From T-Rex to Tweety?

One objection to evolution that I hear among my friends (mostly white, mostly middle class, mostly Christian) runs something like this: "I don't have any problems with microevolution. The Creator would have to make animals so that they can adapt. What I do have problems with is evolution from one species to another. I mean, that's just impossible. Look around. You don't see birds turning into monkeys or dogs turning into elephants. It just doesn't happen."

I've been pondering that objection and how to answer it from the scientific evidence, and I've come up with an angle. I'll be interested in feedback on this approach, especially since I'm at the point in the book where I'm going to need to address this issue. My answer to that objection, however, has to do with the massive amounts of time involved in evolution. I know that's a mind-bender for many Christians who come from a young-earth viewpoint. I wonder if time causes the same issue for people form other religions.

To understand how new species develop, I had to look back to the past. You can't look around now. Our short lives (75 or so years) and our short human history (3000-4000 years) don't stretch long enough to see speciation occurring in any way that we will ever be able to say, "Oh, I see a new species over there." Instead, we have to look back over the fossil record to see large periods of time when new species are evolving.

An example of this would be to look back at the end of the dinosaur age to see how animals very different than the dinosaurs evolved from them. As best I understand, it goes something like this: During the time of the dinosaurs, they evolved until they were many kinds of dinosaurs roaming around. One group was the maniraptors, whose wrists were different than those of other dinosaurs. Over a long period of time, this group of dinosaurs got more varied. The fossil record shows that it included Velociraptors and their relatives (of Jurassic Park fame), Oviraptors (who took care of their eggs), the group called Troodontidae (thought to be pretty dang smart for a dinosaur), and birds. That last word, "birds," may be surprising to you. It was to me as I did the research to write this post. I didn't realize that birds were classified right there as members of the dinosaur family. (If you want to know more, take a look at the page on Coelurosauria in the Tree of Life project. That website can be a little tricky to learn how to move around. Make sure to see the "Containing Group" link below the list of species. It's what lets you go backwards, that is earlier along the fossil record.) And, if you look at Birds (technically Aves from the Latin), you'll see that they contain Archaeopteryx, which most people think of as a dinosaur.


So what? Well, back to the original objection. "I've never seen animals evolve!" If I'm reading the fossil record right, here's a time where we see one animal evolving into a very different one. A dinosaur became a bird!

But, the clever reader will realize that the statement I just made--dinosaurs becoming birds--is the wrong way to state it. That's not really what happened at all, according to the fossil record. During the millions and millions of years that dinosaurs were on the earth, they evolved into a huge variety. One small group out of this was what we think of as birds. And, natural selection kicked in here at the end of the age of dinosaurs. When whatever happened to wipe out the dinosaurs occurred, the early birds were different enough that they were able to survive under the new conditions and begin to evolve into the vast variety of birds we have today.

Does that make any sense? The way I see it is that we'll never actually see the macroevolution that many people object to because we live such short lives. But, if we look back over the fossil record, we can see species change into totally different kinds. I don't really expect religious kids to believe that this is how the Creator made birds, but I do want them to see how science explains the fossil record.

By the way, if you want a little challenge, try using the Tree of Life to trace Mammals (i.e. Mammalia) back to find out when they and the dinosaurs diverged from each other. I'll give you a hint--what fluid surrounds a baby during pregnancy? If you find the answer, you should also see where turtles and reptiles split off.

(The T-Rex skull is from the collection of the Lawrence Hall of Science. I took the picture.)

Moving slow

My wife and I have both been under the weather over the past couple of weeks; so, I'm moving slow on writing and blogging. I appreciate your patience, and I hope to pick the pace back up soon.

Stay Tuned...

This note gives the last of the Puerto Rico thoughts, but I'm brain-dead after 2 days of writing. I'll get back to this as soon as I can, but maybe you can make some sense of it on your own. (BTW, do people still know today what "Stay Tuned" means, or am I just a relic?)

A Heart Issue

I thought a lot about wonder and awe in Puerto Rico. The beaches of Vieques were truly beautiful, and each had a unique beauty that made them together almost a wonderland. Walking in the Il Yunque rainforest was just as amazing. The first picture here captures some of that majesty. Please don't miss the scale of these plants. They were huge! (The second picture may help you with the scale. If you look in the lower right hand corner, you'll see my wife just walking into view. And she wants to make sure that you all know she's not tall!)

Wonder and awe, for me, is a heart issue. The creation calls out to my heart, "There's a Creator." I know my Christian beliefs do impact what I hear, but it's really the other way around. One of my foundational reasons for being a Christian is because the wonder and awe of creation tells me that there must be a God. "He is here," as C.S. Lewis says. (The second part of Dr. Lewis's quote, the "and He has spoken" is something creation can't do fully.) 

I know, though, that many people who are not religious still sense the wonder and awe of creation. I hear it in things agonstic scientists write about the beauty of the world. I see it in the way non-religious people fight valiantly to preserve the environment. So many of us on both sides of the origins issue see the incredible beauty of this planet, and we're moved deeply by it.

To me, this is the problem with scientific materialism. Dawkins and others out on one end of the argument want to use evolution like a club to beat religion out of our brains. They talk about how science makes it perfectly obvious that the Earth evolved to its present state without a god intervening. But, scientific materialists are missing the heart issue of wonder and awe. Even many non-religious people lift their heads up, look at the beauty all around them, and think to themselves, "There's more." They may not be able to identify it, but they know there's something more than natural processes at work. This Earth is just too amazing! So, I think the question of "How?" just seamlessly morphs into "Who?" for many of us.

Ah...labels!

I just realized what labels are for in creating blog posts, and I'm starting to use them. The main labels I'll use right now are "heartsNminds" for posts about teaching evolution and "inquiry" for posts on that subject. I hope the labeling helps you find more easily the topics that you're interested in.

Oh yeah...gotta back it up!

Almost lost a day of writing. I started to work on the current chapter, and realized the last day of my writing was missing! Thankfully, I had made a second backup to a thumb drive. My original copy and first back up had failed.

Would it matter?

David and I were talking when we were in Puerto Rico, and we had walked passed the waterfall in the picture. A question he asked got me thinking about young earth creationism. I'd phrase the question as, "If God used evolution to create the earth, but in 6, 24-hour periods, how would we know? Would the scientific evidence show anything different than the 6 billion year history that science talks about?"

Unless I'm way out to lunch on that question, then I'm thinking that the process is the key issue, not the time involved. The real question is the mechanism of creation, not the time involved. So, did God create with a magical zap where things appeared out of thin air? That's the general gist of the way I viewed creation when I was young-earth in my thinking. Or, did he create via the process of developing life slowly and methodically via evolution, with steps indicated by scientific evidence?

If I'm on to anything here, then we should shift the discussion from "How long?" to "How?". "How long?" is a dead end discussion anyway. We've not gotten any closer to resolving that conflict over the past 160 years, and I don't see anything on the horizon that will make resolution any easier. But, the discussion of "How" might be more productive.

Please help me out here with your thoughts. I've got more thoughts from the Puerto Rico trip, including questions about the role of awe and wonder, but I'll hold off on those until we kick the current question around some.

Coming Soon

Been on vacation in Puerto Rico. The beauty of the island of Vieques and the rain forest on the main island have me thinking a lot about evolution. Watch for a post over the next week or so...

Hey, Orlando Teachers!!!

Click the link above to take you directly to the page at which you can download the Spain Park Model article. My internet connection is being kind of goofy right now; so, if the article doesn't appear there, please check back later. I'll try to have it up by 6:00 p.m.

Or, try the link below. (You may have to cut and paste it into your browser.)

http://homepage.mac.com/lmeadows/SpainParkModel.pdf

Ostriches and Flat-Earthers

I'm deep in the weeds of understanding the evidence for evolution, and there's a lot of it out there. (Actually, a lot of it is available on-line! Maybe I'll try to catalog what I'm finding somehow.) All the evidence has me thinking about how I have probably been an ostrich regarding all of the evidence. I've had my head stuck in the sand, and I'm beginning to realize why many non-religious scientists get so frustrated with Creationists. With all of the evidence for evolution out there, it's like we're a bunch of Flat Earthers.

My son passed me a link to the Flat Earth society. I'm not sure how he found it, but he's good with technology like that. He didn't even know I was thinking about ostriches and flat earthers. Click on the header of this post, if you have a moment, and take a look at what they say and believe. Honestly, they sound so wacko that I can't tell if it's a joke or not! Are there really people today who believe that the Earth is really flat?

We all look down on Flat Earthers. "How dumb?". "Who would believe that in this day and age?". "Don't they know anything about science!". Now, though, I'm really seeing Creationist views from the other side. People who know the evidence for evolution have to be just as dumfounded about the statement, "I don't believe in evolution," as we all are about, "The Earth is really flat."

I'm a little scared of what I'm learning about evolution. It challenges my understanding of Genesis 1, and of course, that cracks the door to challenges to my understanding of all of Scripture. I don't want to be an ostrich, though. I really don't want to keep my head in the sand anymore. I want to know. My faith tells me that the truth really will make me free, and I don't want to be afraid anymore.

Scared of evolution?

I've been working on the appendix of my book, where I'll try to pose an answer to, "Help! I'm a biology teacher, and I really don't understand evolution myself!". I've spent the last couple of days searching out resources that show the actual evidence for evolution, and I've found a lot of great websites. (I'm excited about that so that I can point teachers to free, on-line resources.) A question keeps plaguing me in the back of my mind, though, as I've been working. What are we afraid of?

I keep seeing all of this evidence, and the amount of evidence just keeps piling up across the decades. I guess paleontology is like that, huh? The more they work, the more bones they have. I'm realizing how much I've been afraid of evolution and how I've looked away from the evidence. Now, in the strength of the gospel, I realize that I don't have to be afraid of what's buried in the ground and where the bones lead us. I'm also seeing how radiometric dating is good science, and when it says that Lucy was 3.2 million years ago, that's as trustworthy as pretty much any other scientific explanation. But, of course, pre-humans from 3.2 million years ago doesn't fit well with most sermons on Genesis 1!

So, as I do all this research, I'm wondering what we're scared of. ("We" means those of us who are religious and either intimidated by, skeptical of, or even antagonistic to evolution.) Of course, I know that there's this big war going on out there between the scientific materialists and the creationists, but I'm not really focusing on that. That war is much more political than it is about the facts. I'm talking about the deeper question of why we're scared that science says something that seems to contradict Scripture. So what? Why does that bother us so much? Why don't we simply say, "Oh, that's evolution. OK," and move on without getting in a tizzy. That's the kind of stance I'm taking in this research, but I guess I'm too close to the issue to know why it's so intimidating for other people. Maybe some of you can help me out in understanding what we're so afraid of.

Boston NSTA '08 Follow-Up (Teaching Evolution to Religious Students)

I appreciate the time those of you took to attend my session at NSTA's national convention in Boston. Please let me know any thoughts or questions you have on the session by making a comment here.

Believing Scientists?!?

So, I'm off on an new adventure, and I think I'll be blogging about it in the months ahead. I just got my first book contract! It's on teaching evolution to religious students. I know, I know, I'm always picking the easy battles, right? Why don't I take on some big, important controversy, huh?

In doing research for the book, I ran across "Science, Evolution, and Creationism" from the National Academy of Science, and I've linked it here. Page 15 from the document really caught my attention:

"Scientists, like people in other professions, hold a wide range of positions about religion and the role of supernatural forces or entities in the universe. Some adhere to a position known as scientism, which holds that the methods of science alone are sufficient for discovering everything there is to know about the universe. Others ascribe to an idea known as deism, which posits that God created all things and set the universe in motion but no longer actively directs physical phenomena. Others are theists, who believe that God actively intervenes in the world."

I don't think I've ever seen such a clear statement from such a reputable source that people like me, who believe that God is working in the world today, have a place in science. i wish more people understand this view, including scientists like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, who use the bully pulpit of science to make it seem like theists have no place in science.

Demo by video?

So, I'm having to do a presentation at a conference next week, and I don't have time to do the demo I wanted. (Also, I don't want to have to take equipment on the road.) I'm wondering if a video is as good as a live experiment. For example, does the video here grab you. It grabs me, but I've done a similar experiment for my students live, and I watched the impact. I can't imagine the video having the same impact.

Teaching Today's Students

One of the technology coordinators from Hoover City Schools showed me this video. It really has me pondering how today's students are aliens to traditional teaching.

NSTA Birmingham Follow-Up

Wow! I can't believe that it's been two weeks since the B'ham conference, and I'm just now getting a chance to post this follow-up thread. Please let me know any questions or comments you have, and thanks for coming by my session.

Birmingham: Be There!

I hope some of you are coming to my home town this week for the Regional NSTA convention. If you are, please look me up. I'll be presenting at the following times, and I would welcome you to attend or to catch me before or after so that we can visit for a bit.

Thursday, 12:30 p.m. Talking About Evolution so Fundamentalist Students Will Listen Sheraton Ballroom IX

Friday, 2:00 p.m. Inquiry: What & Why Sheraton Ballroom IX

(I also be doing a few presentations for It's About Time Publishing on Thursday afternoon in the East Meeting Room D of the Convention Center.) I look forward to catching up with old friends!

Teaching Evolution Follow-Up (NSTA Detroit)

Thanks to all of you who attended my session on teaching evolution to fundamentalists students. I was deeply impressed by the tone with which you approached the discussion. I'm always afraid that the discussion will become a fight, and to me, that's a total lost. I appreciated your questions and comments, and I look forward to hearing more.

I'll be happy to field here any questions that you have. Please simply post a comment and check back later for my response. Also, feel free to share any resources that you think others might find useful in their teaching. This is a tough topic, but I'm becoming more and more hopeful that it's something that we can do and do well.

Inquiry: What & Why Follow-Up (NSTA Detroit & Denver)

Thanks to all of you who joined me for the sessions on the What and Why of Inquiry. I hope the connection between the changes in today's workforce helped you see better the rationale for adopting inquiry so that your students are ready for life in work in a global economy. Also, I hope the 5 Essential Features of inquiry helped you better understand what inquiry is and how to begin adopting it in your classroom. (If you'll clink the link embedded in the title of this post, it will take you directly to the chapter that describes the 5 Essential Features. Hope that helps.)

Please let me know any questions or comments you have about the presentation. I look forward to hearing from you and providing any additional resources that I can.

NSTA folllow-up soon

Thanks to all of you who attended my presentations at NSTA. Like you probably, I'm trying to get back in the swing of things at work after being away. I hope to have those follow-up posts I promised up by Wednesday.