Jay L. Wile's Blog, page 31
June 22, 2017
André Marie Ampère: A Fascinating Genius and Devout Christian
André Marie Ampère, the genius who helped us understand the connection between electricity and magnetism.
I recently finished the final book in my elementary science series. It is called Science in the Industrial Age , and it covers the major scientific advancements that occurred in the 1800s. While I was writing it, I had to research the lives of the men and women who were responsible for those advancements. Many of their stories are fascinating, and I hope to write about more of them (and the others I researched while writing the other books). For this blog post, however, I want to focus on the person from the 1800s whom I found most interesting: André-Marie (ahn’ dray muh ree’) Ampère (ahm pehr’).Ampère was born into a wealthy French family, which meant that he could have received the best education money could buy. However, his father wanted him to learn on his own. His father never required him to learn anything, but he inspired his son to want to learn. You might say that Ampère was “unschooled.” According to a friend that knew him well, unschooling seemed to work for him. Ampère read all the volumes of the encyclopedia in his father’s library, starting with the first volume and reading in alphabetical order. He also read extensively on natural philosophy (science).
Unfortunately, his life was marred with three serious tragedies. His sister died when he was 17. The next year, his father was executed as a result of the French Revolution. This hit him particularly hard. He had no more interest in learning, and some of his friends thought that he had lost all reason. Then he discovered Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Letters on the Elements of Botany, and he was pulled from his intellectual lethargy. He later fell in love with and married a woman named Julie, but she died only a few years later.
Despite these terrible tragedies, Ampère was a devout Christian his entire adult life. When his wife died, he wrote two verses from the Book of Psalms and the following prayer:1
O Lord, God of Mercy, unite me in Heaven with those whom you have permitted me to love on earth.
In 1804, Ampère helped to form a group called the Société Chrétienne (Christian Society). Each member was a scholar, and each was given the task of producing a statement about the Christian faith. Ampère was tasked with writing about rational evidence that supports Christianity. While his statement was never officially published, it was included in Claude Alphonse Valson’s biography of Ampère, which was published in 1886. It includes a very interesting argument:2
All modes of proof combine in favor of Christianity. To see the truth, the metaphysician needs only to examine the manner in which the divine religion simultaneously explains the grandeur and the baseness of man, and the idea it gives us of the relations of God with his creatures and of the intentions of Providence.
Why can man mentally embrace all the centuries if he was limited to an existence of a few years? Why, if he was born for the highest destinies, do his penchants bend him, almost everywhere and at all epochs, under the shameful yolk of the most vile passions?
In Ampère’s mind, only Divine Creation followed by the Fall of Man can explain how man is mortal but can still understand the past and contemplate eternity. In addition, those two events are the only way of explaining why people are both wonderfully rational and morally vile.
When his health began to fail him, he was cared for by one of his friends, Emile Deschamps. His close friend, François Arago, said that his last words were spoken while Deschamps was reading The Imitation of Christ, a devotional book written in the 15th century. According to Arago, Ampère said that he knew the book by heart, and then he died.3
These days, of course, Ampère is not known for his Christianity. Instead, he is remembered for his incredible contributions to our understanding of electricity and magnetism. He demonstrated that two wires carrying electricity would attract or repel one another with a magnetic force, depending on the direction the electricity was flowing in each. He developed an equation, called Ampère’s Law, which allows you to calculate the magnetic field produced by electrical current. He was also the first to explain that all magnetism (even what is found in a permanent magnet) is the result of moving electrical charges. The standard unit of electrical current is named after him, but it is usually abbreviated as “amp.”
While his scientific accomplishments were great, he never lost sight of the reason he was put on earth. When writing to a young scientist, for example, he cautioned the man to keep his perspective:4
Write with only one hand! Hold tightly with the other to God’s raiment like a child clinging to his father’s cloak!
I think everyone who writes would benefit from Ampère’s advice.
REFERENCES
June 19, 2017
Can Courses Taken in Junior High Be Included on a High School Transcript?
Me and Savannah, a scientist in the making!
I just got back from Ontario, California, where I spoke at the California Homeschool Convention. I gave a total of five talks over the three-day conference, and I had the chance to speak with lots of homeschooled students and their parents. Several wonderful things happened at the conference, but the highlight for me is pictured above.
On Friday, a young lady named Savannah came up to my publisher’s booth and asked if I was Dr. Wile. I said yes, and she proceeded to tell me that she loved my biology textbook and planned to major in biology at university. I tried to express how much that meant to me, and then she hesitantly asked if I would sign her copy of my book. I said, “Of course!” She didn’t have it with her, but she promised to bring it the next day. Late into the convention on Saturday, she returned with her book, and when she handed it to me, she said, “This is my favorite book in the entire world!”
I had no idea what to say to that. While a lot of students tell me that they love my textbooks, and many of them have also said that my textbooks have inspired them to study science at university, I have never had anyone tell me that one of my books is their favorite book in the entire world! I have lots of favorite books, and none of them are science-related! Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of science-related books that I really love, but I wouldn’t list any of them as my favorites. When I think of my favorite books*, I think of fictional works like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (my all-time favorite series), The Lord of the Rings, and Armageddon’s Children. Not a single science-related book comes to mind. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed by Savannah’s words.
Even though that was the conversation I will never forget, I did speak to many other people. One homeschooling mother came to my publisher’s booth very concerned. She told me that her child was bright and was way ahead of where he “should be.” I stopped her right there and tried to dispel the notion that a student “should be” anywhere at a given age. We are all individual creations of God, and we all have our strengths and our weaknesses. The only place we “should be” when it comes to learning is to be learning more.
She went on to say that this presents a problem for her. He will technically be in 7th grade next year, but he will be taking Algebra 1. I told her that was wonderful and said she might consider having him do my biology course, because for most students, it pairs very well with Algebra 1. This seemed to frustrate her, and she asked if that wouldn’t just mess thinks up even more. I asked her what she meant, and that’s when we hit the heart of the matter: She was worried about her son’s high school transcript. She thought it would look weird if it didn’t include things like Algebra 1 and biology.
This mother’s misconception is common enough that I decided to share my answer with all my readers, hoping they will share it with others: When it comes to including a subject on a high school transcript, the age of the student is not important. The only thing that matters is the level of the course. If it is truly a high-school-level course, it should be included on a high school transcript, regardless of when the course is taken. A complete Algebra 1 course, for example, is universally recognized as a high-school-level course. Thus, it should be included on the transcript, even if the student takes it when he or she is in elementary school!
But how do you actually do this? It depends on how you organize your transcript. Some transcripts, like this one, are arranged chronologically. If that’s how you are doing your transcript, simply add a section prior to the one that covers the freshman year. Title it, “High School Courses Taken Early as Part of an Accelerated Program.” This will tell the person reviewing the transcript that your student was advanced (compared to the average university-bound student) and took some high-school-level courses before he or she was technically in high school.
The other way you can do it is to arrange your transcript by subject instead of chronologically, like this one. When you arrange your transcript this way, the age at which the student took the course doesn’t even come into play. Both types of transcripts are common, so anyone who reviews transcripts will be familiar with both. Use whichever one makes you the most comfortable.
The main point is that you should never hold your student’s progress back. You shouldn’t try to artificially accelerate your student’s advancement, either. You should help your student find the pace that challenges but doesn’t overwhelm. That’s the “sweet spot” of learning. Don’t worry about transcripts or “running out” of things to cover in later years. Allow your student to learn at his or her own pace, and you will be doing significantly better than the vast majority of schools!
Note added later: A commenter on my Facebook page brought up the fact that the NCAA has specific requirements for students wanting to play in college sports. If your student is thinking of doing that, get their transcript toolkit.
June 15, 2017
Radioactive Half-Lives Not Affected by Earth/Sun Distance
The international symbol for radiation, which is also known as the trefoil.
Several years ago, data came out of Purdue University, indicating that the half-lives of some radioactive substances are affected by the distance between the earth and the sun. Despite the fact that most scientists thought there were problems with the experiment, the group continued to publish pretty convincing data supporting their case. Based on their data, I thought their conclusion was well-founded. However, it looks like they (and I) were wrong.I first noted that there might be a problem with their conclusion over two years ago, when other researchers tried to duplicate their results using a more precise technique. They found small changes (significantly smaller than the Purdue group) and no indication that those changes were correlated with the distance between the earth and the sun. Since then, two more papers have been published that pretty much seal the case that the Purdue results were wrong.
The first paper comes from NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since NIST is responsible for all sorts of standards, several of their groups monitor radioactive isotopes for extended periods of time. They are also concerned with precision, so their procedures are focused on making sure there are no outside influences acting on their experiments.
Their paper reports on the results of experiments carried out in 14 laboratories across the world. A total of 24 different radioactive isotopes were studied, including those that decay by alpha emission, beta emission, electron capture, and positron emission. Some experiments covered “only” 200 days, but others covered four decades! Eleven different experimental techniques were used. All of the experiments saw very small variations (less than one-hundredth of one percent), and none of them saw any correlation between those tiny variations and the distance between the earth and the sun. In addition, the variations were different from experiment to experiment, so the most likely explanation for them is variation in the instruments that were used.
While the NIST paper obviously makes a strong case that the Purdue results are not real, I think a more recent paper gives us the final word. The authors used the same detection technique as the Purdue researchers, but they performed the experiment in a sealed chamber that had constant pressure, humidity, and temperature. They studied five radioactive isotopes for over a year, and like the NIST teams, they saw only small variations that were not correlated with the distance between the earth and the sun. This indicates that whatever the Purdue researchers saw was related to changing weather conditions, not changing radioactive half-lives.
While it would have been exciting for radioactive half-lives to be dependent on the distance between the earth and the sun, it almost certainly isn’t the case.
June 12, 2017
More Evidence that A Baby in the Womb is Fully Human
Two images from a 4d ultrasound (click for credit)
Dr. Jermoe L. LeJeune was the brilliant geneticist who first demonstrated that there is a link between certain diseases and corresponding chromosomal abnormalities. While testifying before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee in 1989, he said:
To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a matter of metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.
Almost thirty years have passed since he made this statement, and the scientific evidence continues to support it.
Nearly seven years ago, I wrote about a study of twins in the womb. The study indicated that social interaction takes place prior to birth when the opportunity arises. Later on, I wrote about another study that indicates that if our understanding of brain networks is correct, babies actually think about the future while in the womb!
I recently learned about a new study that adds even more evidence to the ever-growing pile which indicates that babies are fully human while they are inside the womb.
To appreciate what the study says, however, you need a bit of background information. Experiments that have occurred over the past 20 years indicate that newborn infants have a preference for images that look like faces. In fact, the image doesn’t even have to be a face for a newborn to be interested in it. The image just has to have the proportions of a face. Even a triangle of dots with two dots at the top (representing eyes) and one dot at the bottom (representing a mouth) is more engaging to a newborn infant than the same image turned upside-down so that the “eyes” and “mouth” are in the wrong place compared to a face.
One question, of course, is when does this preference begin? When the baby first sees his or her mother? When the baby is first born? Before the baby is born? Until recently, it was impossible to answer that question. However, Vincent Reid and his colleagues figured out a way. They took advantage of the fact that light travels through a mother’s tissues and into the womb. Not a lot of light makes it through, and the mother’s tissues distort it. However, the way light travels through such tissues is very well understood. Reid and his colleagues used this understanding to determine what pattern of lights to shine on the mother’s skin so that, when it reached the baby in her womb, it would look like a triangle composed of three dots.
They then took ultrasound images of 39 babies inside the womb and analyzed how the babies responded to the patterns of light as they were moved across the mother’s skin. They found that the babies inside the womb had pretty much the same response as babies outside the womb. They weren’t interested in following the triangle when it was arranged with two dots on the bottom and one dot on the top (relative to the babies’ position). However, when the triangle was arranged like a face, the babies turned their heads to follow the triangle’s movement. As the authors state:
These results indicate that the fetus in the third trimester is more likely to engage with stimuli featuring an upright face-like configuration when contrasted with an inverted configuration. We therefore conclude that postnatal experience is not necessary for the emergence of a preferential visual system for face-like stimuli.
As far as I am concerned, this is just one more piece of evidence that shows how unscientific it is to claim that a baby isn’t human while it is in the womb. Behaviors that are exhibited from the moment of birth (such as a preference for face-like patterns) are found in the womb when scientists look for them. There is simply no scientific reason to suggest that babies inside the womb are somehow “less human” than babies outside the womb.
Please note that it is not healthy for a baby in the womb to receive a lot of extra light. The lights used in this study were very dim and were calculated to be noticeable to the baby, but not bright. You should never shine lights on a mother’s skin to “stimulate” a baby.
June 8, 2017
A Study of Unschoolers
Idzie Desmarais, an unschooled speaker/blogger.
(Image from her Youtube channel)
Having spent most of my early career as a university professor, I was skeptical of unschooling. Over time, I have met several adults who were unschooled, and I am not nearly as skeptical as I once was. However, the scientist in me wants more than just a few anecdotes about unschooling. I want to see studies, and there haven’t been very many. One small study in Canada showed that while traditionally-homeschooled students were academically superior to their publicly-schooled peers, unschooled students (the study calls them “unstructured” homeschoolers) were academically inferior. The authors point out that their unschooling group was too small to make that conclusion statistically significant.
Of course, it’s not clear what “academically inferior” means when it is applied to unschoolers, because the goals of unschooling are rather different from the goals of public schools, private schoools, and traditional homeschools. Thus, I want to see a lot more studies of unschoolers. I would like to know more about the parents’ goals, the outcomes (academic and non-academic), and the adults that it produces. Fortunately, I recently stumbled across a study that was published four years ago, and it sheds some light on unschooling and those who practice it.
To my surprise, I learned that it was published in the The Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning. I did not know about this journal, so I will probably spend some time looking through its other articles. That might lead to more posts about unschooling. For right now, however, I would like to discuss this particular study, which is entitled “The Challenges and Benefits of Unschooling, According to 232 Families Who Have Chosen that Route.” As the title implies, this study focused on the experiences of families that identify themselves as unschoolers. It didn’t compare them to other families. It simply probed the thoughts of a reasonably-sized group of unschoolers.
Not surprisingly, one of the overall conclusions is that unschoolers are diverse. Indeed, the group couldn’t even agree on a definition of unschooling. In the end, the authors of the study split the group into three different categories, based on the level of student direction. 43.5% of the parents said that they were completely directed by the children. When the children asked about things, the parents eagerly taught them or helped them learn. Otherwise, the children were free to play and explore the world. 41.4% of them said that they offered a small amount of guidance, attempting to motivate the students to learn in specific situations. 15.1% were categorized as “relaxed homeschoolers.” In these families, the parents had some specific educational goals in mind, but they still mostly allowed the children to direct their own learning. I happen to know a promoter of relaxed homeschooling, Dr. Mary Hood, and I have appreciated her outlook and advice to homeschoolers.
Nearly 91% of the families had tried something else before unschooling. 43.5% had sent at least one of their children to school but became frustrated with certain aspects of that kind of education. 47.4% tried a more traditional approach to homeschooling first, but eventually developed a preference for unschooling. Most of the unschoolers studied were influenced by an author who promoted unschooling. The most popular authors were John Holt (a longtime proponent of unschooling), John Taylor Gatto (an award-winnning public school teacher who despises the American educational system), and Sandra Dodd (author of The Big Book of Unschooling). There were several authors mentioned, and I got two surprises from the list. First, Dr. Mary Hood (the “relaxed homeschooler” I know) was not on the list, and Dr. Susan Wise Bauer was. I also am acquainted with Dr. Bauer, and I get the distinct impression that she is not a fan of unschooling!
Of course, based on the title, you would expect some discussion of the challenges and benefits of unschooling. Not surprisingly, 43.5% said that overcoming the negative attitudes of extended family members, friends, and strangers was a big challenge. More surprisingly, 41.4% said that restraining their own culturally-ingrained desire to strongly direct their children’s education was an issue. They wanted to stay “true” to the unschooling method, even though at times they rebelled against it themselves! There were other challenges mentioned by study participants, including having difficulty finding like-minded individuals with whom they could share ideas and make friends.
What about the benefits? More than half thought that unschooling fit their children better than other methods, and more than half also said there were lots of emotional and social benefits. According to the authors:
They said that their children were happier, less stressed, more self-confident, more agreeable, and/or more socially outgoing than they would be if they were in school or being schooled at home.
The authors mentioned that most thought unschooling promoted better learning, but there wasn’t any specific mention about whether or not the parents thought their children were better off academically than other students. Of course, that’s probably not something the parents worry about. One of the more interesting bits in the study was a quote from a Master’s thesis that was written about ten years ago. The quote says:
If the criterion is happy children who grow into self motivated people with a love of learning – well then, yes, unschooling does work.
I haven’t read that thesis, so I am not sure how the author supports her statement. However, I do think it encapsulates the overall goal of many unschoolers.
Another thing I learned is that while there aren’t many studies on unschooled graduates, there are some who have taken it upon themselves to write about their experiences after being unschooled. Idzie Desmarais (pictured at the top of this post), for example, has a blog entitled “I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write.” Kate Fridkis has a blog that hasn’t been updated in a while. Peter Kowalke has made a documentary entitled Grown Without Schooling, and he writes for Life Learning Magazine. I plan to spend time with these resources in an attempt to better understand unschooling.
So do I think unschooling is a good thing? I suspect it is good for some people. There are probably children who would thrive in an unschooling format, and there are probably others who would never learn much of anything. As always, I think that the parents are the best qualified people to make such a decision – not the government, not the “educational establishment,” and certainly not me! Most parents (not all!) are motivated by love for their children, and most of the time, I think that they will make the best choices when it comes to their children’s future. I am discussing this study and these resources specifically so that parents can be better informed when making those choices.
June 5, 2017
No, Young-Earth Creationism Isn’t a “New” Idea
One of the books that John Murray (a 19th-century young-earth creationist) wrote on the subject of geology.
I spent this past weekend in Naperville, Illinois, speaking at the Illinois Christian Home Educators convention. It is a joy to do that convention, because not only are the attendees wonderful, the convention treats its speakers incredibly well. I gave a total of eight talks over three days, which is more than I do at most conferences. However, it was well worth it! As is always the case, I took a lot of questions from the audiences of those talks, but in this post, I want to focus on a question I got from someone while I was at my publisher‘s booth.A homeschooling father told me that he was taking my advice and reading the works of people with whom he disagreed. I commended him for doing that and said that I wish more people would. He then asked about a statement he read in a Biologos article. He didn’t quote the statement, but for the sake of my readers, I will:
Young-earth creationism is relatively new and as recently as a century ago even fundamentalist Christians saw little reason to reject evolution.
I told him that I had read a statement like that at least once before, but I knew that it was utterly false, so I really didn’t pay much attention to it. In addition, I assumed that since the statement is so easily refuted, it must not be very common. However, he said that he had read it in more than one place. Sure enough, when I later did some surfing, I found essentially the same statement at an old-earth creationist website as well.
Since there are at least two sources that make this claim, I thought I would write an article that shows how utterly false it is.
Obviously, young-earth creationism was the most common (but certainly not universal) view held among early church theologians. It was also the most common view held among early Christian natural philosophers (scientists). Boethius, for example, was an early Christian natural philosopher who gave us the idea that sound acts like waves. In his work, De Fide Catholica (On the Catholic Faith), he wrote that Noah’s Flood was real and killed all men save Noah and those he brought on the ark. Saint Albert, the 13th-century natural philosopher who was also called “Albert the Great,” tried to explain how the Global Flood happened.
This thinking continued through the 17th century. While Bishop Ussher (1581-1656) is best known for trying to calculate the actual date of creation, you might not realize that some famous natural philosophers of his time also tried to do just that. Johnannes Kepler (1571-1630), for example, formulated Kepler’s Laws, which give an empirical description of the planets’ orbits around the sun. He also attempted to use Scripture to determine how old the earth is. He decided that the world was created on April 27th, 3977 BC. The great Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), whose work still forms the basis of physics, didn’t assign a date, but he did calculate that the earth was created in 4000 BC.
So young-earth creationism can be traced from the beginnings of Christendom all the way to the 18th century. To say that it is a “new” concept is rather absurd. Of course, perhaps that’s not really what the Biologos and Reasons to Believe articles are saying. Perhaps they are saying that it fell out of favor starting in the 18th century, was pretty much wiped out of science by the 19th century, and then re-emerged as a “new” idea in the 20th century. However, even that is demonstrably false.
A few natural philosophers prior to the 18th century thought the earth was old. However, the one who is probably most credited for getting the majority of natural philosophers to consider an ancient earth was James Hutton (1726-1797). He made several arguments about specific rock formations as well as erosion that supported an ancient earth. His observations were careful and his arguments were good, so in the 18th century, many natural philosophers began studying the earth with the idea that it had existed for a lot longer than just a few thousand years.
While the tide of scientific thought did turn towards an ancient earth in the 18th century, there were still some natural philosophers who thought the earth was young. William Whiston (1667-1752), for example, wrote a book called A New Theory of Earth. It proposed a recent creation and a global flood. It was well received by Isaac Newton and John Locke. Abraham Werner (1749-1817) was probably one of the most well-respected earth scientists of his day. He did his work under the assumption of a global flood, and young-earth creationists of the time used his work as support for their view.
By the 19th century, the general consensus among geologists was that of an old earth. Nevertheless, there were geologists who continued to believe in a young earth and a global flood. They called themselves “Scriptural geologists,” and they published a wealth of work in the 19th century. While many of them were amateurs, some of them were geologists who had been published in the scientific literature. John Murray (1786-1851), for example, was a fellow in the London Geological Society and did a lot of original scientific research in the field of geology. He published geological works such as the book shown at the top of this post. He also wrote a book entitled, The Truths of Revelation: Demonstrated by an Appeal to Existing Monuments, Sculptures, Gems, Coins, and Medals. On pages 214 and 215 of that work, he quotes the Flood account from the Bible and then writes:
This description of a catastrophe, which is attested by universal consent of mankind, and confirmed by the testimony of geological phenomena, is though brief, a very circumstantial and explicit account.
Murray wasn’t the only practicing geologist who was a young-earth creationist during the 19th century. Others included George Fairholme (1749-1846), who did original research in geology and presented a geological paper at a German scientific meeting, George Young (1777–1848), the author of six geology articles published in the scientific literature, and William Rhind (1797–1874), who did original research in the field of geology and published books about that research.
Even in the 18th and 19th century, then, young-earth creationism was supported by some in the scientific community, including some who were knowledgeable in the field of geology. Does that mean it’s correct? Of course not! My only point is that it isn’t some “new” idea that has come about in the minds of modern Christians. It has been around since the beginning of Christendom, and anyone who says otherwise has not done very much reading about the history of science!
June 1, 2017
Another Journey from Atheism to Christianity
Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebreaker, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Western Sydney University (click for credit)
Two people recently shared with me a very interesting article written by Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebreaker, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Western Sydney University. It is entitled, “How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from atheism to Jesus,” and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. While I can’t speak for Oxford University, I am safe in saying that Dr. Peter Singer would not be happy with that title. He is a fervent atheist and a champion of the idea that some human lives have little or no value. I am sure that if he learned he helped “drive” a fellow atheist to Jesus, he would be more than a little annoyed.
How did he accomplish it? He gave three guest lectures at Oxford University, where Dr. Irving-Stonebreaker was a junior research fellow. At that time, she was an ardent atheist. She attended Dr. Singer’s lectures and was stunned by their content. Essentially, Dr. Singer believes that atheism tells us there is no intrinsic worth to human or animal life. An organism’s worth is contingent on the cognitive abilities of that organism. As a result, there are some animals (chimpanzees, for example) that have more worth than some humans (newborn infants and mentally disabled adults, for example). Dr. Irving-Stonebreaker writes:
I remember leaving Singer’s lectures with a strange intellectual vertigo; I was committed to believing that universal human value was more than just a well-meaning conceit of liberalism. But I knew from my own research in the history of European empires and their encounters with indigenous cultures, that societies have always had different conceptions of human worth, or lack thereof. The premise of human equality is not a self-evident truth: it is profoundly historically contingent. I began to realise that the implications of my atheism were incompatible with almost every value I held dear.
As a result of her “intellectual vertigo,” she began to explore avenues that she had never explored before, including theology. She began reading Dr. Paul Tillich and was attracted by the intellectual underpinnings of Christianity. However, she was not convinced.
How did she become convinced? Well, there were several things that nudged her to her Savior, but one of them was a bit surprising to me. She writes:
In the Summer of 2008, I began a new job as Assistant Professor at Florida State University, where I continued my research examining the relationship between the history of science, Christianity, and political thought. With the freedom of being an outsider to American culture, I was able to see an active Christianity in people who lived their lives guided by the gospel: feeding the homeless every week, running community centres, and housing and advocating for migrant farm laborers.
In other words, she looked at the lives of people who took their Christianity seriously, and she saw that there really was something different about them. They truly understood that all of God’s children are precious, and they showed it with their actions. Because of what she saw in these Christians’ lives, she began going to church. She was given C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece, Mere Christianity, and eventually came to Christ in the privacy of her home.
I have cataloged the conversion stories of several atheists over the years, but this one is particularly intriguing to me. For one thing, I have a lot of friends who aren’t Christian, and in general, they have a rather negative view of Christians. They seem to think that Christians are an evil (or stupid) lot intent on making this society a terrible theocracy. It is nice to read of an outsider who observed Christianity in America and came to the opposite conclusion. I want to believe that her observations are closer to reality than those of my friends.
The other intriguing aspect to this story is that in doing a bit of background research on Dr. Irving-Stonebreaker, I learned of a book she wrote. It is entitled Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire, and it won the Royal Society of Literature and Jerwood Foundation Award for Non-fiction. It explores the relationships between Christianity, the pursuit of the natural sciences, and the rise of the British Empire. I have purchased the book and hope to read it soon. If I find it to be as intriguing as it sounds, I will write a review of it here.
H/t to The GeoChristian and Sallie Borrink.
May 22, 2017
There is Hope
Three homeschool graduates who are planning to study chemistry at the university level.
On Saturday, I had the honor of addressing homeschool graduates at the 23rd annual Indiana Foundation for Homeschooling Statewide Graduation Ceremony. It was an excellent ceremony with great music, wonderful speeches from two of the graduates, and plenty of tradition. For me, however, it was more than that. Nowadays, it is easy to be pessimistic about the future of our nation (and the world in general). This graduation ceremony helped remind me that there is hope, and it rests squarely on the shoulders of graduates like those at the ceremony.
There were a total of 80 students who took part in the ceremony, and some of them did something in addition to walking across stage and getting their diploma. One graduate played a (very difficult) violin piece as a prelude to set the mood. The color guard was composed of graduates, and three other graduates led the audience in singing the National Anthem. Two of the graduates gave inspiring speeches, each with a different message. One graduate sang a solo, and another played an impressive piano solo. I gave a commencement address that is similar to one I have given before, and its message is very important to me.
While all of these activities made for an excellent ceremony, they weren’t what inspired my hope for this nation (and the world as a whole). That came from getting to know many of the graduates. A lot of homeschool graduations have only a handful of graduates, since they service a small region instead of an entire state. As a result, you can learn a lot about each individual graduate. Since there were so many graduates at this ceremony, that wasn’t possible. Nevertheless, when each graduate walked across the stage, the screen showed his or her name and whatever information that the graduate wanted to share with the audience.
Most of the graduates shared their future plans, and in some cases, they were very familiar. A handful of them wanted to become doctors or nurses, others wanted to be engineers, others wanted to be teachers, and one was attending the Coast Guard Academy and planned to have a career as an officer. As I told them in my commencement address, they will probably become leaders in those fields, since homeschool graduates are (on average) better educated than their publicly- and privately-schooled peers (see here and the links therein). It’s not surprising, then, that a higher-than-normal percentage of the students sported the cords of the National Honors Society.
However, many of the graduates had future plans that you wouldn’t see very often at a public or private school graduation ceremony. More than one of the young ladies shared that they wanted to be stay-at-home moms. While I don’t think every young lady should have that aspiration (and I think some men should consider being stay-at-home dads), I was pleased to see that these young ladies did. There is no more important task than raising a child properly, and I am glad to see that some dreamed of doing that. In addition, there were several graduates who planned to be pastors or missionaries, and there were some who planned to spend at least a few years on the mission field before doing something else.
There was even one brave young lady who shared that she was a survivor of Ewing’s sarcoma, which is a type of bone cancer. I freely admit that I teared up when I read that on the screen. After the ceremony, I wanted to tell her how much it meant to me that she would share that with the audience, but I couldn’t find her.
I did find a lot of the other graduates, or at least they found me. They told me about their experiences with one or more of my courses, which I always love to hear. Some of them also shared more details about their future plans. The three young ladies at the top of this post, for example, are all going to university to study chemistry. They have different plans for what they will be doing in that field, but they all credited my chemistry course for inspiring their future plans. I told them that it was simply impossible for me to express how much that means to me!
Seeing all the graduates’ future plans was part of what renewed my sense of hope. We need well-prepared students entering into the more “standard” professions like medicine and engineering, and I suspect that these homeschool graduates will meet that need. However, we need good stay-at-home parents, pastors, and missionaries as well, and I was thrilled to see those aspirations present.
What really renewed my sense of hope, however, were the personal moments I was able to spend with some of the graduates. Each student to whom I spoke genuinely thanked me for my books. I have to say, it is hard to imagine a typical high school student thanking the author of one of his or her textbooks. However, each one of the graduates with whom I spoke was enthusiastic in his or her thanks. This told me that they take their education very seriously.
When students had time to share more details about their plans, I became even more filled with hope. Each student who mentioned their long-term goals included something about service. One of the aspiring doctors wanted to be a medical missionary. One of the future nurses specifically wanted to work in an HIV clinic so she could care for the unloved in our society. One of the graduates who wanted to be a teacher planned to work in an inner-city school.
As someone who has spent several years teaching “our future leaders” at the university level, it is easy to become depressed at the selfishness and hedonism that is rampant on university campuses today. It gives me hope to know that there are some students who will act as beacons of light in those dark, dark places.
May 16, 2017
PZ Myers Needs Better Reading Skills Than That
A single bone cell isolated from a Triceratops fossil. (Photo by Mark Armitage)
I was delighted to see that another blog post of mine is the subject of yet another diatribe by Dr. PZ Myers (Creatonists Need Better Evidence Than That). For those who missed it, my post on Mark Armitage’s groundbreaking original research bothered Dr. Myers, and he wrote a response that showed he didn’t really bother to read much about the issue. I wrote a reply that was designed to educate him on the issue. His newest diatribe is a response to that reply. Unfortunately, while Dr. Myers has shown more of an ability to read than he did in his first attempt, he needs to sharpen his reading skills if he ever wants to be informed on the issues that he is attempting to discuss. Perhaps this post will help.
Let’s start with Dr. Myers’s first problem. He doesn’t like the fact that carbon-14 has been found in a Triceratops fossil that is supposed to be millions of years old. In his first attempt at ignoring the data, he claimed:
If the bone was really young, you wouldn’t just be reporting that there was some C14 in it, you’d be reporting an age derived from a ratio.
In my response, I noted that this is just what was reported. The fossil was given a C-14 age of 41,010 ± 220 years. Of course, now he claims that such an age is meaningless. Why? He says that the date indicates there is very little carbon-14 in the fossil – so little that it could be explained by a source other than the Triceratops itself.
But had Dr. Myers bothered to read the post carefully, he would have seen that there are many reasons to discount such an idea. First, as I point out, the processing done on the sample has been worked out in the peer-reviewed literature and is designed to get carbon from the fossil itself and get rid of contaminants.
Second, while a date of 41,010 ± 220 years is near the practical limit of carbon-14 dating, it is not at or over that limit. As I point out in my post, there are much older carbon-14 dates in the peer-reviewed literature, and they are thought to be accurate. Some of those dates are produced with the exact same process as what was performed on Armitage’s Triceratops fossil. If those dates don’t represent a misuse of carbon-14 dating, then Armitage’s date doesn’t, either.
Third, as I mention in my post, there are a lot of other dinosaur bones that have been dated via the carbon-14 system, and they give dates that are even younger. In fact, twenty dinosaur samples gave carbon-14 dates that are all under 40,000 years old. One hadrosaur fossil dates as “young” as 22,380 ± 800 years. These dates are clearly not the result of using the carbon-14 system too near its practical limit.
But here is the statement that makes it clear Dr. Myers has not read up on this issue at all:
Date a carbon sample that’s a hundred thousand years old; it will return an age of 50,000 years. Carbon date a chunk of coal from the Carboniferous, 300 million years ago, and it will return an age of 50,000 years.
This, of course, is false, and anyone who has read up on carbon-14 dating should know that. First, the link above lists 20 dinosaur samples, all of which are supposedly older than 100,000 years old, and all of them return an age of well under 50,000 years. Either the samples aren’t older than 100,000 years, Dr. Myers’s statement is wrong, or (most likely) both.
Second, it is common in the literature to report radiocarbon dates in terms of a lower limit. In this study, for example, a sample is reported to be “>52,000” years old. Such a date means that any carbon-14 signal which might have been detected from the fossil could not be distinguished from the noise. If something really is too old to return a carbon-14 age, the age is generally reported that way. Thus, if something really is 100,000+ years old, it should return a value of “>X,” where X represents the maximum radiocarbon age that can be determined in the experimental setup.
Dr. Myers also suggests that underground radioactive sources might have generated the carbon-14 detected in the dating process. While that might sound reasonable, anyone who has read up on this issue knows it can’t explain what has been measured. As calculations presented on my blog indicate, neutron capture simply cannot produce a significant amount of carbon-14 from carbon. Also, the radiocarbon dates of dinosaur bones are not correlated with the amount of radioactivity in the rocks. If radioactive processes were producing carbon-14 in the fossil, the carbon-14 dates would be younger for the fossils from rocks that contain more radioactivity. They are not.
I have spent most of this discussion on the carbon-14 content of Armitage’s fossil, because that is the subject upon which Dr. Myers seems to be the least informed. However, he also doesn’t like the fact that soft Triceratops cells are found in the fossil. At first, he tried to pass them off as cells from insects, fungi, or bacteria, but my response to his first post must have alerted him to his basic histological error: that insects, fungi, and bacteria do not have bone cells. He has now changed his stance to:
My answer to that is…I don’t know. It’s weird.
He seems to think that since it was hard for him to isolate and observe single cells, there is no way that Armitage could do it. That’s hardly a reasonable argument.
I suggest that Dr. Myers actually attempt to read Armitage’s peer-reviewed paper or his Microscopy Today paper. If he does that, he can at least begin to understand the data. Perhaps he will also pick up some laboratory techniques for better isolating and observing single cells.
May 11, 2017
My Review of “Is Genesis History?”
The film Is Genesis History is unique in many ways. As far as I know, for example, it is the first creationist film that was released as a Fathom Event, meaning it was scheduled to be in theaters for a single showing on a single day (February 23rd). Unfortunately, I was speaking at a conference during that showing, so I was unable to go. It was apparently a very popular Fathom Event, because it was then scheduled for two “encore performances” (March 2nd and March 7th). Unfortunately, I was busy on both of those days as well! As a result, I had to wait for the film to come out on DVD. It was released May 2nd, so I ordered it, and then I watched it.
My overall review is mixed. There are some wonderful moments in the film, and there are some moments that are not so wonderful. Before I get into the details, however, it is best to describe the film in general. The star and narrator of the film is Dr. Del Tackett, who originally studied computer science and taught it for the Air Force. He also served President George H. W. Bush as director of technical planning for the National Security Council. His highest earned degree is a Doctorate of Management from Colorado Technical University. He interviews thirteen different PhDs, most of whom are scientists. All of the interviews are designed to investigate the question that makes up the title of the film: Is Genesis History?
The idea of interviewing only people who hold PhDs (another unique feature of the film) was a good one. They were all clearly knowledgeable in their fields, and they all seemed comfortable in front of the camera. Rather than interviewing them in their offices, Tackett went “into the field” with each of them. When he interviewed geologist Dr. Steve Austin, for example, he did so at the Grand Canyon, where Austin has done a lot of his research. When he interviewed microbiologist Dr. Kevin Anderson, he went to Anderson’s laboratory. This made the interviews more interesting and provided some great visuals to go along with the information being presented.
I think the movie’s beginning sequence contained its best moment. In the sequence, Tackett is standing in a canyon, next to a tiny stream that runs through it. He asks the audience how long it would take for the stream to carve out the canyon. He then picks up a rock and says that other rocks in the canyon have been dated to be 350,000 years to 2 million years old. Then, while standing on the rim of the canyon, he tells the audience that the canyon (including the rocks upon which he is standing) is younger than he is; it was formed during the explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens. This dramatic moment provides an excellent reason for the viewer to think about earth’s history differently from the way he or she might have been taught.
After that moment, he begins his interviews. Since he is starting in a canyon, his first interview is with Dr. Steve Austin at the Grand Canyon. He then moves on to the other experts in the film, querying each one of them about how they see their field in the light of Genesis. Most of the interviews contain material that is well-known to those who have studied the origins debate (catastrophic geology, created kinds, soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, etc.), but there is some information of which I wasn’t aware. For example, Dr. Marcus Ross says that when it comes to the fossils of land vertebrates, fossil tracks are usually found lower than the remains of the animals themselves. He says that this is a mystery in an old-earth view of geology, but it is what you expect from a young-earth view, with animals fleeing the Flood waters, so their footprints should be fossilized lower than their bodies.
Even though most of the information wasn’t new to me, some of the visuals that went along with it were quite stunning. When he interviewed Dr. Kevin Anderson, for example, there is microscope video of the soft tissue that he and Mark Armitage found in a Triceratops horn. The video shows the tissue being stretched and then relaxing, demonstrating that it really is soft and stretchy. To me, that was another dramatic moment. It’s one thing to be told the tissue is soft and stretchy, it’s another thing to actually see that it’s soft and stretchy.
There were some other excellent moments as well. I was most impressed with Dr. Arthur Chadwick, a geologist who studies the processes that produce fossils. At his fossil dig, he briefly summarized those processes and showed how they applied to the fossils that were being uncovered. He also had an excellent discussion of transitional fossils, admitting that there are some fossils that evolutionist produce as transitional that are interesting, even challenging. However, he says that the overall view of the fossil record is much more in line with young-earth creationism than it is with evolution. He says that his faith in young-earth creationism is confirmed by his research, but it would take blind faith for him to believe in evolution.
I also really liked the interview with biologist Dr. Todd Wood. While I don’t agree with everything Dr. Wood says, I do find him to be one of the more reasonable voices in young-earth creationism. As a biologist, he discussed the standard young-earth view that God created kinds of creatures and built within them the ability to adapt to changes in their surroundings. As a result, we can look at all the cats we see in creation (lions, tigers, domesticated cats, etc.) and realize that they are all descended from one pair of cats that were preserved on the Ark during the Flood. Dr. Wood gives other examples, and explains that this view is in line with the biological evidence he has studied, because it embraces both the similarities between species as well as their differences.
Now, there are other aspects of the film that I didn’t like, and one of them has been brought up by others, including one of the experts in the film. It presents a false dichotomy. It says that either the world was shaped by random, natural processes over billions of years, or it was created and experienced a worldwide Flood as described in the Genesis account. Obviously, that’s just not true. There are lots of other choices: old-earth creationism, theistic evolution, one of the other religions’ creation accounts, etc. It is simply senseless to present only two choices, and science would be held back if those were the only two frameworks used to study the evidence.
In addition to this false dichotomy, there is a false certainty in some parts of the film. Hebrew scholar Dr. Steven Boyd, for example, says that all the world’s greatest Hebrew scholars say that the Genesis account requires the days of Genesis to be normal, 24-hour days. That is quite false. A majority of them might (I don’t know), but I know there are great Hebrew scholars who don’t say that, such as Dr. Gleason Archer and Dr. John Sailhamer. Even some ancient Rabbis thought the earth could be quite old. In the same way, Dr. Andrew Snelling discusses the Coconino Sandstone formation and uses some research by geologist Dr. John Whitmore (who is not in the film) to state confidently that it was deposited by water. Dr. Whitmore has, indeed, come up with some evidence that it was deposited by water, but there is other evidence that it was deposited by wind. Dr. Snelling should really be more tentative in his discussion, because there is no conclusive scientific explanation for that formation.
Even though there are problems with the film, I found it well worth watching. I typically don’t like documentaries, because I would rather get my information in a way that makes it easy to verify references, search for competing views, and skip the material I already know. It’s hard to do those things with a documentary. However, it does add some wonderful visuals that really help the message of the data sink it. So I do think it is worth watching, as long as you are aware of the false dichotomy and false certainty that crop up from time to time.
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