The Questioning Librarian

Over at Answers in Genesis, Buddy Davis has an idea. Well, it isn't necessarily his idea, but his article encapsulates creationist thinking on the topic; how can we  use dinosaurs to spread creationism ? He rightly points out that dinosaurs are used to teach evolution and millions of years...because they are a prime example of evolution in the fossil record and existed for millions of year. No humans, by the way, which I suppose is sadly necessary to mention. No humans until almost sixty million years after the dinosaurs died out. Never mind that many Christians are not creationists, Davis wants to speak for all of them. Because of course, we all know that the Christians who accept evolution are really just a bunch of liberal compromisers destined for hell, naturally. He asserts that Christians can use dinosaurs to explain the origin of death. Oh, that's right, creationists assert that there is no death before the Fall of Adam and Eve, so they have to explain away the fossil ...

Ken Ham  complains about speculation . He whines heartily that "secularists" can speculate about the universe, get it written up and published in a reputable science journal while as soon as creationists turn to Genesis 1 they are the focus of mocking and ridicule. How sad for him that not only does he seem to learn nothing over time, but he seems completely unaware as to how science proceeds. The idea of the multiverse, which he dismisses as "speculation", is not even close to being on the same level as the creationist world view. Or is he claiming that the literal interpretation of the Genesis account is just speculation? No, I thought not. He's just mad that "speculation" gets the press while "creation science" gets the mockery. What he doesn't seem to understand, or deliberately ignores, is that the notion of the multiverse seems to arise naturally out of modern physics. Just read Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design . While ...

Reducing one's own impact really does begin at home. By now, we've all heard the exhortations to turn out the lights, switch to efficient light bulbs, turn off the faucet, etc, etc. These are all important, and I encourage people to be taking those steps to reduce energy consumption. Walk or bike if that's feasible. But what if there was another way to reduce energy consumption? Don't waste food! We all know that we do it; I'm no exception. But what if we can change that? We waste roughly  one-third of all food we produce.  Surely this is a terrible tragedy, an unconscionable waste. But this is the proverbial, and no pun intended, low-hanging fruit of the climate change debate. Forget windmills or solar power or electric cars (alright, well don't forget them, they are massively important for the overall solutions to the problem), this is something easy that can be done on a personal level by everyone in this country. If you really aren't going to eat it, d...

And we intend to remain here for quite some time, thank you very much. The world keeps going, much as it has for several billion years, much as it will for millions more, long after I and everyone reading this are dead, long after humanity itself as a species ceases to exist. The world will keep going after that, until the sun expands and consumes it, far into the future. To say anything else (other than a chance collision with an asteroid) is a strange form of wishful thinking, the need to see ourselves, the times in which we live, as special. In the meantime, religious doomsayers will come and go. And they will all, inevitably, be proven wrong given enough time. How about a listing of such dates? In 1914 the founder of what would come to be the Jehovah's Witnesses predicted the end of the world, and the outbreak of war in Europe seemed to confirm his view. Until the end didn't come, and a religion was organized around the idea that 1914 had marked a transformation in heaven...

Ken Ham complains that evolutionists and non-Christians are intolerant towards creationists and Christians  while mouthing platitudes about tolerance. I will not speak to his first example, for that is another topic entirely, but I do want to focus on the second example, quoting Jerry Coyne (author of the excellent book Why Evolution is True  which I highly recommend as an overview of the evidence for evolution) as saying that having a belief in Intelligent Design should automatically disqualify any  scientist from getting a job in the university. I want to say first that I completely agree with Coyne. Any scientist who expresses belief in the idea of Intelligent Design should be considered as unfit to teach science at the university level. Why do I say this? I'll address that in a moment. But first is the idea that this makes Coyne "intolerant" of the beliefs of others, especially Christians. Ham quotes Coyne stating that he abhors religious discrimination is abhorrent...

Upon hearing that PZ Myers was reading Kraken  by Wendy Williams, I decided that I should read it too. And what a good decision that turned out to be! Kraken , a book about squid, is so much more than that. Not only does she discuss squid, but she also looks briefly at other cephalopods like cuttlefish and octopus. More than that, the book is an insight into the kinds of research underway, from aquariums where cephalopod intelligence is studied to Monterrey Bay where Humboldt squid are tagged to track their movements and try and shed a little light on their behavioral practices. Even further, this is a whirlwind tour through evolution, looking at fossils, ancestors, and the parallel evolution of intelligence in the five hundred million plus years since squid and (what are ultimately) human ancestors diverged. It is a fascinating journey, and very brief at two hundred pages. Perhaps most interesting of all is the section looking at how research into cephalopods, whether octopus ...

Creationist John Whitmore decided to enlighten us all as to the "real" nature of the fossil record. He is quick to inform fellow creationists that the geologic record conveys a history of catastrophes of greater or lesser extent after the Flood of Genesis. He asserts that for centuries after the Flood there were numerous catastrophes in the fossil record as the continents reshaped themselves, and that it was the record of catastrophe in the rocks that helped convince him of the veracity of the Genesis Flood (full article here:  http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n4/continuing-catastrophes ). A shame he never bothered to learn dating techniques when he looked at the rocks. Perhaps then he would have been convinced of millions of years, and we would have been spared the embarrassment of this article. The Flood "ripped apart the planet's surface and cycled rocks throughout the mantle," the article introduction posits. Funny, then, that trees and pla...

One of the reviews on the cover of Fiona McIntosh's book stated that she was set to inherit the mantle of David Gemmell. I hold the late Mr. Gemmell in such great regard that I was skeptical of this claim. When it came to action fantasy, there was no one like him, and as much as I like McIntosh's work, she is not David Gemmell. Gemmell was a class unto his own. Fiona McIntosh is good in her own right, without comparison to anyone, whether Gemmell or Jordan, Robin Hobb or P. V. Brett. After having finished the third book in her "Valisar" trilogy last night, I was very glad that I stuck through the first two books. The last hundred pages of "King's Wrath" were worth the entire trilogy. Our story began in "Royal Exile" with the attack by the barbarian Loethar on Penraven. The Valisar King, Brennus, sends his son into exile, and Leo escapes with an oath of vengeance. By the third book, ten years have passed, and all the Valisars (we learned that t...

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone mentioned the "end of the world" in 2012. It seems like "everyone" knows that the world is supposed to end on December 21, 2012, at the end of the Mayan Calender when asteroids will ravage the earth, Planet X will collide with us or the sun will go mad and burn us to a crisp. Or there will be some sort of giant flood a la Roland Emmerich. Take your pick. Or Jesus will come back, or something like it. These are all false, for various reasons, and as if it isn't enough that I keep hearing this from self-appointed prophets on the History Channel I've now been warned of impending doom from the GOP. Yes, that's right, the GOP. I routinely receive emails from an organization called GOPUSA, dedicated to "bringing the conservative message to America." Turns out that they're just a pack of fear-mongering scoundrels. Once again, it says, the government is "lying to us," about something that cou...

Well, now I'm officially a graduate of Clarion University. It hasn't sunk in yet, but I'm certainly working on it. For all their ups and downs, all the success and failure, all the triumph and the heartbreak, the joy and the sadness, to say nothing of the immense quantities of coffee and stacks of books, my five years working on my undergraduate degrees have revolutionized my life. To shamelessly quote Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," and while there were times that I was absolutely in despair, I kept going and pulled through. And it has been the most worthwhile experience of my life. I feel like my mind has been opened to all the possibilities of the world, an openness that definitely was not present during high school. That is, I suppose, the point of college, in a higher sense. Beyond the job qualification it provides, beyond the parties and the people you meet, beyond that is the realization that there is an entire world out ther...

At the risk of beating a dead horse, Creation Moments had another talk about trees, this time the fact that trees seem to be able to communicate by way of pheromones to warn each other when gypsy moth caterpillars start to attack. Once the trees have been warned, they begin to produce as many as eight poisons that kill the caterpillars when they eat the leaves (full link is here:  http://www.creationmoments.com/radio/transcripts/tree-wars ). All this shows, to the creationists, that God is concerned about everything, not just humans. While I can understand this sentiment, and would expect no less from a Creator, I cannot agree for the following reason. When the creationists make this statement, it is really just a hook for creationism, not truly a statement of faith to the glory of God. What's behind this statement is an implicit argument for fundamentalist creationism, which I will always fight, in arguing for design. The facts before us are much better explained as an example o...

The latest staggering insight from Creation Moments is that there are numerous benefits from trees. As anyone who knows anything about trees knows, trees turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, provide us with food, shelter and medicine, and I would add that trees provide useful ways of conserving energy when serving as shade for housing or windbreaks. Yes, trees are quite nice, and I wish that there were more of them than there are, especially in the Amazon. But of course, this is all done from the perspective of creationism whereby each kind of tree existing today was brought suddenly into existence (link here:  http://www.creationmoments.com/radio/transcripts/multiple-blessings-trees ) rather than being the end result of several billion years of evolution. In fact, the fossil record has thus far indicated that coniferous trees developed first, with flowering trees following in the Cretaceous Period, and one of the oldest trees to still be with us today is the ginko tree. All very fas...