National Geographic touts a 3-D film on the “tomb of Christ” (now with bonus comment by Alvin Plantinga)

April 25, 2018 • 12:30 pm

UPDATE: Note that an “Alvin Plantinga” has commented favorably on the National Geographic fiction (comment #14 below). I can’t be sure that it’s the Alvin Plantinga, known for convoluted Sophisticated Theology™, but I’m guessing it is. If you respond to him, be polite!

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What the bloody hell is happening with National Geographic? Article after article is about religion—often Christianity—and all of these latter assume that Jesus was a real person (the implication is a divine person). Is this the way the Murdochs, who now have a controlling stake in the magazine, expect to turn a profit?

Reader Scott called my attention to a new exhibition at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. Here, Ceiling Cat help me, is the announcement (click on screenshot to go to page):

At the bottom of the photo you can read this: “PLAN YOUR VISIT: Exhibition features a short 3-D film with active 3-D glasses. Exhibition not recommended for guests susceptible to motion sickness or dizziness.”

Not recommended for those susceptible to fairy tales, either!

The whole page and its accompanying pdf pamphlet cast no doubt on the claim that this is indeed the tomb of Christ, nor, indeed, on the existence of Christ himself. The only nod to skepticism is this brief statement in the pdf file:

EVERYONE, WHETHER DEVOUT OR NOT, can feel a spiritual power when visiting holy sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, home to what many Christians believe is the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection.

“Can feel”? Or “will  feel”? (There’s a difference.) At any rate, the whole allure of this exhibit is the claim that it really is Jesus’s burial spot, something that couldn’t be verified unless there were some contemporary information inside the tomb.

But as we all know, and which Biblical scholars are loath to admit, there is no evidence for the existence of a Jesus person outside of Scripture—and if he existed, there should be. I’d love for National Geographic to publish a scrupulously honest article: “Jesus: Did he really exist?” Imagine how subscriptions would drop!

For example, in the first video below, produced by the magazine, it exhorts you at 40 seconds in to “Team up with conservation experts and historians as they race to restore the tomb of Christ.” Really? Is there no doubt about this? And get a load of the “science and faith” bit at the end, as if they are complementary ways to establish the provenance of this tomb.

In the second video, also by National Geographic, they open the sealed tomb! At 1:34, the caption appears: “This is the first time that anyone alive today has seen the holy bed.” That, of course, presumes it’s the holy bed. Do they expect to find an engraving that says “Jesus slept here”?

Of course there are no remains or other indications of what was in this spot, but that of course is just what the Bible predicts! In this case, the absence of evidence IS evidence.

At best the archaeologists might be able to date the cavity to around the time Jesus is supposed to have lived, but that will convince only the credulous. There’s a reason they’re called “sheep.”

When did National Geographic completely abandon its scientific bent to pander to the faithful? If you still subscribe, why?

Teaching Evolution: Alfred Sherwood Romer: Life’s story

April 25, 2018 • 11:30 am

by Greg Mayer

Our fifth installment of Teaching Evolution is a paper by A.S. Romer describing a new species of mammal-like reptile that has a dual jaw joint– the old reptilian one, plus a nascent mammalian one. (In reptiles, the jaw joint is between the quadrate bone of the skull and the articular bone of the lower jaw; in mammals it’s the squamosal and dentary, respectively. We’ve discussed this previously at WEIT.) The transition from reptiles to mammals is one of the most completely exemplified major evolutionary changes in the fossil record. That the ancestors of mammals were to be sought among a particular group of fossil reptiles (synapsids) has been known since the late 19th century, from the work of British anatomist Richard Owen and American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. Since then, the story of how this transition occurred, with the bones of the reptilian jaw joint   becoming ear ossicles in mammals, while a new jaw joint evolved, has been worked out in exquisite detail. This paper by Fuzz Crompton and Farish Jenkins gives an overview of the story, and this paper by Luo Zhe Xi has the latest developments.

In the readings I give to the students in my evolution class, I like to include some papers reporting particular findings (such as this one), as well as review papers or book extracts (such as the earlier installments). Most of the scientific literature is, of course, reports of particular findings.

Alfred Sherwood Romer (1894–1973) was for many years the dean of American vertebrate paleontology. A student of William King Gregory at Columbia University, he spent much of his early career at the University of Chicago, before moving to Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. At the MCZ, he eventually became director, in which position he recruited to the Museum such luminaries as G. G. Simpson and Ernst Mayr. Unlike these colleagues, however, Romer devoted most of his work to the study of evolutionary history, rather than evolutionary mechanisms, publishing on vertebrates of all kinds and times, but specializing on amphibians and reptiles of the Paleozoic and Triassic. He wrote several highly influential textbooks and monographs, including Man and the Vertebrates (1st ed., 1933), Vertebrate Paleontology (1st ed., 1933), The Vertebrate Body (1st ed., 1949), and Osteology of the Reptiles (1956). Edwin Colbert (1982) gives a brief summary of his life and work.

Reading:
Romer, A.S. 1969. Cynodont reptile with incipient mammalian jaw articulation. Science 166:881-882. (This will get you the paper only if you or an institution you are affiliated with has a subscription; if not, judicious inquiry might yield you a copy.)

Study Questions:
1. Why is Diarthrognathus, despite its possession of a double jaw joint, not considered an evolutionary reptile-mammal transition form? What, according to Romer, is the phylogenetic position of Probainognathus, and why does he think so?

2. Given what you know about paleogeography, what do you think about the fact that cynodonts (advanced mammal-like reptiles) of the early Triassic are found in South Africa, while the even more advanced cynodonts described from the Middle Triassic by Romer are from South America?

3. What skeletal feature has reached an essentially mammalian stage in Probainognathus and its relatives (the chiniquodonts)?
[The other installments of Teaching Evolution can be found by clicking ‘MOOC’, under “filed under” or “tags”, just below.]

Taos to Española

April 25, 2018 • 10:30 am

Yesterday I decided I’d seen enough of Taos (though many will disagree), and I needed to move on. (Like Neal Cassady, I tend to like the moving as much as the staying.) Soon after the sun came up (view below from my motel window), I had some coffee and hopped in the Ceiling Cat RentalMobile:

I wanted to do a circle from Taos around to Española, from where, the next day, I could drive back to Las Cruces on back roads, seeing a famous petroglyph site. Here’s the route from yesterday: Taos to Tres Piedras and then circling around the Carson National Forest on Route 64 to Abiquiu, where I hoped to see Georgia O’Keeffe’s home and studio, and then winding up in the untouristy town of Española, only about 25 miles north of Santa Fe.

About ten miles west of Taos is the famous Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, a marvel of engineering spanning a 565-foot-deep canyon that contains the Rio Grande River. Built between 1963 and 1965, the 1265-foot steel span gives you a distinct sense of vertigo if you look down while driving over. I waited till I got to the other side, where there’s a rest stop that gives you a proper view. I couldn’t take a good photograph; the one below doesn’t show how bloody deep that canyon is:

This photo from Wikipedia shows it better:

I’ve heard that bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), which are usually very shy and hard to see, sometimes brazenly cross the road by the rest stop on the west side. Though I’ve been in bighorn country many times, I’ve never seen one, and so stopped in the rest area to see if I could descry the elusive ovids.

How many times do you see a “watch for bighorn sheep” sign?

I spied no sheep, but got very close to a cottontail rabbit, probably a desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii). It was grazing peacefully and paid me little attention, so I could get quite close. Isn’t it cute? Lagomorphophiles might verify my identification:

A bit further along is the strange Greater World Community, also called the Greater World Earthship Community, an “Earthship” being, according to Wikipedia, “a type of passive solar house that is made of both natural and upcycled materials such as earth-packed tires, pioneered by architect Michael Reynolds.” Principles of such housing include solar heating and cooling, solar and wind-generated electricity, natural and recycled materials, self-contained sewage treatment, water harvesting and storage, and some production of food.

This is a real self-regulating community of 75 houses; sadly, most are on roads to which you’re not allowed access. (There are two other and smaller Earthship communities in the area.)

The Washington Post has a nice piece about it , showing photos of the weird and wonderful domiciles. You can even rent one or stay for a few days (minimum $140/night in 2016). I couldn’t find out when the community was built, but it had to be after 1988 when Reynolds constructed his first Earthship house.

Here are some of the houses I photographed from the highway or at the “go no further” points on the roads:

Here’s a short video about this Earthship Community. It’s the ultimate hippie haven, and I felt quite nostalgic seeing it. I wouldn’t mind living in one of these beautiful “off-grid” houses, but I’m a city boy.

Here are some of the lovely views of the drive around the Carson National Forest. It was cold up there, and patches of snow remained by the road.

A geologist’s paradise:

This is near the Ghost Ranch, a retreat and recreational center where you can stay cheaply, take horse rides or hikes into the desert, or just chill. Georgia O’Keeffe rented a place here when it was a dude ranch for rich folks (built in the late 1920s). She later bought her own place in nearby Abiquiú, where she moved for keeps after the death of her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Many of her paintings of the desert were made at the Ghost Ranch.

I drove into the tiny town of Abiquiú hoping to get a tour of O’Keeffe’s home and studio, but, sadly, I was there on a Monday, the one day when tours aren’t given. This is the thing I most regret about my visit here, but one miss isn’t too bad.

Her house is surrounded by a tall adobe wall, so this is the best view I could get. Pictures of the interior aren’t easy to come by (they want you to pay to see it, and tours aren’t cheap), but you can see some of the outside and inside here as well as via a Google image search here.

Sadly, I drove on, stopping for the day in the small town of Española.  I read on the Internet that there was a good restaurant there, and after a bit of searching I found La Cocina (“The Kitchen”). And it was good.

The menu had a lot of stuff on it, so I asked my waitress, who was really nice, what she’d recommend. She told me to get the guacamole and chicken tacos, which she said described as “da bomb” and her favorite dish there. For $9.75 you get “two grilled tacos served with chicken and guacamole. Topped with cheese, lettuce and tomato. Served with posole and beans on the side.” They also throw in a sopapilla, Hispanic fried bread which is traditionally served in this state with honey, either as an appetizer or as dessert (I had mine postprandially). It was delicious, tasting a bit like a churro.

Here’s my meal (squeeze bottle of honey to the left). There were also chips and salsa.

And the interior of the luscious soft tacos, brimming with fresh guacamole and big chunks of chicken. I recommend this place if you’re ever marooned in Española.

And the obligatory self-portrait in my motel room.

I have at least one more post to go, including the best burrito I’ve ever eaten and a visit to a stunning local Indian petroglyph site, so stay tuned.

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ apologetics

April 25, 2018 • 9:30 am

The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “rid”, came with a cryptic phrase: “Like Brighton through rock.” I know Brighton Rock is a stick candy, but I’m not quite sure how it refers to this cartoon, in which Mo unapologetically admits to the nature of Islamic scripture, but then maintains it anyway. In fact, the whole cartoon doesn’t make sense to me, as those who defend the Qur’an don’t usually apologize for its contents, or admit that it’s bigoted.

Christians have another tactic: they just ignore the bad bits of the Bible.

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 25, 2018 • 8:30 am

I’ve received several batches of wildlife photos on the road, but haven’t posted them as it takes a long time to do the travel posts, which I put together in my motel in the evening. Today’s post, from reader Don Bredes in Wheelock, Vermont, is an easy one, though, as it has only two photos. Nice ones, too: squirrels (Honorary Cats™):

His notes:

The sunflower seed feeder is down for the season (more than once I have made the mistake of leaving it up too long), so during the day I feed the chickadees, bluejays, and a few more exotic birds on the deck. That routine pleases the red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), who trust their speed and reflexes to save them from the hulking creature with the camera. We have a single gray squirrel this year, too, heretofore seldom seen out here in the hills. He isn’t nearly so trusting. Eastern Gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) have long been common the valleys and villages, but only in the last two or three years has their range expanded to these hilly rural reaches.
Here in the wooded hills red squirrels are numerous, and they’re not looked upon kindly by most people. They do a great deal of damage to the sugarmakers’ sap lines, for one thing. And they will invade a garage or open barn to nest and raise a litter, chewing through any wood or screen that may interfere with their purposes.

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 25, 2018 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning, and welcome to the midweek.

On Twitter today we have an eclectic collection as always, starting off with Sinister Disney, which is my new favorite thing.

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/988873644280496128

Also weird:

https://twitter.com/pullovergirl/status/988960224982781953

Don’t smoke kids. Also, stay in school.

Skeptical cat is skeptical

Snake v fish

A strange bromance at the first official state visit from France to the U.S. If nothing else it has provided the world with a brilliant set of bizarro photos.

Secret elves of the Cretaceous. (Atlas Obscura is a fantastic site for strange bits of information that you never knew you needed to know.)

Finally, Hili needs to come clean.

Hili: I have to send a letter.
A: To whom?
Hili: To our readers because they asked why our website is called “Letters from our orchard”.

In Polish:

Hili: Muszę wysłać list.
Ja: Do kogo?
Hili: Do naszych czytelników, bo pytali, dlaczego nasza strona nazywa się “Listy z naszego sadu”.

Penn State deems all outdoors an Unsafe Space

April 24, 2018 • 10:30 am

Here’s an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer (thanks to several readers for calling this situation to my attention). Click on the screenshot to read the piece about PSU (Pennsylvania State University) and its new decision.

What happened? Here’s the skinny:

A backpacking trip in the Rothrock State Forest and day hikes in the Laurel Highlands and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia were among the Penn State Outing Club’s 2018 spring-term events.

After this weekend, though, the 98-year-old organization has nothing on its calendar, and unless things change, it won’t.

The Outing Club isn’t allowed to go outside anymore.

According to an announcement posted by the club on its website last week, the university will not allow the club to organize and run outdoor, student-led trips starting next semester.

“This is a result,” the announcement said, “of an assessment of risk management by the university that determined that the types of activities in which PSOC engages are above the university’s threshold of acceptable risk for recognized student organizations.”

After a two-month review that did not include consultation with student Outing Club leaders, the university’s offices of Student Affairs and Risk Management made the determination that the hiking, canoeing, kayaking, trail building and camping activities the student-led club has long engaged in are too risky. The club is one of the oldest entirely student-run organizations at Penn State.

. . . The other two outdoor recreation organizations, the Nittany Grotto Caving Club and the Nittany Divers SCUBA Club, were also judged too risky and directed to end trip offerings. Club sports that passed the risk review include the Archery Club, Boxing Club, Alpine Ski Racing Club and Rifle Club.

Note that the decision didn’t involve any of the students, and, worse, the University won’t even tell the students why they nixed the outings.  Is it getting more dangerous out there? I suspect not.

“Student safety in any activity is our primary focus,” Lisa Powers, a Penn State University spokeswoman, said in an email response to questions about the school’s assessment.

Ms. Powers said the university conducted reviews of all campus recreation-supported student groups — 76 sport and three outdoor recreation organizations — to evaluate student safety risks and produce assessment reports. She declined to provide a copy of the assessment report for the Outing Club, saying it is not a public document.

This is ludicrous and embarrassing, especially in view of PSU’s refusal to consult with the clubs and come clean about its decision.

Of course none of us know what really happened, but I think this is a result of universities increasingly deciding they really have to act in loco parentis since students are increasingly becoming consumers; the university thinks that the consumers must be safe. In this case, however, the University— probably afraid of being sued—made the decision against the wishes of the students. The University is, in effect, acting as a Big Helicopter Parent, trying to shield its charges from all possible harm.

Most of us older folk have noticed this on a parental scale. Kids aren’t allowed to play on their own anymore—not without a parent watching. When I got home from grade school, or wanted to do stuff on the weekend, I’d just get on my bike and ride off on my own, sometimes not even telling my parents where I was going. That was when I was ten years old or so. Everybody played unsupervised then, but it’s unthinkable now, despite children actually being safer in today’s world.  So if the world is safer, what is Penn State’s beef? Why, in a safer world, do colleges want even more supervision? You tell me.

Regardless, the students don’t like it one bit:

On a Penn State Reddit site, and the Outing Club’s Facebook page, reports of the university’s decision to shut down the club’s outings were derided by many as hypocritical.

Some of more than 80 Reddit posters wondered if the school will shut down its highly ranked men’s and women’s rugby teams, full-contact club street hockey, and even football because they were risky and potentially injurious.