Geology Fun Fact - Early Life

Geology Fun Fact

Early Life.

The Phanerozoic Eon is the time period consisting of the last 540 million years and means “Visible life”. Although originally thought to correspond with the evolution of life it is now known to represent the evolution of hard parts (like shells). Life truly evolved over 3.2 Ga (billion years ago) and possibly even as early as 3.85 Ga.

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Macroevolution - Terms and Linkages

A few years ago, I had taken a class called Macroevolution. During the class we read several seminal papers on the subject and discussed the implications of these topics. At the end of the class, we set up on the white board some of the principle topics in macroevolution. The discussion involved how the topics were linked and specifically what they could be/were linked to. The class ended with a bunch of evolutionary topics that were heavily interacting and influencing each other. 

I though this was fascinating and I ended up taking pictures of the board after we had finished the class. Below is a cleaned up version of that work session with the appropriate terminology defined and/or discussed below. Keep in mind that the interactions depicted in the diagram are not all of the possible interactions, they are just the most prevalent ones that we happened upon during our discussion. 

Macroevolutionary concepts. Click for a larger version.

Terminology

 The descriptions and definitions below are taken or paraphrased directly from the source literature as cited.

Adaptation – Any change in the structure or functioning of successive generations of a population that makes it better suited to its environment. (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)

Burden - Evolutionary constraints caused by functional interdependency and maintained by internal selection or in other words hierarchically nested interdependence of characters within the organism (Schoch, 2010). Basically these are genes that are hard wired into the genome and passed down through generations that are really difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of. For instance, almost all tetrapods have four limbs since the first tetrapod.

Constructional Morphology – Phylogenetic, functional, and morphogenic constraints and their dynamic relationship which help to explain a variety of evolutionary phenomena such as sub-optimal structures, convergence, parallel evolution, channeled evolutionary pathways, and the geometrical patterns that characterize organic structure (Reif et al, 1985).

Deep Homology – the sharing of the genetic regulatory apparatus that is used to build morphologically and phylogenetically disparate animal features. Homology, as classically defined, refers to a historical continuity in which morphological features in related species are similar in pattern or form because they evolved from a corresponding structure in a common ancestor. Deep homology also implies a historical continuity, but in this case the continuity may not be so evident in particular morphologies; it lies in the complex regulatory circuitry inherited from a common ancestor (Shubin et al, 2009).

Developmental Constraint – The theory that during development the systems within an individual organism will develop a limited and discrete subset of phenotypes, regardless of the environmental variance or experimental manipulation. In other words, regularities and trends observed in phylogeny are a reflection of a conserved set of pattern-generating rules. These internal rules of development define the realm of possible variation and place limits on the process of adaptation (Alberch, 1989).

Disparity (Morphological Disparity) – The total amount of the dissimilarities among all and any kinds of biological groups of organisms (Pavlinov, 2011).

Diversity (Taxonomic Diversity, Biodiversity) – The existence of a wide variety of species (species diversity) or other taxa of plants, animals, and microorganisms in a natural community or habitat, or of communities within a particular environment (ecological diversity), or of genetic variation within a species (genetic diversity). The maintenance of a high level of biodiversity is important for the stability of ecosystems (Oxford Dictionary of Biology).

Exaptation – A morphological or physiological character that predisposes an organism to adapt to a changed environment or lifestyle. (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)

Extinction Rate – The number of extinctions during a given period of time.

Gradualism (Phyletic Gradualism) - It holds that new species arise from the slow and steady transformation of entire populations. Under its influence we seek unbroken fossil series linking two forms by insensible gradation as the only complete mirror of Darwinian processes; we ascribe all breaks to imperfections in the record (Eldredge and Gould, 1972).

GRNs (Gene Regulatory Network) – GRNs are large networks that determine the course of animal development. These networks consist largely of the functional linkages among regulatory genes that produce transcription factors and their target cis-regulatory modules in other regulatory genes, together with genes that express spatially important signaling components. They have a modular structure, consisting of assemblies of multigenic subcircuits of various forms. Each such subcircuit performs a distinct regulatory function in the process of development. GRNs have been attributed to being the reason why there is little change in the phylum and superphylum-level body plans since the Early Cambrian (Davidson and Erwin, 2006).

Mass Extinctions – The extinction of a large number of species within a relatively short interval of the geological time scale. (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)

Natural Selection – The process that, according to Darwinism, brings about the evolution of new species of animals and plants. Darwin noted that the size of any population tends to remain constant despite the fact that more offspring are produced than are needed to maintain it. He also saw that variations existed between individuals of the population and concluded that disease, competition, and other forces acting on the population eliminated those individuals less well adapted to their environment. The survivors would pass on any heritable advantageous characteristics to their offspring and in time the composition of the population would change in adaptation to a changing environment. Over a long period of time this process could give rise to organisms so different from the original population that new species are formed. (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)

Punctuated Equilibrium – An evolution hypothesis that states in evolutionary history the development of new species occurs very rapidly in short bursts (lasting typically less than 100,000 years), which are separated by long periods in which little evolutionary change occurs (Oxford Dictionary of Science).

Red Queen Hypothesis – An evolutionary theory that describes how the coevolution of competing species creates a dynamic equilibrium, in which the probability of extinction remains fairly constant over time. Hence, evolution is seen neither as ‘progressive’ – with a species’ chances of survival improving over time – nor as ‘escalatory’ – with increasing vulnerability to extinction over time. Instead, as one species evolves improvements that make it more competitive, its competitors experience selection pressures that force them to evolve in order to keep pace with it. Ones that lag too far behind will become extinct (Oxford Dictionary of Biology).

Rock Record – The availability of the information on the fossil record, which is correlated with the availability of rocks during a particular time period. The absence or presence of rocks, which have the possibility of containing a set of fossils could have an influence on how scientists perceive the evolution of a particular group (evolutionary rate, extinction rate, diversity, etc.) (Barrett et al., 2009).

Signor-Lipps Effect – This effect is where for most organisms, it is unlikely that the true last occurrence of an extinct species or family will be recorded. Therefore, almost all observed time ranges are truncated. This causes a "smearing" of the record of an extinction event backward in time (Raup, 1986). In other words, a fundamental problem with using biostratigraphic last occurrences to infer patterns of extinction is that, barring reworking, last occurrences nearly always underestimate time of extinction. Signor and Lipps (1982) showed that a random distribution of errors at biostratigraphic range end-points can produce apparent gradual decline preceding a sudden extinction boundary (Meldahl, 1990).

Species Selection – Selection is one of two process of origination and persistence of clades that has been proposed. Selection encompasses those interactions between heritable, emergent character variation and the environment that cause differences in rates of birth or death among varying individuals (Vrba and Gould, 1986). Species selection requires that species be units of selection, and thus there must be properties of the species, rather than the sum of the properties of individuals, upon which selection can act (Erwin, 2000).

Species Sorting – Sorting is one of two process of origination and persistence of clades that has been proposed. In Darwinian Theory, evolutionary change is the product of sorting (differential birth and death among varying organisms within a population). Sorting is a simple description of differential representation; it contains, in itself, no statement about causes. As its core, Darwinism provides a theory for the causes of sorting- natural selection acting upon organisms in the “struggle for existence.” However, other processes (genetic drift, for example) produce sorting as well (Vrba and Gould, 1986).

Stasis – An evolutionary theory where there is zero rate of evolution and no extinction of speciation; evolutionary change occurs only in response to changes in the physical environment (Stenseth and Smith, 1984).

References

2008, in Hine, R. S., ed., Oxford Dictionary of Biology: Oxford, Oxford University Press.

2010, in Daintith, J., and Martin, E., eds., Oxford Dictionary of Science: Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Alberch, P., 1989, The logic of monsters: Evidence for internal constraint in development and evolution: Geobios, v. 22, no. Supplement 2, p. 21-57.

Barrett, P. M., McGowan, A. J., and Page, V., 2009, Dinosaur diversity and the rock record: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, v. 10.1098/rspb.2009.0352, p. 1-8.

Davidson, E. H., and Erwin, D. H., 2006, Gene Regulatory Networks and the Evolution of Animal Body Plans: Science, v. 311, no. 5762, p. 796-800.

Eldredge, N., and Gould, S. J., 1972, Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phylogenetic gradualism, in Schopf, T. J. M., ed., Models in Paleobiology: San Francisco, Freeman, Copper and Company, p. 82-115.

Erwin, D. H., 2000, Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution: Evolution & Development, v. 2, no. 2, p. 78-84.

Meldahl, K. H., 1990, Sampling, species abundance, and the stratigraphic signature, of mass extinction: A test using Holocene tidal flat molluscs: Geology, v. 18, no. 9, p. 890-893.

Pavlinov, I. Y., 2011, Morphological Disparity: An Attempt to Widen and to Formalize the Concept, INTECH Open Access Publisher.

Raup, D. M., 1986, Biological extinction in earth history: Science, v. 231, no. 4745, p. 1528-1533.

Reif, W.-E., Thomas, R. D. K., and Fischer, M. S., 1985, Constructional morphology: The analysis of constraints in evolution dedicated to A. Seilacher in honour of his 60. birthday: Acta Biotheoretica, v. 34, no. 2, p. 233-248.

Schoch, R. R., 2010, Riedl's burden and the body plan: selection, constraint, and deep time: Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, v. 314B, no. 1, p. 1-10.

Shubin, N., Tabin, C., and Carroll, S., 2009, Deep homology and the origins of evolutionary novelty: Nature, v. 457, no. 7231, p. 818-823.

Signor, P. W., III, and Lipps, J. H., 1982, Sampling bias, gradual extinction patterns and catastrophes in the fossil record Geological Society of America Special Paper, v. 190, p. 291-296.

Stenseth, N. C., and Smith, J. M., 1984, Coevolution in Ecosystems: Red Queen Evolution or Stasis?: Evolution, v. 38, no. 4, p. 870-880.

Vrba, E. S., and Gould, S. J., 1986, The Hierarchical Expansion of Sorting and Selection: Sorting and Selection Cannot Be Equated: Paleobiology, v. 12, no. 2, p. 217-228.

Thoughts on the Ham - Nye Creation Debate

This is going to be my first in a bunch of Creationist-Evolutionist topics that I have in mind. More to come in the future (at some point).

Back in February there was a much politicized debate between Bill Nye (the science guy) and Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis CEO). Previously I had not had the time to sit and watch the 2.5 hour debate but recently I had and I have marked down my comments below. Pretty much they follow the course of the "debate" but I have not marked out clearly for the most case where each comment is in reference to, but they should make sense while watching it.

• Clearly, this debate already seems weighted in Ken Ham's favor being at the Creationist Museum, his home turf.

The first part is where the debaters were each given 2 blocks of talks involving a 5 minuted introduction and a 30 minute presentation.

• Ken Ham - Makes some great points (i.e., it shouldn't be Creationists vs scientists but evolutionists vs Creationists; both evolutionists and Creationists have the same source data that they are trying to interpret) but then he wanders off of the science point when questions of why are brought up (because God deemed it so, "there is a book"). He makes many good points but also leaves out large chunks of available contradictory information in order to prove his points.
• Ken Ham - also states that one does not NEED to be an evolutionist in order to contribute to the technological impact of society and there are no technological advances that required that particular discoverer to be an evolutionist. To this point I tentatively agree. You don't really need to believe in evolution to create an iPhone. However, a counter point to this is that many scientists, primarily geologists, use what is known about the age of the Earth and past processes to find oil and gas. To find this oil and gas they need to understand how plates move and the age of rocks in comparison to one another. Find me a "young Earther" who who can find oil based on their interpretations of the Earth.
• Bill Nye - His initial statement/comments really seemed to come out of left field (I'm sitting here going "what the hell?") and I felt he didn't fit the tone of the "debate" (as defined by Ham's performance). I feel this may have set the audience up on the wrong foot. During much of his introduction he often tried to throw too much data at the audience, many times without an explanation. Within his 35 minutes, he tries to explain everything in science related to the age of the Earth, the Big Bang Theory, and evolution. In the process his point often just gets muddled.

The next section is a 5 minute rebuttal by each person, followed by a 5 minute re-rebuttal (?).

• Ken Ham - One of the biggest problems I have with Creationist arguments is that they never seem to understand how radiocarbon dating works. He outright states they tried to date 45 million year old wood with radiocarbon dating. Any geologist who knows anything about carbon-14 will tell you the results will be crap.
• Ken Ham - Oh wait, all animals were vegetarians before the flood???? Sharp teeth does not mean carnivore apparently. I would love to see a lion even try to eat plants with its teeth.
• Ken Ham - Ham had posted several videos of Creationists, who were also scientists, stating there were no conflicting evidence that the Earth was not 6,000 years old based on the science. The problem I see is that he did not have any geologists or paleontologists on contributing to this (even though I am well aware that they do exist). 
• Bill Nye - And to the previous point, Bill Nye himself is not a geologist or a paleontologist, or a biologist, getting up there and debating topics that are outside his realm of expertise. Not exactly the person I would want debating my side. You don't get an accountant to be your lawyer.
• Bill Nye - I feel Bill Nye also harped on some non-essential problems. Does it really matter if Noah was able to build a boat of that size, which was able to to withstand ocean currents. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn't. I think it is a moot point for this debate and one that did not need to even be discussed.
• Overall - I noticed that many of their "rebuttals" were talks with prepared slides. It's not much of a debate rebuttal is you already have prepared what you are going to say beforehand. 

The last section is a Question and Answer part where questions were asked by the audience to either participant. The person receiving the question had 2 minutes to respond and the other person had a 1 minute rebuttal.

• Ken Ham - Ham's God seems awful vain. "he created the universe in order to show us how powerful he is."
• Bill Nye - Nye calls out Ham's reliance on the Bible as the final word. Doesn't leave much room for actual science if all your answers are just "the Bible said so".
• Ken Ham - Ham makes another good point - just because the majority believes something doesn't make it true (something, I myself have stated in the past). 
• Ken Ham - Ham is also harping on the fact that evolutionists cannot prove what we say about the rock record because no one was there to witness it, except (of course) in the case of Creationism where we have the one "being" who was there (God) writing down his own eye witness account. He disregards the fact that the Bible was not actually written by God but by people many years after the supposed Creation.
• Bill Nye - Nye also states that any scientist who disagrees with the common thought in science is embraced. I would have to disagree with this as can be shown by the theory of plate tectonics, which was initially proposed back before 1910 and didn't gain ground until the 1960's and 70's.
• Bill Nye - One of the key things about scientists (of which I wholeheartedly agree with) Nye states is the simple phrase "I don't know". 
• We don't know everything and we (usually) aren't afraid to state when we don't know. That is what drives science, to know the unknown.
• Ken Ham - Yes, there is a book with the answers. We get it Ham.
• Ken Ham - Now, here is the big one. Question to Ken Ham - "What, if anything, would ever change your mind?" 
• The response "the Bible is the word of God...no one is ever going to convince me that the word of God is not true."
• Ken Ham - Another true statement by Ham. He states that scientists did not date Earth rocks to get the 4.5 billion year old age of the Earth, which is 100% true, we dated meteorites as he states.
• My questions is how does that change anything? Even in his Creationist view the Earth and the other planets/astronomical bodies should be the same age.
• Ken Ham - Ham is very good at acknowledging much of the data that is describes current Earth conditions (i.e. the plates are moving, we can see this). However he then goes on to blame the flood for a catastrophic movement of the plates putting them in their position close to today.
• His biggest point is that he dismisses the geological law of uniformitarianism (that things happening today happened in the past). He feels that things aren't constant and that rates of stuff can change astronomically (i.e. plate movement, bed depositional rates, etc.).
• Bill Nye - Nye does a piss-poor job of explaining the second law of thermodynamics and how that relates to evolution.
• Ken Ham - One thing I noticed a couple of times is that it seems that Ham equates Christian with Creationist. They are one in the same to him. I get the feeling that any non-Creationists are not Christians in his view.

My Overall Thoughts.

• What was the purpose of this debate? What was the overall goal? 
• That I do not know. Did they want to persuade more people to their "side". Well I know that the funding for the Creationist museum's has swelled since the debate. Not sure of the benefit to "evolutionists". 
• Although, this wasn't much of a debate either. I felt it was a back and forth presentation battle with the debaters not really responding to what the other person said. Even in the last round, they were more responding to the questions and not their opponent. 
• Overall the respondents did a rather poor job of just answering the questions they are asked and not going off on preplanned diatribes.
• Nye did a poor job of relating to the "common person". I'm not saying they "common person" is dumb, but that they aren't scientists and they don't know all the little parts of many scientific explanations. Nye glossed over many points that (I feel) would have left many people lost or confused. I myself was getting figurative whiplash with how fast he was jumping around topics and adding in stories. 
• Ham presented himself as intelligent and knowledgeable about a great many subjects but I also got the feeling he did not know what he was talking about when referring to geological concepts. He also fell back on "the Bible" as his be all and end all of debates. 
• In essence my thoughts can be summed up with: Why even debate someone who feels that the word of law is written in a book? He stated himself there was no way his mind would be changed. I feel this debate could have been better served by getting a Creation geologist out there who know the Creation science and is able to back up his claims with something other than "because the book said so."

A "...allow me to destroy evolution in 3 minutes" response from theScience Community

There has been this video that I have seen circulating through Facebook recently entitled "Dear Mr Atheist allow me to destroy evolution in 3 minutes!". I post the video here, not to give this person credibility, but so that people can understand what I am about to comment upon:

Upon my first viewing of this video I had to turn it off in about 1.5 minutes due to the shear stupidity of the ranter. Normally my response to such things would be "What are you, a moron?" and leave it at that. However I have been called out by one of my Creationist friends (yes I have at least one of those) that I need to discuss the points brought up by Creationists as valid points (not citing this video, just in general). I know I am frequently not patient enough to do this, however I do have a friend who is, Abel G. Peña, who responded to this video of which a mutual friend had posted on Facebook. Abel is a published author and a philosopher of science who is far more eloquent than I ever could be, so I will repost his response, with his permission, to the video:

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This gentleman speaks with great passion concerning his faith in God, with which I sympathize. He also asks good questions that many average people have who are not familiar with how science works. It's only unfortunate that he takes those questions as evidence for the "stupidity" of scientists and science only because he hasn't taken the time to research some of these concepts in greater depth. As a result, he is quite confused. Here are some common but important misunderstandings by this gentleman:

1) Evolution is *not* the idea of one man: Charles Darwin is most often credited with the formulation of evolution, but the idea was already circulating in the scientific community at the time of his work. (For instance, Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the idea of evolution by means of natural selection independently from Darwin at around the same time, and the friar Gregor Mendel is famous for discovering the mechanism of genetic inheritance, which is integral to evolution.) More importantly, many, many biologists that have come after Darwin, Wallace and Mendel have corroborated evolution through very careful research over 150 years.

2) Evolution is *not* a “theory” in the popular sense: This is one that people often get confused about. It’s understandable because words have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used and spoken. If the weather is chilly, and I say, “It’s cool out here,” while rubbing my arms for warmth, the meaning of “cool” I am using is in reference to temperature. But if I go to a club with bumping music in Ibiza, and I am sweaty from grooving on the dance floor, and turn to my fellow partier and say, “It’s cool out here!” what I mean by “cool” is now something completely different: that this foreign environment we are visiting is exciting and interesting. But if my fellow partier is a native-Spanish speaker rather than a native-English speaker, he might think I was insane for suggesting the temperature is chilly in a stuffy club.

This variation of meaning applies to the word “theory,” as well. The way the word “theory” is used in everyday speech is that a theory is like a fancy idea—maybe it is interesting or seems to have far-reaching consequences if true, but it is by nature questionable, which is why we aren't calling it a “fact.” But that is not how the word is used in the scientific community. (In fact, the word in science very close to the way we use “theory” in everyday speech is called a “hypothesis.”) In the context of science, the word “theory” instead means an idea that is both well-tested and well-substantiated: that is, it has not proven false in those tests, and is thus considered very likely true, especially when tested over a period of 150 years. It’s very natural to ask, “Why don’t scientists just say it’s true, then?” And that’s because it’s technically very difficult for something to be proven 100% true, and why science gives values of truth in terms of probability. We can ask the question, “Do we actually exist?” and I think most scientists would say we very, very probably do exist, but it’s technically true that our existence is not 100% certain. In Buddhism, for example, the concept of “emptiness” denies the reality of the self—that “I” exist.

This concept of belief expressed in probabilities is also directly relevant in reference to atheism: when an atheist says, “I don’t believe in God,” that person is not necessarily saying, “I 100% don’t believe in God.” Instead, what they are often expressing is shorthand for actually meaning: “I believe that God is highly unlikely to exist,” and they feel comfortable stopping their inquiry at that point until some significant piece of evidence (probably based on physics) is presented.

3) Mr. Feuerstein does not understand the second law of thermodynamics: This law of physics, often referred to as the law of entropy, basically states that all things in a closed system will generally devolve toward chaos. But when you oversimplify the law, as this gentleman has done, it ends up sounding like, “Things always become more chaotic” (an idea which seems to contradict the theory of evolution because, likewise, evolution itself is often oversimplified as meaning, “Everything becomes more orderly”). However, an important component that is left out of the second law of thermodynamics in this oversimplification is that the law applies to a “closed system.” This means an environment in which nothing can get in and nothing can get out, sort of like a box. But the process of evolution through natural selection actually needs to interact with the rest of the world to work: that is, the kind of process described by the theory of evolution does *not* take place in a closed system, and thus, the second law of thermodynamics does not contradict evolution. (And, actually, the second law of thermodynamics doesn't say that all things move toward chaos in a closed system, but only that they *statistically* tend to. This is another common misunderstanding of the law. With enough time—such as infinity—the law also predicts that inevitably all things in that closed system will move toward order.)

 I am not sure which religion Mr. Feuerstein professes faith to but, based on his arguments, I am going to guess it is some form of Christianity. That said, not all forms of Christianity believe the same thing. For instance, Catholicism—generally considered a very conservative form of Christianity—has absolutely no quarrel with evolution. In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared (in an encyclical called Humani Generis) that the teachings of the Church and evolution were not in conflict, stating that the only thing the Church insisted on was belief that God was the one responsible for placing souls in human beings, whatever the specific process by which men and women came to exist. Then, almost 50 years later in the mid-1990s, Pope John Paul II went further and praised evolution, saying:

"Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."

This is significant because we see that it's not impossible to be both a Christian and to accept evolutionary evidence from the scientific community.

In this video, Mr. Feuerstein also seems to think that acceptance of the Big Bang theory is incompatible with religious belief or belief in God. But that also is not true. Here, again, John Paul II—generally considered a very conservative pope—actually loved the idea of the Big Bang, because he felt that it not only actually *proved* that God exists but that the theory tells us when the act of universal creation actually took place. He said:

"Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the Creator. Hence, creation took place. We say: therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists!"

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On a side note I would like to point out his mistaking what the word "universe" is derived from. The word universe is from:

"Uni" - meaning one (got that part right)

"versus" - The past tense of vertere, which means to turn. (Dictionary.com, Online Etymology Dictionary)

(It drives me nuts when people don't research such simple things as the origin of words before spewing their nonsense.)

Evolution in Politics - Why it matters (to me)

I have mentioned to people at times that I will not ever, ever, ever, vote for a candidate that doesn't "believe"* in evolution. Most of my friends agree because we are scientists, this is one thing we agree upon. But I have gotten the comment before:

Why? Where does evolution play into politics? They are separate issues. Evolution is not going to reduce the deficit. It is not going to employ millions of Americans. It is not going to get you cheaper health care. Why should you care?

And originally, I cared because it mattered to me. I was told once to pick a couple of issues you are passionate about and vote for a candidate based on those, not on everything else. Because you're never going to find the perfect candidate. Are you passionate about reducing taxes? Vote for someone that will do that. Are you a strong pro-choice or pro-life supporter? Vote for someone who believes as you do. It all made sense. So one of my things was evolution. Do you "believe" in evolution?

Then this Republican campaign (2012) has gotten me thinking about things. There is so much anti-science rhetoric and scientific dismissal out there now that it has even spurred a "movement" of people posting stuff about how they are scientists and how scientists are real people. We are not aloof people who do things just to piss off the masses. We are not amoral or immoral. We are all different. We have the same diversity as non-scientists. Anyway, that is a different topic. Back to my point.

Why is "belief" in evolution so important to me as a candidate then? I see it this way. The president I would like elected is one that can take a whole lot of ideas coming from many different people and be able to assimilate them, and choose the one, or few, that best helps solve the problem at hand. This basically works for anything, ideas on whether to go to war or not, how to increase employment, how to just make the lives of Americans better. So if they can do that, why can't they take the insurmountable evidence for evolution and proclaim that it is a valid hypothesis and that it is occurring. It is basically as much "fact" as you can get in the scientific arena. If you can't do that, then I don't trust you with whether we should go to war based on assumptions you don't know how to understand.

This post was going to be written earlier when there were much more "wackoes" in the political race than there is now (Bachmann and Perry anyone?). But there is still at least one. Santorum. He has made it a goal of his to be anti-science (and anti-non-christian) at every step of the way. So, he has spurred my publishing of this. I'm not sure what Romney's stance on evolution is. I believe he has no official stance on it. Paul as well does not have a stance on it (he feels he doesn't understand it and it isn't a big deal to him) and Gingrich is pro-evolution (although I have some problems with his other political stances).

So, take this as you will. These are my thoughts on how a political leader should think. Not just on what their beliefs are.

* I do not use the term "belief" as in religious belief or taking things on faith. I use it just generally as do you think that evolution is a valid scientific hypothesis. Please do not take my use of the word "belief" out of context.

Evolution in Pop Culture

I have used the Futurama clip several times for an example that perfectly illustrates the missing link (including on my PhD exam). Well here is that clip (if it works) and a couple of others that illustrate evolution in Pop Culture.

This one is the one I mentioned from Futurama showing the human missing link.

futurama - evrim tartışması | izlesene.com

This one is from the Simpsons showing the evolution of Homer from bacteria to a "human".

This is from the Muppet Show on the episode I just watched where a Koozebanian is quickly evolving into Kermit.

Poll of the Week - Chicken vs. Egg

This has always been a fascinating question to me:

(In regards to evolution)
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Now I have several thoughts on this but I will introduce the poll first and comment on what I think it is and why next week. Please make comments and discussion below.

Poll of the Week - Evolution

I was recently reading an article (Fichter et al., 2010) which stated that when you see the word evolution the majority of people immediately think about biological evolution (Darwinian) and they don't think of the evolution of other things like the evolution of the Earth or the evolution of various systems. In general, evolution just means "change over time". It is commonly referred to the natural selection routine of Darwin but most geologists wouldn't bat an eye at using the term in other contexts like how the surface of the Earth has evolved through time.

So the poll of the week is this, when you see the word evolution, what do you think of initially? I honestly only think of biological evolution but I'm curious to see what other people think of.

Please make any comments or discussion in the comments section.



Fichter, L.S., Pyle, E.J., and Whitmeyer, S.J., 2010, Expanding evolutionary theory beyond Darwinism with elaborating, self-organizing, and fractionating complex evolutionary systems: Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 58, p. 58-64.

Finally the TRUTH about Dinosaurs comes to light

Well now we finally have it. The truth about dinosaurs. I was recently sent this article and as it starts out it isn't so bad. It actually makes sense and is correct:

Technically speaking, the term “dinosaur” should be used only to describe a particular group of reptiles that lived on land. In some books, however, you may find an author describing some creatures that flew in the air as “flying dinosaurs.” In other books you may find the author calling certain animals that lived in the water “aquatic dinosaurs.”

We could call these creatures that flew in the sky and swam in the oceans “dinosaur-like” animals, but it would be incorrect to say that they are dinosaurs.

Not bad. But then we get into the meat of the story:

Whatever their differences, however, there is one thing true dinosaurs do have in common with dinosaur-like animals — we can know for certain they all were created by God!

Oh no. I have a feeling this isn't going to end well. Here are some other clips from the article.

Inostrancevia was not a true dinosaur, but one of the extinct reptiles of the order Therapsid, falsely imagined by evolutionists to be the ancestors of mammals.

Yup. Thats what I thought.

[Owen] realized that dinosaur fossils were the remains of creatures buried long ago, most likely in the global flood of Noah’s time.

Well I can't imagine what else would have covered them. Not river flooding or anything. People along the Mississippi river or Brazil wish to comment on that?

This is the best part. How a fossil is made:

1. The Great Flood suddenly buried a dinosaur under tons of water and mud. Escape was impossible.

2. The dinosaur’s body was trapped by layers of sediment laid down by the Flood’s waters. Soft body parts decayed, but the bones remained.

3. God caused high mountains to rise up and deep valleys to sink down so that the Flood waters “fled” and “hastened away” into new, enlarged ocean basins (Psalm 104:5–9). The earth began to dry out, and minerals in the mud, sand, and water replaced the bones — and they became like rock.

So, what happened to plate tectonics? You know that force that moves the continents and pushes up mountains? I'm pretty sure we can actually measure the movements of the plates. How does that come into this.

Well I just felt like I should pass on the pearl of wisdom that was bestowed upon me. Thanks (?) Brendan H. for the article.

The Red Queen Hypothesis

I finished reading Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll for the first time a couple of weeks ago and while reading it I came across the infamous passage where the Red Queen Hypothesis (RQH) sprang from.

For anyone who does not know what the RQH is, it is a theory in evolution theory where both the predator and prey evolve simultaneously. As the predator gets faster the prey gets faster to get away and then the predator gets faster an so on. So the RQH basically states that you have to run as fast as you can to stay in one place.

So as a tribute to that hypothesis here is the portion of the book that that quote came from:

"It' a great huge game of chess that's being played - all over the world - if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join - though of course I should like to be a Queen, best"

She (Alice) glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this, but her companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, "That's easily managed. You can be the White Queen's Pawn, if you like, as Lily's too young to play: and you're in the Second Square to begin with: when you get to the Eighth Square you'll be a Queen -" Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.

Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying "Faster! Faster!" but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had no breath left to say so.

The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. "I wonder if all the things move along with us?" thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried. "Faster! Don't try to talk!"

Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried "Faster! Faster!" and dragged her along. "Are we nearly there?" Alice managed to pant out at last.

"Nearly there!" the Queen repeated. "Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!" And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.

"Now! Now!" cried the Queen. "Faster! Faster!" And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly "You may rest a little now."

Alice looked round her in great surprise. "Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!"

"Of course it is," said the Queen: "what would you have it?"

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run a least twice as fast as that!"

And a picture from my copy of the book that went along with the scene

How to Build a Dinosaur

So I ran across this article (Canadian scientist aims to turn chickens into dinosaurs) describing how one scientist wants to build a dinosaur from a chicken embryo. Although I am fully in support of this (I think it is really cool) he makes a comment:

 "If I can demonstrate clearly that the potential for dinosaur anatomical development exists in birds, then it again proves that birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs."

Now typically, most (and by most I mean at least 95%) of scientists do not debate this. It is a pretty well established fact (fact meaning that it is still a theory but a pretty damn well good one, like gravity) that birds came from dinosaurs. So who is he trying to prove this to? Anyone who does not believe in evolution won't believe the study anyway? I don't know, just my 2 cents.

Scientific Discussion - Darwinism

Scientific Discussion

So I just read this article from the New York Times called "Darwinism must die so that evolution may live" And it is an interesting article about how Darwin's theories of evolution are basically what the majority of people today believe what evolution is. Now I have read The Origin of Species about a year and a half ago and since it is on my 100 Greatest Books list I wrote a little blurb about it.

I should preface this review with the fact that I am a paleontologist and I have been studying geology and paleontology for over 20 years. I came into reading The Origin of Species knowing full well that the text was written over 150 years ago and the science of paleontology and evolution has progressed at a lightening pace since then. That being said, I still was not sure what I was getting into when I read it. To quote my former evolutionary biology teacher "Don't read The Origin of Species unless you have to." This is a science textbook and that is how it reads. The science itself is severely out of date and the text is rather dull to boot. Since the science is not current, I recommend that someone reading this should have a basic scientific background so that they can understand where the science is questionable or not. The main problem I have with The Origin of Species is that instead of doing science experiments, Darwin typically takes observations and makes large leaps of logic to explain why his observations are the way they are. Granted this is a seminal and often interesting work of scientific history, but it is too much of a difficult read for me to recommend it.

Pretty much this is what the article states. The science is severely out of date. To the point where it is just wrong in many cases. Darwin's way of solving problems is also in question (by me). He looks at things (like giraffe neck lengths) and just assumes they evolved into longer necks. He does no science experiments or presents no theories, he just assumes. It is basically a religious view of science (again as I see it).

The main problem I have with Darwin is not his theories, it is how he is presented. I have seen countless scientists flaunting over him as if he created the world while he was just another step in the ladder of science. Great, he brought evolution to the forefront of society, but many others before and since have done a lot more work and should deserve the same amount, if not more, credit.

In the News - Intelligent Design is Dead

In a recent article on Yahoo! It states that many Clergy are now on the side of scientists in the view of evolution:

"As a legal strategy intelligent design is dead. It will be very difficult for any school district in the future to successfully survive a legal challenge," Scott said. "That doesn't mean intelligent design is dead as a very popular social movement. This is an idea that has got legs."

But pastors are speaking out against it. Warren Eschbach, a retired Church of the Brethren pastor and professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania helped sponsor a letter signed by more than 10,000 other clergy.

"We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests," they wrote.
Catholic experts have also joined the movement.

"The intelligent design movement belittles God. It makes God a designer, an engineer," said
Vatican' Observatory Director George Coyne, an astrophysicist who is also ordained. "The God of religious faith is a god of love. He did not design me."