Cretaceous crocs crunch critters

August 17, 2012 • 11:03 am

by Greg Mayer

Earlier this year my friend Chris Noto and his colleagues Derek Main and Stephanie Drumheller published a paper describing injuries to turtle and dinosaur bones from the Cretaceous that show evidence that they were preyed upon by crocodiles.  Besides the irresistible alliteration, their paper serves to show that we can sometimes learn much more about extinct animals than merely their skeletal morphology, and, with the right sorts of evidence, can learn about their behavior, ecology, and physiology as well.

Cretaceous crocodile crunching critter (by Jude Swales)

The fossils were recovered at a site in Texas known as the Arlington Archosaur Site. Modern crocodilians feed on turtles, and also on dinosaurs, if you think of birds as dinosaurs (which, in a sense, they are).  They will seize turtles side to side (as shown in the reconstruction) or top to bottom. American alligators are particularly fond of turtles, and, compared to some other crocodilians, their rear teeth are especially blunt and peg-like (sort of like molar teeth). This helps to crush the shells of turtles they are eating (which, I have been told, break with a popping sound). E.A. McIlhenny, the great naturalist of hot sauce fame, wrote:

I have seen alligators catch large terrapins and turtles of considerable size and crush their hard shells as if they were made of paper, swallowing them whole.

Tooth scars on a turtle shell (above) and a dinosaur leg bone (below).

Noto et al’s study is a nice example that shows we can learn about more than just the morphology of extinct creatures, but can also learn about thier biology and the paleocommunities they lived in, including (in other studies) ecology, behavior, and even color (see, for example, Matthew’s recent post here, and earlier posts by Jerry here and here).

__________________________________________________________

McIlhenny, E.A. 1935. The Alligator’s Life History. Christopher Publishing House, Boston. (Reissued in a facsimile edition in 1976 by the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, with a foreword by the great herpetologist and conservationist, Archie Carr.)

Noto, Christopher R., Derek J. Main, and Stephanie K. Drumheller. 2012. Feeding traces and paleobiology of a Cretaceous (Cenomanian) Crocodyliform: Example from the Woodbine Formation of Texas. Palaios 27:105-115. (abstract)

That annoyingly gapful fossil record

August 17, 2012 • 10:29 am

by Matthew Cobb

Over at The Guardian, their new blogger Dave Hone of the University of Bristol (and, like Jerry, a Spurs supporter) has an excellent piece on the biases in the fossil record. He lists the kind of things that skew our vision of the past – the kinds of organisms that get preserved (v tricky to get soft-bodied organisms), the places where they are preserved (rainforest and mountain top bad, floodplain or lagoon good), and access to the rocks, which can be both geological or political. As he says:

We can’t dig for fossils where no rocks of the right age are exposed, so while Montana and Mongolia are great, the rainforests of the Congo or the volcanic beds of Japan are useless (there’s a reason pretty much every image of a palaeontologist in the field is in a desert or badlands – it’s where the rocks are exposed). Even politics can play a part. Some intriguing fossils have recently turned up in North Korea, but I can’t imagine a major research expedition heading out there any time soon.

All these factors have consequences on our vision of the past:

In short, a group or species that was represented by huge numbers of individuals that lived for a long time, died out only recently, and hung around in deserts or near water, and was quite large and had lots of hard parts, we’re likely to know well. A small, soft bodied animal from the deep ocean or middle of a rainforest and was alive only very briefly many hundreds of millions of years ago, we may never know about. In short, we have a great record of fossil deer, we have almost no fossil flatworms.

Go and read the whole post, and marvel that a) we know as much as we do from our known unknowns and b) wonder what on earth the unknown unknowns of paleontology are, and whether we’ll ever find any of them out…

 
PS You should also read Dave’s more specialist blogs. He’s into archosaurs in a big way, as you can see at archosaurmusings.com and the more public-oriented pterosaur.net. Oh, and despite my initial imaginings, he’s *English*, even if he doesn’t like cricket. You can follow him on Twitter: @Dave_Hone

 

 

Peter van Inwagen explains why God is hidden

August 17, 2012 • 6:24 am

Sophisticated Theologians™ have a highly developed facility for making stuff up to answer any question, no matter how hard.  The problem of evil is one, and two days ago I showed how theologian Peter van Inwagen explained why animals have to suffer in a world made by a loving, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God.  Clever that one, but not convincing.

Almost as vexing a problem is Why God is Hidden: that is, in a world in which, to a theist, God intervenes either from time to time or constantly, why do see no evidence for this?

In the last chapter of van Inwagen’s written transcription of his Gifford lectures, “The Hiddenness of God,” he gives the answer.

He begins by laying out the problem from an atheist’s point of view (p. 135):

If God existed, that would be a very important thing for us human beings to now. God, being omniscient [sic] would know that this would be an important thing to know, and, being morally perfect, he would act on this knowledge.  He would act on it by providing us with indisputable evidence of his existence.  St. Paul recognized this when he in effect said (Rom. 2:18-23) that the blasphemies of the pagans were without excuse because God had provided humanity in a world in which, to quote a text we can be sure Paul approved of, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showest his handiwork. But Paul was wrong to think we had such evidence. It’s quite obvious that we don’t have it and never have had it, for the unprejudiced know that the heavens are quite silent about the glory of God, and that the firmament displays nothing of his handiwork.  And, therefore, the absence of evidence for the existence of God should lead us to become atheists, and not merely agnostics.

Sounds convincing, no?  van Inwagen even gives us an example of the kind of sign God might show us: having the stars in the sky spell out “I am who I am,” from Exodus 3:14.

But if you think God’s hiddenness is a problem, you don’t know Sophisticated Theologians™.  No, this hiddenness of God is exactly what we would expect from the Christian God! (I call this exercise “making theological virtues out of scientific necessities.”)

van Inwagen’s answer is this (p. 146):

It is certainly conceivable that someone’s believing in [God] for a certain reason (because, say, that person has witnessed signs and wonders) might make it difficult or even impossible for that person to acquire other features God wanted him or her to have.

Can we make this seem plausible?

The last line gives the game away, and underscores the difference between theology and science: the former begins with a conclusion or belief that has to be rationalized, no matter what the data.  Theology, in fact, is the art of making the unconvincing seem plausible. It is post facto rationalization.

So what’s van Inwagen’s rationale?  As he notes above, those who are so easily convinced of God’s existence by “signs and wonders” aren’t going to become the kind of believers God wants. (It always amazes me that on some occasions theologians are so sure of what God wants, but on others revert to the “we-can’t-know-God’s-mind” defense.)

Here’s how the argument runs.

  •  A sign and wonder that convinces someone of the Christian God might be unconvincing, because God wants us to believe in more than just his existence (p. 148):

“From the point of view of theism . . . it is indeed true that God wants us human being to believe in his existence, but, like many truths, this truth can be very misleading if asserted out of context.”

What does van Inwagen mean by this? It’s this (p. 149):

And God does not place any particular value on anyone’s believing in his existence, not simpliciter, not by itself. What he values is, as I noted earlier, a complex of which belief in his existence is a logical consequence. . .

Is it not possible, does it not seem plausible, that if God were to present the world with a vast array of miracles attesting to the existence of a personal power beyond nature, this action would convey to us the message that what he desired of us was simply that we should believe in his existence—and nothing more?—or nothing more than believing in his existence and taking account of it as one important feature of reality, a feature that has to be factored into all our practical reasoning? If that is so, then the vast array of miracles would not only be useless from God’s point of view, but positively harmful, a barrier to putting his plan of reconciliation into effect.

So there you have it: God wants us to believe a lot of stuff, but if he convinced us only of the fact of his existence, that would convince us of only that single thing, and leave us immune—for reasons van Ingwagen doesn’t really specify—to the rest of God’s message. For if God wanted us to believe a whole complex of things, couldn’t he just as easily have conveyed the rest of his message by “miracles and wonders” as well, perhaps by having the stars in the sky spell out, each month, a different aspect of the complex of things he wants us to believe?

Van Inwagen doesn’t answer that question, but gives a helpful example of the complex of things God wants us to believe besides His existence.  One of them is this: “Women are intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually equivalent to men.”

Now, says van Ingwagen, God could have conveyed this eternal truth to us—a truth, by the way, which is contravened by everything that appears in God’s own writing, the Bible!)—by having a burning bush proclaim the equality of women, or have “every woman born with a tastefully small but clearly legible birthmark that says (perhaps in the native language of her parents), ‘Not intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually inferior to men’” (p. 150).

But God doesn’t want to do that.  Why? Because, according to van Inwagen (p. 150):

Part of the answer, I think, is that he has already given us all the evidence we need or should ever have needed, to be convinced—to know—that women are not the intellectual, emotional, or spiritual inferiors of men. And this is, simply, the evidence that is provided by normal social interaction. . .

What is really needed to eliminate sexism is not sullen compliance forced on one by evidence that has no natural connection with life in the human social world. What is needed is natural conviction that proceeds from our normal cognitive apparatus operating on the normal data of the senses. . .

And might it not be that miraculous evidence for the equality of the sexes would actually interfere with the capacity to come to a belief in the equality of the sexes in the right way?

So there you have it: we need to accept the “complex of stuff” that God wants us to believe in the absence of miracles, for miracles wouldn’t be as convincing as our arriving at those conclusions through our own reason and observations.

If that’s not a call for secular based morality—and a denigration of the notion of morality as derived from God—than I don’t know what is!

First of all, if gender equality is what God wants us to accept, why is the Bible full of cases of divinely approved gender inequality: mandating silence of women in Church, the stoning of nonvirgin brides and adultresses, and so on?  Did God want us to ignore what He aid in his holy book and ultimately arrive, in fact, at the opposite conclusion?

And how is this theologian so sure about what God wants? It looks to me that van Inwagen is just taking his own liberal, moral sentiments and putting them in God’s mouth—which is, of course, what believers do and have always done.  I presume part of God’s complex of beliefs is that slavery and genocide are immoral too: the exact opposite of what God tells us in the Bible.

And if God wanted us to figure out gender equality by ourselves, why did he let humanity go through many millennia of treating women as second-class citizens? Why is this realization happening only now? Did God want women to be denigrated and be prevented from reaching their full potential as human beings for so many centuries, beginning at least six millennia ago—and then suddenly allow women begin to come into their own in the early twentieth century? That doesn’t make sense.  Why wasn’t this all spelled out in the Bible?

And, after all, why is van Inwagen so sure that if God told us what he really wanted with signs and wonders—after all, isn’t that what happened with the stone tablets brought down from the mountain by Moses?—we’d be less likely to accept the message than if we figured it out by ourselves?  I don’t think so.  There are simply too many people who would completely follow whatever God wanted, like treating women as equals, only if it was clearly conveyed with signs and wonders.

No, for van Inwagen, we’re supposed to figure out the right thing to do by using our senses and reason.  And that is secular rather than religious morality.

In the end, van Inwagen’s argument for God’s hiddenness comes down to an argument that morality must come from our own reason, not from God.  I will gladly sign on to that, but I can only laugh at van Inwagen’s ludicrous rationale for why God exists but keeps himself hidden.

.

A gorilla never forgets

August 16, 2012 • 7:38 am

by Greg Mayer

Three gorilla brothers, Kesho, Alf, and Evindi, were recently reunited at Longleat Safari Park, after Kesho had been separated as part of a breeding program. As reported in an article in The Sun (entitled “Gorillas in the Missed”!), and visible in a slideshow at the BBC, the reunion has gone quite well.

Gorilla brothers Alf (left, age 9) and Kesho (right, age 13) get reacquainted. Photo by BNPS, from The Sun.

There had been some concern whether they would remember each other, but keeper Mark Tye said

The moment they met, you could see the recognition in their eyes. It’s like they’ve never been apart.

while Ian Redmond of the Ape Alliance noted

What you’re seeing is exactly what you think you’re seeing. Two intelligent social mammals, who were separate, are pleased to see each other again and play together. It is gorilla joy, being reunited with someone you used to have good times with and now you can again, so it’s gorilla happiness.

While we normally emphasize cats, owls, and bears here at WEIT, these gorillas help illustrate a larger point concerning the evolution of complex social behavior and what Darwin called the moral sense. It has always seemed very odd to me that many people, including such respected and successful biologists as Francis Collins and Francisco Ayala, maintain that there is a gulf between animal and human behavior, which some (though not all) would fill with miracles. Even a passing acquaintance with the behavior of a phylogenetically diverse group of vertebrates (say, a toad, a turtle, and a cat, for starters) presents a prima facie case for the continuity of development of social, behavioral, and even moral complexity in animals, and I find the inability to see this as puzzling. Apes and other primates add yet another step in this continuity (see also this recent post by Jerry), and the evident richness of the cognitive world of these gorillas adds to our appreciation that while we do, indeed, differ from gorillas, they too have come a long way from our fishy forebears, and are relatively not that far behind.

Atran and the Wilsons vs. the rest of us: the Chronicle writes on the “religion wars”

August 16, 2012 • 6:17 am

Trust me; you’ll want to read an article by Tom Bartlett in the August 13 Chronicle of Higher Education: “Dusting off GOD.” It’s a long piece, but you’ll learn a lot about the opposition to New Atheism in academic circles.

The piece makes three main points:

  • People like Scott Atran and David Sloan Wilson see New Atheists as misguided in their vicious and mindless attacks on faith.  As the article notes, some psychology experiments show that aspects of religion have beneficial effects.  Subjects who, for example, read the word “divine” or other goddy words before they’re given money have a tendency to give more of it away. Further, people like Dawkins, Myers, and I needlessly conflate science and atheism.

To be fair, the article does mention some of the downsides of faith (I mention acid-throwing by the Taliban and P. Z. talks about religion’s horrible treatment of women), but in general it accentuates the positive.

The problem is that we lack any quantitative way to tell for sure if religion increases or decreases what Sam Harris calls “well being.” How do you measure a marginal increase in charity among some Christians against a disfigured Afghan woman? How does one weigh faith-based hospitals in Africa (which often  involve prosyletizing) against the Catholic church’s deliberate promulgation of AIDS by criticizing condoms? How does one balance the group “solidarity” that religions give Americans versus the fact that Islam deliberately disposseses and stifles the ambitions of anyone with two X chromosomes?  And the piece doesn’t even mention creationism, which of course is a direct outgrowth of religion.

I’ve made the judgment, as have other New Atheists, that on balance religion is a negative force. No, I can’t produce data that absolutely prove this, but I’m convinced by what I see.  Further, religion is not only bad in itself, but encourages a climate of superstitious thinking.

If there’s one thing that unites New Atheists (well, most New Atheists), it’s the idea that we need good reasons for our “beliefs.”  Why are people like Atran and D. S. Wilson so soft on religion and don’t go after astrology or homeopathy? It is, of course, because religion is a socially sanctioned form of superstition—though homeopathy is pervasive, and harmful, in much of the Western world.

What galls me about all this is that people like Wilson and Atran are admitted atheists, yet they constantly emphasize the benefits of faith.  Presumably they have good reasons for not accepting God, yet they think that the belief is useful for society. (I’m not so sure it is, since much of Western Europe functions fine though largely atheist; the problem in America is that we don’t provide the social support networks, governmental or otherwise, that make religion superfluous).  This seems a bit hypocritical to me.  After all, if most religious people really thought, as do Atran and Wilson, that there is no god, they’d abandon their faith.

Now I’m not one to disabuse my dying grandmother of the delusion that she’ll go to heaven (I’m making this situation up), but in the main I see religion as a form of delusional thinking that can’t possibly be good on the whole, simply because it’s 1) false and 2) divisive.  But yes, some effects of faith are positive, and some faiths are more benign than others (you won’t see me crusading against Quakers or the Amish).  Even homeopathy has placebo effects, and reading your horoscope may make you feel better (I’ve never read one that says, “You suck and are going to have a lousy day.”) But, like most New Atheists, I think that on principle we should accept truths rather than lies. For truth enables us to make the most rational judgments, even if it is sometimes dispiriting. (Read Sam Harris’s Lying.)

Finally, there’s a reason why science and atheism are associated.  Science is based on tenets of empiricism, skepticism, and rationality. It encourages them in its practitioners, and attracts those who already have these qualities.  And those traits are inimical to faith.  At least in America, scientists are far less religious than the public at large, and the most accomplished scientists are the least religious.

  • The article notes the profound lack of interest that New Atheists have in the origins and spread of religion.  David Sloan Wilson is particularly vociferous on this point, and the article notes this:

In two blog posts, one in March and one in May, Wilson questioned whether Richard Dawkins “might fail to qualify” as an evolutionist for, among other shortcomings, ignoring research on the evolution of religion.

Well, Dan Dennett certainly hasn’t ignored the origins of religion: just read Breaking the Spell. But in the main, we’re not interested in that: I, for one, feel that we’ll never understand how religion came about, whether it has a genetic basis, and so on, and such studies are largely exercises in wheel-spinning.  Now they might produce some interesting results in a few decades, but I’d rather spend my time arguing against faith than understanding its origins. As I say in the piece, had Richard tried to explain the origin of religion in The God Delusion, he not only would have diverted from his aim, but engaged in explaining a lot of conflicting theories that have no resolution.

I would like to contest one sentiment attributed to me:

The substance of Coyne’s criticism is that while Wilson is speculating about religion’s origins, which Coyne sees as a quixotic endeavor, he and other New Atheists are on the front lines battling extremists, and that Wilson would do well to enlist.

I don’t remember saying that—but maybe I did.  I do see the origin of religion as an unproductive area of study, simply because there are so many different theories, theories involving group versus individual selection, genetics versus cultural influences, notions of agency versus intimations of mortality, and so on.  But I don’t think Wilson should enlist in our cause.  He’s too soft on faith and tends to be too excitable.  I’m happy if he stays where he is, though he really should ratchet down his bad-mouthing of fellow atheists. He does himself no good in this endeavor, and comes off as a bit of a prima donna who is peeved because nobody pays attention to him.

  • Finally the article discusses the conflict about group selection between D. S. Wilson and E. O. Wilson on one side and Everyone Else on the other.

I have little to say here that I haven’t before, and this part of the article is the weakest.

I may be overly sensitive, but the piece, although pretty fair to both sides, seems a bit slanted toward people like D. S. Wilson and Atran who take out after New Atheists.  It notes at least twice that the attention garnered by New Atheists comes from their ability to stir up controversy—their “box office.” So I have mixed feelings about the last sentence in this paragraph, though feel a bit of Schadenfreude about the rest:

Homework or no, Breaking the Spell was a best seller, while Darwin’s Cathedralwas not. If the conflict over the best scientific approach to religion is measured in popularity, the New Atheists would win with ease. As of this writing, PZ Myers has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and Wilson has around 500. A YouTube clip of Dawkins tying Bill O’Reilly into knots has over four million views, while Wilson interviewing a fellow scholar, Michael Blume, on his findings about religion and fertility has around 300. Skewering God makes for better box office.

Well, I’d like to think that our arguments have something to do with it. Why does skewering God make for good box office in America, while supporting God does not? After all, most Americans are religious.  I think the success of New Atheism is that it has tapped into a vein of doubt and agnosticism that’s been, until recently, buried deep under the skin of America’s.

At any rate, read the piece.  I’d be curious, too, to hear readers’ reaction to the fact that so many academics who are atheists nevertheless promote the benefits of religion.

A new group of skeptic blogs

August 16, 2012 • 4:54 am

(Sorry, I had to use the word “blog” since it’s necessary here.) John Loftus, ex-Christian preacher and author, has started a new group of blogs, Skepticblogs.com, whose intent, as he said in the mission statement, “is not to antagonize any other skeptical or freethought blogs.” The mission statement is below:

WELCOME TO SKEPTIC BLOGS

Posted by  on Aug 09, 2012 in Welcome

Skeptic Blogs has been designed to be a network community of skeptical bloggers, podcasters and Vbloggers. Our intention is not to antagonize any other skeptical or freethought blogs. We merely seek to offer a fresh perspective, one we think other skeptics and atheists will appreciate. It will include like-minded people who will run their own individual blogs as they see fit given our mission statement and posting policy (below).

Mission Statement:

We seek to collectively provide a positive set of voices on behalf of science, reason, and skepticism. We take aim at critically examining the basis of religious faiths, their holy books, claims of miracles, and of the paranormal, without neglecting the adverse cultural impact they have on us. We will do so from a diverse set of perspectives and disciplines of learning.

Our Posting Policy

Bloggers have agreed to post something at least once a week, barring unusual circumstances. Invectives which demean individuals on the basis of ethnicity, sex, gender identification, or age, will not be tolerated. Wherever there is room for debate about controversial issues we will do so reasonably based on evidence. While it is fashionable in some corners of the internet for atheists to crassly denigrate people, that is not acceptable here (although, sometimes we can only tolerate the tolerable). We will focus on the arguments themselves. No position worth defending requires the sacrifice of respect or manners. We want a respectful intelligent debate on the issues that divide us or none at all, and we demand the same from our commentariat.

John’s old website, “Debunking Christianity,” is now located there, as well as seven other sites.  So far John et al. seem to maintaining an atmosphere of civility (at least in the posts; there are few readers’ comments so far), and the sites are heavy on ideas and philosophy, which I like.

Two posts I particularly appreciate include “Gould’s NOMA—a thorough analysis” at The Tippling Philosopher (which, I note, has stolen my phrase “sophisticated theologians™”!), a post that has lots of reference and debunks not only Gould’s specious idea, but also the common claim that Augustine was the original Sophisticated Theologian™ who, presciently, saw the Bible as pure metaphor.  Another good post is “Of miracles” at the Hume’s Apprentice site.

The whole enterprise looks good, and so far refreshingly free of drama, but it’s new and needs publicity, readers, and comments; so go over and have a look. (I’m hoping that a cat will appear now and then.)

As always, I’ll maintain the independence of my own site, but I wish John and his comrades well. And while I’m at it, let me put in an unsolicited plug for John’s new book, Why I Became an Atheist.  Despite its unfortunate title, which implies that it’s a personal story of John’s journey from faith to unbelief, it’s really a thoroughly-reasoned and well documented account of the follies of faith. It belongs on your shelf beside the books of Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Stenger, and Dawkins, and I recommend it highly.

h/t: Chris