Brain food and eye candy for evolutionists

Sorry. I don't pre-order. Not even Harry Potter.

Let us know when it's out.

"Sinodelphys, a 125 million year old marsupial"

You know, she doesn't look a day over 120 million.

I heard some creationists (old-earth, by chance) claim that instead of evolution being true, god comes along and randomly inserts life into the ecosystem at very specific points. The one said that the type of evidence presented doesn't strictly support evolution and therefore evolution has no evidence. I finally decided to tell them, "If your so-called god inserts life at various points in time, it's only because he made the environment kill them off. You'd THINK he'd be able to program them well enough to live past a few simple ice ages and what not. Or was it the devil killing off all the creatures with his evil, evil ice?"

Is there any evidence to refute their claim, though? I'm no biologist, so I have no idea.

this is Sinodelphys, a 125 million year old marsupial. You're already drooling, aren't you?

I'll stick with beef and chicken, thank you.

I can't wait for the animated movie!

I am drooling, thanks. Looks tasty. I think he'd be wonderful with some gravy and biscuits in the morning. Just like squirrel.

@Kyle: No you can't disprove something like this. Its a silly meaningless argument that can neither be proven nor disproved. The claim of an all powerful god who mucks with the evidence to make it look like evolution cannot be disproved, but its meaningless. If god works so hard to make it look perfectly like evolution occurred how is it any different from evolution occurring? Wouldn't it just be easier to "create" evolution? When someone gives you an argument like this walk away and bang your head on a rock, far more effective than arguing with them.

PZ is being very kind. Don Prothero spent two years researching and writing this book, I spent 3 months doing about 30 illustrations (out of almost 200) for it while also completing other jobs. I received a copy from the publisher today and it's a truly beautiful book worthy of Don's hard work and eloquent words.

this is Sinodelphys, a 125 million year old marsupial. You're already drooling, aren't you?

Is this marsupial served with white wine or red?

Can they be stir fried?

I was beginning to worry about Olduvai George, what with not being updated for 8 months.

I'm glad that you're still with us and that it has been a productive haitus.

I heard some creationists (old-earth, by chance) claim that instead of evolution being true, god comes along and randomly inserts life into the ecosystem at very specific points.

It is superstitious nonsense. The creos make up and circulate lies amonst themselves to reassure each other that their older lies are true. Naturally propping up lies with more lies is a loser game.

One old guy told me that we couldn't be related to chimps because only humans have a 4 chambered heart. The reality is that all mammals and birds have a 4 chambered heart which a 30 second internet search would have shown.

These people have no interest in reality or the truth.

The one said that the type of evidence presented doesn't strictly support evolution and therefore evolution has no evidence.

The theory is amass in evidence after 150 years of productive research. Because of the activities of creationists and their insistence that new species doesn't appear, there are ready made collections of major evidence to be found.

The problem in a happenstance meeting would be that pointing to a an easy accessible source to back you up isn't the best argument in the here and now. So it would be a good thing to familiarize yourself with the material, and pick one group of evidence that attracts you. (And so hopefully others.)

[We must always train in some matter or other. There is a new breed of creationist spawned, that you can catch outright lying (and happily confessing to it) on the web. I had forgotten how to spell "liar", it had been quite a while since I had to last time... :-P]

For myself, I fancy the easy to picture phenomena that "common descent" gives new species (for example by populations who gets split up and separated). Speciation in turn makes for branching lineages of heritable traits (characters) through time. In other words, the bush of life.

In this case I would point to these lineages, say the branching bush of horse evolution. (See the last figure.)

If the conversation permits I would probably also later point out that this is a predictive theory as scientific theories must be. For example, Tiktaalik was a tetrapod that paleontologists predicted traits, age and type of geological layer (from predicted habits) to find it in, from their knowledge of already discovered lineages.

They then went out and made the find based on the prediction. (See Wikipedia for a decent article.) A creationist could not do that from his "random insertions".

god comes along and randomly inserts life into the ecosystem at very specific points.

Referring to the branching bush of lineages, a creationist would have to explain how to insert life without breaking the smooth development that each of these lineages represent.

But it isn't just measuring characteristics of fossils that makes a problem for such a creationist, in the very likely case that he dismiss fossils.

By comparing related now living species, say horses with donkeys and zebras, the genomes shows the same relationships that the branching fossil lineages makes. Creationist insertions would show up here too, by large collections of randomly thrown together genes. They would stand out against the naturally related ones.

Lastly, I would ask that creationist why we would accept an added "just so story" without any evidence whatsoever to clumsily straitjacket a perfectly working predictive theory? We don't do that in science, and by Occam's razor or sheer good judgment we wouldn't do that anywhere else either.

Of course, comparing troy's and raven's approaches, that seems to be the best way over all. In that case, I have another suggestion, have a "creationist rock" handy in a pocket for later head banging.

May I inquire if anybody has made such a product? I would fancy a thick latex cover to avoid cuts, chipping of the rock, and easy cleaning of blood, toil, tears and sweat. And a stylized Darwin fish on opposite sides.

Perhaps also a companion rock to throw away to alleviate frustration. Or perhaps not, it would be awfully tempting to use it as an argument...

I had a Sinodelphys for a pet once. Those things have voracious appetites and they bite like pit bulls -- I still have the scars on my ankles from those needle-like teeth.

Seriously, I watched Carl meticulously painting the thing, and even having seen him work on it, I'm still amazed at how WONDERFUL it looks.

...

Troy, goshdangit, I say you darned well CAN disprove the existence of gods. You can do it so well that there's no room for practically-meaningful doubt. And it's so easy kids can do it.

People get hung up on the forms of strict logic and they constantly forget that there is a TESTING GROUND for the results of formal logic which comes into play after you observe the forms: the real world. Logic is a tool for understanding the mechanisms of thought and reality; it is not the determinant of either.

Without tediously working your way through a careful collection of syllogisms, you came to KNOW that there was no Santa Claus. The guy commonly described in the western myth of Santa -- not only does he not exist, he never existed, and never can exist. You KNOW it.

You can achieve the same understanding of the nonexistence of gods. To me, it is easily reasonable to say that every god I ever heard of does not exist, never existed, and never can exist. Every god claim you put through the mill of formal logic fails so spectacularly that it's absurd to keep the door open to the dotting of that last rational "i" - that formal logic demands you remind yourself "you can't prove a negative."

I say you can prove negatives all day long. You take the specific fantastic claim that someone makes, and you show that it can't be true in the real world. Whether it is that they can't support it with any reasonable evidence, that the claim is logically impossible or internally contradictory, that it flies in the face of masses of other things already known, that the mystical jargon they're using has no meaning outside the deliberately-undefinable religious linguistic set they're using, or that it was impossible for that person, in any real-world way, to definitively speak of the attributes of the being they're so persistently asserting the existence of, you can show that they're just spouting nonsense.

Refusing to take the next REASONABLE step, to say confidently that there are no such things as gods, to forever back away from it with the caveat, "well, you can't prove a negative," gives the parasitic fantasists a constant beachhead in our minds.

It's like there's a Coliseum of Logic, and Christians constantly expect their opponents to step in there to face the lions, but they refuse to do it themselves. We help them out by honorably demanding it of ourselves - but we let them off when it comes to the same stern test. I say it's time to stop being so goddamned reasonable, to demand that THEY troop into that vicious arena too. The proof that gods don't exist is right there in the lame, baseless, self-contradictory, arrogantly impossible claims made for them.

Gods don't exist. They never did. They never can. And we all KNOW it.

I heard some creationists (old-earth, by chance) claim that instead of evolution being true, god comes along and randomly inserts life into the ecosystem at very specific points.

This is also Bad Theology as well. Who are these OEC's to say what god is doing? New prophets? Talking to a burning bush again? Bolts of lightening out of the sky?

Generally people who claim to know what god wants are either carted off to the looney bin or made high church officials or designated prophets. Or elected president of the USA.

For strict fundie literalists, these claims would be looked at suspiciously. What bible verses cover this one?

These people don't know their religion or Book any better than they know their reality, truth, or biology. They don't care about that either.

For the 20% that believe anything including that the sun orbits the earth, what can you do but shrug and hope they don't have any critical type of job.

Wonderful, yet another book I would do absolutely anything to have, yet cannot get because if any of my family found it among my possessions I would be grilled at best and excommunicated at worst.

... if any of my family found it among my possessions I would be grilled at best and excommunicated at worst.

C Murdock, you're their family, but are they yours? Sounds like it's time to trade up. :D

This is also Bad Theology as well. Who are these OEC's to say what god is doing?

Good point. If I speculate about the shape of God's nose, that would be considered absurd and non-biblical. But if I venture that he steps in every few million years and does a bit of re-engineering, I'm a defender of the faith.

Another illustrated book on evolution that seems to be worth a look is:

"EVOLUTION" by Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu.

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Jean-Baptiste-Panafieu/dp/1583227849

"Unprecedented in its approach, the number and diversity of the species presented, and the quality of the photographs, Evolution is the book on how we came to be what we are. Spectacular, mysterious, elegant, or grotesque, the skeletons of the vertebrates that inhabit the earth today carry within them the imprint of an evolutionary process that has lasted several billion years. This book is the result of a dual approach, scientific as well as aesthetic, rigorous yet accessible. Each chapter is made up of a short text that illuminates one theme of the evolutionary process-repetition, adaptation, polymorphism, sexual selection-and a series of exquisitely composed photographs of skeletons against a black background. Approximately three hundred photographs of whole skeletons or details have been made possible by the French National Museum of Natural History. The reader learns, by experiencing each text and photograph together, how the structure of every creature has been shaped by its environmental and genetic inheritance."

I would like to add that Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu apparently has a series of illustrated books for young people that are apparently not translated, like "Sur les traces de Charles Darwin". Maybe someone here knows a publisher that might be interested. They would be good xmas gifts.

You can find a list over at Amazon Canada.

http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/701-3313286-5024339?initialSearch=1…

Wonderful, yet another book I would do absolutely anything to have, yet cannot get because if any of my family found it among my possessions I would be grilled at best and excommunicated at worst.

Posted by: C Murdock | October 19, 2007 12:56 AM

Having personal experience, and knowing many who've come from your position, I would suggest that, in the long run, you'd be happier for it. If your family is that way, that they'd have naught to do with you over that book, they'll get you sooner or later for something because you can NEVER make people like that happy. It's impossible.

The reality is that all mammals and birds have a 4 chambered heart

And the crocodiles have a 4-chambered one with a valve between two of the chambers. How transitional of them.

Tiktaalik was a tetrapod

Um... no, not quite. :-)

I almost have more respect for YEC's that old earth anti-evolutionists. At least the Ken Hams of the world have an internally consistent story. I often ask ID types who do believe in the real age of the earth and the fossil record why is it so unreasonable for science to assume then that every animal that existed had a mother?

... if any of my family found it among my possessions I would be grilled at best and excommunicated at worst.

That isn't even Bad Theology, it is just wrong. Salvation is by faith alone or faith + good works depending on what part of the NT you read. Another major inconsistency in the inerrant book.

Those few fundies that claim one cannot accept reality and evolution and be a Xian are simply rewriting the religion and scripture without any justification whatsoever. In the old days, that would be considered heresy. These days it is considered merely stupid and evil.

"Sinodelphys, a 125 million year old marsupial"

You know, she doesn't look a day over 120 million.

I was going to say 125 million years YOUNG.

Is the title an intentional parody of the old Duane Gish YEC book Evolution: The Fossils say No! ?

Beautiful! Drooled and ordered.

ALWAYS nice to see the artwork of talented people figuring prominently in helping to bring the past back to immediacy, to life.

We want MORE...We want MORE...We want MORE...

<>

Since it probably tastes like chicken, white wine or perhaps a nice rosé.

And the dish must be served with pocket bread.

okay - slightly off-topic question: I love how you/Scienceblogs/Great Web Spirit provided links to multiple booksellers. Is this a plugin and/or how can I get this functionality for my very own?

Not a plugin, just a piece of boilerplate text template that I tweak with grep for each new book. This is it:

<i>TITLE</i>^{<span style="font-size: 9px;">(<a href="http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ISBN/pharyngula-20" target="_new" title="buy this book at amazon">amzn</a>/<a href="http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=41505966&bfpid…" target="_new" title="buy this book at barnes&noble">b&n</a>/<a href="http://www.dpbolvw.net/click-1772498-9836638?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abebo…" target="_new" title="buy this book at abebooks">abe</a>/<a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=30010&cgi=product&isb…" target="_new" title="buy this book at Powells">pwll</a>)</span>}

I just past that in, do a case sensitive search-and-replace for "ISBN" and insert the actual ISBN, and it's done. Note that this code has MY affiliate/partner information in it, so if you use it, all your book sales will fill my coffers rather than yours -- you'll have to adjust it a little.

Whew. That got uglified in translation.

Tiktaalik was a tetrapod

Um... no, not quite. :-)

D'oh! Thanks.

Thanks, P.Z. It's an incredibly useful tool. You should get someone with Scienceblogs to package it as a plugin (I don't have the programming skills, unfortunately) and offer it to all their bloggers.

PS - love the blog. Read yours and Ed Brayton's religiously (pun fully intended).

Very Nice and informative blog..

The one said that the type of evidence presented doesn't strictly support evolution and therefore evolution has no evidence.

The theory is amass in evidence after 150 years of productive research. Because of the activities of creationists and their insistence that new species doesn't appear, there are ready made collections of major evidence to be found.

The problem in a happenstance meeting would be that pointing to a an easy accessible source to back you up isn't the best argument in the here and now. So it would be a good thing to familiarize yourself with the material, and pick one group of evidence that attracts you. (And so hopefully others.)

[We must always train in some matter or other. There is a new breed of creationist spawned, that you can catch outright lying (and happily confessing to it) on the web. I had forgotten how to spell "liar", it had been quite a while since I had to last time... :-P]

For myself, I fancy the easy to picture phenomena that "common descent" gives new species (for example by populations who gets split up and separated). Speciation in turn makes for branching lineages of heritable traits (characters) through time. In other words, the bush of life.

In this case I would point to these lineages, say the branching bush of horse evolution. (See the last figure.)

If the conversation permits I would probably also later point out that this is a predictive theory as scientific theories must be. For example, Tiktaalik was a tetrapod that paleontologists predicted traits, age and type of geological layer (from predicted habits) to find it in, from their knowledge of already discovered lineages.

They then went out and made the find based on the prediction. (See Wikipedia for a decent article.) A creationist could not do that from his "random insertions".

god comes along and randomly inserts life into the ecosystem at very specific points.

Referring to the branching bush of lineages, a creationist would have to explain how to insert life without breaking the smooth development that each of these lineages represent.

But it isn't just measuring characteristics of fossils that makes a problem for such a creationist, in the very likely case that he dismiss fossils.

By comparing related now living species, say horses with donkeys and zebras, the genomes shows the same relationships that the branching fossil lineages makes. Creationist insertions would show up here too, by large collections of randomly thrown together genes. They would stand out against the naturally related ones.

Lastly, I would ask that creationist why we would accept an added "just so story" without any evidence whatsoever to clumsily straitjacket a perfectly working predictive theory? We don't do that in science, and by Occam's razor or sheer good judgment we wouldn't do that anywhere else either.

Of course, comparing troy's and raven's approaches, that seems to be the best way over all. In that case, I have another suggestion, have a "creationist rock" handy in a pocket for later head banging.

May I inquire if anybody has made such a product? I would fancy a thick latex cover to avoid cuts, chipping of the rock, and easy cleaning of blood, toil, tears and sweat. And a stylized Darwin fish on opposite sides.

Perhaps also a companion rock to throw away to alleviate frustration. Or perhaps not, it would be awfully tempting to use it as an argument...

The reality is that all mammals and birds have a 4 chambered heart

And the crocodiles have a 4-chambered one with a valve between two of the chambers. How transitional of them.

Tiktaalik was a tetrapod

Um... no, not quite. :-)

Tiktaalik was a tetrapod

Um... no, not quite. :-)

D'oh! Thanks.