Explosion? What Explosion?

 An idle thought on Father’s Day.

The Cambrian Explosion that actually wasn’t.

To this day Christian extremists describe the Cambrian Explosion as the sudden appearance of advanced animal life on the planet which can only be explained by God creating it.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, many paleontologists are declining to call the event the Cambrian Explosion any longer. This is because it is clearly not an explosion. It was a diversification, a radiation of already existing life.  This is exactly the sort of thing that has happened time and time again throughout evolutionary history.

Scientists are merely human, so, for about a century, they refused to recognize any fossils from the preceding Ediacaran era.  After all, they said, we know there aren’t any. So first of all, we won’t look. Second, if somebody claims he found some, we will just ignore him (or her).

Now that we finally recognize their existence and have found fossil beds containing them, we know that there was even a bilaterian before the Cambrian.  (That’s an advanced form of life, including you and me, that wasn’t supposed to exist prior to the “explosion”.)

Even Darwin recognized the problem of advanced bilaterian and complex animal life suddenly popping into existence. Because he was an honest man and a really competent scientist, part of his revolutionary work included the careful and detailed listing of all the possible objections to his theory of natural selection. The most telling, he acknowledged, was the absence of fossils prior to the Cambrian. Fossils which we have now found.

The Christian extremists refer to this as “Darwins doubt”. This is nonsense. Darwin did not doubt his theory. He just recognized that this was a valid objection to his conclusions. It is sad that he did not live to know all that has been found since his time which confirms, again and again and again, that he was correct.

From the net:

> Roger Mason (born 4 May 1941) is an English geologist. He is known as the discoverer of Ediacaran fossils, although it was later found that a then 15-year-old schoolgirl named Tina Negus had discovered the first Charnia fossil a year before he did.<

Notice that in this rare case, Tina Negas actually gets sort of a secondary, footnote kind of recognition for her discovery. In most cases, she isn’t even mentioned.  Wonder why? The school boy who found it a year after she did is honored. She’s almost entirely forgotten, even though she discovered it a year earlier, in the same forest where he discovered it. Makes me wonder if it was exactly the same fossil!  Hmmmm…

An add-on from two days later:

To make it clear that Darwin had no “doubts” let us quote him. “Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited,… the world swarmed with living creatures.”  – Darwin, 1859.

A prediction which now has been proven to be completely true.

Notes: Extremism And the Left

Quillette Is doing well this week! Here's another article I found compelling and interesting. The first point of the article makes it I found most in need of sharing Is that the extreme left is growing and, unless it is reigned in, will become as extreme and anti-intellectual as the extreme right.

>Those on the right once were the main enemies of evolutionary theory, but today, as Colin Wright argues, those on the extreme left are the “new evolution deniers.”<

And in answer to all those extremist you choose to throw science into the garbage can:

 > But science should be in the business of advancing knowledge of the world and its inhabitants rather than advancing certain groups or sides over others. Like any discipline of science, evolutionary psychology has not been untouched by prejudice and ridiculous theories. But most of them were either unfalsifiable and thus unscientific or were falsifiable and subsequently refuted by experimental tests. <

the Götterdämmerung Cometh

http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/welcome-bible-belt-mam-louisiana-teachers-are-using-book-genesis-science-classes

In response to this, I posted:

These are the same people who destroyed the power and grandeur of the medieval Islamic culture by turning it away from science and forcing it to submit to fundamentalist religion and its allies, superstition and delusion.  The current Islamic belief that the Crusades were the cause of the downfall is baseless.  The culture committed suicide by fundamentalism.

We may yet go down the same path, though I believe that the anti reality, anti science crowd has lost the culture wars and is now at the same stage as Fascist Japan was when a growing sense of inevitable defeat lead to the utter desperation of kamikaze attacks and training little children to blow themselves up to kill invading American soldiers in the blast.

To Americans, the Japanese fascists appeared so determined that some of us began despair.  But the victory was coming. The  kamikaze attacks were effective in spreading fear and a sense of hopelessness among Americans, yet the very same fanaticism contributed to the belief that the use of atomic bombs was not only justified, but necessary to save both American and Japanese lives.  I am convinced that while gerrymandering and voter suppression by Republicans may delay the downfall of their fanatic obsession, they will also make that Götterdämmerung more complete.

Books to read:  Downfall, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, What Went Wrong, and The Demon Haunted World

Of Pseudoscience and Paradoxes and Cabbages and Kings

 

On paradoxes:

I'm on record as having stated that paradoxes are always either a misuse of language or a misunderstanding of a logical presentation.  I will add that they can also simply be a lie.

For example: which came first, the chicken or the egg? This was never a paradox under any terms.  If you accept the scientific explanation of evolution, the the egg came many millions of years before the first chicken. In fact, before the first bird. On the other hand, if you accept some variation of special creation, then the chicken came first. God, or the gods, created chickens. Later these chickens laid eggs.

Either way no paradox.

Addendum: I just watched the video that was attached to the original post. In it, the posters take a very long, and I admit amusing, time to make a point which declares the egg, in fact, came first in a rather different way than the simplified manner I stated above.  They ignore the fact that there is not even a paradox for creationists.

My point being that this, like all paradoxes, was always a misuse of language or of logic.  In other, words,  the logical eqivalent of a visual trick, a trompe l'oeil.

On pseudoscience in "science class" in religious schools:

Why don't the ultra religious have the honesty to admit that their beliefs are religious not scientific? If they are correct, why lie about it?  If they are wrong, why persist?  Why appeal to a warped falsification of science if science is so wrong?

Why can't they be honest about their most cherished beliefs?  The only credible answer, I think, is that they themselves doubt their beliefs.  If their faith was strong, they would let it stand on it's own.  They shore this faith up with pseudoscience because they have doubts and need to convince themselves that science is on their side.

That is sad for many reasons.  I make no scientific claims regarding my mystical experiences. They are internal, subjective and not amenable to scientific verification. Since I have confidence in their reality, I see no need to seek outside confirmation.  (Or conformation, as spell check had it!)

I start from the foundation that reality is real and facts are real.  We know this to be true because when we base our actions on   fact, things work as predicted. You can test a fact.  You can perform an experiment to see if something is real. 

That means that evolution is as real and factual as science can make it.  Look  around you and see how accurate science is.  Our world has been built by science.

But I could just us honestly say I start from my knowledge that God is real and present. This is not an objective, testable belief. Unlike science, this is something one knows inside oneself. It's not testable because God is, by definition, beyond the ability of science to test. This is because God is supernatural, in the old sense of that word. Super meaning above or beyond natural. Science can only test that which is natural.

In short: I have no doubt that God is there and loves us and cares about us. I also have no doubt that evolution is as science has described it to be. And I don't see any contradiction in those two beliefs.  This world operates on a scientific basis, and God is present throughout this world trying to guide us to make appropriate decisions within the framework of the scientific reality we inhabit.

Freidman and Vouchers

I have been down and out for a long time. I'm slowly cycling back up, as evidenced by my making a blog post. Not much of one, but nonetheless interesting.

As you read the following excerpt, please recall that Friedman, one of the founders of the voucher movement, wanted to end all public education in America because he regarded the system as socialist.


From https://www.au.org/church-state/may-2013-church-state/people-events/louisiana-voucher-plan-subsidizes-religion-au-warns

-- “The diversion of existing public school resources to voucher schools will result in taxpayer support for religi­ous instruction at religious schools, with little to no oversight by the State, let alone the public,” asserts the brief. The brief cites specific examples, noting that some religious schools taking part in the program use textbooks that reject evolution and teach that humans coexisted with dino­saurs, that dinosaurs may still be living today and even that Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster exists.

Other texts assert that environmentalists seek to destroy the economy, that God used the mistreatment of Native Americans to convert them to Christianity and that many people in Africa are illiterate because they are not Christians. --

Nice curriculum. What's next? Maybe the dinosaurs died out because they weren't Christians? A pean to witch burning during the Protestsnt Discipline? All funded by the taxpayers of Louisiana.


The definition of pean, the meaning of the word Pean :Is pean a scrabble word? Yes!
n. - (ancient Greece) a hymn of praise (especially one sung in ancient Greece to invoke or thank a deity). From: http://www.scrabblefinder.com/word/pean/

Smithsonian, March 2010:

In an article about Ardipithecus ramidus, Ann Gibbons [good name for the author of an article on apes] states the well known fact that...“the gold standard for being a hominid was upright walking” Was is the key word since it is not universally accepted that Ardi was a hominid. She certainly seems to be based on the upright stance and her teeth, but maybe not. What interested me most was what I had not found in any article, the odd case of Oreopithicus. Oreopithicus was found some years ago and was a big shock. Clearly an ancient ape, it was bipedal. Supposedly impossible. As I recall, it was then argued that Oreopiticus was an exception that proofed the rule.*

The explanation I remember was that it was an island ape and island species are often peculiar in their adaptations, being much more extreme and varied than their mainland cousins. I looked up “Ardipithecus ramidus, bipedal, and Oreopithicus.” I found quite a few articles, the essence of which was that Oreopithicus bambolii might have been bipedal.

Either way, human evolution is far different than presumed. A recurring tale which goes back as far as Darwin. The assumptions made about our own evolution have proven wrong again and again. Lest any creationists take pride in this, let me remind them that it is Science, not superstition which has repeatedly found the errors and corrected. them.

For example, a species was once identified as Hesperopithecus was much debated about a century ago. It turned out that the supposed Nebraska Man, who had been identified by a single tooth, was a species of extinct pig. Oops! However, again I point out that the error was found and the correction made, by scientists. Science is such an amazingly useful tool because it is a tool which works. Again and again, it has shown itself to be self correcting. Exactly the opposite of the accusation made by creationists that science is just a another form of belief and has a dogma which may not be questioned. Science always questions, and is always open to new proof. It does require proof, which is consistently absent in the hearts and minds of creationists. Also in their arguments.


*We often hear the irrational and disturbing phrase “This is the exception which
proves the rule.” This makes no sense at all. I read somewhere that the original phrase was, “This is the exception which proofs the rule.” Proof is the old word for testing. Today it is remembered primarily as the identifier of the alcohol content of an intoxicating liquid, as in , 80 proof. Is the etymology actually “proofs” not “proves”? I don't know, but it makes sense and I like it, so I use it.


Final note: Interested in Nebraska Man? Try this address: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html