“Dogs Likely Originated in Europe More than 18,000 Years Ago” reads the headline of a “Science Daily” news report summarizing genetic research published last week on the front cover of Science.
The 31 investigators who published their groundbreaking work analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of dogs and wolves from 1,000 – 30,000 years ago, comparing them with the genomes of modern domestic dogs.
The data supports the hypothesis that domestic dogs evolved from wolves in Ice Age Europe agreeing with the archaeological record, BUT, of course all this science is completely wrong and the investigators and their thousands of colleagues working in comparative genomics, paleontology, archaeology and paleoanthropology are hopelessly deluded because Ken Ham and Ray Comfort say so.
When I last dared criticize Creationism, The News’ Facebook page had more than a hundred responses. There was quite a heated exchange with Creationists from all over the U.S., absolutely incensed I had the gall to diss the unquestioned truths of Ham and Comfort.
Some questioned my credentials, saying a developmental psychologist can’t know anything about evolution. I replied politely that my undergraduate degree was in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology and human evolution, that I had done graduate work in brain and behavioral evolution and that my research includes studies in Cognitive Evolution, so that maybe I have more than enough relevant education and experience.
That seemed to shut them up on that line of argument but there is a larger and more crucial point to be made about my credentials and stance on evolution versus those of Ham’s Answers in Genesis (AiG) degreed employees who deny evolution.
When I discuss the age of the earth, the fossil evidence that makes humans and dinosaurs living together utterly preposterous, the genetic evidence that refutes any attempt at a literal interpretation of Adam and Eve or the comparative genomics of dog evolution I am reporting the science: the data and the consensus of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of scientists who work in those and related fields.
I’m telling you what we know as a species because of what practicing scientists in the relevant fields know. I am acting as a reporter, a science journalist who has enough education and familiarity to write accurately about what the experts in those fields know.
Conversely, Ham’s underlings, just because they have Ph.D.s, whether it is in a relevant or related field or not, are insisting that all those scientists are wrong: that one or two people with somewhat related degrees and who do not work in these fields can completely overturn the consensus of thousands of scientists.
Somehow Ham’s employees know better than entire disciplines worth of scientists who actually do the research, solely because the revisions and denials of AiG employees must comport with Ham and Comfort’s extreme Creationist interpretations. That’s the absurdity, the 24 karat chutzpah, the absolute idiocy of their claims.
I teach a course in developmental psychology. My Ph.D. allows me to be familiar enough with the subject and its research to lecture competently on the current findings from an up-to-date textbook that contains the latest knowledge gleaned from thousands of studies published by thousands of researchers.
It would be absurd enough for me, even with a degree and research experience in the same field to insist that all those scientists, all those studies were wrong: that an entire field was hopelessly incorrect and all its practitioners thoroughly deluded just because I said so.
But that is exactly what Ham’s hired hands do, and without relevant background in most of the fields they pretend to overturn all consensus on. Ya’ gotta’ admit they got balls, if not brains. Just because you have earned an advanced degree doesn’t mean you’re a genius. One of the brightest professors I ever had, possibly the smartest intellect I’ve had the pleasure of knowing said a Ph.D. guarantees only one thing: that a person has worked very hard at least once in their life.
Ham’s hired guns, although they may have an education related to the whole fields of study they obnoxiously claim are in error, and may have earned their degrees with a lot of hard work, it gives them absolutely no credentials, no justification for claiming they know better than whole disciplines of working scientists.
The whole Creationist enterprise is bankrupt from the start, and then there’s all the evidence that unequivocally supports evolution to the point; it is absurd to deny it.
If there is anything Creationists are competent at is absurdity and denial. Creationism is one of the most striking examples of the conflict of religion and science in this country and around the world.
Come hear University of Chicago evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne tonight at Freed Curd Auditorium at 7 p.m. speak on this very subject.
Story by William Zingrone, associate professor of psychology
The truth of Genesis states that mankind has been on this Earth, in his present likeness,
for more than 60 million years. They were the third advent of mankind on Earth, after
two episodes of extinctions. In Genesis chapter two, it tells of modern mankind (the sixth
advent), which God created in 7200 BC, which we know as Adam & Eve.
Don't listen to "creationist clowns" that don't understand the Genesis text. They misrepresent
Genesis, the same way the Catholic Church misrepresents Christianity (it is a pagan religion
which was started by Constantine in 325 AD).
The ONLY correct opposing view to evolution is the "Observations of Moses". Look it up. Every
thing else is false and foolish doctrines.
Herman Cummings
ephraim7@aol.com