To the murderer of Dr. George Tiller,
It is evident that you are taking lessons from the good book, what with all of the murder and slavery and what not.
Oh, and I sincerely hope that you saved a gay, pro-choice, atheist fetus. The right to reproduce with my uterus is mine. Mine, all mine.
“I Give Evolution Two Opposable Thumbs Up” reads the bright blue rear window decal on my car. I have been given much positive feedback on it from strangers. Their feedback gives me a sense of hope that science is valued in Texas in spite of recent discussions by the Texas School Board regarding the watering-down of the science curricula regarding biological evolution1 .
Why do I need hope? I need hope because our nation, once a place to grow one budding scientist after another is failing. We don’t make scientists, we import them. If it were not for overseas engineers and scientists, the US would be trailing behind other nations in the fields of technology and science2 . What kind of future will the children of the U.S. have if the nation is poorly educated in science? Without proper education in the sciences, how can we properly overcome economic, energy, and environmental crises? The United States of America has a short but rich history of innovation and advancement.
What happened? We can point fingers at the quality of our educational system or at the parents who are not involved in their child’s schoolwork. Well, we can point fingers anywhere, really.
However, today I would like to point my finger at the unpatriotic U.S. citizens who oppose a proper education in the sciences. These folks want to teach science in a manner that will not conflict with a book that is a few thousand years old because of their faith. Religious faith should not be mixed with science. Fear and competition led us to achieve scientific greatness when we conquered outer space. It is now ignorance and religious dogma that has led us to our decline in scientific advancement.
We provide an ugly disservice to our nation’s heritage of innovation- one that has made us a great nation, when we place the obstacle of religious dogma in the way of scientific progress.
Shortly after Halloween had ended, it began. Christmas. Small signs of the impending, inescapable attack of the Christmas season had already begun to appear. The seasonal aisles of my supermarket were cleared of Halloween sweets, supplies, and decorations to be replaced with Christmas sweets, plastic evergreen trees, decorations, and gifts. Soon my mind began to wander: Do the men selling the $5 “Keep the Christ in Christmas” magnets at the supermarket know (or care) that many Christmas traditions are pagan in origin? How much of these traditions and customs are directly related to the actual birth of Jesus? Did I correctly remember that Christmas celebrations were at one time outlawed in Colonial America?
Let’s have a quick look at Colonial America, the Pilgrims, and Christmas.
The Pilgrims were separatists who sought to purify the Church of England by ridding it of all Roman Catholic influence. These Puritans regarded Christmas as a frivolous and wasteful celebration which was unaligned with core Christian beliefs. They had found no historical or scriptural reference regarding the December 25th birthday of Jesus. They denounced Christmas as a pagan ritual that had been disguised in Christianity. Providing further impetus for the Puritan suppression of Christmas was the manner in which the celebration occurred. Raucous behavior, mockery, and excessive consumption of food and alcohol were common characteristics of the Christmas celebration. The celebrations were thought to be so disruptive and unsavory at the time, that the General Court of Massachusetts declared in 1659 that celebration of Christmas was to be a criminal offense (the law was repealed in 1681).1 So, on December 25th, Puritan separatists toiled as they would have on any other day while frowning upon the celebration of Christmas.
It is somewhat of a loss that the Puritanical suppression of Christmas did not catch on. I tire of the annual Christmas bombardment. In the United States, the Christmas holiday permeates the marketplace for at least two full months. This is where I stifle my rant about Christmastime consumerism. I encounter Christmas party after Christmas party, each meant to celebrate the birth of Jesus. This year I have been metaphorically submerged in mistletoe and holly that sometimes I think I may drown. On the other hand, I enjoy the paid Christmas vacation. I enjoy it, that is, until I stop to think about the origin of Christmas and its traditions.
As I mentioned above, Puritans denounced Christmas as a pagan ritual that had been re-wrapped in Christian wrapping paper. In pre-Christian Europe, it was a tradition to celebrate the winter solstice. Celebrating the winter solstice may be one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world. As the winter solstice approached, each day grew shorter, darker, and colder. Ancient peoples may have believed the sun’s power was weakening as the days progressed toward the winter solstice. When the winter solstice finally arrived, this “loss of power” would cease and the days would grow longer and brighter as the sun’s strength was “reborn”. This would certainly be cause to celebrate, consuming the food and drink that had been the fruits of a successful year of harvest. Different pagan festivals were present in pre-Christian Europe, most of these were related to either the sun or the winter solstice. The largest of the Roman festivals was Saturnalia. Near the time of winter solstice, Romans celebrated Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture and harvest. The celebration was one of feasts, gifts, tom-foolery, gift-giving, and role-reversal. Romans celebrating Saturnalia could be found decorating their homes with greenery and candles. Another Roman festival was Dies Natalis Solis Invicti “the birthday of the unconquered Sun”. The use of the title “Sol Invictus” as it pertained to this festival encompassed several sun gods including Mithras2, the patron god of Emporer Aurelian. In northern Europe, Yule was celebrated by the Celts who believed that the sun stood still for twelve days in mid-winter. During these twelve days, a Yule log was lit to conquer the darkness. Mistletoe was a symbol of life during the dark winter months and was also used in many Druid ceremonies. It was harvested by Celtic priests on or about the winter solstice from holy oak trees. 3
Feasts, frolic, candles, bright evergreens, yule logs, holly, and mistletoe – all are part of our modern Christmas celebrations, all are pagan in origin. Since these festivals were age-old traditions, pagans were extremely hesitant to stop celebrating them as part of conversion to Christianity. Some Christians even enjoyed partaking in the pagan celebrations:
“It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day.”4
The Roman Catholic Church needed a method by which the pagans would more easily accept Christianity. The church found this method in the institution of December 25th as a feast in honor of Christ’s birth. The Roman Catholic Church proposed a December 25th Christian celebration which would actively oppose the Roman pagan holiday of Natalis Solis Invicti “the birthday of the unconquered Sun”. It was to take place on the same day of celebration as the pagan celebration. The first Christmas within the Roman Catholic Church occurred when Pope Sixtus III officiated the first Christ Mass on December 25th, 435.56
Perhaps there is merit to the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention in what month (or what day) Jesus was born. When reading the nativity story, a December birth seems unlikely. Would shepherds and their flocks sleep outside during a cold winter night? The story also contains a reference to the census requested by Caesar Augustus. According to the story, the census required that people return to their town of origin. Winter months would have been poor traveling for many. Indeed, a winter birth date of Christ is not likely. Since the birth date of Jesus is not known, I suppose that it is acceptable to honor a person on a day other than the day of their birth. However, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus should be the most revered holiday for Christians, seeing as how these events are core to the Christian doctrine. Why create a new holiday to honor his birth? Assimilation. The pre-Christian pagan festivals were too difficult for the Roman Catholic church to combat, so they conveniently began celebrating the birth of Jesus at the same time of year that the pagan festivals had traditionally occurred.
Pagan celebrations of the winter solstice appear to be the real “Reason for the Season”. Without their occurrence, I doubt that we would be celebrating Christmas, and if we did, I doubt that it would take place in winter with the traditions we see today. The celebration of Christmas did not originate as a reverent time of reflection of Christ’s birth. It was a strategy of the Roman Catholic Church to successfully Christianize European pagans. This contradicts the message I had received when growing up in the Methodist church. I had believed that Christmas was a solemn observation of the birth of Jesus Christ. This holiday is misrepresented. Instead of originating as a reverent celebration, it seems to have originated as a Roman Catholic conversion tactic – a tactic which has stolen and repackaged pagan celebrations and customs in an effort to Christianize non-Christians.
This is the conclusion of my interview with Dirk Van Tuerenhout, Ph.D., Curator of Anthropology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The first half of the interview is titled I Love Lucy.
Dirk, here’s a question from an associate; he mentions that creationists usually say that none of the other hominin species we know about today have anything to do with humans. According to them, fossils like Lucy are not the remains of a related species, let alone a direct human ancestor, but merely “some ape gone extinct”. So how do scientists arrive at the genealogical trees we all know from biology text books?
This is a question that requires an extensive answer. This question has shades of a favorite creationist line to critique/attack on Darwinian evolution. “Darwin says we all came from monkeys. Can you believe that?!”
Here is what we can say to that:
- Darwin never said we evolved from monkeys.
- However, we do share with other apes a common ancestor (ultimately also with monkeys, but much more remotely in time).
- We are as humans also part of the family of Great Apes.
In order to ascertain what links might exist between us and Lucy, we need to define what constitutes a modern human and then see which traits if any we can find with Lucy. Scientists have identified four traits that define a modern human:
- Walking upright all the time (a.k.a. habitual bipedalism)
- Making and using tools (complex tools especially)
- Having a large brain compared to one’s body size
- Having the ability to communicate (especially complex communication)
Having these traits make us modern humans human. When, however, do we see these traits appear in the fossil record?
Take Lucy, at 3.18 million years ago. She only had one of these traits: she walked upright all the time. In other words, Lucy, like us, was a habitual bipedal creature. That is a significant trait to have and one that separates her from the other apes (living or extinct), because they did not.
Moreover, and equally important: genetic data help us make that distinction more clear cut as well: based on comparing DNA from modern human beings and that of our closest non-human primate relatives (a complicated way of saying: chimps, gorillas and orangutans) we differ very little with these guys. The genetic difference between us and a chimp is about 1% in our DNA. Scientists have calculated that it may have taken about 7 million years for that 1% difference to accumulate over time.
While this number is certainly subject to revision and further study (nothing is black and white in science, there is a continuous questioning of what we know), based on what we know today we can say this:
- Lucy is a habitual bipedal creature (we know this because of her hips, hip and knee joints) and so are we.
- Lucy dates to 3.18 million years ago. This postdates the split between our lineage and that of the other Great Apes by about 3 to 4 million years. So in that regard Lucy also belongs on our side of the tracks.
In other words, both her bones and modern DNA data make Lucy a distant relative of ours and not one of the extinct non-human apes.
So how does one put a family tree together?
Initially the family tree was put together based on observed similarities between organisms. Specifically, this led to the development of a family of Hominoidea, of which we are the only member as this time and the family of the Pongidae in which the chimps, gorillas and orangutans are placed. This classification, or taxonomy, goes back to that devised by Linnaeus. He classified based on what he could see.
Nowadays, we classify also based on genetics. That has resulted in the coning of the term hominin, rather than hominid, in which both humans and chimps are placed together (because they are so closely related genetically), with the gorillas and orangutans left in the remaining niche.
In image form, this is what we are talking about:
The traditional view first, based on observed similarities:
Here chimp, gorilla and orangutans are categorized together, because they look a lot more like each other and not that much like a human.
The more recent classification next, based on genetic relationships:
How do we know that the various hominin species are related and, more importantly, how do we know in what way they are related to each other?
How do we determine the degree of relatedness among extinct hominins? While it is a human trait to want to see everything classified and neatly placed in a pigeon hole, it is not always possible to do this – at least not right away.We always work from the known toward the unknown. At this stage, when a fossil is found, it is compared against known fossils. “Known” here means that we know where they are from, how old they are and where they are placed in the family tree. A new fossil also has a location where it was found and eventually will also have a date assigned to it. What remains (far from simple) is to determine where your fossil fits in. Again you have to work with the known, or in this case: what did you find? If you have a complete skull, it might be much easier to make this determination than if you have found a foot or wrist bone. You compare morphologies and suggest degrees of similarities (and therefore old fashioned taxonomic relationships – see above) to establish a place in the family tree.
Remember, however: science will continue to subject any finding to future insights which might require revisiting and fine-tuning previous conclusions.
When we want to assign a fossil a spot in the genealogical tree, do we have to rely on inferences from bone morphology alone or are there other means of supporting our model?
Given that most fossils (with the exception of H. sapiens and Neanderthalers) do not have extractable DNA in them, we have to rely on morphology, place of discovery and dates to assign a place on the family tree (or family bush as we are calling it today).
What, on the other hand, would we expect to find under the creationists’ hypothesis?
The way in which this is phrased is too kind to creationism: hypothesis belongs in a scientific framework. Creationism or its “scientific” clone, I.D., does not work with hypotheses – no matter how much they would like to disagree with this. In the end, they already have their conclusion: an intelligent creator, or God made everything and here is the evidence for that line of thinking. Creationists/I.D. people are very good at casting doubts on scientist’s interpretations, producing a prodigious amount of materials everywhere to disseminate this perception that scientists do not really know what they are talking about. In reality what they are picking up on is the debate inherent in science on the manner in which evolution has proceeded in the past, not a discussion about the existence of evolution itself. Small detail with important repercussions.
In order to make the point that creationists do not really work with scientific hypotheses but that they prefer to cast aspersions on other people’s thinking to push their agenda, I refer to a point raised earlier: “creationists say Lucy is not an extinct human ancestor but rather an extinct ape.”
By framing the discussion a priori they have – in their mind – already won the battle. They have effectively removed Lucy from our lineage and so more doubt and scorn can be heaped on any arguments to the contrary. One needs to go back to the very crux of the matter and prove that their assertion of where Lucy belongs is wrong in the first place. Having reconstituted a level playing field, then you can proceed by proving that she is indeed an early human ancestor.
As best as I can tell then, a Creationist could not care less about what these fossils might look like and where they belong. In the end, they all see them as evidence of a creation by a Creator to confuse us or to make us marvel at the creation we live in. This is not a form of logic I can follow, but that seems to be their line.
Dirk Van Tuerenhout leverages his time to provide educational opportunities about the Lucy fossil to museum visitors while also teaching at the University of Houston-Clear Lake during the summer. If you are in the Houston area, I encourage you to visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and of course, Lucy.
Further Reading
Upon reading the news that A. Afarensis Lucy was “on tour” with her world premier in Houston, I eagerly awaited the exhibit’s opening. On a beautiful September morning, Mom (me), Dad, and the kids climbed into the car to see this famous 3.2 million-year
-old fossil. We prepared our children with the expectation that Mom and Dad would be “taking a very long time” reviewing the entire exhibit. And we did. The exhibit is incredible.
Dirk Van Tuerenhout, Ph.D., Curator of Anthropology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is the man behind this news-breaking exhibit. I had the opportunity to interview him, with questions related to Lucy, evolution, and human ancestry.
Dirk, the foremost question on my mind is in regard to the Australopithecus Afarensis “Lucy” exhibit at our local museum in Houston. I have had the unique opportunity to see this fossil. Lucy is the grand finale to the Ethiopia exhibit on display until April 2008 at the museum. I remain impressed by the entire exhibit, and plan on visiting a few more times before April arrives.
If I remember correctly, a section of the Lucy exhibit contains fossils of early hominids, including homo sapiens. There are also educational time-lines present in the exhibit, assisting the visitor in gaining perspective of how very removed we are from 3.2 million years ago. These help trace what we currently know about human evolution.
Have you received criticism from proponents of “Intelligent Design” or those that reject evolution? If so, do the critics engage you in dialogue?
I have received reactions from people who are proponents of Creationism and ID. They come in many formats, ranging from comments left in our guest books, as well as emails sent to the museum. I engage these individuals in a dialogue when possible – none of those who leave comments in our guest books leave a phone number or email. Occasionally I also hear from our docents that ID proponents will come through the exhibit and challenge the docents.
Have you anecdotes of a particularly amusing or volatile conversation?
I have received emails from school groups and teachers who either have been to the exhibit or have heard of it. In the latter case, there was one email from a Christian Academy in Scottsdale, AZ. The questions they raised were: did we share with our visitors the facts that
a. One of Lucy’s knee joints was found 1.5 miles away from the rest of the skeleton and
b. Some of the remaining bones were said to have been found 50 feet down.
I replied asking where these allegations come from – this is always step one: please identify your sources. The answer was vague but informative enough: “books written by creationists.”
I checked in with the website TalkOrigins and very easily found an outline of these allegations and rebuttal materials. Specifically, it amounted to two favorite tactics used by creationist proponents: incorrect representation or conflation of the information at hand. The knee joint turned out to be another knee joint, also belonging to an A. afarensis [but not Lucy], which was found by Johanson in 1973. He never made the claim that it was Lucy’s knee joint, but creationist sources clearly did. What we have here at best is an unintentional conflation of a Lucy knee joint and another A. afarensis knee joint (a Lucy-like joint) and at worst…? The reference to “50 feet down” does not mean that they were digging 50 feet down, although it does imply it, but rather that the archaeologists went up and down the slope over a distance of 50 feet.
I sent this information to the teacher and she was very appreciative of the fact I had sent her an answer. Typically, she indicated, people do not bother (read: the scientific community. I am sure that any creationist source would be bending over backwards to answer promptly and exhaustively). She went on to say that she had printed out the document I had sent and that she would spend a class period on the topic. That is all I can ask for: please take the scientific data and share it with your students.
What are your favorite strategies when having these discussions?
I make it a point to always answer any questions. This needs to be done, because otherwise we run the risk of being accused of not having an answer or being unwilling to respond. I also make sure to stay away from engaging in a discussion regarding religious topics – many emails are replete with Bible quotations – preferring instead to zero in on specific scientific statements. Any statements in this regard tend to suffer from conflation or misquotation and are much easier to refute, point by point. I tend to get answers back that abound with more Bible quotes and very little science. Usually I will reply one or two more times. Then I end the conversation with a polite thanks to the other person.
As I viewed and participated in the exhibit, I wondered: “this history – all that science has shown us of these fossils – is this enough to turn the minds of those that reject evolutionary theory?”
I don’t think that one can change the mind of those who favor creationism. That is not my goal either. What I do want to achieve is to reply to every single email and allegation that comes my way. We cannot afford to not do this, or else we go the way of the dodo in the court of public opinion.
Next week, I will post the remainder of the interview, which will focus on human ancestry.
