More fossilized soft tissue

Ken Ham is excited about another discovery of traces of collagen in dinosaur bones. Me? I’m saying ho-hum, it’s mildly interesting, but it’s not what you think it is. Kenny-boy thinks it’s evidence that the bones are only 4,000 years old. I’m just wondering what processes protected collagen from degradation.

In this new study, researchers* used advanced mass spectrometry and protein sequencing to detect bone collagen in a well-preserved hip bone from an Edmontosaurus uncovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota. This unexpected find is encouraging other researchers to pull fossils out of storage and look at them with these new technologies. And why?

The popular science article explains:

Furthermore, experts could uncover the biochemical pathways that enabled the preservation of organic compounds over millions of years. “The findings inform the intriguing mystery of how these proteins have managed to persist in fossils for so long,” said Taylor.

Yes, how these proteins could remain for millions of years is a big mystery. Evolutionists, try as they might, have yet to be able to present a plausible explanation for the existence of soft tissue in supposedly ancient fossils. Now the popular science article quoted Dr. Taylor, who is a creation scientist involved with this new find, saying this research will help us understand how proteins can last for “so long”—creationists too want to know how proteins can last a few thousand years. We don’t have the problem of millions and millions of years but there’s more work to be done to understand the processes that preserved them since the flood, 4,350 years ago.

The original paper doesn’t ask the question Ken Ham thinks it does. It has a narrow, specific scope: is the collagen part of the bone, or is it a product of external contamination? They show that it really is in the fossil.

They say nothing about the age of the fossil, except to briefly acknowledge it was “excavated from the Upper Cretaceous zone of the Hell Creek Formation in Harding County, South Dakota, USA.” They don’t dwell on that fact (it’s not the focus of the paper), but I know that there’s a huge amount of data screaming that it is 70 million years old. Any explanation for the preservation of soft tissue has to include all those facts. You know, the facts that Ham ignores.

Collagen is there. I’m willing to accept that. The bones are 70 million years old. The science demonstrates that. And we have plausible explanations for its preservation.

We previously demonstrated that the treatment of extant microvascular tissue with haemoglobin, an Fe-coordinating protein, can significantly enhance stability over multi-year time frames10, in effect acting as a preserving agent. Here, we extend this experimental observation to propose that enhanced resistance to degradation is due in part to Fe-catalysed non-enzymatic crosslinking of molecules comprising structural tissues, with haemoglobin suggested as the primary source of such Fe in vessels undergoing diagenesis.

This is just another example of Answers in Genesis cherry-picking the data they like and then misinterpreting/misrepresenting it.

I get email

This email was long and particularly vapid, so I’m not going into detail on it, but I do include the whole damn thing below the fold for your entertainment. To summarize it briefly, my correspondent is a friendly Muslim who wants me to know that he accepts evolution…for other organisms, but not humans. Humans are special. To make his point, he provides Evidence of the Divine.

This evidence consists of long, practically obsessive descriptions of how beautiful Mohammed was. His eyes were large, with deep black irises and bright whites, and his eyelashes were long and how good he smelled, I never smelled ambergris or musk or anything as fragrant as the scent of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Also, he knew that horse hooves could strike sparks when galloping over stones, but there are no stones in the desert! How can you not be convinced of the existence of god and the falsity of evolution when you learn this?

He concludes by telling me how persuasive his argument is.

I want to let you know that I’ve shown this to scientists and they were utterly convinced that God didn’t exist and that we evolved from a common ancestor with primates. But after I showed them this proof that the Quran has Divine origins. They started to rethink their whole world view regarding God and atheism.

I include the entirety of his “proof” below, despite the fact that apparently it’s going to convince all of you to leave this site and go running to your nearest mosque. After all, how can you resist when Mohammed bats his lovely eyes at you?

[Read more…]

The argument for god from consistent anatomy

Aron Ra asked me to address a novel proof for the existence of god. You see, the only way you can get a nose in the middle of your face every time, or any kind of symmetry, is if a designer made it so. If you leave it to biology, you’ll get noses in random places on your body!

He really didn’t need a developmental biologist to explain this — the problem isn’t that the old goober in the picture doesn’t understand the developmental cascade that leads to a predictable morphology, it’s that he has a gross misconception that physics and chemistry and biology lack any process that can produce predictable outcomes absent a god skewing the results.

By the way, I was doing my best to keep it simple. I know that asymmetries are common. I can see, for instance, that my right forefinger is slightly longer than my left by about a millimeter; I know that my left ear is noticeably higher than my right (I had my peers loudly pointing that out in grade school.) Are those facts evidence that a god must not exist, or at least, that the god we have is terribly sloppy?

AiG ❤️ Dawkins & Coyne

Answers in Genesis is thrilled at everything Trump promises to do. You know what else makes them happy? That Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne have embraced a Biblical worldview, finally realizing that sex is binary and simple, just like the Bible says. Skip ahead to about 7:30 if you don’t want to hear them fawning over Trump, don’t bother listening at all if you don’t want to hear their appreciation of Dawkins and Coyne (also some guy named Pinky or Pink…they knew there was “pink” in the name).

It doesn’t mean much. These are creationists, they always pick and choose which words they’ll hear. But isn’t it interesting that some New Atheists are converging on a dogmatic religious view?

Kent Hovind’s latest ‘wife’ says bye-bye

Kent Hovind must be a real asshole — he keeps driving women away. Here’s a brief history of his brief ‘marriages’:

He was married to his first wife Jo Hovind from 1973 and they stayed together until their divorce in March of 2016.

He then ‘married’ Mary Tocco in September 2016, though no sexual adultery had taken place in his former marriage, making him an adulterer. They did not get a marriage license and instead entered into a public, legally recognizable common-law marriage.

However, in Alabama at the time, the state did not recognize “common-law-divorces” that can be entered and exited willy-nilly, but rather in order to legally end the marriage, they would have to undergo a formal divorce process, the same as if entered into a traditional marriage. To quote Robert Baty “Legal common-law marriages cannot be dissolved except by legal process, not by hand-waiving.”

But that’s exactly what he did. While still legally married to Mary Tocco, Kent Hovind waived his hands and declared the marriage dissolved in 2017.

Feeling restless and on the prowl, he got ‘married’ again in 2018, this time to Cindy Lincoln. This was done in the same sort of private ceremony.

However, after his first common-law marriage, Alabama changed its laws, so that the state no longer recognized any new common-law marriages as legally binding.

Following this pattern, his new ‘marriage’ to Lincoln did not last long, and he cut ties with her in 2020 by ‘divorcing her’ ie another wave of his hand. Though they publically presented themselves as married up to this point and consummating the relationship, the law treated this basically as a boyfriend and girlfriend breaking up, given the ‘marriage’ was invalid in the first place.

It is this third ‘wife’ that took an order of protection against the disgraced creationist, claiming that he physically abused her by ‘body-slamming her’ and has engaged in a pattern of psychological torture, resulting in him being sentenced to 30 days in jail for domestic violence.

Then in September of 2021, he ‘married’ a 4th ‘wife’, Sandra Sawyer, in another private covenant/ common-law ceremony. Like the ‘marriage’ before, the state does not recognize this marriage, and so legally he is still married to his second wife.

The saga will have to be updated, because it seems that #4, Sandra Sawyer, has now left him.

I hope the women around him are waking up to this and that there is no #5.

What’s the opposite of chocolate and peanut butter?

I can imagine much worse, but I didn’t want to make you all sick

You know, the old “two great tastes that taste great together” slogan, only the opposite of that — two awful things that become even more awful when combined? I tried imagining something unpleasantly yucky, and then picturing a completely different yuk, and then mixed them up in my imagination, and only succeeded in making myself mildly nauseous.

Then I discovered that Answers in Genesis had done the exercise for me. They have announced that they are combining the idiocy of young earth creationism with the hype of AI, and then I felt extremely nauseous.

We’ve been talking about doing this project for some time now, and I’m excited to finally announce a brand-new tool to help you find answers to your questions: AI Genesis. This chat tool, an extension of our website, has been under development and testing for months, and we’ve now rolled out a beta (test) version for anyone who has an account on our website.

You can ask our AI a wide variety of questions, such as:

• What was the shape of Noah’s ark?
• What’s the best evidence for a young earth?
• Is Genesis derived from ancient myths?
• What happened to the dinosaurs?
• Are the Gospels trustworthy?
• How can I share the gospel with someone who is trans?

I don’t have an account on their website — I haven’t even tried, but Ken Ham has gone all fatwah on my butt so I doubt I’d succeed — but I’m confident that they’ve implemented a glorified chatbot to deliver highly filtered creationist messages to their audience. One thing I have to commend AiG for is that they’ve hired some competent people to manage their internet presence. Have you looked at their SEO? Try to use Google to find specific details about AiG, and instead you get page after page of fluff written by AiG proponents. It’s amazingly useless.

But then, Google pretty much sucks nowadays.

Man tracks!

Dan Olson has been soaking in the history of creationism, and has come out with an excellent YouTube documentary. It starts with the Paluxy dinosaur tracks, and leads to Clifford Burdick, The Genesis Flood, and frauds like Kent Hovind. And then Carl Baugh shows up, a true charlatan.

It’s familiar stuff, but really well presented. Well worth an hour and a half.

Confidently ridiculous

Oh boy. There are places on the internet that are still full of arrogant ignorance. A creationist charged into a subreddit with some, ummm, assertions.

Athiesm is a religion that insidiously postures itself as science, indoctrinating the youth with made up stories about the origins of life, and history of the universe.
Example of atheist beliefs in science that are not proven or factual and simply a belief yet are taught as factual science.

Why is it that these guys who hate atheism so much don’t know how to spell atheism? That’s especially ironic given that nothing he complains about are actually tenets of atheism. His gripe is with science, not atheism — a great many religious people are entirely comfortable with accepting every idea on his list. It’s just that most (not all) atheists don’t have any problem with the authority of science, it takes a dedication to religious dogma to so readily accept counterfactuals.

Let’s look at his claims one by one.

1. We are stardust

This is not an atheist idea.

The base material of the universe is hydrogen — it’s mostly hydrogen. So the question is, where did the heavier elements come from? The religious belief is that a god simply poofed them all into existence. A better, non-miraculous explanation is that the process of nucleosynthesis, a fusion reaction that takes place in stars, built up the carbon and iron and oxygen etc. over time, and that these elements were scattered throughout the universe and used as building blocks for planets and people etc. We have evidence for nucleosynthesis. We lack evidence of divine poofing.

2. Human beings are apes

This is not an atheist idea.

Humans definitely belong in the ape clade — the morphological, genetic, and molecular evidence link us. If an alien were to classify and categorize life on Earth, they would group us with the other primates. There is no evidence to suggest that humans are discretely unique in a way that makes them non-apes. This is an old, failed argument by creationists that there is something in the human brain that isn’t shared with other apes.

3. The earth is 5 billion years old

This is not an atheist idea.

Go argue with the physicists and geologists. We know for sure that the Earth is older than 6000 years old, the usual number trotted out by creationists.

4. Human beings share a common ancestor with apes that we evolved from in Africa millions of years ago

This is not an atheist idea.

Geneticists and anthropologists have the details. We can, for example, measure the differences between the genomes of humans and chimpanzees, measure the rates of mutation and fixation, and estimate how long the two species have diverged. It’s millions of years. The anthropologists can tell us our ancestors were African. Where is the creationist evidence for, for example, the Garden of Eden or Adam & Eve?

5. Everything evolved from a single cell organism

This is not an atheist idea.

Likewise, we have evidence of all the shared commonalities between us and all other organisms. We have evidence of the processes that generate the differences. Common origin is the most parsimonious explanation. Meanwhile, the Christian Bible doesn’t even contain the concept of cells, or single-celled organisms. Would he like to argue with the evidence for cell theory?

6. Fish evolved into amphibians, and then into reptiles, and then birds, and then mammals?

This is not an atheist idea. It’s also not a scientific idea. It’s a creationist bogosity.

For someone trying to argue with evolution, he sure doesn’t seem to understand the theory. He presents a linear caricature of evolution, and claims that’s what we teach? Mammals didn’t evolve from birds, or from modern reptiles, or from modern amphibians, or modern fish. Come on, do better.

All of these claims are not proven. Yet, they are taught as fact. The definition of fact is a thing that is known or proven to be TRUE. Again, none of these claims are nor can they ever be proven to be true. Therefore they are not factual and should not be treated as factual. That is Where the indoctrination accusation claims stand because these beliefs are treated as proven factual science when they are an indoctrination of athiest beliefs being taught as factual science about the origins of life which is religious.

Allow me to quote one of the slides I present in my introductory biology class.

There is no such thing as “truth” or “proof” in science! All knowledge is provisional and subject to revision.

Scientists do use the word “fact”, but only in the sense that Stephen J. Gould defines:

In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

This class has nothing to do with atheism; it’s not a subject we discuss at any point in the semester.

Another thing I teach:

Science is not a catalog of facts to be memorized.

Science is a process for acquiring and evaluating new knowledge.

Religion does the opposite of that; it’s an interpretation of a few old myths presented as inviolate dogma. There’s no way you can regard science as a religion.

And why is a religious dogmatist using “religious” as a pejorative?

He throws in a few references, but they’re all from Answers in Genesis, and therefore can be dismissed out of hand.

I’m in trouble with AiG and its lawyers

I have been informed that I must take down a blog post, this one. Apparently, Answers in Genesis does not own a whole jet, they lease 25% of one, and how dare I quote an investor site that says “The Cayman Islands are considered a tax haven” or that AiG has been grasping at tax breaks.

RE: False and Defamatory Statements

Dear Dr. Myers:

We represent Answers in Genesis, Inc. (“AiG”). We are writing to demand you and your blog, FreeThoughtBlogs, cease and desist further publication of your article Why are creationists so pasty pale at Answers in Genesis? posted at https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ 2024/10/17/why-are-creationists-so-pasty-pale-at-answers-in-genesis/ with a October 17, 2024 publication date (the “Article”). The Article contains several false statements and distortions of fact intended to defame our client.

The Article begins with the following statement: “AiG owns a private jet,” which is false. AiG has a lease for the fractional use of a private jet. In other words, AiG does not own a jet. It owns a percentage of an aircraft’s flight hours each year, approximately 25% of the allocated usage. The ministry has no oversight or involvement regarding the other 75% of use. The reasoning for the fractional use of a private plane is not about luxury but practicality, allowing the ministry to reach more people over a shorter period of time.

With that being said, it could very well be true that this jet “frequently darts down to the Cayman Islands for one-day visits.” However, that does not mean that those trips are taken by AiG. In fact, they are not. No AiG personnel have used the jet (or any other aircraft) for trips to the Cayman Islands.

Of particular concern are the following false statements on your blog:

“What are they doing down there? Why do they frequently fly there and then come straight back?” followed by “Wild guess: The Cayman Islands are considered a tax haven
… making it an ideal place for multinational corporations to base subsidiary entities to shield some or all of their incomes from taxation.”
“AiG has been working so hard to get all kinds of tax breaks here in America, why would they need to evade taxes even more than that?”
These veiled claims have no basis in fact.As you know and intended, when such allegations are directed towards a nonprofit ministry, they discredit and impeach the ministry. The intended implication in your false statements is not only that AiG aims to profit from its mission and that it violates laws for purposes of enriching itself, but it also partakes in additional illicit activity. Since there is no basis in fact, your blog’s publication of the Article (and your authorship of it) constitutes the tort of defamation. Under the laws of Kentucky, where the damage of your misconduct was directed and felt, your malicious defamation exposes you personally to liability, to include for punitive damages.

To our knowledge, you made no effort to contact AiG to verify or corroborate the story’s allegations. It further appears that no effort was made to independently verify the allegations via publicly available sources. Even a minimal effort in that regard would have revealed the falsity of these allegations. Indeed, had you bothered to look at the aircraft registration of the plane, which can conveniently be found on the same website your Article links to, you would have discovered that AiG does not in fact own the plane.

You and your blog acted with actual malice in that you knew your statements were false or, at best, you acted in reckless disregard to the veracity of the statements. This is not the first time you have been reckless in your allegations regarding the ministry. The insinuations your “expose” propagates are presented as truths, when in fact they are lies. Your statements have been circulated to the public, to include the media, which increases the scope and corresponding liability for your misconduct.

Implications that AiG has engaged in illegal or criminal activity is unacceptable, as are the enumerated claims above. Your statements damage AiG’s reputation and were done with intent to cause harm, i.e. maliciously. Your followers have circulated your false claims, including to the media.

We demand that you immediately and permanently remove the Article and release a statement retracting the article and enumerated claims above. Please confirm that you have done so within five days of the date of this letter.

In the meanwhile, since you are on notice of legal claims made against you, you have a duty to preserve all communications and documents concerning the Article, to include all communications and investigations relevant to the same. All electronic records, to include all forms of electronic communications, should be preserved. This demand is not a waiver of any other claims my clients may have against you. Do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions or desire to discuss this matter.

OK, I’ll admit that they have a solid alibi, and I am removing the post.

I am not at all surprised that Ken Ham is extremely touchy about their money, but have never sicced a lawyer on me for all my posts refuting their creationist bullshit.