Darwin’s death, April 19, 1882

We shouldn’t get out of April 19 — a day marked by significant historic events through the past couple hundred years — without remembering that it is also the anniversary of the death of Darwin.

Charles Darwin in 1881, portrait by John Collier; after a Collier painting hanging in the Royal Society

Immortality?  Regardless Darwin’s religious beliefs (I’ll argue he remained Christian, thank you, if you wish to argue), he achieved immortality solely on the strength of his brilliant work in science. Of course he’s best known for being the first to figure out that natural and sexual selection worked as tools to sculpt species over time, a theory whose announcement he shared with Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently arrived at almost exactly the same theory but without the deep evidentiary backup Darwin had amassed.

But had evolution turned out to be a bum theory, Darwin’s other works would have qualified him as one of the greatest scientists of all time, including:

Darwin’s theory set out a sequence of coral reef formation around an extinct volcanic island, becoming an atoll as the island and ocean floor subsided. Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

US Geological Survey graphic demonstrating how coral atolls form on the sinking remains of old volcanic sea mounts, as Darwin described. Wikimedia commons image

• World’s greatest collector of biological samples:  During his five years’ voyage on HMS Beagle, Darwin collected the largest collection of diverse plant and animal life ever by one person (I believe the record still stands); solely on the strength of his providing actual examples to the British Museum of so much life in so many different ecosystems worldwide, before he was 30 Darwin won election to the Royal Society.  (His election was engineered partly by friends who wanted to make sure he stayed in science, and didn’t follow through on his earlier plan to become a preacher.)
• Geology puzzle solver:  Coral atolls remained a great geological mystery.  Sampling showed coral foundations well below 50 feet deep, a usual limit for coral growth.  In some cased old, dead coral were hundreds of feet deep.  In the South Pacific, Darwin looked at a number of coral atolls, marvelous “islands” that form almost perfectly circular lagoons.  Inspired partly by Lyell’s new encyclopedic review of  world geology, Darwin realized that the atolls he saw were the peaks of volcanic mounts.  Darwin hypothesized that the volcanoes grew from the ocean floor to the surface, and then the islands were colonized by corals.  The round shape of the volcano gave the atoll its shape.  Then the volcanic mounts eroded back, or sank down, and corals continued to grow on the old foundations.  It was a perfectly workable, natural explanation for a long-standing geologic puzzle.  (See Darwin’s monograph, Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs.)
• Patient watcher of flowers:  Another great mystery, this time in biology, concerned how vines twined themselves onto other plants, rocks and structures.  Darwin’s genius in designing experiments shone here:  He put a vine in his study, and watched it.  Over several hours, he observed vine tendrils flailing around, until they latched on to something, and then the circular flailing motion wrapped the tendril around a stick or twig. Simple observation, but no one had ever attempted it before.  (See On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants.)
• Champion of earthworms, and leaf mould:  Darwin suspected the high fertilizer value of “leaf mould” might be related to the action of earthworms.  Again, through well-designed experiments and simple observation, Darwin demonstrated that worms moved and aerated soil, and converted organic matter into even richer fertilizer. (See The Formation of Vegetable Moulds Through the Action of Worms.)
• Creation of methodological science:  In all of this work, Darwin explained his processes for designing experiments, and controls, and made almost as many notes on how to observe things, as the observations themselves.  Probably more than any other single man, Darwin invented and demonstrated the use of a series of processes we now call “the scientific method.”  He invented modern science.

Any of those accomplishments would have been a career-capping work for a scientist.  Darwin’s mountains of work still form foundations of geology and biology, and are touchstones for genetics.

Born within a few hours of Abraham Lincoln on February 12, 1809, Darwin survived 17 years longer — 17 extremely productive years.  Ill through much of his life with mystery ailments, perhaps Chaga’s Disease, or perhaps some other odd parasite or virus he picked up on his world travels, Darwin succumbed to heart disease on April 19, 1882.

More:

• Some recent Darwin in the news… (thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com)
• Why is Darwin more famous than Wallace? (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• The “On the Origin of Species” author dies on this day in 1882. (commuteresources101.wordpress.com)
• Coral atoll where giant tortoises outnumber man 10,000:1 (terradaily.com)

 

Darwin Day, around the cyber world

Phantasmagorical art at Pharyngula:

Colorful Darwin rendering, from Pharyngula

P.Z. mentions that James Randi joins the celebration of Darwin Day at Broward College.

Digital Cuttlefish wrote a poem about Darwin – the usual brilliant Cuttlefish rhymes.

Panda’s Thumb reports on the special Darwin Day issue of Cell Reports.  Read down, you’ll find another post on a series of posts explaining evolution for average people, at BioLogos.  A great idea for Darwin Day, or any day.

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy reported on the progress of the resolution in Congress to declare Darwin Day, and other matters.

Talk Nerdy To Me at Huffington Post carries a light little post of Darwin trivia.

Evolve, will ya?

Happy Darwin Day 2013! How to celebrate?

Darwin on Shakespeare: “I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.” (The Quote Blog) In the photo, Utah Valley University Prof. Daniel Fairbanks shows off a bust of Darwin he has sculpted while lecturing about evolution (Fairbanks is the son of sculptor Avard Fairbanks, and an accomplished sculptor himself.)

What to do for Darwin Day, and Evolution Sunday, and Darwin Week?

Wasatch Brewery’s Evolution Amber Ale. Is this still being brewed in Salt Lake City?

• Make a clay bust of Darwin — see photo above.
• Send a Darwin Day e-card to your friends, courtesy of the American Humanist Association!
• Find Darwin Day events here.
• Can you find a preacher preaching on Evolution Sunday, near you?
• Do you know a teacher who teaches evolution well?  Call or write to thank them.  Heaven knows they need the support.
• Join the National Center for Science Education.
• Add Panda’s Thumb to your blogroll. No blog?  Well, at least bookmark the site.
• Read some Darwin.  You can start here, or here, or here,  with Origin of Species.  I recommend buying the book — better to make notes on.
• Oh, I’m also partial to his paper on the origins of coral atolls, and his paper on the work of earthworms.  Darwin was one helluva polymath.
• Ponder the significance of Darwin’s and Lincoln’s having been born on the exact same day, February 12, 1809, within a few hours of each other.
• In Dallas?  Pay a visit to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science; look at the exhibits showing evolution, especially the T. Boone Pickens Life Then and Now exhibit.
• Call your Texas state representative in Austin, and tell her or him, “Just evolve, will you?”  Time to move on and do the right things for education and science.
• In Salt Lake City?  See if you can track down a bottle of Wasatch Brewery’s Evolution Amber Ale.  Are they still making that delightful quencher?

The Darwinian student’s after dinner dream. Harper’s Weekly, December 23, 1871; artist not identified; copyright Harper’s Weekly and HarpWeek

More:

• Tomorrow Is Darwin Day for 2013 (sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com)
• 7 surprising facts about Charles Darwin (mnn.com)
• BOOK: Darwin: A Graphic Biography (thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com)
• Church-state separation group to celebrate Darwin’s life (kansas.com)
• It’s the right time for Congress to recognize Darwin (secularnewsdaily.com)
• Get to Know Darwin (thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com)
• Atlanta City Council Issues Proclamation in Honor of Charles Darwin (patheos.com)
• 10 fun facts about Darwin (neatorama.com)

Especially on his birthday, don’t call Darwin racist — he wasn’t

Creationists, Intelligent Design proponents, and several other anti-science and historical revisionist groups come unglued every February about this time — February 12 is Charles Darwin’s birthday.  He was born in 1809, on the exact same day as Abraham Lincoln.

Part of creationists’ coming unglued revolves around that fact that the science behind evolution grows stronger year by year, and at this point no argument exists that creationists can make against evolution that has not been soundly, roundly and thoroughly.  This makes creationists nervous in a discussion, because even they recognize when they lose arguments.   Creationists don’t like to lose arguments about how well Darwin’s theories work, because they erroneously believe that if Darwin is right, God and Jesus are wrong.

God and Jesus cannot be wrong, in their view, but intellectually they see they are losing the argument, and they grow desperate.  In their desperation they grasp for claims that shock uneducated or unfamiliar viewers.  Since about 1970, among the more shocking arguments one can make is to claim one’s opponent is racist.

Claiming Darwin, and hence evolution, boost racism, slaps history with irony.  Creationism’s roots were in denying that Europeans and Africans are evolutionarily equal, a claim necessary to allow slave holders to enslave Africans and go to church on Sundays.  The Civil War is 150 years away, the Emancipation Proclamation 148 years old, and even die-hard creationists generally have forgotten their own history.

Creationists accuse Darwin of being a racist, they claim evolution theory is racist, and they claim, therefore, it cannot be scientifically accurate.  There are a lot of holes in that chain of logic.

This is Darwin’s birthday.  Let me deal with major wrong premise, and give creationists room to correct their views with accurate history, so we don’t have a shouting match.

Way back in 2008, nominally-liberal evangelical preacher Tony Campolo got suckered in by a conservative evangelicals claim to him that evolution and Darwin are racist.  Below is my answer to him then — I think Campolo learned his lesson — but this builds on the claims Campolo made which are really copied from creationists.

In short, Darwin is not racist, and here are some explanations why, with a few updated links and minor edits for Darwin’s birthday, and Lincoln’s birthday, in 2013:

Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a sociology professor and preacher who for the past 15 years or so has been a thorn in the side of political conservatives and other evangelicals, for taking generally more liberal stands, against poverty, for tolerance in culture and politics, and so on. His trademark sermon is an upbeat call to action and one of the more plagiarized works in Christendom, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming” (listen to it here).

Tony Campolo, in a publicity still from his website. He should be more gray by now (this photo is no later than 2008, and probably earlier).

Since he’s so close to the mainstream of American political thought, Campolo is marginalized by many of the more conservative evangelists in the U.S. Campolo is not a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcast Network, on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” nor on the white, nominally-Christian, low-budget knock-off of “Sabado Gigante!,” “Praise the Lord” (with purple hair and everything).

Campolo came closest to real national fame when he counseled President Bill Clinton on moral and spiritual issues during the Lewinsky scandal.

His opposite-editorial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer back in 2008, “The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” is out of character for Campolo as a non-conservative evangelistic thinker — far from what most Christians expect from Campolo either from the pulpit or in the college classroom. The piece looks as though it was lifted wholesale from Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, showing little familiarity with the science or history of evolution, and repeating canards that careful Christians shouldn’t repeat.

Campolo’s piece is inaccurate in several places, and grossly misleading where it’s not just wrong. He pulls out several old creationist hoaxes, cites junk science as if it were golden, and generally gets the issue exactly wrong.

Evolution science is a block to racism. It has always stood against racism, in the science that undergirds the theory and in its applications by those scientists and policy makers who were not racists prior to their discovery of evolution theory. Darwin himself was anti-racist. One of the chief reasons the theory has been so despised throughout the American south is its scientific basis for saying whites and blacks are so closely related. This history should not be ignored, or distorted.

Shame on you, Tony Campolo.

Lincoln and Darwin, born hours apart, February 12, 1809

Is it an unprecedented coincidence?  204 years ago today, just minutes apart according to unconfirmed accounts, Abraham Lincoln was born in a rude log cabin on Nolin Creek, in Kentucky, and Charles Darwin was born into a wealthy family at the family home  in Shrewsbury, England.

Gutzon Borglum’s 1908 bust of Abraham Lincoln in the Crypt of the U.S. Capitol – Architect of the Capitol photo

Lincoln would become one of our most endeared presidents, though endearment would come after his assassination.  Lincoln’s bust rides the crest of Mt. Rushmore (next to two slaveholders), with George Washington, the Father of His Country, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and Theodore Roosevelt, the man who made the modern presidency, and the only man ever to have won both a Congressional Medal of Honor and a Nobel Prize, the only president to have won the Medal of Honor.  In his effort to keep the Union together, Lincoln freed the slaves of the states in rebellion during the civil war, becoming an icon to freedom and human rights for all history.  Upon his death the entire nation mourned; his funeral procession from Washington, D.C., to his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, stopped twelve times along the way for full funeral services.  Lying in state in the Illinois House of Representatives, beneath a two-times lifesize portrait of George Washington, a banner proclaimed, “Washington the Father, Lincoln the Savior.”

Charles Darwin statue, Natural History Museum, London – NHM photo

Darwin would become one of the greatest scientists of all time.  He would be credited with discovering the theory of evolution by natural and sexual selection.  His meticulous footnoting and careful observations formed the data for ground-breaking papers in geology (the creation of coral atolls), zoology (barnacles, and the expression of emotions in animals and man), botany (climbing vines and insectivorous plants), ecology (worms and leaf mould), and travel (the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle).  At his death he was honored with a state funeral, attended by the great scientists and statesmen of London in his day.  Hymns were specially written for the occasion.  Darwin is interred in Westminster Abbey near Sir Isaac Newton, England’s other great scientist, who knocked God out of the heavens.

Lincoln would be known as the man who saved the Union of the United States and set the standard for civil and human rights, vindicating the religious beliefs of many and challenging the beliefs of many more.  Darwin’s theory would become one of the greatest ideas of western civilization, changing forever all the sciences, and especially agriculture, animal husbandry, and the rest of biology, while also provoking crises in religious sects.

Lincoln, the politician known for freeing the slaves, also was the first U.S. president to formally consult with scientists, calling on the National Science Foundation (whose creation he oversaw) to advise his administration.  Darwin, the scientist, advocated that his family put the weight of its fortune behind the effort to abolish slavery in the British Empire.  Each held an interest in the other’s disciplines.

Both men were catapulted to fame in 1858. Lincoln’s notoriety came from a series of debates on the nation’s dealing with slavery, in his losing campaign against Stephen A. Douglas to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate.  On the fame of that campaign, he won the nomination to the presidency of the fledgling Republican Party in 1860.  Darwin was spurred to publicly reveal his ideas about the power of natural and sexual selection as the force behind evolution, in a paper co-authored by Alfred Russel Wallace, presented to the Linnean Society in London on July 1, 1858.   On the strength of that paper, barely noticed at the time, Darwin published his most famous work, On the Origin of Species, in November 1859.

The two men might have got along well, but they never met.

What unusual coincidences.  Today is the first day of a year-long commemoration of the lives of both men.  Wise historians and history teachers, and probably wise science teachers, will watch for historical accounts in mass media, and save them.

Go celebrate human rights, good science, and the stories about these men.

Resources:

Charles Darwin:

• Darwin 200
• About Darwin.com; links to Darwin texts online
  
• On the Origin of Species online
• C. Warren Irvin Collection of Darwin and Darwiniana, University of South Carolina

Abraham Lincoln:

• Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
• Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
• Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College (Galesburg, Illinois)
• Lincoln Digitization Project at Northern Illinois University

More:

• 7 surprising facts about Charles Darwin (mnn.com)
• Birthday Boys: Abie and Charlie (psychologytoday.com)
• On Feb. 12, should Darwin get his day? (richarddawkins.net)
• Tomorrow Is Darwin Day for 2013 (sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com)
• Darwin: Geologist First and Last (blogs.scientificamerican.com)

Anybody know what hour of the day either of these men was born?

This is mostly an encore post.

Time machine! For Digital Learning Day

Screen shot from HHMI’s iPad app, Earth Viewer — the time machine function.

Stealing the entire post from P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula:

I’ve been playing with it for a while. It turns out that when you go back to Cretaceous Morris, you need to be able to swim really well, but Cambrian Morris is high and dry on a fairly small landmass (whoa, but oxygen is way down and carbon dioxide way up). You can have your own time machine, too — it’s the EarthViewer app for iPad, and it’s free from HHMI Here’s what it has:

• Data and continental reconstructions dating back billions of years

• Climate and carbon dioxide data for the last 100 years

• The ability to manipulate the globe and zoom to any location

• Track the location of modern cities back over 500 million years

• In depth features on major geological and biological events in Earth history

• Clickable details on geologic eons, eras, and periods

• Automated play modes

• An extensive reference list

• Suggestions for classroom use

• Tutorial videos

Did I mention that it’s free? This HHMI thing is pretty danged sweet.

There is no creationist/Noah’s Flood version.

No Windows version, yet, either.

Did we mention the Howard Hughes Medical Institute made this and related apps free?

December 27, Great Beginnings Day: Darwin, Apollo

December 27 is one of those days — many of us are off work, but it’s after Boxing Day, and it’s not yet on to New Year’s Eve or Day. We should have celebrated, maybe.

We should celebrate December 27 as a day of portent: A good embarkation, and a good, safe end to a nation-encouraging trip to almost touch the Moon.

HMS Beagle, on a voyage of discovery

On December 27, 1831, Charles Darwin and H.M.S. Beagle set sail on an around-the-world voyage of discovery that would change all of science, and especially biology, forever.

December 27 1831
After a few delays, H.M.S. Beagle headed out from Plymouth with a crew of 73 under clear skies and a good wind. Darwin became sea-sick almost immediately.

Darwin never fully overcame his seasickness, but he fought it well enough to become the single greatest collector of specimens in history for the British Museum and British science, a distinction that won him election to science societies even before his return from the trip — and cemented his life in science, instead of in the church. Darwin’s discoveries would have revolutionized biology in any case. In analyzing what he had found, a few years later and with the aid of experts at the British Museum, Darwin realized he had disproved much of William Paley’s hypotheses about life and its diversity, and that another, more basic explanation was possible. This led to his discovery of evolution by natural and sexual selection.

Mini-sheet from the Royal Mail in 2009 honoring Darwin’s discoveries in the Galapagos Islands

On December 27, 1968, Apollo 8 splashed down after a successful and heartening trip to orbit the Moon. The three crewmen, Commander Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders, had orbited the Moon, a very important milestone in the methodological race to put humans on the Moon (which would be accomplished seven months later). 1968 was a terrible year for the U.S., with the North Korean capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo, assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy during the presidential campaign, riots in dozens of American cities, nasty political conventions with riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, a contentious and bitter election making sore the nation’s divide over Vietnam policy, and other problems. On Christmas Eve, Borman, Lovell and Anders broadcast from orbit around the Moon, a triumphant and touching moment for the Apollo Program and Americans around the world. Their safe return on December 27 raised hopes for a better year in 1969.

Motherboard.tv has a great write up from Alex Pasternack:

In 1968, NASA engineers were scrambling to meet President Kennedy’s challenge to land a man on the moon by decade’s end. Because delays with the lunar module were threatening to slow the Apollo program, NASA chose to change mission plans and send the crew of Apollo 8 all the way to the moon without a lunar module.

Exactly 43 years ago, the three astronauts of Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit another celestial object. As they came around the dark side of the Moon for the third time, Frank Borman, the commander, finally turned their capsule around. And then they saw the Earth.

Borman: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.
Anders: Hey, don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.
Borman: (laughing) You got a color film, Jim?
Anders: Hand me that roll of color quick, will you…

One of the resulting photos taken by Anders on a Hasselblad camera became one of the world’s most iconic images.

As Bill Anders recalls it:

I just happened to have one with color film in it and a long lens. All I did was to keep snapping… It’s not a very good photo as photos go, but it’s a special one. It was the first statement of our planet Earth and it was particularly impressive because it’s contrasted against this startling horizon… After all the training and studying we’d done as pilots and engineers to get to the moon safely and get back, [and] as human beings to explore moon orbit, what we really discovered was the planet Earth.

Plan to raise a glass today, December 27, 2012, to Great Beginnings Day for the human race. December 27 is a day we should remember, for these achievements.

Also on December 27:

• 1927 – “Show Boat” with music by Jerome Kern and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City (AP)
• 1932 – Radio City Music Hall opened for the first time, with a stage that, to me, looks like an old radio (AP)
• 1945 – The World Bank was formed under the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, a key part of world finance structure following World War II
• 1949 – Indonesia gained independence in a grant from Queen Juliana of the Netherlands; Netherlands had ruled Indonesia for three centuries

Adapted from a post from 2010.

More:

• 44 Years Ago Today: Apollo 8′s Historic Broadcast from the Moon on Christmas Eve in 1968 (launiusr.wordpress.com)
• With a view from beyond the moon, an astronaut talks religion, politics and possibilities (seattletimes.com)
• Apollo 40 years on: how the moon missions changed the world for ever (guardian.co.uk)

Happy Origin of Species Day! (November 24)

Tomorrow, November 24, 2012, marks the 153rd anniversary of a day that quietly changed all of science, should have changed much of theology, and brought much of the world into the future, though many people don’t know it yet.

It’s a Saturday this year — so let’s be a day early, to get informed and involved the people who don’t check their calendars on the weekends.

On November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin’s book was published, On the Origin of Species.

Title page, 1859 edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species – image from the University of Sydney via Wikimedia image

How to celebrate?  You could read a summary of Ernst Mayr’s shorthand version of Darwin’s theory, and understand it really for the first time  (I hope not the first time, but there are a lot of people who really don’t understand what Darwin said — especially among critics of evolution):

Darwin’s theory of evolution is based on key facts and the inferences drawn from them, which biologist Ernst Mayr summarised as follows:^[3]

• Every species is fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce the population would grow (fact).
• Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size (fact).
• Resources such as food are limited and are relatively stable over time (fact).
• A struggle for survival ensues (inference).
• Individuals in a population vary significantly from one another (fact).
• Much of this variation is inheritable (fact).
• Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce; individuals more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future generations, which produces the process of natural selection (inference).
• This slowly effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species (inference).

Charles Darwin’s 1837 sketch, his first diagram of an evolutionary tree from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837) on view at the the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Interpretation of handwriting: “I think case must be that one generation should have as many living as now. To do this and to have as many species in same genus (as is) requires extinction . Thus between A + B the immense gap of relation. C + B the finest gradation. B+D rather greater distinction. Thus genera would be formed. Bearing relation” (next page begins) “to ancient types with several extinct forms.”  Wikimedia image

This is mostly an encore post — hey, it’s a history blog — with tips of the old scrub brush justified to Larry Moran and P. Z. Myers, and especially Eugenie Scott and the National Center for Science Education.

More:

• The Origin of Darwinism: Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species ebook (guardian.co.uk)
• World’s youngest species (bbc.co.uk)
• Charles Darwin’s insurance documents found by RSA (telegraph.co.uk)
• Was Charles Darwin the world’s most emo scientist? (mnn.com)
• Visualizing Origin of the Species (ritholtz.com)
• Now that’s a tee-shirt! (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• A history of the theory of evolution through natural selection (guardian.co.uk)
• Charles Darwin gets 4,000 write-in votes in Georgia election (mnn.com)
• Creationism and Vitalism (sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com)
• Carl Zimmer wins Kavli Science Journalism Award
• From NCSE:
• NCSE offers a free preview in .pdf of Rudolf A. Raff’s Once We All Had Gills (Indiana University Press, 2012)
• NCSE’s Joshua Rosenau’s invited essay “Science Denial: A Guide for Scientists” was published in Trends in Microbiology 2012;20(12):567-569.

 

Steve Schafersman, Texas State Board of Education District 15

District 15 for the Texas State Board of Education covers 77 counties in Texas’s northern Panhandle.  It’s oil (Midland), cotton, Texas prairie and small towns, and lots of schools, and some surprisingly good colleges and universities.

Texas State Board of Education District 15, TFN image – “District Overview
District 15 is huge, covering all of northwestern Texas. It is also arguably the most Republican SBOE district, giving more than 74 percent of the vote to Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election and more than 70 percent to Gov. Rick Perry in the 2010 gubernatorial race.”

It’s a district where science plays a big role, and should play a bigger one.  The 15th includes those lands in Texas where the Dust Bowl got started, where unwise plowing based on inaccurate readings of climate contributed to one of the greatest man-made natural resources disasters in all of history.  It’s the home of Texas Tech University, where members of the chemistry faculty created a wine industry based on the chemistry of grape selection and fermentation, and where geologists learn how to find oil.

This area leads Texas in wind power generation, a considerable factor in the state that leads the nation in wind power generation.

In short, science, engineering and other technical disciplines keep this area economically alive, and vital at times.

Of the two candidates, Democrat Steve Schafersman is a scientist, and a long-time, staunch defender of science education (what we now cutely call “STEM” subjects:  Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).  If the race were decided by a test in STEM subjects, Schafersman would be the winner.  Schafersman lives in Midland.

The GOP candidate in the race is religiously anti-science, Marty Rowley of Amarillo.  As a good-ol’-boy, former pastor, he’s got a lot of support from the usual suspects.  Rowley’s views on science, technology, engineering and mathematics run contrary to the business and farming interests of his entire district.  Do his supporters look to the future?

Do you vote in Midland, Lubbock, Amarillo, Dalhart, Abilene, San Angelo, Dallam County, Tom Greene County, Cooke County or Montague County?  You need to vote for Steve Shafersman.  Do your children a favor, do your schools a favor, and do your region of Texas a favor, and vote for the guy who works to make education good.

Shafersman is the better-qualified candidate, and probably among the top two or three people with experience making the SBOE work well, in the nation.  He deserves the seat, and Texas needs him.

More:

• Texas SBOE 2012 Election: Schafersman v. Rowley (sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com)
• Texas Freedom Network Insider, “Texas Ed Board candidate advocates teaching creationism in science classrooms”
• Texas GOP candidates support creationism, posting of Ten Commandments in school rooms, contrary to law, science, and reality
• Shake-up possible for state board (mywesttexas.com)
• Evolution tops State Board of Education debate topics (amarillo.com)
• Providing accurate science, history information top priority for state education candidate (mywesttexas.com)
• Potential new faces on the Texas education board (star-telegram.com)
• Ideas for school vouchers are up in the air (gosanangelo.com)
• Democratic candidates Sadler, Schafersman in Abilene today (reporternews.com)
• Views vary for State Board of Education candidates (mywesttexas.com)

Steve Schafersman campaign flier:

Schafersman for Texas State Board of Education District 15 – click image for larger version

Creationism vs. Christianity (a reprise)

This is an encore post, a repeat post from about four years ago, back in 2008.  For some reason the post got a couple hundred hits one day this past week, probably from a reference at another blog that I could not track.  I reread it — still true, still good stuff.  In this campaign year of 2012, I am dismayed at how anti-science and the denial of reality haunts election discussions, especially on-line, but also in the newspapers and magazines, on television and radio, in diners and drugstore fountains, in churches and PTA meetings.  Denial of reality may or may not be a genuine ailment to humans.  When it becomes a core belief of a significant number of people, denial can cripple our nation, our states, cities and towns. We need to ask deep questions.  We need to have real answers, not fantasies nor dangerous delusions.

Charles Darwin’s study, where he conducted experiments and made many of the observations he wrote about. Photo: PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Denying reality plagues us as an actual political response to several problems.  Denialists wander so far down paths of disreality, they argue that we should ignore serious problems, and that the problems will then go away.

Should we teach the science of evolution to our children, or should we pretend fairy tales will substitute?  This has deep meaning to those who understand that Charles Darwin’s greatest contribution to science probably was his strict methodology, which required observation of things in nature before writing about them as if authoritative.  Early in his life Darwin recognized that the natural world he saw, in Brazil, in the Galapagos Islands, in Australia and Tasmania, in South Africa, bore little resemblance to the world portrayed as authoritative by the great William Paley in his Natural Theology.  Throughout his science career Darwin observed real things in real time.  For his monograph on coral atolls, Darwin extensively observed the volcanic island phenomena throughout the South Pacific.  To write about barnacles, Darwin raised them in tanks in his study.  Looking at the mystery of exactly how the ivy twines, Darwin put a plant before him, and watched it, unraveling the secrets of how tendrils “knew” what to latch onto for support of the vine.  To write about leaf moulds, Darwin observed worms at work, in his lab and in his gardens.  To show the variation existing in what we now call the genome of a species, Darwin made extensive interviews and correspondence with animal husbanders of pigs, sheep and cattle, and he raised pigeons for generations himself, demonstrating how variations can be expressed that drive populations of one species to split into two through natural, everyday processes familiar to anyone who observed nature, and accessible by anyone who made methodical notes.

This familiarity with reality made Darwin a great scientist.  The methodology proved extendable into other areas when he carefully observed the mediums to whom his brother had cast great credence.  Charles revealed to Erasmus that spirit knocking on the tables at the séances did not occur so long as they held the hands of the mediums, who were then unable to feign the knocking.  Ultimately it provided some despair to Darwin:  In the face of criticism from William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, that the Earth was not old enough to allow for evolution as Darwin suggested it must have occurred, Darwin had no answer.  Lord Kelvin calculated the ages of the Earth and Sun to be no more than 200 million years.  This was shown by the present temperatures and color of the Earth and the Sun, and calculated by Lord Kelvin from how long it would take the Earth, known to be composed of much iron and nickel, to cool from white hot to current temperatures.  Lord Kelvin ventured deep into coal mines to measure the temperatures of the Earth deep underground, to confirm his calculations.  At his death, though he defended his own observations of fossils and breeding of live animals, Darwin had no response for those arguments.  Darwin thought there must be other forces at play.  Only some years later did Ernest Rutherford find the secret of the Earth’s heat:  Radioactive decay in the mantle and core of the planet keeps it warm.  Measures of heat loss for such a large body had not accounted for continuous heating from within.  A short while later astronomers and physicists discovered problems with Lord Kelvin’s calculations of the age of the Sun:  The Sun is not composed of iron, cooling from white hot temperatures, but instead is hydrogen, fusing into helium, and making its own heat.

Darwin’s calculations of the age of the Earth were more accurate than Lord Kelvin’s, based on Darwin’s crude calculations of how long it might take animals and plants to have evolved from much more primitive forms.  History demonstrated by easily observable things provided greater accuracy than history devised without benefit of grounding in reality.

In what other realms might grounding in reality produce answers different from what some expect, even producing better questions that many ask?  Should we consider the migratory pattern changes of birds, fish and mammals, as indicators of a warming climate, over rebuttals provided by untested claims that measuring stations might not be placed correctly?  Can we actually “cool” atoms with lasers, and use individual atoms to store information, no matter how counterintuitive that might sound?  Can it be true that teaching people about contraception, and about sex, actually prompts teenagers (and others) to reduce sexual activity and look for love, rather than just sex?  Does extending medical coverage to an entire population actually decrease total health care costs as observed in all other nations where that solution has been tried, or will it increase costs because the only way to reduce medical costs is to ration it, either with a bureaucracy, or by cutting off access by backdoor, death panel means testing (no money, no health care)?  Is there any place Arthur Laffer‘s “curve” of increasing tax revenues by cutting tax rates, actually does not work — or any place it actually works?  Has any society in history ever gotten rich by showering riches on the rich, and ignoring the poor, the merchants, and the working class?

In short, how does reality we know, inform us about reality yet to be?  Which is the more potent predictor, observed reality, or hoped-for results to the contrary?

Our future hangs on how we answer the question, probably more than what the answer actually is.

I believe Christians, the largest faith group in the U.S., have a duty to stand for reality, and truth discovered by observation.  That was the issue in 2008, too.

Here is my post of four years ago.  I noticed a few of the links no longer work; I’ll replace them with working links as I can.  If you find a bad link, please note it in comments; and if you have a better link, note that, too.

Several weeks ago [in 2008] I responded to a lengthy thread at Unreasonable Faith.  The original post was Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” cartoon of the guy in a doctor’s office, just diagnosed with an infection.  The physician asks the guy if he’s a creationist, explaining that if he is, the doc will treat him with old antibiotics in honor of his belief that evolution of bacteria doesn’t occur.

Point being, of course, that evolution occurs in the real world.  Creationists rarely exhibit the faith of their claims when their life, or just nagging pain, is on the line.  They’ll choose the evolution-based medical treatment almost every time.  There are no creationists in the cancer or infectious disease wards.

At one point I responded to a comment loaded with typical creationist error.  It was a long post.  It covered some ground that I’ve not written about on this blog.  And partly because it took some time to assemble, I’m reposting my comments here.  Of course, without the Trudeau cartoon, it won’t get nearly the comments here.

I’ll add links here when I get a chance, which I lacked the time to do earlier.  See my post, below the fold.

Louisiana plans to use vouchers to teach creationism

News from the National Center for Science Education — I get e-mail, and it’s probably best to pass it along quickly, unedited, except for links in the text of the article, and the photo of Zack Kopplin, which I added:

VOUCHERS FOR CREATIONISM IN LOUISIANA?

Louisiana is about to spend almost twelve million dollars to fund the teaching of creationism, charges Zack Kopplin, famous for organizing the effort to repeal the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act. In Kopplin’s sights now is a controversial new voucher program in the state that uses public school funds to pay for tuition and certain fees at private schools for students who attend low-performing public schools and whose family income is below 250% of the federal poverty level. When the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education considered a set of accountability guidelines for such private schools at its July 24, 2012, meeting, Kopplin testified that of the roughly 6600 spaces available for students under the program, 1350 will be filled, as the Lafayette Independent Weekly(July 26, 2012) described it, “at private Christian schools that teach creationism and peg evolution as ‘false science.’”

Zack Kopplin, brave teen fighting for good science education in Louisiana

According to the Alexandria Town Talk (July 25, 2012), “A number of the schools on the voucher list teach creationism, a doctrine that holds that God created all life out of nothing, and either don’t mention the theory of evolution or teach that it is false science. State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education [BESE] policy on teaching science requires that public schools teach what is in textbooks but they can supplement with BESE-approved material to promote ‘critical thinking’ on alternatives to evolution.” Superintendent of Education John C. White told the newspaper that BESE had approved the curriculum for all of the schools. “Not teaching evolution could show up in the required state testing for students receiving vouchers, he said, and there could be repercussions ‘if a school shows a fundamental disregard’ for conducting the test.”

Writing earlier in the New Orleans Times-Picayune (July 18, 2012) about Kopplin’s research on the private schools expected to receive new students through the voucher program, columnist James Gill commented, “It is impossible to prepare fully for such a massive reform as going voucher, and some undeserving private schools are bound to receive an OK from harried state officials. But a religious takeover on this scale cannot be accidental. Of the schools on Zack Kopplin’s list, one believes that scientists are ‘sinful men,’ and declares its view ‘on the age of the earth and other issues is that any theory that goes against God’s word is in error.’ Another avers that evolution is ‘extremely damaging to children individually and to society as a whole.’ A third tells students to write an essay explaining how ‘the complexity of a cell shows it must be purposefully designed.’ And so it goes.”

The creationist instructional material used by such schools include textbooks from Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books — which were described by the University of California system in the ACSI v. Stearns case as “inappropriate for use as primary texts in college preparatory science courses due to their characterizations of religious doctrine as scientific evidence, scientific inaccuracies, failure to encourage critical thinking, and overall un-scientific approach” — and Accelerated Christian Education. A textbook from ACE that argued against evolution on the grounds that the Loch Ness monster not only exists but also is a living plesiosaur (incorrectly described as a dinosaur) understandably attracted the attention of The Scotsman (June 25, 2012) and was widely ridiculed nationally and internationally.

The voucher program is presently under legal challenge from the Louisiana Association of Educators and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers along with a number of local school boards. But the issue of the state’s funding the teaching of creationism is not part of the challenge. Rather, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune (July 10, 2012) explained, “Two key issues are at play in the voucher suit: whether providing private schools with money from the Minimum Foundation Program violates the [Louisiana state] constitution by redirecting those funds from public schools, and whether a last-minute vote setting the new MFP formula in place received enough support in the state House to carry the force of law.” The state will be allowed to implement the voucher program while the challenge works its way through the court system, the newspaper reported.

For the article in the Lafayette Independent Weekly, visit:
http://www.theind.com/news/11055-kopplin-state-paying-116m-to-schools-teaching-creationism

For the article in the Alexandria Town Talk, visit:
http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20120725/NEWS01/120725003/Louisiana-vouchers-going-mainly-church-affiliated-schools

For James Gill’s column in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, visit:
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/07/vouchers_are_a_creationists_be.html

For NCSE’s collection of material from ACSI v. Stearns, visit:
http://ncse.com/creationism/legal/acsi-v-stearns

For the article in The Scotsman, visit:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/odd/loch-ness-monster-cited-by-us-schools-as-evidence-that-evolution-is-myth-1-2373903

For the article on the challenge to the voucher program in the New
Orleans Times-Picayune, visit:
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/07/judge_denies_injunction_in_vou.html

And for NCSE’s previous coverage of events in Louisiana, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/louisiana

With all the troubles Louisiana has, with rebuilding from storms, a dysfunctional food distribution system, a dysfunctional health care distribution system, clean up from the Gulf oil spill of 2010, and erosion problems especially in the Gulf bordering parishes, why is Louisiana wasting time and brain power on creationism?

More information:

• Funding Fundamentalism: Student documents Louisiana voucher subsidy for Creationism (secularnewsdaily.com)
• In Louisiana, the Governor’s Voucher Program Could Send $11,000,000 to Creationism-Endorsing Schools (patheos.com)
• Stop Governor Jindal’s Creationist Voucher Program – Zack Kopplin – Repealing the Louisiana Science Education Act (richarddawkins.net)
• Creationists in Louisiana Win State Funding (dianeravitch.net)
• LA Voucher Students Taught Creationism, Climate Change Denial, and Bigotry (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Louisiana Legislator Was For School Vouchers, Until She Remembered That Muslims Exist (towleroad.com)
• What Will it Take to Get New Orleans Times-Picayune Owner to Sell? (theatlanticwire.com)
• Is Louisiana the future of Georgia’s education system? (blogs.ajc.com)
• When Youth Get Involved (dianeravitch.net)
• 98% of Eligible Students Say No to Vouchers ” Diane Ravitch’s blog (educationclearinghouse.wordpress.com)

Creationists, lay off Nessie (part 2)

Nessie replica in Scotland. Or, a replica of what that drunk guy claimed he saw. Based on a sketch the police wouldn’t use. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dave Does the Blog agreed, and pointed the way to Slacktivist, a blog on issues of faith and lack of faith, who also agree that creationists ought to change their tune:  The Loch Ness Monster doesn’t belong in science textbooks, especially as a claim against evolution theory.

We soaked this idea a bit here at the bathtub a couple of days ago.

Slacktivist points out that the Nessie claim is taught in schools funded with public money.  Your tax dollars at work, parents, teachers and politicians, teaching your children that Nessie is real.

What constitutes real science evidence, for creationism? Looking west as Nessie marches up 6th Avenue on a sunny early afternoon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What about monsters under the bed?  Does the text claim they contradict evolution, too?

Related articles

• American Children Taught Nessie is Real (gizmodo.co.uk)
• Louisiana Elementary School Teaches Loch Ness Monster Refutes Darwin (jdjournal.com)
• Loch Ness monster proves Darwin wrong (freethinker.co.uk)
• Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution (boingboing.net)
• Fundamentalist Schools Using “Nessie” To Disprove Evolution (idle.slashdot.org)

Christians, call on this publisher to repent

What would Jesus do in a case like this?

In order to question evolution theory, a publisher claiming to be Christian, publishing books to be used in nominally Christian schools that get charter school funds, claims that the Loch Ness Monster is real.  Why?

[Loch Ness Monster = dinosaur] + [Alive with humans] = [Falsification of evolution theory]

Like Dave Barry, we could not make this stuff up.  It’s too lunatic for fiction.

Here’s the story, from Scotsman.com (not “true Scotsman,” of course) (links added):

Loch Ness monster cited by US schools as evidence that evolution is myth

The Loch Ness monster: Used as evidence that evolution is myth*

By CLAIRE MCKIN
Published on Monday 25 June 2012 14:05

THOUSANDS of American school pupils are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real – in an attempt by religious teachers to disprove Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Pupils attending privately-run Christian schools in the southern state of Louisiana will learn from textbooks next year, which claim Scotland’s most famous mythological beast is a living creature.

Thousands of children are to receive publicly-funded vouchers enabling them to attend the schools – which follow a strict fundamentalist curriculum.

The Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme teaches controversial religious beliefs, aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.

Youngsters will be told that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man, then Darwinism is fatally flawed.

Critics have slammed the content of the religious course books, labelling them “bizarre” and accusing them of promoting radical religious and political ideas.

One ACE textbook called Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc reads: “Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence.

“Have you heard of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.”

Another claim taught is that a Japanese whaling boat once caught a dinosaur.

One former pupil, Jonny Scaramanga, 27, who went through the ACE programme as a child, but now campaigns against Christian fundamentalism, said the Nessie claim was presented as “evidence” that evolution could not have happened.

He added: “The reason for that is they’re saying if Noah’s flood only happened 4,000 years ago, which they believe literally happened, then possibly a sea monster survived.

“If it was millions of years ago then that would be ridiculous. That’s their logic. It’s a common thing among creationists to believe in sea monsters.”

Private religious schools, including the Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, Louisiana, which follows the ACE curriculum, have already been cleared to receive the state voucher money transferred from public school funding, thanks to a bill pushed through by Republican state governor Bobby Jindal, a Hindu convert to Catholicism.

Boston-based researcher and writer Bruce Wilson, who specialises in the American political religious right, said: “One of these texts from Bob Jones University Press claims that dinosaurs were fire-breathing dragons. It has little to do with science as we currently understand. It’s more like medieval scholasticism.”

Mr Wilson believes that such fundamentalist Christian teaching is going on in at least 13 American states.

He added: “There’s a lot of public funding going to private schools, probably around 200,000 pupils are receiving this education.

“The majority of parents now home schooling their kids are Christian fundamentalists too. I don’t believe they should be publicly funded, I don’t believe the schools who use these texts should be publicly funded.”

And you wonder why kids turn out like they do?

Christians, you may disagree with evolution theory, or Darwin’s findings and the work of 10,000 other scientists, but do you want to perpetrate bald-faced hoaxes to defend your disagreement?  Call on the publisher to change the book.  Spreading falsehoods is the wrong way to go about getting at the truth.

_____________

*  Yes, that’s the photo that’s been debunked a dozen times, a dozen ways.  Whatever it is a photograph of, it is not the Loch Ness Monster.

More, and Related articles

• Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution (boingboing.net)
• Fundamentalist Christian Textbook Uses Nessie To Disprove Evolution (patheos.com)
• Loch Ness monster proves Darwin wrong (freethinker.co.uk)
• Fundamentalist Schools Using “Nessie” To Disprove Evolution (idle.slashdot.org)
• Louisiana Elementary School Teaches Loch Ness Monster Refutes Darwin (jdjournal.com)
• Weird Science: Taxpayer-funded religious schools in Louisiana teach monstrously bad biology (secularnewsdaily.com)
• In Louisiana schools, ‘Nessie’ is real, evolution is myth (sfgate.com)
• American Fundamentalist Schools Seek To Disprove Evolution Using Loch Ness Monster (techie-buzz.com)
• At Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:
  • Critics of evolution will damage the economy of Texas and the Nation, Tyson says
  • Fred Flintstone waded here:  Hoaxsters ready to teach creationism to Texas kids
  • Dangers of creationism:  Synapse shutdown
  • Peppered Moths
  • Dembski’s blog caught hoaxing again
  • Fearful IDists can’t meet ethics challenge in Dallas
  • Inherently dishonest:  Creationism
  • Twisting recent history (creationism), 2
  • Twisting recent history (creationism), 1

Is Fox News a barrier to further evolution of humans?

Rob Rogers, cartoonist with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has an answer:

3,756

Tip of the old scrub brush to Devona Wyant.

Michael Pollan at TEDS: What do potatoes think of us?

Pollan asks a provocative question:  Do we force plants to do our bidding when we breed them, or are we being manipulated by them?

Pollan is the author of Botany of Desire, a great book.  There is a PBS production based on the book.