older. It doesn’t really matter whether the Earth was created 5 billion years ago, 5,000 years ago, or, heck, even 5 minutes ago.
Moving on through the Genesis story, we see that on the “third day” (remember, not just 48 hours later; perhaps as much as billions of years?) “…the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding seed after his kind…”
Doesn’t that sound like the beginning of photosynthesis and the release of oxygen on earth? Skip ahead to day five when God created, “…great whales and every living creature that moveth…” and you have the next step in the scientific time-table: an explosion of complex life that happened during the Cambrian period.
Which of course leads naturally into the creation of man and woman sometime later. Genesis calls it the sixth day; modern scientists have more accurately dated the emergence of humans. But either way, we went from nothing, to oxygen, to plants, to animals, to humans.
It’s remarkably consistent how evolution and Genesis look at the process and tell the same stories using different words. Science can never prove or disprove God, but science can provide support for the existence of God and that is what the Big Bang and evolution can give us. There are, of course, holes in the theory of evolution that are big enough to drive a semi-truck through, but it is highly possible that evolution was the tool that God used to bring humans into being.
There is no reason for Christians to fear science. Denigrating or denying the clear, measurable, logical, repeatable work of thousands of scientists through the years does nothing to bolster Christian beliefs. We should embrace science and what it confirms about the existence of a Creator.
And despite our portrayal as God-less heathens, scientists do take a lot on faith (though we don’t like to admit this.) I’ve never personally observed the full change from a simple to complex organism—it takes too long to see it through—but I believe that it happens. I’ve never seen an electron, but I’m pretty sure they exist!
For me, it comes down to faith and life, not a hard and fast belief in a literal interpretation of one chapter of one book. An argument about whether Genesis and current scientific beliefs are at odds with each other misses the point that Christianity is about Jesus, his life, his death, and his resurrection. We argue so much and get distracted about something that in the end is not that important. Maybe it’s time we stopped shouting and started listening.
Dr. Ned Bowden
Well if Bowden is a Christian—and I assume he is—he needs to read his Bible more closely. For, as nearly all of us know, there are two Genesis stories, and they give different orders of creation. Neither, in fact, is compatible with what we know about the history of Earth. Pulling out my trusty King James Bible, I find this:
Genesis Chapter 1
Light
The firmament and water
Vegetation (grass and fruit trees)
Stars
Sea creatures (including whales) and fowls
Beasts of the earth
Man and woman (simultaneously)
Genesis Chapter 2
Earth and heavens
Plants
Water
Man (Adam)
Garden of Eden (moar plants)
Beasts of the fields and fowls of the air
Woman (Eve)
We know the reason for this disparity: the two stories come from two different traditions, and were simply inserted cheek-by-jowl in the Bible, with no attempt to comport them. Its fun to watch fundamentalists try to reconcile them, though!
Bowden has apparently relied on the account in Chapter 1, which is still problematic (in reality, grasses and flowering plants evolved long after sea creatures, and how could you have vegetation before the sun?). He completely neglects Chapter 2, which is even more problematic since it has plants appearing before water and, more distressingly, male humans before land animals, followed by female humans. That truly violates what we know about evolution.
Some simple fact-vetting by the magazine might have prevented this embarrassment.
Now 25 of Bowden’s colleagues have written a response to his letter (I was pleased to see my one-time postdoc Ana Llopart, now on the faculty, among them), taking issue with Bowden’s claim that there are holes in the theory of evolution “big enough to drive a semi-truck through.” They also note that Bowden’s piece was “initially not labeled as opinion,” suggesting that the magazine backtracked and added the disclaimer.
But the theory of evolution, or at least its major tenets, is supported by a mountain of evidence. That’s the topic of WEIT. And yes, there are things we don’t understand about evolution, like how life originated (I don’t consider that an area of evolutionary biology but of organic chemistry: the origin of replicators on which evolution could then act), how sexual selection works in many cases, how consciousness evolved, and what is the true sequence of fossils that is forms the lineage of modern humans. Maybe you can say those are big enough to drive a truck through, but if that’s the case, then physics and chemistry also have their holes. What is dark matter and dark energy? Is there more than one universe? Is string theory right? Those are huge “holes,” and such holes are why science is exciting and keeps going. But Bowden doesn’t dwell on physics—for the obvious reason that he’s trying to diss evolution. Nor does he specify exactly what those evolutionary “holes” are. I’d love to hear about them, since I suspect they’d be the usual creationist drivel.
I won’t dwell on Bowden’s accommodationism, or the supposed contributions that faith can make to science, as his claims are almost self-refuting. There’s too much fail in this letter to go after it all (e.g., the “appearance of age” argument for a young earth).
Had I been those 25 professors, I would have added a paragraph about how Bowden is as ignorant of Scripture as he is of biology. Now that would have been embarrassing! Or, rather, more embarrassing, because, in his ignorance of science (and the Bible), Bowden has shamed himself, his department, and his University.
Inside Higher Ed, with its usual cowardice, simply reports the incident and doesn’t take a stand, although its short piece is called “Should university website publish anti-evolution views?” They should have provided an answer: “Well, they’re entitled to, but it’s not very smart to try to comport evolution with an ancient work of fiction when they don’t jibe. And if they’re entitled to publish Bowden’s views, they’re entitled to publish views in favor of ESP, Bigfoot, and homeopathy. Where are the articles on how astrology comports with astronomy and psychology?”
Finally, as expected, the Discovery Institute is lauding Bowden’s piece on Evolution News and Views. And they make a pretty bizarre argument: University of Iowa faculty condemn Bowden because the school is inferior to places like Harvard. Therefore, insecure Iowa faulty are forced to fight back when evolution is criticized. In contrast, the accomplished and secure faculty of Harvard don’t have to defend evolution because creationism doesn’t threaten them. I kid you not. Here’s the DI take:
The rush to condemn Bowden, or to censor Ball State physicist Eric Hedin, is probably driven in part by status anxiety on the part of faculty or administration, respectively. The last thing you want to do is let one of your own professors taint you with the reputation for harboring someone with views — so goes the mythology of Darwinism — just a step or two removed from the Ark Park.
The University of Iowa and Ball State are perfectly respectable places to hang your hat as a professor, but there’s only one Harvard. If you’re a tenured professor there, obviously, you’ve made it. You need not feel threatened by something a little bit outré that the guy in the office down the hall says or writes somewhere.
This may explain why Harvard geneticist George Church, who gave a warm approbation to Darwin’s Doubt, has not, as far as I know, suffered a public condemnation by his own colleagues. It’s also one reason why Darwinism makes so fascinating a sociological study, as much as it does a scientific one.
And, by the way, Bowden’s views are indeed just a step removed from the Ark Park. He’s responded, by the way, to the Inside Higher Ed piece, but it’s just made things worse by accusing evolutionist of lying:
129 thoughts on “University of Iowa chemist decries evolution in school magazine; colleagues object but Discovery Institute applauds”
It doesn’t really matter whether the Earth was created 5 billion years ago, 5,000 years ago, or, heck, even 5 minutes ago.
Not to get too picky, but if the world were created 5 minutes ago, then the whole “Fall” thing that we alleged needed saving from is a lie, one created intentionally by the Christian God. I may not be Christian, but I’m pretty sure we don’t need salvation from an illusion.
Well, an omniscient god would know that Adam WOULD have fallen if he had existed, so that’s enough to send the bulk of humanity to hell.
Presumably including all of the people that never existed up until the five minutes ago creation, but who wold have sinned if they had and who have now just come into being in hell along with memories of centuries of torture. That’s a pretty merciless god figure. Makes Scalia’s satan look pretty benign!
So all my fond memories of the chicks I used to know when I was young are just wet dreams? Dammit, Bowden, you just destroyed my sex life! 🙁
And then the “Crucifixion” would also be a lie – in which case any “salvation” is illusory (except in sophisticated theology perhaps).
“But the theory of evolution, or at least its major tenets, is supported by a mountain of evolution.” Did you mean “mountain of evidence”?
Yeah, a typo. Fixed it, thanks.
Both work don’t they?
Absolutely. Evolution is its own evidence.
The man doesn’t know evolution, and apparently doesn’t know his Bible, either.
Or philosophy, given that AFAIK most philosophers reject last thursdayism as silly and weak, whereas this guys seems to think it’s just peachy.
A competent philosopher would admit that last thursdayism cannot be disproven, and that whether it is “silly” is not germane to whether it is true. But, like solipsism, it is unproductive.
Granted, though both serve as a useful sort of reductio ad absurdum argument against the utility of unfalsifiable metaphysical assertions.
Yes, people often mistake “irrefutable” with “necessarily true.” The Omphalos Hypothesis (Last Thursdayism) and solipsism are irrefutable, but represent positions that lead nowhere.
Not necessarily nowhere.
The exact same logic that leads us to conclude that we can’t rule out the possibility that Queen Maeve the Housecat Created All That Is, Was, and Ever Will Be Last Thursday…well, it applies to Ms. Maeve, herself. She can’t rule out the possibility that she herself was created Last Wednesday by the Invisible Pink Unicorn (MPBUHHH).
From this, we can conclude that the notion of ultimate responsibility for creation is incoherent. I mean, if even the creator can’t know that she herself is or isn’t a creation, of what sense does it make to claim that she created anything, let alone everything?
Cheers,
b&
Not to mention the third creation story in John–inconsistent with the first two
Bowden must thank god for tenure, given the incredibly poor argumentation and grasp of the facts he displays.
(in reality, grasses and flowering plants evolved long after sea creatures, and how could you have vegetation before the sun?).
Well, some microorganisms don’t need sunlight to live, and in his broad brushstroking of evolution he seems to have decided that all prokaryotes count as plants.
IMO the real killer is that according to mainstream science, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc… are only made in supernovae. You can’t possibly have “the waters” or anything organic appear before stars and call that sequence ‘consistent with science.’
I should add that, unlike his other blunders, the nucleosynthesis blunder is IN his field. In fact he very strongly implies that he accepts modern science when it comes to radioactivity and nuclear reactions. So wheras some of his other stuff can be passed off as an arrogant chemist speaking outside his area of expertise, he really has no such excuse when it comes to nuclear and radiochemistry.
Cosmic dissonance.
*Like*
+1
Oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen are cooked up in the interior of stars, no supernovae required. You get energy out of fusion reactions for elements up to the atomic weight of iron. It’s the elements heavier than iron that require the blast of a supernova to create them.
Gah, you’re right! Now I feel like a Bowden.
In any event, its still stellar nucleosynthesis.
“Now I feel like a Bowden”.
+ 100
True, but I think you still need a supernova to distribute these elements to enrich subsequent generations of stellar systems in heavier elements.
Otherwise they just sit in the core, usually of a white dwarf.
(Material is shed during the red giant phase, but I believe that would be mainly hydrogen & helium. Could be wrong though.)
Don’t be silly, the stellar synthesis of the waters may be in his own field, and thus inexcusable. But it’s hardly not as bad as his “Plants were created before the sun!” blunder.
I mean, the guy probably doesn’t think about the origin of various atoms that often, usually focusing on those atoms sometime after they landed on earth.
However, even a child knows that plants need the sun. The Genesis creation story only works if you assume the Earth was ‘on hold’ while god was getting everything set up. The creation of plants before the sun is not merely getting the order wrong, it makes a metaphor impossible, as not only does in mean the Earth was created before the Sun, it means that organisms whose existence is entirely dependant on the Sun preceeded it.
Calling Genesis a metaphor for the modern understanding of the origin of the Earth and stars is already a huge stretch. But you can’t “metaphor away” the freaking order of things. The comparison fails there, and the liberal Christians only way out is to call it poetry.
I’m willing to concede that both blunders peg the stupidity meter. 🙂
+1
Doesn’t that sound like the beginning of photosynthesis and the release of oxygen on earth? Skip ahead to day five…
Yeah. Skip day four when the sun was supposedly created after photosynthesis because it pretty much blows my assertion out of the water…
The last sentence of his follow up comment is pretty telling of his lazy thinking imo.
Besides, most Christians will know that our salvation comes from Christ not Genesis chapter 1.
In other words: It doesn’t really matter if you agree or disagree because in the end jesus is the only answer.
Ah! But Gen. 1 was the question!!
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You’re right. By the looks of it, it sure as hell wasn’t a question of science.
An argument about whether Genesis and current scientific beliefs are at odds with each other misses the point that Christianity is about Jesus, his life, his death, and his resurrection.
Professor Bowden, you’re the one missing the point here. The argument can easily be rephrased to be about whether the Gospels and current scientific beliefs are at odd with each other. Because when it comes to the miracle stories, they are.
[Okay, my apologies for so many posts. I’ll stop now. Don’t know why this particular gentleman bothers me so.]
I do not know you, but I think I understand why this particular gentleman bothers you so. He bothers me in the same way.
Cue Christian persecution in five, four, three….
“But whether you take the Big Bang or ‘God said, “Let there be light,”’ it says the same thing.”
No. No, it doesn’t.
/@
That’s just it. The helpful apologists who try to interpret Genesis as God’s sly metaphor for evolution — people back then didn’t get it but today we can discern the vague hints and clues and figure out that the story in Genesis is actually describing evolution — forget that the Biblical scenario is a LOUSY metaphor for evolution. They’re retrofitting and hurting themselves with the force required to shove science into religion.
A child could do better. Anyone could. Give someone the task of putting the basic concepts and ideas of modern cosmology and evolutionary biology into simple stories and images which could be grasped at some level by simple, primitive, pre-scientific people and NOBODY is going to come up with anything even close to Genesis. Because the task isn’t that hard. Gradual natural change vs. poof!
“God’s way of creating” indeed. I’d love to ask Bowden to come up with a scenario, any scenario — run wild, babe, and use your imagination — which he could NOT turn into “God’s way of creating,” regardless of how wildly his imagination runs. My guess is he couldn’t do it.
Read almost any creation myth from anywhere, and to a mind like Bowden’s and a number of Islamic apologists it can be fancied to comport with, and therefore to have some sort of priority over,scientific theories.
The remark in his response about scientists lying to laymen is beneath contempt. What a disgusting person.
Id love to ask Bowden to come up with a scenario, any scenario run wild, babe, and use your imagination which he could NOT turn into Gods way of creating, regardless of how wildly his imagination runs.
Oh, that’s easy.
Just have Satan be the creative force in the scenario….
b&
I received my Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. It’s a shame that something like this would happen. I will be writing to the editors.
I studied at University of Stellenbosch. There were Social Science building was named the “BJ Voster Building”. Minister of Justice the Rivonia Trial in which Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life, and the PM that followed Verwoed.
It’s not our fault. The people running these schools should know better.
When this story was written 4,000 years ago, they didn’t have the language to talk about things like the Big Bang theory and subatomic particles.
Waitaminute.
So this ultra-powerful super-smart YHWH dude thought it was important enough to teach a bunch of psychotic goatherders about the origins of the universe, but he couldn’t be bothered to give them the same kind of education we give schoolkids today?
Really?
Just how hard would it have been for him to have sat them down, said, “Look, I know this might be hard for you to take, but remember that I am the Yam that I Yam and you’re not very bright. So listen carefully. Matter is composed of really, really tiny particles, much too small for you to see — go have a look at what that Democritus chap is talking about, but he doesn’t quite have it right. And here’s how you can generate an electric current so you can perform the oil drop experiment so you can know that I’m not bulshitting you. These particles….”
Damn.
Do these Christian idiots even pretend to listen to themselves? Do they realize how stupid they sound, or, at the least, how much of an idiotic incompetent asshole they make their bestest superfriend out to be?
Cheers,
b&
“Listen to me, my apostles, and record what I say carefully, for it will be beyond your understanding. I speak it not to you, but for those who will come after, who will understand it, and better know the glory of my Father, who is in Heaven.
I speak unto you that all matter is composed of the smallest things. Together, they number no more than one hundred. All the things you see, all the things you touch, are but assemblies of these smallest things into greater works.
And these smallest things are distinguished by their count. And everything you see, and everything you touch, can be understood as a joining of these smallest things into combinations still so small that the eye cannot perceive them, just as the eye cannot perceive the air.
And so that you may hear, and others understand, I say unto you that the very water that falls from the sky, and that you drink, is made of two of the smallest things whose count is one, and one of the smallest things whose count is eight. The air you breath is made of two of the smallest things whose count is eight. And as water and air are the fuel of life, you can see that the smallest thing whose count is eight is uniquely important for your life. Each smallest thing has it’s own uniqueness, without which creation would be barren.”
There you go, a scientific lesson, in Biblical language, that explains the very basics of atomic theory, and explains the exact structure of liquid water.
It has some details that are still wrong, of course. Air is not composed solely of O2, and atoms are not the smallest thing, but I don’t think anyone would deny that if Jesus did say this, that the Gospels would had to have been written by someone with advanced scientific knowledge, even if some of it was over simplified.
Dr. Bowden, your god exists outside of space time, so he’s free to go back and put that into one of the Gospels, so that we believe in him, if he so chooses. No need to pay me, saving me from his own desire to torture me would be enough.
In the beginning was light. The light cooled, and begat simple gasses. These collected and became stars. Many of these died, begetting more stars and the elements of the earth. The Earth took shape around one of these stars.
Life formed, simple and small. It begat more life, each generation different from the last, with new kinds of life arising from the old over untold years. Many of the old and new kinds died out, while some went on to beget still more kinds, until all the life we see about us, including mankind, had taken shape.
Very good.
But because I am not all-powerful, I was unable to provide you with a safe paradise. Those same simple creatures that ultimately begat you, and which are too small for you to see without tools you must invent, are now your mortal enemies. You must take great care to wash them off your hands before you eat, and off your hands and naughty bits after you pee, poopeth and fornicate. A mixture of animal fat and ashes will help greatly, as will covering your mouths when you cough and sneeze. And for God’s sake, stop picking your noses.
The idea that god had to explain scientific concepts in such innacurrate details because the people were so stupid is trivially disprovable.
Either Genesis was poetry, meant to symbolize gods dominion over all things, or it was an attempt to describe actual events which it got horribly wrong. Liberal Christians cannot make any claims as to it being a simplified version of scientific truth. At least, not honestly.
Very good.
Did he say that the great whales arrived during the Cambrian? (Day 5 of Gen.)
I never knew that…
I would like to know more about Bowden’s idea that the Cambrian explosion produced whales.
Well, if trilobites and all those other Cambrian critters ‘exploded’ into existance, why not whales, too?
😉
What a mess! Exploding animals! Keep it clean for god’s sake!
I’m in Oregon. Our Dept of Transportation did that exploding whale. Once.
If the bible is the WORD of God and God used evolution as a way of accomplishing his aims [creating all things????], then why didn’t he just come out and say it, saving us a few centuries to figure out that’s what he meant.
The IT department at Goddidit, LLC hasn’t figured out how to release new versions of the biblical system software at regular intervals or how to fix interface incompatibility.
They must still be using Waterfall. They need to move to Agile.
Or, more likely, they’re using that all-time favorite project management technique: I WANT IT NOW! NOW! NOW! ARE WE THERE YET? WHY AREN’T YOU FINISHED? I WANT IT NOW! NOW! NOW!
You might laugh, but I’m not joking.
b&
Yeah, I call those “why can’t you just” projects where someone asks something like “why can’t you just make it do x” and doesn’t accept that the ask is huge.
There also is the “I have the loudest voice so you have to do what I want” technique.
Thankfully, the second one is considered a firing offence now. 🙂
The great thing about being a consultant — or, as I pronounce it, “insultant,” — is that all I have to do is say why I think it’s an idiotic idea and then go ahead and do it anyway when they say that that’s what they really want. It’s their money to waste, and I’m more than happy for them to waste it on me.
Once upon a time we’d try to engineer things so they’d be future-proof. But half the stuff we did died on the vine; another half wouldn’t get touched for years; and, in the worst half, they’d constantly ask for “minor” revisions that would completely invalidate any sort of future-proofing we could ever imagine having done.
So, now, we just write the cleanest possible code that gets the project out the door in the minimum amount of time. If they come back with changes, we put the minimum amount of effort into those changes — often to the point of copy / paste of large blocks of code rather than abstract it out into something reusable. If there’re enough iterations of that such that the codebase becomes unwieldily and brittle, we’ll start to warn them that the next “one minor little change” will likely necessitate a complete re-write from scratch. Often, that’s the point where they lose interest anyway, though sometimes it does give us a chance to wipe the slate blank. Not that it gives us anything other than a temporary reprieve, of course….
b&
Don’t know how to send in a ‘tip’ to Prof Coyne, but just go to google news and search “Archbishop Jozef Michalik”
Unbelievable!
Go to the Univ. of Chicago site and look him up: His email is there.
As a University of Illinois alumn (1974), I am proud once again to post this caution:
“Friends don’t let friends go to Iowa.”
Reblogged this on The Little Tower and commented:
One good thing about the internet age is that those scientists whose scientific views aren’t supported by the evidence can out themselves. We get to see scientific self-correction in action.
I am embarrassed for this guy. Oviously he is too smitten with his religion to be embarrassed on his own behalf.
His article, and response, give an impression of intellectual laziness.
Is it possible that this guy had a reputation for being coo coo for Cocoa Puffs and the editors just gave him enough rope to hang himself?
I tend to think that about a lot of local journalism – that the papers sometimes intentionally select the craziest letters to the editor for publication, just to increase readership – but I’d be somewhat surprised if a University magazine did that. Aren’t those things typically given out free to alumni, and not intended to be sold on a per magazine basis?
I wasn’t thinking as a means to increase readership, but rather as a means of exposing him for what he is…a nut.
Possible, but unlikely. The editors probably liked the accomodationist flavor of the piece. The details don’t matter: it’s called “Common Ground.”
And Bowden seems perfectly ordinary to me, even brighter and more articulate than average. This is a brain on religion.
If you want to evaluate or measure him then you have to make huge accomodations for that.
I wonder if Bowden has lived a very sheltered existence. Nothing but labs during the week and church on the weekends. Could this be the first time he has ventured out into the big bad world with his views on science and religion? There are certainly places in this country where you can grow into middle age without hearing a serious challenge to your wackadoodle ideas. But a science professor! He must have had some interaction with serious people.
The editors were probably from the famed writing program and wouldn’t have known better
I’ve been telling people for a while, a lot of chemists are like that. They should be added to doctors and engineers as the professions that stereotypically are more likely to be evolution-deniers.
There are even some physicists who reject the theory of evolution. My PhD thesie adviser, who was on the short list for the Nobel Prize in physics this year is a born again Christian and an evolution denier, or at least he was when I knew him.
Yes, this is true. Especially engineers. (I am one.) You’d think that engineers never receive any real science training (I did; but for many it seems not to have taken.)
Engineer as profession for a man is as pedestrian as nurse as profession for a woman. Therefore, you get, pretty much, a normal slice across society. In the US, this means a very large percentage of engineers who are sincerely religous and deny evolution, global warming, etc., and are tea-baggers (I have to live with them 🙁 .)
I’m one too. I would have hoped that the requirement to think clearly about forces and loads (i.e. basically cause and effect) would lead to logical thinking in other directions too. Unfortunately it frequently doesn’t (remember Harold Camping?).
It is, of course, the case that for engineering purposes it makes absolutely no difference whether the loads are generated by interatomic forces or whether God just put them there. So religious belief doesn’t clash with engineering – just with rationality.
I’m a chemistry grad student, and I don’t believe in creationism, intelligent design, theistic evolution, or any other such nonsense. I don’t know what the stats are for the various fields, but I would be seriously surprised if anywhere near a majority of chemists were creationists or IDiots. Try not to make accusations of the form “a lot of (insert field or profession here) believe in X.” It’s intellectually lazy to make such sweeping statements without providing any data.
Personally, I view chemistry as being inherently anti-theistic, since we’re playing with what the religious might consider to be God’s building blocks.
Alas, somewhere there are stats showing that chemists, of all the “hard science” scientists, are the most likely to be theists. (My google-fu isn’t working well, though-sorry.) Still a much smaller percentage than the general population, though. I like your framing of the matter.
According to a 2009 Pew survey, 41% of chemists believe in a god, compared with 32% of biologists and medical scientists (not sure if that includes M.D.s or not), 30% of those in “geosciences”, and 29% of physicists and astronomers. But chemists and physicists/astronomers are both less likely to believe in a granola-ey “universal spirit or higher power” (14% for both fields) than are biologists/medical (19%) and geoscientists (20%).
Garnetstar, I see that your assertion has some truth to it. I hope I didn’t come off as too offended; in fact, I thank you for making me want to look up the stats on different fields, which caused me to learn something. Hooray!
Yikes, as an erstwhile biologist, I wish they hadn’t conflated us with “medical scientists.”
I checked his record at the University of Iowa. He has a PhD from Harvard. Published a lot of stuff on polymer chemistry and has filed various patents. Has two grad students. Clearly he can think rationally about chemistry. However, his statements about evolution are are remarkably (unbelievably?) ignorant and witless. Seems like an example of a bloated ego pumped up even more with a dose of blind faith.
It’s called bootstrapping. Get yourself an education in one field of science, and then you figure out the rest of it all by yourself.
/snark
Compartmentalization as defense against cognitive dissonance.
There it is!
“Pulling out my trusty King James Bible, I find this:
Genesis Chapter 1
Light
The firmament and water
Vegetation (grass and fruit trees)
Stars
Sea creatures (including whales) and fowls
Beasts of the earth
Man and woman (simultaneously)
Genesis Chapter 2
Earth and heavens
Plants
Water
Man (Adam)
Garden of Eden (moar plants)
Beasts of the fields and fowls of the air
Woman (Eve)”
It’s been a while since I read the creation story, but that seems a little more succinct than I remember. Have you got the abridged version? 😉
I wonder if this guy is one of the folks (alas, there sure seem to be a lot of those!) who writes to C&E News every time they do a pro-evolution editorial.
I oppose creationism because I’m not tenured at Harvard?? LOL!
If god is using evolution to make species, why does he then turn around and let them go extinct? And why does he allow asteroids and comets to come and wipe so many out all at once? I guess He is mysterious or something.
The thing I personally really hate about this particular piece is the annoyingly nasty and smug version of well-poisoning that runs throughout something ironically titled “Common Ground.”
Look at how Bowden sets himself up as the White Knight in a dispute between Bad Guys. He wants to make a case for “ending animosity” (the Bad Guys would apparently make a case for continuing ‘animosity,’ unlike him, who wants to end it.) But then there’s:
In our era of punditry, it seems that only the loudest, most extreme, and most intransigent voices are heard. It’s not enough simply to have an opinion; you must shout down anyone expressing a different view to demonstrate the “right-ness” of your own.
Well, look. What a fair, neutral, respectful description of your opponents. No name-calling here. Instead we see that all the people who DON’T agree with him are pundits, loud, extreme, intransigent shouters who won’t let anyone else express a point of view because they are RIGHT and others are WRONG.
Unlike Bowden, who reaches out even to the extremist scum who are “both wrong,” thus avoiding being on a side himself and staying out of other people’s unnecessary “battle.”.
Hypocrite much?
I hate this self-righteous stance of Middle Ground of Reason and Moderation in the midst of an issue which actually has details that matter. It doesn’t seem to occur to Bowden that maybe everyone involved in the “battle” is NOT simply looking for a facile, superficial, desperate, strained, face-saving, cowardly, incoherent, dishonest, embarrassing way to force-fit the two opposing sides together into one happy reconciliation. He’s not a White Knight. He’s an ineffectual dragon.
I know that URL! That must qualify as the most-linked-to page on the Internet by now…
Indeed. Amongst atheists, you may well be right.
Creationists and accommodationists, I’m not so sure.
Pretty soon we’ll be like the prisoners in the cell block, telling jokes by just calling out a number.
I think we should all chip in and buy the good professor a copy of Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus Christ for Xmas. That might keep him from writing nonsense for a while.
Is Carrier’s book due to be published anytime soon? I remember asking him about it at Skepticon in 2010. At that point he said it would be published by the end of 2011. Last year he said he hoped to have it completed before Skepticon 6 which is just over a month away. If you have any info about when it will be released I’d love to hear about it. 🙂
A few years ago I asked a creationist about the first two chapters of Genesis, and he maintained that there actually were two separate creations, one after the other, so that both sequences were literally true and there was no conflict. I should have asked him how many Jesuses there were.
If you’re talking about apocalyptic preachers, that number is probably in the thousands….
Including amongst them the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a thought I always find jarring.
The two creations idea is sometimes a part of a theological idea called Pre-Adamism
Which has enjoyed varying levels of popularity (though never a majority view as far as I know). It’s still popular among racists who like the idea that not all humans are descended from Adam, that pinnacle of creation (guess who is and who isn’t).
I’m guessing the quantities of eumelanin and pheomelanin in one’s skin.
I’ve actually written two posts on my own website that tie into this very well. The first, probably not particularly informative to readers of this blog, is titled ‘Problems With Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis’. Do a google search for it and pick the one written by me (currently the first return – I’d link to it directly but for some reason WordPress doesn’t like my site). The objections I put into that article are probably pretty familiar to everyone here.
The second article, which readers here might be a bit more interested in, is titled ‘Book Review – God- or Gorilla?, Chapters 24 & 25’. It’s also the first return from Google if you search that phrase specifically. It’s part of a review I did of an old book a few years ago. The book was written back in 1922 by a guy named Alfred McCann. According to this page, the popularity of the book even earned him an invitation to the Scopes trial. Anyway, he devoted a chapter of the book to trying to reconcile the creation story from Genesis with the supposed scientific explanation of the day (I say supposed, because while I’m not exactly sure what the view was then, I suspect creationists in his day were just as ignorant as modern day ones). And that explanation was very different from out current understanding – the Big Bang wasn’t even a serious proposal, yet. But McCann was still able to find remarkable agreement between that explanation and scripture. He even quoted another person from that era as saying:
The points of agreement between Genesis and science are far too many and far too unlikely to be due to accident. They are far too many; for the chances against even eight events put down in their correct order by guesswork is 40,319 to 1. And they are far too unlikely ; for what could have induced an ignorant man (i. e., ignorant of modern science) to say that light came before the sun or that the earth once existed without any dry land.
As I wrote in that entry, “if the true meaning of Genesis is supposedly so clear, how is it possible that he could interpret it so differently from modern day theistic evolutionists? And if it’s so easy to shoe-horn Genesis to fit whatever creation story you can come up with, does it really show insight on the part of its writer? Or rather, is it just flowery verse coupled with a creative interpretation on the part of modern readers?”
That is a highly amusing point.
Science: “The universe is steady state”
Acommodationist: “Hey, that agrees with Genesis!”
Science: “No, wait, big bang!”
Acommodationist: “Hey, that agrees with Genesis too!”
Science: “Oops we made a mistake – it’s actually big bang plus inflation and cosmological constant.”
Acommodationist: “Hey look, yet again that agrees with Genesis!”
Science: “Let me guess – dark matter and dark energy also agree with Genesis?”
Acommodationist: “Amazing, isn’t it?”
Yes, just like they will re-define god in whatever way is required to evade disproof by science.
Just like the Koran, a detailed description of embryology, both in the middle ages when Galen was infallible, and today!
When I read this:
Think of all the energy that has gone into knock-down, drag-out, red-faced shouting matches between these two camps. But if you examine both ideas side-by-side, the creation story in Genesis is remarkably consistent with what we believe as scientists.
Then I read this:
We can argue whether this happened 5 billion years ago or 10,000 years ago, but really, what’s the point?
It sounds an awful lot like Virginia Heffernan. It’s all about what you like, not about facts. Facts aren’t necessary.
What is going on with Harvard grads?
Two important cards near the top of Religious Conservatism’s deck:
Reality Relativism (demonstrated in the Bowden piece): good, very good. Most often deployed in science vs religion debate.
(imaginary, so-called) Cultural Relativism: bad, very bad. Most frequently deployed in “values” debates.
Religious advocates see Cultural Relativism everywhere they look. Their Reality Relativism is invisible to them, though. They believe, instead, they actually describe reality.
This outcome is not to be unexpected from a group that recognizes little if any distinction between belief and material existence.
It really floors me still that a huge majority of those around me, including many highly educated and highly capable people, have this blind spot in their thinking where they believe that if they think some stuff (e.g. pray, “believe” in Jesus, etc.) that that thinking somehow causes (directly causes) large and personally very important changes in the real world (aside from their own internal mental state.)
Really? I think some stuff and something happens in real life? Or I say some magic words and something happens in real life?
Pure, infantile fanatasy. If you could only get people to step back and assess their beliefs dispassionately.
But then, that’s the mark of an educated an skepitcal person, not a credulous religious person.
” There are, of course, holes in the theory of evolution that are big enough to drive a semi-truck through”
…
“There is no reason for Christians to fear science. Denigrating or denying the clear, measurable, logical, repeatable work of thousands of scientists through the years does nothing to bolster Christian beliefs.”
…
hmm…
If you can drive a truck through evolutionary theory, Christian theology would easily accomodate an Imperial star destroyer.
“I know some scientists who think we can understand everything in the universe without God. I know some Christians who think we can understand everything in the universe without science.
They’re both wrong.”
You can stop reading Bowden’s little piece right there and know you’re saving yourself some valuable time in which to do something else.
It’s the classic false equivalence.
Which is not to say that the rest of the piece cannot also be demolished, as other commenters have ably done above.
Dr. Bowden, I’ve taken the liberty of editing your letter so as to remove all of the factually untrue statements. Here it is:
“I wish more people could stop to see that seemingly opposite views do not necessarily cancel each other out. It is possible for different world views to exist simultaneously and even support one another, if we only can ask and answer questions honestly and without name-calling.
I know some Christians who think we can understand everything in the universe without science. They’re wrong. It’s unfortunate that so few take the time to consider that science and faith do not have to be mutually exclusive but can support one another.
There is no reason for Christians to fear science. Denigrating or denying the clear, measurable, logical, repeatable work of thousands of scientists through the years does nothing to bolster Christian beliefs. We should embrace science.
For me, it comes down to faith and life, not a hard and fast belief in a literal interpretation of one chapter of one book. An argument about whether Genesis and current scientific beliefs are at odds with each other misses the point that Christianity is about Jesus, his life, his death, and his resurrection.”
You’re welcome.
Seriously! Where were the editors? Every Leter to the Editor I’ve ever had acecpted has been significantly edited to make it shorter.
Our chemist has repeated the old story I was told as a child to reconcile the creation story and science. Nothing new here, just the same old attempt to rationalize the contradictions and put his mind at rest. I would guess most Christians do the same thing so they can have their cake and eat it to. This kind of logic if used in other situations could be dangerous to him and loved ones, for example when decisions about faith healing or medical treatment contradict each other. You can’t choose both, you must make one decision, the right decision. We all have situations where we can be ambiguous but there are times when we must choose choice A, or choice B, rather than all of the above.
So much fail.
By the way, I do think we now know how life arose. We clade within geochemistry, more exactly within alkaline hydrothermal vent chemistry. [Lane&Martin]
But we lack the “fine point” details. Which is why Russell got 8 MUSD from NASA to study this geochemistry and look for more detail of the trait changes.
I know some scientists who think we can understand everything in the universe without God. I know some Christians who think we can understand everything in the universe without science.
They’re both wrong.
Ah yes, the ever popular but outdated postmodernism.
The science position is based on facts and creationism on opinion. And you can’t own your own facts, only your opinion. But for post-modernists, facts is only “another story”.
Odd thing for a chemist to believe in though.
If we throw out our modern definition of a day as a 24-hour period, Genesis tells us that on the first day, “God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void…”
When this story was written 4,000 years ago, they didn’t have the language to talk about things like the Big Bang theory and subatomic particles. But whether you take the Big Bang or “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ ” it says the same thing.
The problem here is that you need to define “Big Bang”. If it is when “light” appeared (appearance of standard particles), inflation preceded it.
And even if you define it as an initial singularity, we don’t know if there was one. All theorems implying that one is unavoidable are based on semiclassical physics like geodesics AFAIK. And we know semiclassical physics is just an emergent theory.
In say Hawking’s no boundary quantum cosmology a “fuzzy instanton” universe appears at inflation, tunneling there (instanton) but in his view not needing a pre-history of the system the tunneling happened in as he solves an inverse problem (of a solution based on all histories).
We can argue whether this happened 5 billion years ago or 10,000 years ago, but really, what’s the point?
Ah yes, the ever popular but outdated “5 billions instead of 14 billions” mistake.
Odd thing for a chemist to believe in though, stellar nucleosynthesis takes _time_.
Suspect his last grant was rejected and now he’s turning to Templeton.
Ooh! Good answer!
+1
Ned’s off to a cracking start alleging Genesis’ confirmation of natural history, as Genesis 1 states that Light occurs before stars are created. I’m no codemonkey, but come on – your program isn’t going to work very well if your first line contains gibberish.
Then Ned says in his comment that “salvation comes from Jesus, not Genesis”.
What are we being saved from if not the criminal negligence/psychopathy of the god of Genesis? Bad programming?
Is Jesus a patch to fix the bugs of God 1.0?
And why is Ned even invoking Genesis only to say it’s practically irrelevant? It’s like he hasn’t even read it …
We can have science AND religion?
Hardly.
We only have one science. But which religion does he think is the one religion? How do you convince the billion muslims or the billion Hindus about the one true Christian religion?
So which god should we take as the representative of the one true religion, Jesusgod, Allah, or Vishnu. And yet science is exactly the same, universally accepted, whether it be with a christian, a muslim or a hindu. Can’t say the same for the universal truth of which religion and which god is THE one, like science is THE one.
Would Ned by happy to agree that we have all decided to choose Vishnu as the singularly accepted God, and Hinduism, along which we can agree there is no conflict between science and religion?
I don’t think Ned will give up his religion in order to have one religion reflecting the truth of there being only one science.
Nice!
My guess is he knows demonstrably more about evolution than he does about any other world religion than his own… and he can’t even get *that* one right!
Also note in the Discussion, an intriguing speculation on presence of 2-thio-U at the wobble position of anticodons of certain tRNAs as an evolutionary relic, based on the thermodynamic utility 2-thio-T shown in the experimental work.
There are holes in Bowden’s argument “big enough to drive a semi truck through.” Trying to reconcile Genesis with the theory of evolution and the Big Bang is fanciful at best. Indeed, Bowden seems completely unaware of Dr. Kent Hovind’s research in this area.
“But the theory of evolution, or at least its major tenets, is supported by a mountain of evidence. That’s the topic of WEIT.”
Really? Having paid some attention to this web site I would have said that the topics of WEIT are—
cats,
atheist issues,
biological and other scientific phenomena,
diatribes against those who oppose and seem to oppose evolution,
personal adventures of the author.
When looking for a discussion of the evidence for evolution on this web site, I rarely find it.
I have no complaint about the above topics, but if a web site is titled Why Evolution Is True, I would think I might find some discussion of why evolution is true.
I think he was referring to the book of the same title.
Yes I was, and your comment was gratuitous.
I suggest that you pay attention to other websites from now on.
I agree. He was most definitely talking about his book, Why Evolution Is True.
“When looking for a discussion of the evidence for evolution on this web site, I rarely find it.”
That’s because it’s in the book (linked to at the top of every page!).
/@
Something else to consider is that this website is really an offshoot of its original purpose, which was merely to be an advertisement for the book. The scope of this site expanded right off the bat to serve as a rare, civil oasis — a virtual meeting place that serves to air issues of academia / education. It is a rare place that fights the stupid canard that public resistance to evolution is somehow disconnected from religion, or that a better strategy is to either shut up or make nicey-nicey about it. Make more sense now?
Excellently put.
To be honest, I can understand a bit how those unaware of that process could be a bit startled at first. (Though it should become obvious after spending any time here.)
Your post, beginning with “. . . a rare, civil oasis…” would make an excellent blog, (er, website) blurb, if such existed.
Genesis 1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,””
It gets it wrong within the first 10 words. Everything after that is wrong as well.
Not to get too picky, but if the world were created 5 minutes ago, then the whole “Fall” thing that we alleged needed saving from is a lie, one created intentionally by the Christian God. I may not be Christian, but I’m pretty sure we don’t need salvation from an illusion.
Well, an omniscient god would know that Adam WOULD have fallen if he had existed, so that’s enough to send the bulk of humanity to hell.
Presumably including all of the people that never existed up until the five minutes ago creation, but who wold have sinned if they had and who have now just come into being in hell along with memories of centuries of torture. That’s a pretty merciless god figure. Makes Scalia’s satan look pretty benign!
So all my fond memories of the chicks I used to know when I was young are just wet dreams? Dammit, Bowden, you just destroyed my sex life! 🙁
And then the “Crucifixion” would also be a lie – in which case any “salvation” is illusory (except in sophisticated theology perhaps).
“But the theory of evolution, or at least its major tenets, is supported by a mountain of evolution.” Did you mean “mountain of evidence”?
Yeah, a typo. Fixed it, thanks.
Both work don’t they?
Absolutely. Evolution is its own evidence.
Or philosophy, given that AFAIK most philosophers reject last thursdayism as silly and weak, whereas this guys seems to think it’s just peachy.
A competent philosopher would admit that last thursdayism cannot be disproven, and that whether it is “silly” is not germane to whether it is true. But, like solipsism, it is unproductive.
Granted, though both serve as a useful sort of reductio ad absurdum argument against the utility of unfalsifiable metaphysical assertions.
Yes, people often mistake “irrefutable” with “necessarily true.” The Omphalos Hypothesis (Last Thursdayism) and solipsism are irrefutable, but represent positions that lead nowhere.
Not necessarily nowhere.
The exact same logic that leads us to conclude that we can’t rule out the possibility that Queen Maeve the Housecat Created All That Is, Was, and Ever Will Be Last Thursday…well, it applies to Ms. Maeve, herself. She can’t rule out the possibility that she herself was created Last Wednesday by the Invisible Pink Unicorn (MPBUHHH).
From this, we can conclude that the notion of ultimate responsibility for creation is incoherent. I mean, if even the creator can’t know that she herself is or isn’t a creation, of what sense does it make to claim that she created anything, let alone everything?
Cheers,
b&
Not to mention the third creation story in John–inconsistent with the first two
Bowden must thank god for tenure, given the incredibly poor argumentation and grasp of the facts he displays.
Well, some microorganisms don’t need sunlight to live, and in his broad brushstroking of evolution he seems to have decided that all prokaryotes count as plants.
IMO the real killer is that according to mainstream science, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc… are only made in supernovae. You can’t possibly have “the waters” or anything organic appear before stars and call that sequence ‘consistent with science.’
I should add that, unlike his other blunders, the nucleosynthesis blunder is IN his field. In fact he very strongly implies that he accepts modern science when it comes to radioactivity and nuclear reactions. So wheras some of his other stuff can be passed off as an arrogant chemist speaking outside his area of expertise, he really has no such excuse when it comes to nuclear and radiochemistry.
Cosmic dissonance.
*Like*
+1
Oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen are cooked up in the interior of stars, no supernovae required. You get energy out of fusion reactions for elements up to the atomic weight of iron. It’s the elements heavier than iron that require the blast of a supernova to create them.
Gah, you’re right! Now I feel like a Bowden.
In any event, its still stellar nucleosynthesis.
“Now I feel like a Bowden”.
+ 100
True, but I think you still need a supernova to distribute these elements to enrich subsequent generations of stellar systems in heavier elements.
Otherwise they just sit in the core, usually of a white dwarf.
(Material is shed during the red giant phase, but I believe that would be mainly hydrogen & helium. Could be wrong though.)
Don’t be silly, the stellar synthesis of the waters may be in his own field, and thus inexcusable. But it’s hardly not as bad as his “Plants were created before the sun!” blunder.
I mean, the guy probably doesn’t think about the origin of various atoms that often, usually focusing on those atoms sometime after they landed on earth.
However, even a child knows that plants need the sun. The Genesis creation story only works if you assume the Earth was ‘on hold’ while god was getting everything set up. The creation of plants before the sun is not merely getting the order wrong, it makes a metaphor impossible, as not only does in mean the Earth was created before the Sun, it means that organisms whose existence is entirely dependant on the Sun preceeded it.
Calling Genesis a metaphor for the modern understanding of the origin of the Earth and stars is already a huge stretch. But you can’t “metaphor away” the freaking order of things. The comparison fails there, and the liberal Christians only way out is to call it poetry.
I’m willing to concede that both blunders peg the stupidity meter. 🙂
+1
Doesn’t that sound like the beginning of photosynthesis and the release of oxygen on earth? Skip ahead to day five…
Yeah. Skip day four when the sun was supposedly created after photosynthesis because it pretty much blows my assertion out of the water…
The last sentence of his follow up comment is pretty telling of his lazy thinking imo.
In other words: It doesn’t really matter if you agree or disagree because in the end jesus is the only answer.
Ah! But Gen. 1 was the question!!
/@
You’re right. By the looks of it, it sure as hell wasn’t a question of science.
Professor Bowden, you’re the one missing the point here. The argument can easily be rephrased to be about whether the Gospels and current scientific beliefs are at odd with each other. Because when it comes to the miracle stories, they are.
[Okay, my apologies for so many posts. I’ll stop now. Don’t know why this particular gentleman bothers me so.]
I do not know you, but I think I understand why this particular gentleman bothers you so. He bothers me in the same way.
Cue Christian persecution in five, four, three….
“But whether you take the Big Bang or ‘God said, “Let there be light,”’ it says the same thing.”
No. No, it doesn’t.
/@
That’s just it. The helpful apologists who try to interpret Genesis as God’s sly metaphor for evolution — people back then didn’t get it but today we can discern the vague hints and clues and figure out that the story in Genesis is actually describing evolution — forget that the Biblical scenario is a LOUSY metaphor for evolution. They’re retrofitting and hurting themselves with the force required to shove science into religion.
A child could do better. Anyone could. Give someone the task of putting the basic concepts and ideas of modern cosmology and evolutionary biology into simple stories and images which could be grasped at some level by simple, primitive, pre-scientific people and NOBODY is going to come up with anything even close to Genesis. Because the task isn’t that hard. Gradual natural change vs. poof!
“God’s way of creating” indeed. I’d love to ask Bowden to come up with a scenario, any scenario — run wild, babe, and use your imagination — which he could NOT turn into “God’s way of creating,” regardless of how wildly his imagination runs. My guess is he couldn’t do it.
Read almost any creation myth from anywhere, and to a mind like Bowden’s and a number of Islamic apologists it can be fancied to comport with, and therefore to have some sort of priority over,scientific theories.
The remark in his response about scientists lying to laymen is beneath contempt. What a disgusting person.
Oh, that’s easy.
Just have Satan be the creative force in the scenario….
b&
I received my Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. It’s a shame that something like this would happen. I will be writing to the editors.
I studied at University of Stellenbosch. There were Social Science building was named the “BJ Voster Building”. Minister of Justice the Rivonia Trial in which Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life, and the PM that followed Verwoed.
It’s not our fault. The people running these schools should know better.
Waitaminute.
So this ultra-powerful super-smart YHWH dude thought it was important enough to teach a bunch of psychotic goatherders about the origins of the universe, but he couldn’t be bothered to give them the same kind of education we give schoolkids today?
Really?
Just how hard would it have been for him to have sat them down, said, “Look, I know this might be hard for you to take, but remember that I am the Yam that I Yam and you’re not very bright. So listen carefully. Matter is composed of really, really tiny particles, much too small for you to see — go have a look at what that Democritus chap is talking about, but he doesn’t quite have it right. And here’s how you can generate an electric current so you can perform the oil drop experiment so you can know that I’m not bulshitting you. These particles….”
Damn.
Do these Christian idiots even pretend to listen to themselves? Do they realize how stupid they sound, or, at the least, how much of an idiotic incompetent asshole they make their bestest superfriend out to be?
Cheers,
b&
“Listen to me, my apostles, and record what I say carefully, for it will be beyond your understanding. I speak it not to you, but for those who will come after, who will understand it, and better know the glory of my Father, who is in Heaven.
I speak unto you that all matter is composed of the smallest things. Together, they number no more than one hundred. All the things you see, all the things you touch, are but assemblies of these smallest things into greater works.
And these smallest things are distinguished by their count. And everything you see, and everything you touch, can be understood as a joining of these smallest things into combinations still so small that the eye cannot perceive them, just as the eye cannot perceive the air.
And so that you may hear, and others understand, I say unto you that the very water that falls from the sky, and that you drink, is made of two of the smallest things whose count is one, and one of the smallest things whose count is eight. The air you breath is made of two of the smallest things whose count is eight. And as water and air are the fuel of life, you can see that the smallest thing whose count is eight is uniquely important for your life. Each smallest thing has it’s own uniqueness, without which creation would be barren.”
There you go, a scientific lesson, in Biblical language, that explains the very basics of atomic theory, and explains the exact structure of liquid water.
It has some details that are still wrong, of course. Air is not composed solely of O2, and atoms are not the smallest thing, but I don’t think anyone would deny that if Jesus did say this, that the Gospels would had to have been written by someone with advanced scientific knowledge, even if some of it was over simplified.
Dr. Bowden, your god exists outside of space time, so he’s free to go back and put that into one of the Gospels, so that we believe in him, if he so chooses. No need to pay me, saving me from his own desire to torture me would be enough.
In the beginning was light. The light cooled, and begat simple gasses. These collected and became stars. Many of these died, begetting more stars and the elements of the earth. The Earth took shape around one of these stars.
Life formed, simple and small. It begat more life, each generation different from the last, with new kinds of life arising from the old over untold years. Many of the old and new kinds died out, while some went on to beget still more kinds, until all the life we see about us, including mankind, had taken shape.
Very good.
But because I am not all-powerful, I was unable to provide you with a safe paradise. Those same simple creatures that ultimately begat you, and which are too small for you to see without tools you must invent, are now your mortal enemies. You must take great care to wash them off your hands before you eat, and off your hands and naughty bits after you pee, poopeth and fornicate. A mixture of animal fat and ashes will help greatly, as will covering your mouths when you cough and sneeze. And for God’s sake, stop picking your noses.
Since we’re going down this road, Eric, here’s a video of a potential “Accurate Genesis” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOXVG_k5Vrk
The idea that god had to explain scientific concepts in such innacurrate details because the people were so stupid is trivially disprovable.
Either Genesis was poetry, meant to symbolize gods dominion over all things, or it was an attempt to describe actual events which it got horribly wrong. Liberal Christians cannot make any claims as to it being a simplified version of scientific truth. At least, not honestly.
Very good.
Did he say that the great whales arrived during the Cambrian? (Day 5 of Gen.)
I never knew that…
I would like to know more about Bowden’s idea that the Cambrian explosion produced whales.
Well, if trilobites and all those other Cambrian critters ‘exploded’ into existance, why not whales, too?
😉
What a mess! Exploding animals! Keep it clean for god’s sake!
I’m in Oregon. Our Dept of Transportation did that exploding whale. Once.
If the bible is the WORD of God and God used evolution as a way of accomplishing his aims [creating all things????], then why didn’t he just come out and say it, saving us a few centuries to figure out that’s what he meant.
The IT department at Goddidit, LLC hasn’t figured out how to release new versions of the biblical system software at regular intervals or how to fix interface incompatibility.
They must still be using Waterfall. They need to move to Agile.
Or, more likely, they’re using that all-time favorite project management technique: I WANT IT NOW! NOW! NOW! ARE WE THERE YET? WHY AREN’T YOU FINISHED? I WANT IT NOW! NOW! NOW!
You might laugh, but I’m not joking.
b&
Yeah, I call those “why can’t you just” projects where someone asks something like “why can’t you just make it do x” and doesn’t accept that the ask is huge.
There also is the “I have the loudest voice so you have to do what I want” technique.
Thankfully, the second one is considered a firing offence now. 🙂
The great thing about being a consultant — or, as I pronounce it, “insultant,” — is that all I have to do is say why I think it’s an idiotic idea and then go ahead and do it anyway when they say that that’s what they really want. It’s their money to waste, and I’m more than happy for them to waste it on me.
Once upon a time we’d try to engineer things so they’d be future-proof. But half the stuff we did died on the vine; another half wouldn’t get touched for years; and, in the worst half, they’d constantly ask for “minor” revisions that would completely invalidate any sort of future-proofing we could ever imagine having done.
So, now, we just write the cleanest possible code that gets the project out the door in the minimum amount of time. If they come back with changes, we put the minimum amount of effort into those changes — often to the point of copy / paste of large blocks of code rather than abstract it out into something reusable. If there’re enough iterations of that such that the codebase becomes unwieldily and brittle, we’ll start to warn them that the next “one minor little change” will likely necessitate a complete re-write from scratch. Often, that’s the point where they lose interest anyway, though sometimes it does give us a chance to wipe the slate blank. Not that it gives us anything other than a temporary reprieve, of course….
b&
Don’t know how to send in a ‘tip’ to Prof Coyne, but just go to google news and search “Archbishop Jozef Michalik”
Unbelievable!
Go to the Univ. of Chicago site and look him up: His email is there.
As a University of Illinois alumn (1974), I am proud once again to post this caution:
“Friends don’t let friends go to Iowa.”
Reblogged this on The Little Tower and commented:
One good thing about the internet age is that those scientists whose scientific views aren’t supported by the evidence can out themselves. We get to see scientific self-correction in action.
I am embarrassed for this guy. Oviously he is too smitten with his religion to be embarrassed on his own behalf.
His article, and response, give an impression of intellectual laziness.
Is it possible that this guy had a reputation for being coo coo for Cocoa Puffs and the editors just gave him enough rope to hang himself?
I tend to think that about a lot of local journalism – that the papers sometimes intentionally select the craziest letters to the editor for publication, just to increase readership – but I’d be somewhat surprised if a University magazine did that. Aren’t those things typically given out free to alumni, and not intended to be sold on a per magazine basis?
I wasn’t thinking as a means to increase readership, but rather as a means of exposing him for what he is…a nut.
Possible, but unlikely. The editors probably liked the accomodationist flavor of the piece. The details don’t matter: it’s called “Common Ground.”
And Bowden seems perfectly ordinary to me, even brighter and more articulate than average. This is a brain on religion.
If you want to evaluate or measure him then you have to make huge accomodations for that.
I wonder if Bowden has lived a very sheltered existence. Nothing but labs during the week and church on the weekends. Could this be the first time he has ventured out into the big bad world with his views on science and religion? There are certainly places in this country where you can grow into middle age without hearing a serious challenge to your wackadoodle ideas. But a science professor! He must have had some interaction with serious people.
The editors were probably from the famed writing program and wouldn’t have known better
I’ve been telling people for a while, a lot of chemists are like that. They should be added to doctors and engineers as the professions that stereotypically are more likely to be evolution-deniers.
There are even some physicists who reject the theory of evolution. My PhD thesie adviser, who was on the short list for the Nobel Prize in physics this year is a born again Christian and an evolution denier, or at least he was when I knew him.
Yes, this is true. Especially engineers. (I am one.) You’d think that engineers never receive any real science training (I did; but for many it seems not to have taken.)
Engineer as profession for a man is as pedestrian as nurse as profession for a woman. Therefore, you get, pretty much, a normal slice across society. In the US, this means a very large percentage of engineers who are sincerely religous and deny evolution, global warming, etc., and are tea-baggers (I have to live with them 🙁 .)
I’m one too. I would have hoped that the requirement to think clearly about forces and loads (i.e. basically cause and effect) would lead to logical thinking in other directions too. Unfortunately it frequently doesn’t (remember Harold Camping?).
It is, of course, the case that for engineering purposes it makes absolutely no difference whether the loads are generated by interatomic forces or whether God just put them there. So religious belief doesn’t clash with engineering – just with rationality.
I’m a chemistry grad student, and I don’t believe in creationism, intelligent design, theistic evolution, or any other such nonsense. I don’t know what the stats are for the various fields, but I would be seriously surprised if anywhere near a majority of chemists were creationists or IDiots. Try not to make accusations of the form “a lot of (insert field or profession here) believe in X.” It’s intellectually lazy to make such sweeping statements without providing any data.
Personally, I view chemistry as being inherently anti-theistic, since we’re playing with what the religious might consider to be God’s building blocks.
Alas, somewhere there are stats showing that chemists, of all the “hard science” scientists, are the most likely to be theists. (My google-fu isn’t working well, though-sorry.) Still a much smaller percentage than the general population, though. I like your framing of the matter.
Alas, I fear you are correct: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
According to a 2009 Pew survey, 41% of chemists believe in a god, compared with 32% of biologists and medical scientists (not sure if that includes M.D.s or not), 30% of those in “geosciences”, and 29% of physicists and astronomers. But chemists and physicists/astronomers are both less likely to believe in a granola-ey “universal spirit or higher power” (14% for both fields) than are biologists/medical (19%) and geoscientists (20%).
Garnetstar, I see that your assertion has some truth to it. I hope I didn’t come off as too offended; in fact, I thank you for making me want to look up the stats on different fields, which caused me to learn something. Hooray!
Yikes, as an erstwhile biologist, I wish they hadn’t conflated us with “medical scientists.”
I checked his record at the University of Iowa. He has a PhD from Harvard. Published a lot of stuff on polymer chemistry and has filed various patents. Has two grad students. Clearly he can think rationally about chemistry. However, his statements about evolution are are remarkably (unbelievably?) ignorant and witless. Seems like an example of a bloated ego pumped up even more with a dose of blind faith.
It’s called bootstrapping. Get yourself an education in one field of science, and then you figure out the rest of it all by yourself.
/snark
Compartmentalization as defense against cognitive dissonance.
There it is!
“Pulling out my trusty King James Bible, I find this:
Genesis Chapter 1
Light
The firmament and water
Vegetation (grass and fruit trees)
Stars
Sea creatures (including whales) and fowls
Beasts of the earth
Man and woman (simultaneously)
Genesis Chapter 2
Earth and heavens
Plants
Water
Man (Adam)
Garden of Eden (moar plants)
Beasts of the fields and fowls of the air
Woman (Eve)”
It’s been a while since I read the creation story, but that seems a little more succinct than I remember. Have you got the abridged version? 😉
I wonder if this guy is one of the folks (alas, there sure seem to be a lot of those!) who writes to C&E News every time they do a pro-evolution editorial.
I oppose creationism because I’m not tenured at Harvard?? LOL!
If god is using evolution to make species, why does he then turn around and let them go extinct? And why does he allow asteroids and comets to come and wipe so many out all at once? I guess He is mysterious or something.
The thing I personally really hate about this particular piece is the annoyingly nasty and smug version of well-poisoning that runs throughout something ironically titled “Common Ground.”
Look at how Bowden sets himself up as the White Knight in a dispute between Bad Guys. He wants to make a case for “ending animosity” (the Bad Guys would apparently make a case for continuing ‘animosity,’ unlike him, who wants to end it.) But then there’s:
Well, look. What a fair, neutral, respectful description of your opponents. No name-calling here. Instead we see that all the people who DON’T agree with him are pundits, loud, extreme, intransigent shouters who won’t let anyone else express a point of view because they are RIGHT and others are WRONG.
Unlike Bowden, who reaches out even to the extremist scum who are “both wrong,” thus avoiding being on a side himself and staying out of other people’s unnecessary “battle.”.
Hypocrite much?
I hate this self-righteous stance of Middle Ground of Reason and Moderation in the midst of an issue which actually has details that matter. It doesn’t seem to occur to Bowden that maybe everyone involved in the “battle” is NOT simply looking for a facile, superficial, desperate, strained, face-saving, cowardly, incoherent, dishonest, embarrassing way to force-fit the two opposing sides together into one happy reconciliation. He’s not a White Knight. He’s an ineffectual dragon.
Or as xkcd would put it:
http://xkcd.com/774/
I know that URL! That must qualify as the most-linked-to page on the Internet by now…
Indeed. Amongst atheists, you may well be right.
Creationists and accommodationists, I’m not so sure.
Pretty soon we’ll be like the prisoners in the cell block, telling jokes by just calling out a number.
I think we should all chip in and buy the good professor a copy of Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus Christ for Xmas. That might keep him from writing nonsense for a while.
Is Carrier’s book due to be published anytime soon? I remember asking him about it at Skepticon in 2010. At that point he said it would be published by the end of 2011. Last year he said he hoped to have it completed before Skepticon 6 which is just over a month away. If you have any info about when it will be released I’d love to hear about it. 🙂
A few years ago I asked a creationist about the first two chapters of Genesis, and he maintained that there actually were two separate creations, one after the other, so that both sequences were literally true and there was no conflict. I should have asked him how many Jesuses there were.
If you’re talking about apocalyptic preachers, that number is probably in the thousands….
Including amongst them the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a thought I always find jarring.
The two creations idea is sometimes a part of a theological idea called Pre-Adamism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Adamism
Which has enjoyed varying levels of popularity (though never a majority view as far as I know). It’s still popular among racists who like the idea that not all humans are descended from Adam, that pinnacle of creation (guess who is and who isn’t).
I’m guessing the quantities of eumelanin and pheomelanin in one’s skin.
I’ve actually written two posts on my own website that tie into this very well. The first, probably not particularly informative to readers of this blog, is titled ‘Problems With Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis’. Do a google search for it and pick the one written by me (currently the first return – I’d link to it directly but for some reason WordPress doesn’t like my site). The objections I put into that article are probably pretty familiar to everyone here.
The second article, which readers here might be a bit more interested in, is titled ‘Book Review – God- or Gorilla?, Chapters 24 & 25’. It’s also the first return from Google if you search that phrase specifically. It’s part of a review I did of an old book a few years ago. The book was written back in 1922 by a guy named Alfred McCann. According to this page, the popularity of the book even earned him an invitation to the Scopes trial. Anyway, he devoted a chapter of the book to trying to reconcile the creation story from Genesis with the supposed scientific explanation of the day (I say supposed, because while I’m not exactly sure what the view was then, I suspect creationists in his day were just as ignorant as modern day ones). And that explanation was very different from out current understanding – the Big Bang wasn’t even a serious proposal, yet. But McCann was still able to find remarkable agreement between that explanation and scripture. He even quoted another person from that era as saying:
As I wrote in that entry, “if the true meaning of Genesis is supposedly so clear, how is it possible that he could interpret it so differently from modern day theistic evolutionists? And if it’s so easy to shoe-horn Genesis to fit whatever creation story you can come up with, does it really show insight on the part of its writer? Or rather, is it just flowery verse coupled with a creative interpretation on the part of modern readers?”
That is a highly amusing point.
Science: “The universe is steady state”
Acommodationist: “Hey, that agrees with Genesis!”
Science: “No, wait, big bang!”
Acommodationist: “Hey, that agrees with Genesis too!”
Science: “Oops we made a mistake – it’s actually big bang plus inflation and cosmological constant.”
Acommodationist: “Hey look, yet again that agrees with Genesis!”
Science: “Let me guess – dark matter and dark energy also agree with Genesis?”
Acommodationist: “Amazing, isn’t it?”
Yes, just like they will re-define god in whatever way is required to evade disproof by science.
Just like the Koran, a detailed description of embryology, both in the middle ages when Galen was infallible, and today!
When I read this:
Then I read this:
It sounds an awful lot like Virginia Heffernan. It’s all about what you like, not about facts. Facts aren’t necessary.
What is going on with Harvard grads?
Two important cards near the top of Religious Conservatism’s deck:
Reality Relativism (demonstrated in the Bowden piece): good, very good. Most often deployed in science vs religion debate.
(imaginary, so-called) Cultural Relativism: bad, very bad. Most frequently deployed in “values” debates.
Religious advocates see Cultural Relativism everywhere they look. Their Reality Relativism is invisible to them, though. They believe, instead, they actually describe reality.
This outcome is not to be unexpected from a group that recognizes little if any distinction between belief and material existence.
It really floors me still that a huge majority of those around me, including many highly educated and highly capable people, have this blind spot in their thinking where they believe that if they think some stuff (e.g. pray, “believe” in Jesus, etc.) that that thinking somehow causes (directly causes) large and personally very important changes in the real world (aside from their own internal mental state.)
Really? I think some stuff and something happens in real life? Or I say some magic words and something happens in real life?
Pure, infantile fanatasy. If you could only get people to step back and assess their beliefs dispassionately.
But then, that’s the mark of an educated an skepitcal person, not a credulous religious person.
” There are, of course, holes in the theory of evolution that are big enough to drive a semi-truck through”
…
“There is no reason for Christians to fear science. Denigrating or denying the clear, measurable, logical, repeatable work of thousands of scientists through the years does nothing to bolster Christian beliefs.”
…
hmm…
If you can drive a truck through evolutionary theory, Christian theology would easily accomodate an Imperial star destroyer.
….and that mofo is huge! Just look!
Awesome picture! Thanks!
“I know some scientists who think we can understand everything in the universe without God. I know some Christians who think we can understand everything in the universe without science.
They’re both wrong.”
You can stop reading Bowden’s little piece right there and know you’re saving yourself some valuable time in which to do something else.
It’s the classic false equivalence.
Which is not to say that the rest of the piece cannot also be demolished, as other commenters have ably done above.
Dr. Bowden, I’ve taken the liberty of editing your letter so as to remove all of the factually untrue statements. Here it is:
“I wish more people could stop to see that seemingly opposite views do not necessarily cancel each other out. It is possible for different world views to exist simultaneously and even support one another, if we only can ask and answer questions honestly and without name-calling.
I know some Christians who think we can understand everything in the universe without science. They’re wrong. It’s unfortunate that so few take the time to consider that science and faith do not have to be mutually exclusive but can support one another.
There is no reason for Christians to fear science. Denigrating or denying the clear, measurable, logical, repeatable work of thousands of scientists through the years does nothing to bolster Christian beliefs. We should embrace science.
For me, it comes down to faith and life, not a hard and fast belief in a literal interpretation of one chapter of one book. An argument about whether Genesis and current scientific beliefs are at odds with each other misses the point that Christianity is about Jesus, his life, his death, and his resurrection.”
You’re welcome.
Seriously! Where were the editors? Every Leter to the Editor I’ve ever had acecpted has been significantly edited to make it shorter.
Our chemist has repeated the old story I was told as a child to reconcile the creation story and science. Nothing new here, just the same old attempt to rationalize the contradictions and put his mind at rest. I would guess most Christians do the same thing so they can have their cake and eat it to. This kind of logic if used in other situations could be dangerous to him and loved ones, for example when decisions about faith healing or medical treatment contradict each other. You can’t choose both, you must make one decision, the right decision. We all have situations where we can be ambiguous but there are times when we must choose choice A, or choice B, rather than all of the above.
So much fail.
By the way, I do think we now know how life arose. We clade within geochemistry, more exactly within alkaline hydrothermal vent chemistry. [Lane&Martin]
But we lack the “fine point” details. Which is why Russell got 8 MUSD from NASA to study this geochemistry and look for more detail of the trait changes.
Ah yes, the ever popular but outdated postmodernism.
The science position is based on facts and creationism on opinion. And you can’t own your own facts, only your opinion. But for post-modernists, facts is only “another story”.
Odd thing for a chemist to believe in though.
The problem here is that you need to define “Big Bang”. If it is when “light” appeared (appearance of standard particles), inflation preceded it.
And even if you define it as an initial singularity, we don’t know if there was one. All theorems implying that one is unavoidable are based on semiclassical physics like geodesics AFAIK. And we know semiclassical physics is just an emergent theory.
In say Hawking’s no boundary quantum cosmology a “fuzzy instanton” universe appears at inflation, tunneling there (instanton) but in his view not needing a pre-history of the system the tunneling happened in as he solves an inverse problem (of a solution based on all histories).
Ah yes, the ever popular but outdated “5 billions instead of 14 billions” mistake.
Odd thing for a chemist to believe in though, stellar nucleosynthesis takes _time_.
Suspect his last grant was rejected and now he’s turning to Templeton.
Ooh! Good answer!
+1
Ned’s off to a cracking start alleging Genesis’ confirmation of natural history, as Genesis 1 states that Light occurs before stars are created. I’m no codemonkey, but come on – your program isn’t going to work very well if your first line contains gibberish.
Then Ned says in his comment that “salvation comes from Jesus, not Genesis”.
What are we being saved from if not the criminal negligence/psychopathy of the god of Genesis? Bad programming?
Is Jesus a patch to fix the bugs of God 1.0?
And why is Ned even invoking Genesis only to say it’s practically irrelevant? It’s like he hasn’t even read it …
We can have science AND religion?
Hardly.
We only have one science. But which religion does he think is the one religion? How do you convince the billion muslims or the billion Hindus about the one true Christian religion?
So which god should we take as the representative of the one true religion, Jesusgod, Allah, or Vishnu. And yet science is exactly the same, universally accepted, whether it be with a christian, a muslim or a hindu. Can’t say the same for the universal truth of which religion and which god is THE one, like science is THE one.
Would Ned by happy to agree that we have all decided to choose Vishnu as the singularly accepted God, and Hinduism, along which we can agree there is no conflict between science and religion?
I don’t think Ned will give up his religion in order to have one religion reflecting the truth of there being only one science.
Nice!
My guess is he knows demonstrably more about evolution than he does about any other world religion than his own… and he can’t even get *that* one right!
And, well, that’s the take on things from the center of the country. Meanwhile, with efforts IN CHEMISTRY from both coasts, here’s the latest, very fresh off the PNAS presses, from Jack Szostak’s lab on abiogenic origins.
Also note in the Discussion, an intriguing speculation on presence of 2-thio-U at the wobble position of anticodons of certain tRNAs as an evolutionary relic, based on the thermodynamic utility 2-thio-T shown in the experimental work.
There are holes in Bowden’s argument “big enough to drive a semi truck through.” Trying to reconcile Genesis with the theory of evolution and the Big Bang is fanciful at best. Indeed, Bowden seems completely unaware of Dr. Kent Hovind’s research in this area.
“But the theory of evolution, or at least its major tenets, is supported by a mountain of evidence. That’s the topic of WEIT.”
Really? Having paid some attention to this web site I would have said that the topics of WEIT are—
cats,
atheist issues,
biological and other scientific phenomena,
diatribes against those who oppose and seem to oppose evolution,
personal adventures of the author.
When looking for a discussion of the evidence for evolution on this web site, I rarely find it.
I have no complaint about the above topics, but if a web site is titled Why Evolution Is True, I would think I might find some discussion of why evolution is true.
I think he was referring to the book of the same title.
Yes I was, and your comment was gratuitous.
I suggest that you pay attention to other websites from now on.
I agree. He was most definitely talking about his book, Why Evolution Is True.
“When looking for a discussion of the evidence for evolution on this web site, I rarely find it.”
That’s because it’s in the book (linked to at the top of every page!).
/@
Something else to consider is that this website is really an offshoot of its original purpose, which was merely to be an advertisement for the book. The scope of this site expanded right off the bat to serve as a rare, civil oasis — a virtual meeting place that serves to air issues of academia / education. It is a rare place that fights the stupid canard that public resistance to evolution is somehow disconnected from religion, or that a better strategy is to either shut up or make nicey-nicey about it. Make more sense now?
Excellently put.
To be honest, I can understand a bit how those unaware of that process could be a bit startled at first. (Though it should become obvious after spending any time here.)
Your post, beginning with “. . . a rare, civil oasis…” would make an excellent blog, (er, website) blurb, if such existed.
Genesis 1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,””
It gets it wrong within the first 10 words. Everything after that is wrong as well.