State of Protest

Dear Procrustes,

You are a moron, with your liberal anti-Christian views, and you’d better shut your site down, or I’m going to find you and your family and I’m going to crack your skull with a baseball bat and mutilate your family.

Signed,
Hypothetical

Yes, fortunately this is still a hypothetical situation for me, but it’s certainly real enough for a number of rational activists out there, including, fairly recently, PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, who blogs at Pharyngula.¹ On July 13, PZ Myers received an email with the subject line: “your short life.” The sender went on to state that if PZ Myers did not cease and desist his job (for the sake of his children), the PZ Myers would get his “brains beat in.”²

I’m not going to bother addressing the fact that someone who purports to follow a higher spiritual code is threatening the life of someone (and his kids) who follows a code of reason. Instead, I’d like to cite a few more examples, and then ask the readers if anyone else has had similar experiences, what have they done in those situations, and what can be done if we ever find ourselves in such a situation.

Before I jump into other examples, I’ll give some closure to the PZ Myers issue. First of all, PZ Myers made it quite clear that he reserved the right to post any emails (in full, with metadata) that contain threats of violence. What, pray tell, must have someone endured to require such a disclaimer! Word got around, and AIGBusted, from Answers in Genesis Busted, sent an email to the threatener’s employer³ (since the email threat was sent from a work address). It turns out that the threatener, Melanie Kroll, who, ironically, worked for 1-800-Flowers, was fired over the matter.⁴ Although it’s unknown how many readers possibly sent similar emails, AIGBusted appropriately feels no guilt over the firing. “I don’t feel guilty about reporting her. I think it is important for atheists to realize that large numbers of us wield a fair amount of power in these situations.”⁵

Apparently that is true. We have shown that we have the ability to do more than just sit idly by, wondering how valid a threat is. But how many of us (and by us, I mean anyone in the non-believing, rational, atheist, etc., community) are actually being threatened, how consistently, and, most importantly, how viable are these threats?

Where to begin? Of course, with the blog post that prompted Melanie Kroll’s threat.

July 12, 2008:
PZ Myers wrote, in a blog entry: “Christian Lunatics Issue Death Threats Over a Cracker… Unlike those nutty Muslims who are always taking offense over cartoons, these people have serious grievances.” And went on to describe and criticize the overreaction by the Catholics, media, and others, to Webster Cook’s forcible removal of The Body of Christ from a church.⁶ Accused of having “kidnapped” the equivalent of Jesus Christ, Cook began receiving death threats shortly after the media exploded the issue beyond repair, and PZ Myers, in turn, received a death threat for reporting about it. (Yes, I’m anxiously anticipating my day in the sniper scope.)

July 17, 2007:

Professors in Colorado Receive Death Threats for Teaching Evolution
Letters from a Christian extremist last week threatened the lives of evolution biology professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The letters claimed to be on behalf of a group, but newspapers and at least one blog have reported that an individual, Michael Korn, a Jew-turned-Christian extremist, is likely behind the threats (an image from his web site is at right). CU police spokesman Brad Wiesley told me they haven’t officially named a suspect but the Colorado Daily wrote that others “close to the case” named Korn.⁷

July 7, 2007:
J.K. Rowling announces the end of her beloved Harry Potter series of books, indicating that although it was a wonderful experience for her, there was a darker side to writing something Christians didn’t agree with: “Rowling says her success has been “the experience of a lifetime.” But it also has brought an intense level of pressure, scrutiny and criticism. In the United States, her book tours have attracted thousands of screaming children, but also death threats. Some Christians have called for the books to be banned, claiming they promote witchcraft.”⁸

March 28, 2008:
“Popular video site LiveLeak have been forced to remove the controversial film critical of Islam FITNA [by Geert Wilders⁹] after it received death threats from primitive, violent intolerant muslims.”¹⁰ Both Geert Wilders and some LiveLeak staff received a variety of threats of death and violence.

July, 2008:
Army Spc. Jeremy Hall’s “sudden lack of faith, he said, cost him his military career and put his life at risk. Hall said his life was threatened by other troops and the military assigned a full-time bodyguard to protect him out of fear for his safety.”¹¹

June, 2002:
Michael Newdow, a TIME Person of the Week, received multiple death threats for his attempt to challenge the constitutionality of the “under God” phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, which was recited every morning at his daughter’s public school. ¹² (As a side note, I met Mr. Newdow during that time period, and heard him discuss his various issues. He has also advocated for the removal of “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency,¹³ and he has won the Freethought Hero Award.¹⁴ )

October, 2006:
Robert Redeker is “a writer and high school philosophy teacher who has been under police protection and in hiding with his family since the newspaper Le Figaro published his op-ed piece about Islam on Sept.19. Entitled “Faced with Islamist intimidations, what should the free world do?”" “Redeker writes that he and his family are being forced to move every two days. “I’m a homeless person,” he complains. “I exercised a constitutional right, and I’m being punished for it right here on the territory of the Republic.” Redeker is only the latest in a lengthening list of Europeans who have been subjected to death threats from Muslims outraged by criticism of their faith and prophet.”¹⁵

1988:
Salman Rushdie had a fatwa issued against him for his publication of The Satanic Verses.¹⁶

November, 2004:
Mohammed Bouyeri shot Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film director and critic of Islam, eight times, killing him, and then nearly decapitated him by cutting his throat. Then Bouyeri stabbed van Gogh in the chest. A few weeks prior to the murder, Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah Mosque in The Hague gave a sermon, calling van Gogh a “criminal bastard” and beseeching Allah to inflict an incurable disease upon him. ¹⁷

These examples are frightening and real, and they can all be Googled rather easily. But are the numbers of threats against the rational much higher? Have you ever received a threat of violence, death, or other retaliatory act for something you’ve done or that you’ve believed in? Please share!

If you’ve received a threat, did you take it seriously? How did you react to it? (did you reply, post the message, contact the authorities?) Regardless of whether you’ve received a threat, do you have any advice or suggestions for those who do?

Is this a trend we should be worried about?

1. Pharyngula, “Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.” http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ [↩]
2. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/mail_dump.php [↩]
3. Did I Get a Woman Fired? Answers in Genesis Busted. http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2008/07/did-i-get-woman-fired.html [↩]
4. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/071608-woman-fired-over-death-threat.html [↩]
5. http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2008/07/did-i-get-woman-fired.html [↩]
6. Christian Lunatics Issue Death Threats Over a Cracker, AlterNet. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/91269/ [↩]
7. Professors in Colorado Receive Death Threats for Teaching Evolution, Wired.com. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/professors-in-c.html [↩]
8. Rowling bids her boy wizard goodbye, USATODAY.com. http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-07-19-rowling-potter_N.htm [↩]
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders [↩]
10. LiveLeak Remove “Fitna” After Death Threats, GBG Atheist News. http://godbegone.blogspot.com/2008/03/liveleak-remove-fitna-after-death.html [↩]
11. Atheist soldier sues Army for ‘unconstitutional’ discrimination, CNN.com. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/07/08/atheist.soldier/index.html [↩]
12. Person of the Week: Michael Newdow. http://www.time.com/time/pow/article/0,8599,266658,00.html [↩]
13. Michael Newdow’s “In God We Trust” Lawsuit Dismissed, Austin’s Atheism Blog. http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/06/13/michael-newdows-in-god-we-trust-lawsuit-dismissed.htm [↩]
14. Freethought Hero Award, Freedom From Religion Foundation. http://ffrf.org/awards/special/2004_newdow.php [↩]
15. Did a Critic of Islam Go Too Far?, TIME.com. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1541776,00.html?cnn=yes [↩]
16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie [↩]
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_%28film_director%29 [↩]

Look up rational activism in the encyclopedia, and you should find Sean Tevis. If not, slip his bio in there.

Last week (on or about July 16), Sean created a web page with some stick-figure action figures resembling Frank Miller’s “300.” These stick figures were yelling something about how the Internet could change the face of political history. Well, it did, and it’s still going strong.

Arlen Siegfreid is a Kansas state representative, a right-wing conservative who is anti-abortion, pro-censorship, anti-same-sex marriage, pro-surveillance, and pro-creationism (in public schools). Although Representative Siegfreid seems a shoe-in for the next election, Sean, a non-politician “Information Architect,” wants to run against him.

With a common sense platform, mostly designed to oppose Siegfreid, Sean readied himself to play the political race game, until he stumbled upon a hurdle that would seem insurmountable for most would-be activists: he needed name recognition cash. According to Sean’s entertaining stick-figured explanation of the situation, 93.4% of the time it’s the candidate with the most advertising money who wins an election. It’s mid-July, and Sean asks, “How much do I need?” The verdict: $26,000. By July 28.

Game over, man! Game over!

No, not for Sean! See, Sean is an educated man. Sean knew that it would require 52 donors, donating $500 each, to meet his goal. However, having spent some time learning basic math in school, Sean figured that he could reduce the amount of individual donations required by increasing the number of donors. Brilliant! Reminds me of the idea I had as a child to send a letter to every resident of the U.S., asking for them to send me a dollar each. I’d have been a millionaire for sure! Except that I wasn’t so great at math, and I didn’t account for the fact that it would actually cost me money to send those letters, and I would have to offset any earnings made by the cost of those letters, and I wasn’t guaranteed to get any money. Even if half of the U.S. sent me a dollar, I’d still end up with a negative return. But, as Sean says, This is the Internet!

Instead of trying to find a handful of very generous donors, Sean would seek out great gobs of very slightly generous donors, via the Internet, which is practically free.

His goal was to acquire 3000 donors, donating $8.34 each.

He drew his stick-figure story, and posted his request website page, with a little button link to donate via PayPal. He even listed the basic campaign finance rules and a list of perks for higher than requested donations (campaign t-shirts, coffee mugs, and Kansas flags, among them).

And then he waited. (I’m sure the waiting involved a bit of “alerting the press”)

BoingBoing (one of my favorite must-visit-daily websites), and a few others got the word. I got the word from BB, and spread it to the Atheist Think Tank forum. I monitored Sean’s website, watching the donors increase slowly. I was getting worried. When I first started watching, he had only acquired a hundred or so. But, probably because of all the latency created by the flood of visitors to his website, I was likely not seeing what was really happening. My forum friends informed me that they had either donated or that the website was sluggish. We started passing out Sean’s direct email so that we could donate via PayPal without going through his website. We sat and watched and cheered and rallied. And, apparently, so did a hell of a lot of others.

And today, July 21, the number of donors is 5,298.

That’s five-thousand, two hundred and ninety-eight donors.

Screw 3000, make 6000!

Apparently no state representative in Kansas history has ever had more than 644 donors.

WIN!¹

But you know what has gotten me really excited about all this? It’s not Sean Tevis specifically, although I think he’s established himself as a hero. It’s that this has given us an example of how we can use our resources to make progressive change, to rally against the incumbents who want to tell us that the way to live our lives must conform to their twisted ideologies. It shows us that there are people out there who give a shit, and although they might not all individually be able to stand up and fight, they sure can click a button and send a real representative a few bucks to help do something about this strangulation we’re enduring. And that representative can do what needs to be done without worrying about not being related to an oil tycoon. If you want to phrase that in popular terminology (that, in its spiritual sense, doesn’t necessarily correspond to my rational belief system, but is a close enough word), it gives us rationals some hope.

Sean Tevis needed 3000 of us to help him kick some ass.

What we need is 3000 Sean Tevises.

First, go visit Sean Tevis by clicking these words, and see what he’s done, and maybe donate a little.

Second, do something about something. I can’t tell you exactly what to do. All I know is that if we even had ten, twenty more people like Sean Tevis, we could start reversing this trend of government-sponsored, taxpayer funded perniciousness. Donate to a Sean Tevis, run your own campaign, start a local paper or a blog, get active.

1. or “PWN!” if that suits you [↩]

According to Jerry Bergman, at Answers in Genesis, we should be teaching Creationism in public schools.

Here’s his reasoning:

Fifty studies were reviewed that surveyed opinions on teaching origins in public schools. The vast majority found about 90 % of the public desired that both creation and evolution or creation only be taught in the public schools. About 90 % of Americans consider themselves creationists of some form, and about half believe that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years. In America, about 15 % of high school teachers teach both evolution and creation, and close to 20 % of high school science teachers and about 10,000 scientists (including more than 4,000 life scientists) reject both macroevolution and theistic evolution. Although the vast majority of Americans desire both creation and evolution taught in school, the evolutionary naturalism worldview dominates, revealing a major disparity between the population and the ruling élite.

I agree!

I think we should be teaching alternate theories of existence in public schools. And here is how I propose we set up the curriculum:

Monday

1st Period: The Earth was nothing but water and darkness, ruled over by Mbombo, the white giant. One day, he felt a terrible pain in his stomach, and vomited the sun, the moon, and the stars. The sun shone fiercely and water steamed up in clouds. Gradually, the dry hills appeared. Mbombo vomited again, this time the trees came out of his stomach, and animals, and people, and many other things: the first woman, the leopard, the eagle, the anvil, monkey Fumu, the first man, the firmament, medicine, and lighting. Nchienge, the woman of the waters, lived in the East. She had a son, Woto, and a daughter, Labama. Woto was the first king of the Bakuba.¹

2nd Period: The Creator split a tree into three pieces. He gave a piece to each tribe, one being a spear, the other a hoe, and the third a bow, and these recipients became the three tribes of people, the beginning of humanity.

3rd Period: Mangala was an entity made up of four divisions, and two sets of dual gendered twins. Being tired of keeping it all inside, Mangala compiled all the matter into a seed, which was the world. And the seed exploded, disappointing Mangala, who destroyed it. Then Mangala tried again with two sets of twin seeds, which, after having been planted in an egg-like womb, along with other sets of seeds, emerged as fish, representing fertility. One of the male twins tried to escape from the egg. This trickster, Pemba, stole a piece of the womb’s placenta and threw it down, creating the earth. He then tried to refertilize the remainder of the womb. Mangala castrated and killed Farro, Pemba’s brother, to save creation, and then Mangala raised Farro from the dead. Mangala then took the remainder of the placenta and transformed it into the sun, leaving Pemba for the darkness and night. Mangala transformed Ferro into a human, and was taught the language of creation. Farro’s newly created twins came and joined him on the earth, and they all propagated humanity.

4th Period: Lunch

5th Period: Damballah created all the waters of the earth. In the form of a serpent, the movement of his 7,000 coils formed hills and valleys on earth and brought forth stars and planets in the cosmos. He forged metals from heat and sent forth lightning bolts to form the sacred rocks and stones. When he shed his skin in the sun, releasing all the waters over the land, the sun shone in the water and created the rainbow. Damballah loved the rainbow’s beauty and made her his wife, Aida-Wedo. The revelations of the loa (deity) descended upon the first faithful in Ifé, a legendary city located in Nigeria. Therefore, everything in life and all spiritual strength comes from Ifé. In death, the higher soul will return to Ginen (the world of the dead, said to be under the water below the earth) to reside with the loa and the ancestral spirits.

6th Period: In the beginning, there was only water and chaos. The supreme being sent Obatala or Orishanla down from the sky to create some land out of the chaos. He descended on a long chain (umbilical cord) and brought with him a rooster, some iron, and a palm kernel. First, he put the metal on the earth and the rooster on top of that. The rooster scratched the metal and spread it out to create land. Then he planted the palm seed and from it grew the earth’s vegetation. Olurun named earth “Ife” and the first city “Ile-Ife.” Orshilana created humans out of the earth and got Olurun to blow life into them.

Tuesday

1st Period: Physical reality (space, matter and/or energy) is eternal, and therefore does not have an absolute origin. The Creator is an architect and organizer of pre-mortal matter and energy, who constructed the present universe out of the raw material (demiurge). There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.

2nd Period: Xenu was the dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy” who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Their essences remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm.

3rd Period: Auditing practice.

4th Period: Lunch

5th Period: Everything begins in a state of chaos where nothing exists but two gods named Tiamat and Apsu, who give birth to the first generation of gods, which one is Ea. Apsu cannot sleep because of these god children so he plans to kill them. Ea finds out and kills Apsu and Tiamat plans to avenge her husband. Ea has a son named Marduk. Tiamat assembles a huge army to avenge her husband and names Qingu the commander. Marduk is named as commander of the younger gods as long as he kills Tiamat; which he does through an arrow to the throat. Marduk splits her body in half and uses the back half to make the sky (which holds back the cosmic ocean) and the front half to make the earth (which holds the subterranean ocean). Marduk takes out Tiamat’s eyes and allows some of the subterranean ocean to flow out into two streams that become the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Finally, Marduk and Ea (and other gods) decide to create human beings to bear the burden of the gods, so that they can rest and not have to do all the hard work. Marduk creates people by killing Qingu and mixing Qingu’s blood with clay.

6th Period: The Ground of Being is the First Cause.

Wednesday

et cetera.

I think this would be an excellent way to introduce much needed mythological and spiritual awakenings in students, letting them know that plenty of other people around the world actually believe this stuff, AND, since they do believe this stuff, that makes this stuff VALID as alternate theories to evolution, and that no “theory” is better than any other belief in creation. I mean, it only makes sense that we give everyone a fair shot, right? I’m all for that. I’ll have to get my kid an afterschool tutor so he can learn to do some basic math, but it’s worth it for all the myriad wonders of creationism he will learn! Now that’s tolerance!

So, now that that point has been conceded and taken care of, I propose we move to the next item on the agenda, regarding tolerance, fairness, and whatnot: required programs for every religious institution.

All religious institutions shall, with their own funding, thoroughly and objectively instruct their staff, members, and guests, with government oversight, in the following areas:

-Heredity
-Variation
-Mutation
-Sex and recombination
-Population genetics
-Mechanisms
-Natural selection
-Genetic drift
-Gene flow
-Outcomes
-Adaptation
-Co-evolution
-Co-operation
-Speciation
-Extinction
-Evolutionary history of life
-Abiogenesis
-Common descent
-Evolution of life

-The scientific method
-Basic and intermediate mathematics
-Logic
-Philosophy
-Classic literature
-Civil rights
-Constitutional law
-World history
-Domestic history

Religious institutions will be required to hire experts in these fields who are unaffiliated with any religion (lest there be an unfair bias in favor of one “theory” or religion over another), and will be subject to strict scrutiny with regard to the curriculum and teaching standards. Standardized exams will be given, and religious institutions will have adjustments in funding and tax exemption based on the scores.

It would be my honor to assist in implementing this fair and balanced program. I hope it gets kicked off right away!

What a great day for tolerance!

1. This, and the following excerpts, quoted and paraphrased from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth [↩]

Part II of the Post Hoc and the Finicky Chickens video is up!

Research Volunteers Needed!

We are preparing to run another fMRI study of belief and disbelief, and we need volunteers to help us refine our experimental stimuli. This promises to be the first study of religious faith at the level of the brain. By responding to the four surveys I have posted online, you can make an enormous contribution to this work.

Please answer as many of the surveys as you can. If you only have time to answer one, please choose at random (otherwise, we will have many more responses to the first than to the others).

Feel free to post this message to your blog or to forward the relevant links to your friends. We especially need Christians to respond, as one of the goals of these surveys is to design stimuli that a majority of Christians will find doctrinally sound.
http://www.samharris.org/

I had the misfortune of reading an article this morning from the St. Petersburg Times entitled “The evolution of a sensitive lesson: Educators find ways of handling The Theory. Some skip it. Others hunt for a balance point.”¹ The article states that many Florida public school teachers have been intentionally avoiding the teaching of evolution in their science classes, although Florida law requires it. What is their excuse? Backlash from offended parents. Parents who object to evolution being taught in schools.

Since “no one complains when a teacher does not teach evolution,” “There is not an outcry for, ‘Teach us Evolution.’” What a convenient excuse for using the public school system to misguide children. Evolution is a fundamental aspect of science, and the recurring attempts to overturn the success of the rational mind in 1925² evoke a sense of desperation combined with a pathetic waste of resources both monetary and mental. In what deteriorated state would the nation be if the holy book happened to state plainly that 2+2=5? Would teachers hesitate to teach correct math? Would their excuse be that there isn’t any outcry for “Teach us math”? Would they flinch and pander to parents who insisted that deviation from biblical pronouncement is offensive, regardless of any contrary evidence?

Here are some of the embarrassing statistics from the 2005 survey conducted by the National Science Teachers Association, as sited in the article:

31 percent said they felt pressured to include creationism or Intelligent Design in their science classroom. Most of the pressure came from students (22 percent) and parents (20 percent).

30 percent said they felt pressured to de-emphasize or omit evolution or evolution-related topics from their curriculum.

85 percent said they felt well-prepared to explain the reasons why it’s important for students to understand evolution; 11 percent said they did not.

19 percent said they de-emphasize or omit the term “evolution” in their lessons so as not to draw attention to it.

I say, let’s reverse this trend. If a teacher intentionally omits “evolution,” fire the teacher. If a parent tries to pressure the school or teachers not to teach evolution, or to add creationism, support the teachers who teach evolution. The state law states that evolution must be taught. The state, then, should stand behind teachers who do so.

The article throws in some definitions:

Darwin’s theory of evolution: Says species have changed over millions of years, driven by their ability to adapt and survive in changing environments.

Creationism: The belief that a god or gods created the Earth, the universe and life.

Intelligent design: The belief that some systems found in nature, such as the human eyeball, are too complex to have formed without the intervention of an unnamed designer.

Intelligent design is a modern-day reverse engineered, watered-down, “skeptic-friendly” version of creationism, as even a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush noted in what should have been the end of this controversy, the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.³ In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III stated, “The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism.” Teaching intelligent design in public schools violates the First Amendment. Teaching evolution does not.

If you live in the state of Florida, or the United States, or anywhere that the public, tax-funded school system is under either direct or surreptitious attack by those who would threaten the livelihood of teachers who teach actual science, then it is not only your duty to intervene, but it is also in your best interest. These kids are going to be running this planet in a few decades, and I don’t want to see what the world will look like if the vast majority of them insist that the planet is six thousand years old, created by sky-daddy, and anyone who says otherwise will burn in hell — after burning at the stake, of course. If you don’t think human beings are capable of such irrational behavior, then you might want to brush up on your history and current events.

Contact the Florida Department of Education⁴ and tell them that you want the government of Florida to protect teachers who follow Florida law, teachers who teach science in science class, not mythology.

If you’re not in Florida? Contact the U.S. Department of Education⁵.

Then contact the department of education in your own state.⁶ Call, write letters, protest, become amici to related court cases. There is so much we can all do, even if it seems minor. It’s that important.

1. http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/03/State/The_evolution_of_a_se.shtml [↩]
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial [↩]
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District [↩]
4. Florida Department of Education: http://www.fldoe.org/ [↩]
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education [↩]
6. Education Resource Organizations Directory: http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/Programs/EROD/org_list.cfm?category_ID=SEA [↩]

Imagine, if you will, the diversity in that group photo! The History Channel’s 2005 documentary, Ape to Man, attempts to recreate just that in a handy, 100 minute film. We learn of the struggles of the dedicated men who sought to answer some of the most fundamental questions of human existence… Who are we? Who are our evolutionary ancestors? Where on Earth do we come from? As the film explains within the first few minutes, for ages, we had no scientific explanation for these questions. That is, until the discoveries made over the last century by the scientists who risked much to bring us such revelations.

The film highlights a number of fossil milestones that mark various points along the 3 million year procession from ape-like creature to human-like protoman. It also unearths the controversies faced by those that made the discoveries, and the social climate at the time of their introduction into the scientific world. The first fossil is discovered in 1856 by a limestone harvesting crew in a cave in the Neander Valley, Germany. What is originally thought to be a piece of skull of a modern day murder victim is brought to the foreman’s attention, and is, amazingly enough, almost discarded. At the last minute, though, he instead decides to show it to a teacher friend of his he believes might have some interest in the item. The “murder victim” turns out to be a 40,000 year old skull of the hominin that is later named (you guessed it!) Neanderthal.

The interesting part is the initial hesitance on the part of the Victorian scientific community to identify this find as a new species of man. The skull is, at first, thought to belong to a barbarian that fought the Roman legions, the victim of an unknown congenital deformity, even a lost Russian Cossack. The high school anatomy teacher that retrieved the skull fragment is the first to suggest it is an ancestor to man. To most of the population at the time, this idea was absurd. Three years later, Darwin’s “Origin of Species” is published, and popular opinion regarding Neanderthal begins to change. We begin also to attempt to flesh out our family tree, and the race is on to become the first scientist to discover the “missing link,” an animal more exactly between ape and man.

That is not to say human obstinance does not play its own part in hindering the scientific process… The desire to place this “missing link” in Europe leads to one of the biggest blunders of all time in the search for our true ancestor. Piltdown man, presented before the Royal Geographical Society in 1912 by Charles Dawson, was the ideal candidate for such a creature. Its brain was large, like a human being’s, and its jaw was primitive like that of an ape. Aside from that, it was discovered in England, which is what seems to have primarily cemented its place in history. This meant our origins could be traced back to Europe, not Asia, as was previously thought, and therefore appealed to the British scientific minds of the time. Because the find was so popular, little digging was done to verify its authenticity. Decades pass before the truth is realized.

When a true contender to the throne, Taung child (or Australopithecus africanus) from South Africa was discovered by Australian anatomist Raymond Dart in 1924, it nearly devastated his career. The initial introduction of the first human ancestor to come from Africa known at the time (and earliest, at over 2,000,000 years old,) was met with much opposition. The small brain and fine teeth of Taung did not fit the mold of what scientists wanted. One London scientist who reviewed Dart’s find placed it in the same family as gorillas without having actually seen the fossil for himself. 25 years pass until Dart and his fossil gain the recognition they deserve.

In 1953, 40 years after Pildown’s ascension to the role of “missing link,” the fossil is examined scientifically for the first time. It is finally proven to be the hoax that it has been all along. The celebrated jawbone, is, indeed from a modern ape that has simple had its teeth filed down.

The tale told of our rich history (both ancient and modern) in this film is both fascinating and, well, humorous! It goes to show that even in the face of some our greatest discoveries, human selfishness has the ability to be one of our greatest downfalls. Even the most scientifically inclined among us fall victim to this kind of behavior. We are reluctant to change, we don’t like to have our conventional beliefs challenged, and we are afraid of what we don’t know. We often favor our ideas even if they aren’t the best idea going, and we don’t appreciate someone else trying to steal our thunder. What evolutionary need there is for these traits remains to be speculated. To the author, though, it’s an endearing, if annoying aspect of all of us. Perhaps one day we shall, as a species, overcome these feelings, and embrace the truth more readily, just as our ancestors overcame their fears in order to harness the power of fire. Or maybe that sort of thing will have to be up to the next species that springs from our primitive loins.

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Ape To Man for purchase

Neanderthal man

Raymond Dart on Wikipedia

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

Lucy Exhibition

Australopithecus Afarensis

PBS Humans: Humankind Evolution

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.

-Mutha