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An eyeful of creationist IDiocy
by Dr. Donald Prothero
  -Professor of Geology at Occidental College
  -Lecturer of Geobiology at CalTech

Skepticblog

http://skepticblog.org/2011/07/13/an-eyeful-of-creationist-idiocy/

A few weeks ago my email box was full of gloating messages from creationists claiming that the latest discovery of complex eyes in the Cambrian “proved” creationism and “refuted” evolution. As usual, creationists demonstrate a remarkable ability to completely misunderstand and misinterpret real science, and get the message of the paper ass-backward. The article to which they referred is an excellent new paper on the appearance in the Early Cambrian of compound eyes, slightly earlier than they were known previously. But creationists doesn’t know enough science to understand the paper—all they do is read “complex eyes” and “Early Cambrian” in the title, and to them, “Darwinism is falsified.” It never ceases to amaze me how they can mangle legitimate research to mean just the opposite of what was written, but so strong are their belief filters that they hear only what they want to hear, and completely miss the point of most of the world of science that doesn’t fit their preconceived notions.

The discovery itself is quite remarkable, and good discussions are given here and here. From the Lower Cambrian Emu Bay Shale of Kangaroo Island, South Australia, are nicely preserved elements (ommatidia) of compound eyes, which are larger and more complex than any others known from the Early Cambrian (although similarly complex but smaller compound eyes are found in trilobites of the Atdabanian Stage of the Cambrian, just  a few million years later). The eyes themselves are individual molts and not attached to bodies, but they were once part of some large arthropod. Some ommatidia have over 3000 lenses, equal to many of the compound eyes found since the Cambrian. Although it forces us to revise our treatment of the history of eyes a bit, it it not “the end of Darwinism” as creationists claim. The molecular data have long predicted that complex compound eyes should have appeared long before we see them in the fossil record, but were simply not preserved because they had no hard parts yet (probably because conditions in the Precambrian and Early Cambrian oceans only gradually reached a threshold that allowed mineralization of soft tissues). This discovery simply extends the range of compound eyes back a few million years earlier than we had known previously.

Yet if you read the creationist accounts of this discovery, it was as if this one paper had caused all of evolutionary biology to crumble! The main thread of their argument is the same, tired old “Cambrian explosion” misconception they’ve been beating for decades. Somehow, the appearance of one more complex fossil in the Early Cambrian makes the “Cambrian explosion” completely inexplicable by evolution. In the words of creationist IDiot David Buckna, “The Cambrian explosion is affirmed; complexity appears suddenly without transitions; Darwinism is falsified; the inference to the best explanation is intelligent design. Let the world know.”

That is pure garbage, and shows once again that creationists cannot read, or if they do read, they don’t understand anything. The truth of the matter was outlined in Chapter 7 of my 2007 book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters, and I will summarize the major points below:

1. Contrary to creationist lies, there is an excellent sequence of fossils that show the logical stepwise transition from the earliest single-celled bacteria at 3.5 billion years ago, to the first eukaryotic cell at 1.8 billion years ago, to the multicellular (but soft-bodied) Ediacara biota 610 million years ago, and finally in the first two stages of the Cambrian (545-520 million years ago), the “little shellies”, which are small bit of armor of the first skeletonized organisms. Only in the third stage of the Cambrian (the Atdabanian) do the hard-shelled trilobites and other complex organisms first appear. This is exactly as would be predicted by evolution: single-celled prokaryotes, then eukaryotes, then soft-bodied multicellular creatures, then the first tiny bits of skeletonization, and finally large skeletonized fossils.

When I read the creationist versions of this reality, they always ignore all the evidence of anything prior to trilobites, despite the fact that the Ediacara biota has been known for 70 years, and the rest documented over the past few decades. They act as if no fossils existed before the trilobites (as it was in Darwin’s day) and none of the discoveries of the past 70 years existed. When Michael Shermer and I debated and beat creationists Stephen Meyer and Richard Sternberg in Beverly Hills in 2009, I attacked them on this very point—and they dodged it by focusing on the trilobites, and completely ignoring all the less complex organisms that preceded them.

2. The term “Cambrian explosion” is a complete misnomer. These events took place between 610 and 520 million years ago (spanning 90 million years), or even if you just restrict it to the Early Cambrian, 25 million years. Ninety million or even 25 million years is hardly a rapid “explosion” by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve urged geologists to use the more appropriate “Cambrian slow fuse” to reflect reality and not give the creationists fuel for their lies, but it’s hard to change old habits. The archaic term “Cambrian explosion” dates back to the early days of geology, when the events of the Precambrian-Cambrian transition, lasting 25 to 90 million years, seemed abrupt on the scale of the 520 million years that followed, or the 3 billion years that preceded it. That’s a geologist’s perspective, where millions of years are nothing when you’re used to billions of years of time.

Whatever caused the “Cambrian slow fuse”, and however it occurred, is is most certainly not an “abrupt explosion” that is too fast for evolution to explain. Even 25 million years is almost half of the Cenozoic, or the “Age of Mammals” that we are still a part of! There is plenty of time for events to unfold at normal rates of evolution, and the discovery of earlier compound eye fossils does not change the overall pattern.

Ironically, the creationists themselves cite articles showing the “Cambrian explosion” took tens of millions of years (clearly labeled through the paper) yet they don’t believe in a time scale longer than 6000 years for all of creation! That’s their usual tactic: cherry-pick a few things out of context, quote-mine whatever seems to support their position, and then ignore everything else that completely contradicts and falsifies what they have asserted. That may serve their purposes, but it’s not science and it’s dishonest. But as I documented in my 2007 Evolution book, they don’t care about honesty as long as they can distort and misquote science and scientists to serve their purposes of evangelism and suppression of science they don’t like.

I realize that most of us are tired of creationist lies and propaganda and political interference, and want to get on with our lives doing science and true scholarship, or just earning a living. But garbage like this latest event are evidence that the fight must go on. We must keep vigilant that they don’t threaten our schools or scientific institutions any more than they do already.

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well, rude demeanor and spelling errors aside....lol

i just want to point out that creationism and intelligent design aren't necessarily synonymous. i do want to add just one thing though. creationists believe that all the creatures to have ever roamed this earth were all created at the same time. now, of all the species that have gone extinct, from before dinosaurs, to dinosaurs, to prehistoric creatures, and those of today, do you really think there is enough room on earth to support them all at the same time?

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
well, rude demeanor and spelling errors aside....lol

i just want to point out that creationism and intelligent design aren't necessarily synonymous. i do want to add just one thing though. creationists believe that all the creatures to have ever roamed this earth were all created at the same time. now, of all the species that have gone extinct, from before dinosaurs, to dinosaurs, to prehistoric creatures, and those of today, do you really think there is enough room on earth to support them all at the same time?

Not with the size of some of them dinosaurs anyway.....

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
well, rude demeanor and spelling errors aside....lol

i just want to point out that creationism and intelligent design aren't necessarily synonymous. i do want to add just one thing though. creationists believe that all the creatures to have ever roamed this earth were all created at the same time. now, of all the species that have gone extinct, from before dinosaurs, to dinosaurs, to prehistoric creatures, and those of today, do you really think there is enough room on earth to support them all at the same time?

I've hear IDers arguments go either way, with some asserting that there was one point of creation and others multiple points of creation.  Creationists did about the same.  The only real difference that I'm aware of between the two is that most Western creationists would say God made everything, where as the ID crowd say it would take Intelligence to organize chemicals to create life.  This change was made in attempt to circumnavigate the ban on teaching creationism in science classes of public schools, trying to use the technicality of 'we never said God' to make it constitutional.  That said, the only two choices are either God or Ancient Astronauts, and neither one exactly has a plethora of scientific evidence behind it.  And of course, a quick and easy counter is 'if it takes Intelligence to create life, what created Intelligence?'  As for your final question, I don't know if one could squeeze all the different species of critters that ever were onto Earth all at one time, but no self respecting scientist would propose that that happened.

As for the composition of the article: Rude?  Yeah, something to realize is that many scientists and almost all paleontologists (which is what the author specializes in) don't think much of creationists or IDers.  There is absolutely no love lost between Geologists (which include paleontologists amongst other fields) and young earth creationists.  There is often a great sense of frustration generated when dealing with those types because you can present the evidence for your cause but then have your argument systematically poo-pood for violating the creationist's favorite book.  As for the spelling, out of curiosity I copy and pasted the article into Word and the only things it flagged as misspelled were scientific names, "shellies," and 'skeletonized.'

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i may be off from the common perceptions, but to my thinking, i tend to see creationism as dealing primarily with life here on earth, whereas i view intelligent design as dealing more with the totality of the universe, as well as what we know of life, both plant and animal. basically, the whole of what we call creation. this is very much similar to the way i tend to view the whole of science. geology, astronomy, physics, biology, paleontology, mathmatics, etc, all corroborate with each other in our understanding of the physical realm, just as the four forces (gravity, electo-magnetism, weak force [radioactive decay], and strong force [nuclear fission and fusion] ) all work in harmony to create order and predictability in the physical laws of our existence. to me, the way all things derive from other things, and complexity arises from simplicity, and the forces that work in unison to allow any of this to exist - everything in totality - is the culmination of both the sciences, AND the work of some form of architect.

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not totally on-topic, but just found it, so....



:-P

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miles

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
well, rude demeanor and spelling errors aside....lol

i just want to point out that creationism and intelligent design aren't necessarily synonymous. i do want to add just one thing though. creationists believe that all the creatures to have ever roamed this earth were all created at the same time. now, of all the species that have gone extinct, from before dinosaurs, to dinosaurs, to prehistoric creatures, and those of today, do you really think there is enough room on earth to support them all at the same time?

I dont know that I agree that creationists believe that all creatures to have ever roamed the earth were created at the same time.  Some may, but not all of us.  Similarly we dont all believe that the earth was created in 6 literal 24 hour periods.  

I believe everything was created by God.  Thus I am a creationist.
But...remember that (2 Peter 3:8-9 NIV) goes as follows:

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  

This implies that a Day to God is like a really long period of time...not necessarily 24 hours...not even a literal 1000 years.  But it is like a thousand years.

So many creationists understand that creationism is not actually a literal thing.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:

So many creationists understand that creationism is not actually a literal thing.

what does that mean exactly? lol

as for the time thing, of course if you were an intelligence that has been around at least for billions of years (or forever, whichever) time is going to be completely different  that something like you and me which is around for less than a century.

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The only way this ends is to discover how life comes from no life. Until then science has to put up with the creationists.

Anyway, I liked the article although I still laugh at an attacking article written by someone who says others attack him. In groups like this, I see quite a few more of these types of posts than those from creationists. Why the worry that some just don't believe??? Who really cares if some don't believe in evolution??? Isn't any skin off my teeth. Maybe if we quit wasting time and energy trying to convince the unconvinced, and focus it on the science at hand, we would know quite a bit more than we do now.........just a suggestion.

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Originally Posted by Mark Simmons:
Maybe if we quit wasting time and energy trying to convince the unconvinced

If people started doing that, then message boards the world over would become ghost towns :-P

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Originally Posted by Mark Simmons:
Maybe if we quit wasting time and energy trying to convince the unconvinced, and focus it on the science at hand, we would know quite a bit more than we do now.........just a suggestion.

I strongly disagree.  If it weren't for the efforts of scientists to educate the public our scientific and technological progress would be greatly retarded.  If scientists and other associated science enthusiasts didn't make noise about the teaching of very non-scientific ideas in science classes every American HS student would receive their diploma without ever even hearing of evolution, sufficing to believe that 'god did it' was a scientifically sufficient answer (metaphysical explanations are not acceptable in scientific discourse, something that the creationist and ID 'science' folks still don't seem to grasp).  Without this basic scientific knowledge fewer students would be moved to become scientists, those who did would take longer to educate because their background knowledge would be so deficient, and the rest of society would likely be so deprived of understanding of natural process that innovation would be greatly slowed.  If scientists didn't advocate and fight censorship, instead silently focusing on study, people would still believe the Earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth (Bill O'Reilly apparently still believes this), Jerusalem is the center of the universe, and that the entire universe was created as-is in six (literal) days six thousand years ago (sadly some ignorant souls still believe this).

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Originally Posted by Bryant Platt:


I strongly disagree.  If it weren't for the efforts of scientists to educate the public our scientific and technological progress would be greatly retarded.  If scientists and other associated science enthusiasts didn't make noise about the teaching of very non-scientific ideas in science classes every American HS student would receive their diploma without ever even hearing of evolution, sufficing to believe that 'god did it' was a scientifically sufficient answer (metaphysical explanations are not acceptable in scientific discourse, something that the creationist and ID 'science' folks still don't seem to grasp).  Without this basic scientific knowledge fewer students would be moved to become scientists, those who did would take longer to educate because their background knowledge would be so deficient, and the rest of society would likely be so deprived of understanding of natural process that innovation would be greatly slowed.  If scientists didn't advocate and fight censorship, instead silently focusing on study, people would still believe the Earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth (Bill O'Reilly apparently still believes this), Jerusalem is the center of the universe, and that the entire universe was created as-is in six (literal) days six thousand years ago (sadly some ignorant souls still believe this).

But science has successfully established itself already. We are now down to either teaching or talking to a wall. Ya gotta know when to cut your losses. Since religion is seen as a standard for morality by most, you will never fully get rid of its influence and since you can never fully get rid of its influence.......well you see where I am going.

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Originally Posted by Kieran Colfer:

Originally Posted by Mark Simmons:
Maybe if we quit wasting time and energy trying to convince the unconvinced

If people started doing that, then message boards the world over would become ghost towns :-P

That means most people who go to them could then go out and enjoy a real life in the real world. I count that as a win.....obvious none of us here fit that bill  ;-)

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Originally Posted by Mark Simmons:

Originally Posted by Bryant Platt:


I strongly disagree.  If it weren't for the efforts of scientists to educate the public our scientific and technological progress would be greatly retarded.  If scientists and other associated science enthusiasts didn't make noise about the teaching of very non-scientific ideas in science classes every American HS student would receive their diploma without ever even hearing of evolution, sufficing to believe that 'god did it' was a scientifically sufficient answer (metaphysical explanations are not acceptable in scientific discourse, something that the creationist and ID 'science' folks still don't seem to grasp).  Without this basic scientific knowledge fewer students would be moved to become scientists, those who did would take longer to educate because their background knowledge would be so deficient, and the rest of society would likely be so deprived of understanding of natural process that innovation would be greatly slowed.  If scientists didn't advocate and fight censorship, instead silently focusing on study, people would still believe the Earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth (Bill O'Reilly apparently still believes this), Jerusalem is the center of the universe, and that the entire universe was created as-is in six (literal) days six thousand years ago (sadly some ignorant souls still believe this).

But science has successfully established itself already. We are now down to either teaching or talking to a wall. Ya gotta know when to cut your losses. Since religion is seen as a standard for morality by most, you will never fully get rid of its influence and since you can never fully get rid of its influence.......well you see where I am going.

Thats the thing, its not necessarily a fight to eradication.  Not all credible scientists are atheists or agnostic (like my self), many find a balance between rational discourse and metaphysical pursuits (my former supervisor is a great applied geologist and has received several professional honors, yet is also deeply religious, he just seems to try to reconcile the two and read the Bible with his scientific learning as a guide).  Even the Catholic Church and several other Christian bodies seem to have reconciled the idea of evolution (to varying extents) with their beliefs.  The only ones who have to fear science wiping them off the face of the earth are fundamentalists who believe in a literal reading of the bible, and they've been on a slow decline for centuries.