World’s oldest albatross gives birth—at age 63!

March 4, 2014 • 2:09 pm

UPDATE: I mistakenly used last year’s article instead of this year’s. The fact is that, according to EarthSky, Wisdom produced another chick in early February of this year—at age 63! Here’s the photo of her with her offspring:

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She looks great for an old bird, doesn’t she?

h/t to Reader Grania, who corrected me and also put the link to this photo in the comments.

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“Wisdom” is not only the oldest living wild bird known to humans, but according to the Washington Post, she just gave birth to a single chick that hatched Sunday on the island where she lives: the Midway Atoll.

Her age is known because birds on the island have been tagged repeatedly (the tags tend to fall off after a few decades, and Wisdom has been tagged six times, with each new tag replacing a still-extant old one).

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) is one amazing bird:

Wisdom has raised chicks five times since 2006, and as many as 35 in her lifetime. Just as astonishing, she has likely flown up to 3 million miles since she was first tagged at Midway Atoll at the end of the Hawaiian Island chain in 1956, according to scientists who have tracked her at the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s “4 to 6 trips from the Earth to the Moon and back again with plenty of miles to spare,” the USGS said in an enthusiastic announcement Tuesday.

“It blows us away that this is a 62-year-old bird and she keeps laying eggs and raising chicks,” said Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the Bird Banding Laboratory at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel.

Here she is, a cougar bird with her much younger mate:

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(From the Post): Wisdom (left) attempts to nudge her mate off the nest for her turn at incubating the couple’s egg. She’s 62; the male is presumed to be much younger. Photo by Pete Leary/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Although parrots have lived the longest in captivity, no wild bird is known to be older than Wisdom. That, of course, could simply reflect a paucity of tagged parrots—or other birds that might live a long time. But Wisdom beat out her closest rival a few years ago.

Albatrosses aren’t the world’s largest birds, or the oldest — parrots in captivity have lived to age 80, Peterjohn said. But they are easily the largest seabird, with wingspans as wide as eight feet, “like a sea gull on steroids,” Peterjohn said, dwarfing the average gray gulls that are known to roam beaches stealing french fries.

They’re the oldest known bird in the wild. Wisdom edged out the second oldest known albatross to reproduce, a 61-year-old named Grandma, of the Northern Royal species, Peterjohn said. But Grandma hasn’t been seen at her nesting ground at Taiaroa Head, New Zealand, in three years and is presumed dead.

Albatrosses mate for life, suggesting that Wisdom probably had to find a new, younger mate maybe twice down the line.

There are simply not enough good data to determine whether Wisdom is of extraordinary longevity or just average. As one researcher said, “half the birds could be 60 years old. . . These birds could be much older than we think.”

A good piece about Carl Sagan

March 4, 2014 • 11:00 am

With Neil deGrasse Tyson’s presentation of “Cosmos” (produced by Ann Druyan and Seth MacFarlane) set to premiere this Sunday, people are harking back to the original “Cosmos” of Carl Sagan. That original ran for 14 telvision episodes at the end of 1980, and I remember it well. Sagan was mesmerizing, and his excited presentation didn’t seem an affectation, like that of some science gurus, but a true reflection of his personality.

One of the best retrospectives I’ve read is a piece in the new Smithsonian by Joel Achenbach,  “Why Carl Sagan is truly irreplaceable“. Have a read when you have some leisure time and (preferably) a good libation.

There’s a lot of fascinating stuff: about Sagan’s meeting with Timothy Leary, in prison for LSD use, about Sagan’s habit of dictating his books, and about his own prolific use of marijuana (I didn’t know that he was such a stoner). I’ll quote only one part, about Sagan’s death and atheism.  I suppose, as I get older, I get more fascinated with how people face the end of their lives. Sagan appears to have done it with courage and aplomb:

Sagan became gravely sick with the blood disorder myelodysplasia in 1994, and underwent a bone marrow transplant from his sister, Cari. Sagan, then 60, wanted everyone to understand that although he was facing the possibility of a premature death, he would not seek comfort in some traditional religious belief in an afterlife.

In 1996, a man wrote to him asking about the distance to heaven. Sagan’s response: “Thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of heaven has been found out to about 10 billion light years. (One light year is almost six trillion miles.) With best wishes…”

When a religious couple wrote to him about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996: “If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses.”

Sagan became agitated after reading a new book by the legendary skeptic Martin Gardner, whom Sagan had admired since the early 1950s. It suggested that perhaps there was a singular God ruling the universe and some potential for life after death. In November 1996, Sagan wrote to Gardner: “[T]he only reason for this position that I can find is that it feels good….How could you of all people advocate a position because it’s emotionally satisfying, rather than demand rigorous standards of evidence even if they lead to a position that is emotionally distasteful?”

Gardner responded: “I not only think there are no proofs of God or an afterlife, I think you have all the best arguments. Indeed, I’ve never read anything in any of your books with which I would disagree. Where we differ is over whether the leap of faith can be justified in spite of a total lack of evidence…”

I interviewed Sagan that spring in Seattle, where he was undergoing medical treatment, and although chemotherapy had ravaged his body he had lost none of his volubility or his enthusiasm for science, reason and the wonders of the cosmos. He felt confident that he could beat his disease.

We talked a lot that day about extraterrestrial life.

“I’d rather there be extraterrestrial life discovered in my lifetime than not. I’d hate to die and never know,” he said.

While he was in Seattle, his secretaries sent a fax daily to Druyan with a rundown on the mail, calls that had come in, speaking invitations, requests for interviews, requests to contribute a piece of writing to some upcoming anthology. Sometimes Sagan would annotate these faxes with a few instructions. Toward the very end he would sometimes merely cross out a paragraph. Couldn’t do it. He was out of time.

Sagan died shortly after midnight on December 20, 1996. He was 62.

I’m 64, and could never imagine being able to do what he did, even if I had three lifetimes. If I could write just one book as good as The Demon-Haunted World, I could die happy. (Well, not really; nobody dies happy.) Sagan was a natural.

Bryan College forces its faculty to swear to historical existence of Adam and Eve

March 4, 2014 • 9:11 am

Things are in ferment at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee. Named after William Jennings Bryan, one of the prosecuting attorneys of the 1925 Scopes Trial (which also took place in Dayton), Bryan is an extremely conservative Christian school that adheres to Biblical literalism.

Until now. The press of science is beginning to discomfit even literalists, and is making incursions into Bryan.

The most recent scientific finding that’s causing Christian ferment is the calculation by evolutionary geneticists that the smallest size that the population of humans could have experienced when it spread from Africa throughout the world was about 2250. That comes from back-calculating the minimum size of a human group that could have given rise to the extensive genetic diversity present today in non-African humans. That figure is based on conservative assumptions and is very likely to be an underestimate.

2250 is, of course, not 2. That means that humanity could not have had two ancestors within the time frame accepted by Biblical literalists. In other words, Adam and Eve could not have existed—not in the way the Bible says. And that has huge repercussions for Christianity, for if Adam and Eve weren’t the literal parents of humanity, how did their Original Sin spread to us all? Original Sin is, of course, a pivotal part of Christian doctrine, as without it there is no reason for Jesus to return and exculpate humanity from that sin through his death and Resurrection. If Adam and Eve didn’t exist, but were simply a fiction, then Jesus died for a fiction.

More liberal Evangelicals have responded by  adopting a variety of desperation tactics, including assumptions that Adam and Eve were merely the “federal heads” of humanity: two individuals among many who were designated by God to represent everyone else. That, of course, fails to explain how Original Sin started and spread. Other more liberal theologians simply claim that the Adam and Eve story is a metaphor for our inborn “selfish” nature: our genetic endowment that leads us act for ourselves rather than others.  But that then includes all animals as bearers of Original Sin, and doesn’t explain how Jesus’s return helps us fight the tyranny of our “selfish genes”.  To a rationalist, all of these Sophisticated Theological™ gymnastics are amusing, and you can read those desperate apologetics at the website of BioLogos, an organization devoted to reconciling Jesus and Darwin. These theological gymnastics don’t convince anybody who isn’t wedded to the Christian mythos at the outset.

The least devious Christians (and that includes those at the Vatican, which professes the historicity of Adam and Eve) simply hold fast to literalism. Regardless of what genetics tells us, they say, the Bible takes precedence, and Adam and Eve were real historical figures from which we all descend.

And that, as reported by the Times Free Press of Chattanooga, Tennesee, is the new position of Bryan College, whose trustees have just added a rider to its “statement of belief” to expand that belief to a historical Adam and Eve.  Since the original statement of belief is, like the Bible, inerrant and unchangeable, the new language is said to be a “clarification.” And this clarification must be signed by all professors at the school. Here are the old and new statements from the paper:

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What prompted this “clarification” is the advance of science, which shows that the Bible is simply wrong about Adam and Eve. Not every conservative Christian can comfortably ignore the new results from genetics (rejecting science smacks uncomfortably of being a backwoods hick), and some at Bryan have tentatively tried to find ways around the historicity of Adam and Eve.  Several biology professors, for instance, are teaching a multiplicity of views about creation, which doesn’t sit well with many of their coreligionists:

In 2010, Ken Ham, a nationally known creationist who runs the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., wrote a scathing article criticizing Bryan College because of a graduate’s book. The graduate, Rachel Held Evans, wrote about how she had questioned the nuances of her evangelical upbringing and had come to new realizations about the world, including the belief that evolution was part of God’s creation plan.

Ham also criticized biology professor Brian Eisenback, who was quoted in USA Today saying that he taught all origin views and theories — including Genesis and evolution — without revealing his own beliefs.

“There are many colleges/seminaries — like Bryan College — across the nation with professors who compromise God’s word in Genesis and/or will not teach the authority of God’s Word in Genesis as they should. It’s about time that these colleges were held accountable for allowing such undermining of the authority of Scripture to the coming generation,” Ham wrote in a 2010 blog post.

Eisenback and Bible professor Ken Turner gained attention last year for their grant from the BioLogos Foundation to write a new curriculum on science education that will marry scientific evidence with evangelical Christian perspectives on interpreting Scripture and science. BioLogos is a nonprofit that believes God created the world over billions of years and works to further the ideas of evolutionary creationism.

BioLogos is the organization founded by present National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins; its aim was to get evangelical Christians to accept science, including evolution. But since then it’s taken a path that I can only describe as cowardly, refusing to take an official position on the historicity of Adam and Eve. But all the genetic evidence militates against that historicity, and it’s ironic that Collins is a geneticist (he no longer heads BioLogos). Nevertheless, BioLogos actively debates the “meaning” of Adam and Eve, and, by taking a grant from them to fuse science and religion, the Bryan professors only exacerbate the tension that exists between these fields.

In fact, Bryan’s president, Steven Livesay, decried this accommodationism, citing the primacy of scripture:

Last month, a chapel talk at Bryan featured a discussion with Wood and well-known evolutionary creationist Darrel Falk. At the end of their conversation, Livesay said he wanted to make a statement about Bryan College’s stance on origins. He said he did not agree with the views of BioLogos.

“Scripture always rises above anything else. Scripture rises above science. … Science at some point will catch up with the scripture,” Livesay said, according to an online podcast of the event.

Haynes, the trustee, said Livesay has brought up the need for clarification several times to the board. Christians have increasingly begun to question traditional interpretations of Genesis, though he believes the Bible is clear on the matter.

“When you review these things, the first thing you must do is go back to the scripture and make sure what you’re saying is compatible with scripture,” he said. “Scripture judges you.”

So much for the compatibility of science and religion! But remember that 64% of Americans, at least in 2006, claimed that if science were to disprove a tenet their faith, they’d reject the science and hold to their faith. That’s precisely what the Bryan kerfuffle is all about.

In the meantime, the students are also conflicted, for not all of them want to be seen as rejecting science wholesale:

Nearly 300 of the school’s 800 students signed a petition within a few days asking the trustees to reconsider the change. Joseph Murphy, in a Student Government Association letter to the administration, said the decision was made without faculty input and that the president and trustees were threatening academic freedom. He called the move unjust, uncharitable and unscriptural.

“We believe that this sets a precedent of fear and distrust in our community,” the petition read. “We believe that this will discourage potential faculty and staff from serving at Bryan and potential students from coming here.”

Remember, though, that what the students are objecting to is simply the new rider about Adam and Eve. They apparently don’t have any quarrel with the equally ludicrous claims about the creation of humans and Original Sin. As usual, you can pick and choose which statements of the Bible can be read as metaphor, and you don’t need good reasons.

The Times Free Press notes that statements of faith are not uncommon in religious colleges, and lists some.

Picture 3Our local Christian college, Wheaton College, which has a good reputation for academic rigor in other areas, also has a statement of faith that completely undercuts any notion of a university’s objective search for truth. It strongly resembles the Nicene Creed.

Bryan is fighting a losing battle, but it will be a long battle. These vestiges of superstition, and blind adherence to it, will eventually disappear as America becomes more secular. There will always be Biblical literalism, but I’m confident it will slowly wane. But it will wane not with the changing of minds, but over the dead bodies of its adherents, as the older generation dies off and the younger, exposed to secularism and doubt on the internet, begins to ask questions.  (It’s telling that it is the students of Bryan who are the biggest protestors.) I am patient, for I know this change won’t happen during my lifetime. But I also know that in one or two centuries, Adam and Eve will be regarded as we now regard Zeus and Wotan.

There are still those who engage in the futile battle to change the minds of literalist Christians. BioLogos tried and failed, and is now fighting a rearguard action that involves not promoting science, but soothing the ire of creationists. The National Center for Science Education, which has been highly effective in fighting public-school creationism in the courts, is still trying to reassure evangelicals that their faith is compatible with evolution:

“The position they’re staking out with this new statement is not shared among all evangelicals, all Christians,” said Josh Rosenau, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education, which advocates teaching of evolution and climate science. “The evangelical position doesn’t have to be an outright rejection of human evolution. There are ways to be a Bible-believing literalist without being at odds with science.”

Well, yes, of course some evangelicals are friendly to evolution, though 46% of all Americans (not just evangelicals!) are young-earth creationists. But to tell literalist evangelicals who that they can simply make their faith compatible with evolution simply isn’t on, for it misunderstands literalism, the tenacity of faith, and especially the role of Adam and Eve as buttresses reinforcing the whole edifice of Christianity. Such accommodationism tries to force Christianity into the Procrustean bed of science, and it just won’t fit.

To claim that Bible-believing literalism is compatible with science is like saying that eating broccoli is compatible with being a lion. It’s not only a theological statement—something that science-promoting organizations shouldn’t be making—but is just plain silly. Literalism is literalism, and Bryan College is fighting to hang onto it.

Guerrilla Skeptics create and update Wikipedia pages (including mine)

March 4, 2014 • 7:25 am

About a month ago I received an email from Susan Gerbic—who helps run Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW)—telling me that they were revamping my Wikipedia page. I was surprised, as of course I hadn’t solicited this, and had no idea who started the page in the first place—nor who updates it.  And I’d barely heard of the group (more in a second), though I knew that it was trying to enforce Wikipedia standards against unsubstantiated scientific claims (i.e., woo).  A while back, I wrote about how Rupert Sheldrake had beefed loudly about how the GSoW had messed up his Wikipedia page, though it turned out that they’d never done that).

At any rate, I had no objection to what they were doing given that the final page was accurate (and that they kept my picture with Dusty the Cat). My assistance was limited to sending them my c.v. and providing a ten-second audio clip introducing myself, a new feature on Wikipedia.

The final result, produced by editor Kyle Hamar, was great—and let me emphasize that I am only one of many skeptics whose bios they’re improving on Wikipedia. (Click on these links to see the Before & After versions.)  Since then I’ve learned that Gerbic runs a large and tightly-knit group (you can read interviews with her here and here), a group punctilious about accuracy and conformity to Wikipedia‘s standards (apparently my earlier bio had too much of the wrong kind of citation). Gerbic won the Randi Foundation’s “In the trenches” award in 2012 for services to skepticism. Her colleagues and editors, however, who do a lot of the spadework, are working largely without recognition, so let me give them, along with Gerbic, a shoutout here.

The group’s website is here, and contains their mission statement:

The mission of the Guerrilla Skepticism editing team is to improve skeptical content on Wikipedia. We do this by improving pages of our skeptic spokespeople, providing noteworthy citations, and removing the unsourced claims from paranormal and pseudoscientific pages. Why? Because evidence is cool. We train – We mentor – Join us.

That sounds good to me, and I endorse them for debunking woo and sticking to facts. Perhaps some of the Wiki editors who read this site would like to volunteer.

Their latest post, which went up Sunday, details the last two months of their activity, and gives a list of skeptics whose bios they’re working on—or have worked on. These include Pamela Gay, Phil Plait, Maryam Namazie, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Bill Nye, Eugenie Scott, and Sanal Edamaruku. They often use local talent when revising bios outside of the U.S. and the U.K.: for example, they just got 7 new editors in Hungary alone whose job is to deal with Hungarian scientists and skeptics). 

Below is Gerbic’s talk at last year’s TAM, describing how her group works (the talk is really quite fascinating):

The group is seeking feedback (and assistance), and you can find their email address at the end of their latest website post.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 4, 2014 • 3:45 am
The quotation given by Hili in the first line of the dialogue is the motto of Letters from our Orchard (upper right-hand corner of that page):
Hili: “Ask a Pompous Truth: How do you know?”. Okay, but how do I catch it?
A: Try in the garden.

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In Polish:

Hili: “Napuszonej prawdzie zadaj pytanie: skąd to wiesz?” No dobrze, ale jak ją złapać?
Ja: Spróbuj w ogrodzie.

New Republic publishes my “Bill Nye loses” piece

March 3, 2014 • 8:01 pm

As always, I’ll let you know when The New Republic re-published a piece that’s appeared here first. My post this morning on the Ham/Nye debate, and how Ken Ham is crowing that it revitalized the fund-raising for his Ark Park, has appeared without alteration in The New Republic as “Thanks to Bill Nye, creationists raised enough money to build an anti-science theme park. The science guy won a debate—and subsidized the enemy.”

You might have already read this, but do go over to the site if you can just to give them some traffic, for I’d like to be able to keep purveying a secularist/evolutionist message to a new audience.