Evidence Against Young-Earth Creationism

I am a theist, and a Christian, but I am not a fan of believing in claims that appear to be more than demonstrably false. To believe in a claim that is proven false absolutely requires that the adherent willfully closes their mind to truth. If there is a God, then that is certainly not what he intended for us.

One of these claims which, in my uneducated opinion, is more than demonstrably false is Young-Earth Creationism (YEC). I don't mean to offend anyone who may believe in Young-Earth Creationism, but to my mind, I can't imagine why He would do that.

To create the Earth in one week, 6,000 years ago, would require pretty significant, and frequent, violations of known laws of physics. If He could accelerate the Creation process in such a way, then why did it take a week? If He is capable of performing such huge violations of the laws of physics, then why not just snap your fingers and have it all be there? I don't know that there is a coherent answer.

In addition, if He did create it in one week, 6,000 years ago, then why would He also create huge amounts of physical evidence that it took much longer? Literally everything in the universe, from coral and tree rings, to the time it takes starlight to reach us, testifies that the universe has been here for much more than 6,000 years.

The more insightful among you may say that He did that in order to mask his presence, such as in an old refutation to the Argument from Non-Belief. He needs only those who are prepared to know of His existence in order to protect the unprepared. But that doesn't quite fit. No matter how God created the Earth, He could have masked His existence. Old-Earth Creationism doesn't bring us any further to proving his existence. In fact, wouldn't Old-Earth Creationism be the more reasonable model, if He were trying to hide His influence, since it looks much more like the natural process?

A bigger problem is that if God did leave such evidence as fossils and such in order to throw us off, it would be closer to deception than masking his existence. In other words, it would not simply be the absence of positive evidence, it would be the presentation of negative evidence. God would be telling a lie, rather than simply not saying anything at all, and according to Christian canon, God cannot lie.

In other words, no matter how you choose to interpret the first few chapters of Genesis, it difficult to see Young-Earth Creationism as not conflicting with the rest of the Bible and how we conceive of God, in addition to simply leaving many, many questions unanswered, and contradicting the many signs to the contrary.

D Rizdek on Fine Tuning

A user over at Debunking Christianity, named D Rizdek, made a comment on the Fine-Tuning which was noteworthy enough to be made into it's own post. He said,

"Fine tuning only makes sense if there is no god. If there is no god, then it is quite remarkable that all the universal constants seem to be "just so" such that matter/energy comes together in atoms, then molecules, that gravity is "just right" so that planets and suns form that give off light that nurtures life, blah blah. But that's only remarkable if there's no god. But of course that indicates there's no god.  

If there IS a god, then it's all mundane. It's all arbitrary. Matter and energy can behave anyway this god wants it to. There need be no universal constants at all, or they can be ANYTHING this god desires, because,well, it's god. God can design things any it want's to. Life need not have a planet it live on IF god designed it otherwise. Matter/energy need not come together to form atoms, planets and stars. What would be the point if life doesn't need them. Besides, if god wanted atoms, planets or start, they'd just appear without any constants. Because that's what gods do. It's only after applying human limitations on god that one can use the argument from fine tuning. The reasoning is that because WE are limited in how we must interact with the immutable physical universe, somehow the theist becomes ingrained in thinking their god must also be thus limited. They believe he must come up with "just so" constants otherwise nothing would work."

Rizdek says that Fine-Tuning only works if there is no God because if there is no God, then it is remarkable that all these constants line up in a way that allows life to form. If there is a God, then it is not remarkable, it's to be expected.

I may be mistaken, but his argument seems to be:

• If God exists, then the universe would allow life to exist.
• The universe allows life to exist.
• This isn't particularly impressive.

Therefore:

• God does not exist.

In addition, the post that came from this comment stated that:

"The burden of proof would be on the theist to show why God would want to produce a world which was naturalistically sustained and so on rather than one supported supernaturalistically."

Here is a response to that:

Argument from Non-Belief

Jesse Anderson and the Infinite Money Theorum

"It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?
Stupid Monkey!"

The Infinite Money Theorem states that a million monkeys with a million typewriters, given a million years, will type out all the works of Shakespeare.

About a year ago, a Nevada software developer named Jesse Anderson claimed that a computerized simulation of a typing simian had completed  "A Lover's Complaint," a narrative poem by Shakespeare.

CNN reports that Anderson's virtual monkeys began typing on August 21, 2011. Using open-source software called Hadoop, he created a huge group of "monkeys" that input random strings of gibberish. When a chunk of text matches a word used in Shakespeare's catalogue, it gets crossed off of a database of the plays and poems.

The problem is that this completely misses the point of the theorem. The theorem, at least as applied to the origin of life implies that the words must be in order. The analogy between randomly creating Shakespeare and DNA randomly forming in primordial seas necessitates it, because the argument requires the formation of a complete strand of DNA, not a single segment.

Therefore, the work of Shakespeare produced by the monkeys must also be a complete strand, not individual letters.

Anderson reported that trillions of character combinations have so far been used, but Shakespeare has presumably not yet been reproduced.

However, even if it were, there would be other things to take into account, such as the fact that amino acids are soluble in water. Even if it could have formed in ancient seas, it immediately would have broken up again.

While evolution by natural selection is an adequate explanation of the development of complex life, and it is an explanation that I do accept as truth, we cannot yet explain how that life originated in the first place. Even Richard Dawkins admits this.

But whatever the case, Anderson's virtual monkeys do not prove that such complexity could come about so quickly.

Reproducing Religious Experience

A few years ago, there was a study done in which a scientist used electromagnetic currents to give subjects feelings similar or identical to those experienced in reported "religious experiences."

There have been studies like this for decades. The most famous ones, and certainly the ones that were the most fun, involved giving subjects LSD in a controlled environment.

The study was not done to disprove the existence of any religion. In fact, they claim that "we have not attempted to refute or to support the absolute existence of gods, spirits, or other transient phenomena that appear to be prominent features of people's beliefs about themselves before and after death... However, we have shown that the experience of these phenomena, often attributed to spiritual sources, can be elicited by stimulating the brain with specific weak complex magnetic fields."

However, this information is almost always cited as proof that there is no God and that religious experience is false. It is a simple fact that this is not proof that God does not exist. However, it is evidence. It is evidence that there is no God and that religious experience is a delusion. In other words, based on the results of this and similar studies, we cannot conclude that there is no God. We can only conclude that is it less likely than we thought. How much less? I don't know. Even Richard Dawkins can't put an exact number on it. But this does give us reason to doubt.

I think the reason that this is taken as proof of God's non-existence is because of the false assumption that God, if He exists, works exclusively through mystical, abstract, non-physical means, but this is not a Christian doctrine. The Atheist demands magic. The Christian is comfortable with chemicals. The Atheist demands that God operate entirely outside of our bodies. The Christian is comfortable with religious experience being just that — an experience, and thus experimental. The idea that God doesn't always work through ridiculous violations of the laws of physics, but through natural processes, is not new the Christians.

Furthermore, you cannot prove that something does not exist simply because you can replicate it. If this were true, then we could conclude that there is no Federal Reserve because people fake counterfeit money. We could say that there is no such thing as love because there is Ecstasy. There are no natural lakes because there are man-made lakes.

The existence of a counterfeit does not indicate that it is not based on something authentic. It only means we need to be more careful before coming to conclusions about what is true or false, because even if there was a God, a good percentage of religious experiences must still be false.

Christianity and the Birth of Modern Science

It's a pretty common view these days that science and religion are at odds, or that they work against each other. This is tragic. What is even more tragic is that this view is often accurate. Theists make claims which are demonstrably false and consider it a badge of honor to obstinately refuse to listen to reason, or to promote a conception of God which even they admit makes no sense.

Another view is that science and religion are independent of each other. Science is about the physical, whereas religion is about the metaphysical. Science is empirical, religion is more philosophic. Rejecting religion because of science is like rejecting politics because of science, or rejecting economics because of science. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Recently, I came across another idea which I had never heard, but the more I look, the more sources I see that hold this position. Some scholars apparently think that religion has not been a hindrance to science. In fact, they believe that modern science owes a lot to medieval Christianity.

One example is James Hannam, who holds a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. He wrote an article called Christianity and the Rise of Science. In this article, he argues that Christianity is largely responsible for the rise of science as we have it today for a number of reasons, including:

• The preservation of literacy in the Dark Ages.
• The doctrine of the lawfulness of nature.
• The need to examine the real world rather than rely on pure reason.
• The belief that science was a sacred duty.

I highly suggest you read the full article, linked above, for a complete explanation. Another article by Hannam is Science owes much to both Christianity and the Middle Ages.

A misconception about apparent conflict comes from a few high-profile cases, such as Galileo, but these are not characteristic of the entire Middle Ages. The idea that science and religion were in conflict did not become popular until long after in the writings of Voltaire. 

We think that science and religion were in conflict for the same reason that people are afraid to fly in airplanes. We never hear reports of planes successfully landing with no trouble. We only hear about the horrific crashes, so we have a distorted view of how common they are. Likewise, we never hear about all the support religion gave to science and education in an era when it was hard to come by. We only hear about Galileo's trial so our view is distorted.

Another mistake is equating "religion" with "Christianity". Even in the Middle Ages, religious communities in other parts of the world, such as in Muslim regions, saw many fundamental advances in science and mathematics, including a theory of evolution by natural selection which was common knowledge among Muslims almost a thousand years before Darwin.

Much of history is simply a matter of perception and interpretation. If Hitler had won WWII, our textbooks would be very different, regardless of what actually happened or who was actually "right", but it seems there is a certain number of scholars who interpret history such that not only has religion not been a stumbling block for science, but that we may not have had science without it.

What do you think?

TIL that Evolution was taught among Muslims almost a thousand years before Darwin.

Here's another post on Reddit that has exploded into something interesting. I submitted a post called TIL that Evolution was taught among Muslims almost a thousand years before Darwin. The comments turned into a pretty interesting discussion about the relationship between science and religion, the history of Evolution as a scientific idea, the effect of religion on peoples minds, and many other things.

This submission hasn't blown up the way IAmA Former Mormon Missionary. AMA did, but there are some pretty interesting insights that are definitely worth checking out.

Big Bang Theism

Sometimes when I read atheistic writings or publications it seems like the term "Christian" or "Theist" is taken to be interchangeable with "Creationism". I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be either a Christian or a theist, and it also shows a lack of understanding or awareness that there are different forms of creationism.

There is Young-Earth Creationism, which holds that the Earth is only 6000 years old, there is no evolution, etc. There is also Old-Earth Creationism, which holds that the six "days" in Genesis were not literal 24 hour periods,  God may have used evolution as the mechanism by which He created man, etc.

Here is a handy little graphic I found that illustrates each view.

Stone Age Europeans Discovered America

Here is an interesting article saying that new discoveries indicate that the first settlers of the Americas were not Siberian-originating ancestors of today's Native Americans. New finds, such as arrowheads and other tools show that some Europeans made it here about 10,000 years before those who crossed over the Bering Strait.

"A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological breakthroughs for several decades - and are set to add substantially to our understanding of humanity's spread around the globe."

READ MORE

This doesn't directly support anything taught by the LDS church, but at the very least, I hope we can realize that we do not have a full grasp of the history of the American continent, and I hope we can be a little more open-minded towards some LDS claims.

The Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit

The Ultimate 747 Boeing Gambit is an argument put forth by Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, which is allegedly a counter-argument to the Argument from Design and an allusion to Holye's Fallacy.

Astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, who was a Darwinist, atheist and anti-theist, reportedly stated that the "probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747."

The basic argument against the idea of empirical theism goes back to David Hume, who's argument ccan be summed up in the popular phrase, "Who designed the designer?"

Dawkins writes that Evolution by natural selection is the only workable solution to the question of life's origin on Earth, and since it requires fewer assumptions than the God Hypothesis, Occam's Razor demands that we accept evolution over God.

This argument forms the central argument of The God Delusion and can be read here.

There are a few problems with this.

First is that evolution by natural selection is not a workable solution for the origin of life on Earth. Evolution does adequately explain how that life moved from simplicity to complexity, but it does not explain how it began to exist in the first place. Richard Dawkins admits this.

The fact that evolution does not explain the origin of life on Earth does not mean that we must therefore accept God as the answer. It only means that evolution, by itself, is not sufficient reason to reject God as the answer.

This leads to the second problem. Even if evolution by natural selection is a reality, which I believe that it is, it does not mean that we must reject God as a reality. There is nothing in evolution which disproves God, or even affects His probability of existence. At best, it disproves Young-Earth Creationism, but it actually strengthens Old-Earth Creationism.

Even Charles Darwin said that a man "can be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist."

Third, Dawkins argues that God is the ultimate Boeing 747 because if He created something as complex as the universe, then he must be even more complex. Therefore, the designer needs a designer. If the universe could not have arisen by chance, then neither could God.

However, Dawkins argues that the universe did arise by chance and that there is almost certainly no designer. Therefore, Dawkins argues that complexity does not require design. However, complexity could be designed, it is simply not required.

For example, it very well could be the case that the universe was designed, since it is possible that complexity would come about by design, but it is also possible that the universe's designer was not designed, since design is not required for complexity.

Not only is Dawkins' argument self-refuting, since he does not believe that complexity requires design, but it also completely fails to even address the issue of God's existence for the same reason.

The Argument from Parsimony

Occam's Razor

The Argument from Parsimony is an argument against the existence of God which claims that because scientific, or naturalistic, theories adequately describe the origin of life and the development of religion, the actual existence of any supernatural beings is an unnecessary detail and may be ignored unless it is shown that we need it to explain some phenomenon.

In other words, unless it can be shown that a phenomenon cannot be explained unless there is a God, then we have no reason to think that there is a God. God would complicate the issue rather than work towards resolution.

First of all, let me say that there is a difference between parsimony and simplicity. There are many simple theories which are not parsimonious. For example:

"The planets and stars are stuck to orbs around the Earth."

The geocentric model of the solar system is much simpler than our current view, that the Sun is in the center. The Heliocentric model is so complex that Sir Issac Newton had to develop a new kind of math, calculus, to describe the motion of celestial bodies and develop the laws of motion and gravitation.

But even though the idea of a heliocentric solar system is vastly more complex, it is still more parsimonious because it leaves fewer questions unanswered.

This principle is referred to as Occam's Razor. The idea that the hypothesis that requires fewer assumptions is preferable.

That's actually one of the first weaknesses with this argument. It's presents Occam's Razor as an absolute law, when it is actually just a "rule of thumb".

This is important because there are many, many examples of Occam's Razor stifling or delaying scientific advancement. For example, appeals to simplicity were used to deny meteorites, ball lightning, continental drift, DNA, atomic theory, and reverse transcriptase.

In addition to denying ideas that turned out to be true, Occam's Razor is also used to assert ideas which are false. For example, scientists thought that there must be some medium, Aether, out in space which allowed light waves to propagate, because it was less parsimonious to postulate wave propagation in a vacuum. At the time, all known waves propagated through a physical medium. We now know this to be false.

So the Argument from Parsimony fails immediately just because explanations sometimes reach beyond available data.

Second, even if the argument was successful, denial of God would bring us no closer to understanding what caused the Big Bang or life on Earth. Even Richard Dawkins admits the possibility of an origin involving intelligent beings (3:10).

For example, imagine yourself holding the end of a long chain. The other end of this chain is not in view, but when you pull on the chain, it it secured. If we were to say that there is nobody holding the other end of the chain, would we be any closer to finding out what is holding the other end? For that matter, do we have any good reason to think there is no one holding the other end? Sure, there may be no evidence that there is, but is there any evidence that there isn't? Like Dawkins, should we at least be open to the possibility of some intelligence on the other side?

Would we be making any fewer assumptions if, instead of a person on the other end of the chain, we instead said that it was fastened to some post or bolt in a wall? Or would we then need to explain how that post got there, ad infinitum?

So even if the argument is successful, which it isn't, then it still just doesn't do us any good. It wouldn't even necessary show that God is the less parsimonious hypothesis.

Mormon Creation

A while ago, I had a discussion with a reader about the LDS doctrine of Creation (See Comments). Mainstream Christianity and science say that the Universe was created in an instant, from nothing, though they disagree on how long it took.

The reader pointed out a supposed inconsistency in LDS doctrine, because Joseph Smith taught that matter is eternal, which would seem to indicate a steady state universe.

I pointed out that this does not mean that the Church supports the steady state theory. After all, Joseph Smith taught that "Spirit" was a type of matter, and Spirit is eternal. Therefore, he was not necessarily referring to the physical universe.

There are other issues, such as the mysterious nature of the Singularity, which leave Joseph Smith's comments rather ambiguous. Ultimately, the church has no official position on how the Creation happened, and it allows its members to believe what best makes sense to them.

However, I recently came across this quote by the second President of the Church, Brigham Young:

In these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular...whether the Lord found the earth empty and void, whether he made it out of nothing or out of the rude elements; or whether he made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he give revelation on the subject. If we understood the process of creation there would be no mystery about it, it would be all reasonable and plain, for there is no mystery except to the ignorant.
—Brigham Young, (May 14, 1871) Journal of Discourses 14:116.

The context of this quote is Brigham Young commenting on the relationship between science and religion. The religionists of the day pushed the idea that God "made the earth out of nothing in six days, six thousand years ago."

Brigham Young says that in these respects we differ from Christians because, as I explained to this reader, we do not make this claim. We do not know exactly how the Creation happened, but "our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular."

Whatever science says, we agree.

Science Flies You To The Moon. Religion Flies You Into Buildings.

The graphic above has been circulating around the internet for some time now, but I saw it recently and started really thinking of the implications of it and how ridiculous the thought process behind it is.

First of all, it's a logical fallacy. It's an appeal to emotion. It asks you to suspend the thinking part of your brain and just focus on an emotion (anger or sorrow over 9/11) rather than an actual idea. Then it ties the scapegoat, religion, to that emotion.

Second, it's too simplistic. It equates "science" with space travel, and "religion" with 9/11. It completely ignores all the terrible things science has done (Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Napalm, Chem Warfare, the invention of firearms.) Even the automobile kills more than what this graphic calls "religion". In the United States alone, 35,000 to 40,000 people are killed by automotive accidents every year. That means that since 9/11, cars have killed about 385,000 people. Thank you, Science.

In addition, it ignores the good done by religion. The LDS church alone, in 2008, provided aid to 3.3 million people in 122 countries, and since 1985 help has been given to 23 million people in 163 nations. From 1985 - 2009, $327.6 million in cash and $884.6 million in commodities of aid was given throughout 178 countries. These services include, Emergency response, wheelchair distribution, The Clean Water Service, the Neonatal Resuscitation Program, and the Vision Treatment Training program.

2011 was also a big year for LDS disaster relief and humanitarian aid.

In addition to these efforts, the LDS Church also has over 300 job development and placement centers around the world. In 2001, the LDS Church began the Perpetual Education Fund which provides money to cover tuition and other school expenses to people in developing nations. As of 2007, tens of thousands of individuals had been given assistance. So far this program has operated primarily in South America and Oceana. The LDS Church has also begun producing a nutrition-rich porridge named Atmit to help during acute famines. The LDS Church Welfare program owns farms, ranches, canneries, and other food producing facilities to provide temporary food relief for families and individuals. LDS Humanitarian Services frequently works with other charities and NGOs such as the Red Cross, Catholic charities and even various Islamic charities for which the LDS Church has produced halaal food.

Clearly, there's more to consider than aviation.

Third, even if we were to equate "science" with spaceflight and "religion" with commercial airline disasters, then Science's record still wouldn't be too good compared to Religion.

For example, there about 15 million commercial flights annually, worldwide. That means that since 9/11, there have been about 165,000,000 flights. How many of these has religion flown into buildings? Four. Two into the WTC, one into the Pentagon, and I'm counting the failed attempt that ended up in a Pennsylvania field.

That means that your odds of having "religion" fly your plane into a building is 0.000000024%.

"Science" has flown 291 manned spaceflights since 1961. As of November 2004, 439 individuals had flown on spaceflights, and 22 astronauts had died.

That means that your odds of having "science" kill you and your entire crew is about 5%.

That means that "science" is 208,333,333.33 times more likely to blow you up in the air than "religion."

"One of these days, Alice! One of these days!
 BANG! Straight to the moon!!"
 - Ralph Kramden on Space Travel

And that's not counting non-astronaut fatalities during spaceflights. 305 civilians have been killed as the result of spaceflight accidents, including up to 100 dead in Xichang, China, where the Intelsat 708 Satellite, a Long March rocket, veered off course immediately after launch, crashing into a nearby village only 22 seconds later, destroying 80 houses.

So even if religion flies you into buildings, science flies you into whole villages.

We've killed 327 people to get 439 into space. That means that every time a shuttle launches, there's a 74% chance that someone will die for each crew member on board.

Some may be thinking, that's only true because you're looking at percentages, not death tolls. 9/11 killed more than 3,000 people, spaceflight has only killed 327.

That may be true, but I still don't think you want to take that route, because as pointed out earlier, science is responsible for a lot more than our few trips to the moon. But even if we were confined to aviation, we could also say that shoddy engineering, maintenance and design (Mechanical Failure) has killed more in commercial airliners than religion.

According to ACRO, between 1999 and 2010, there were about 2,000 airplane accidents, resulting in around  15,000 deaths.

But look on the bright side,
at least they're making money off you.

Religiosity and High IQ?

I recently wrote about a study done in 2008 which allegedly connected religiosity and low IQ. In other words, you're more likely to be a believer if you're stupid.

I mentioned a few problems with the study, including the testers reputation for falsifying and concocting data and the fact that the conclusion is unsupported, even if the data is accurate.

Then I stumbled upon this 2011 article, by USA Today, about a study showing that you're more than twice as likely to abandon religion if you are uneducated.

"Since the 1970s, religious service attendance has declined among all white Americans, but the rate of decline among those without college degrees has been more than twice that of college graduates, according to the researchers."



Read the full article here!

Religiosity and Low IQ

Prof. Richard Lynn

A few years ago, a British psychologist named Prof. Richard Lynn did a study comparing various countries religiosity and their average IQ.

The study, published in the scientific journal, Intelligence, measured the average IQ of 137 countries and compared it to the statement from a 2007 study on religion covering the same 137 countries, representing about 95% of the world's population. In Angola, for example, 98.5% of the population believes in a God, but the average IQ was just 68.

However, the three countries with higher IQs were Japan (105), Taiwan (105) and Germany (99). In those countries, the percentage of people who disbelieve in God were 65%, 24%, 42%.

Prof Lynn found that in only 17% of countries did the proportion of people who believe in God fall below 80%. Prof Lynn said, "These are virtually all the higher IQ countries."

In short, nations with a lower average IQ tended to have the most believers. One exception was America , a high IQ country where only 10 per cent of people don't believe in God.

A thoughtful reader would be hesitant to accept these results for a few reasons. First and foremost is that correlation does not equal causation. If correlation implied causation, it would mean that ice cream causes children to drown.

In addition, there are many factors that contribute to IQ, and the study does not take these into account.

But Prof Gordon Lynch of Birkbeck College, London, said the study had failed to take into account complicated economic, historical and social factors that explained different IQ and 'faith' levels in countries.

'Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive,' he said.

One of these important factors is the socioeconomic status of the individual in question. For example, Richard Lynn collaborated on a book called The Bell Curve, which argues, in part, that genetic differences between African-American and white subjects caused African-Americans to have lower IQ scores.

But then we have this:

Contrary to "The Bell Curve" findings, a new study by researchers at Columbia and Northwestern Universities suggests that poverty and early learning opportunities -- not race -- account for the gap in IQ scores between blacks and whites. (The study will be published in the April issue of Child Development. 

Adjustments for socioeconomic conditions almost completely eliminate differences in IQ scores between black and white children, according to the study's co-investigators. They include Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Pamela Klebanov of Columbia's Teachers College, and Greg Duncan of the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University.
As in many other studies, the black children in the study had IQ scores a full 15 points lower than their white counterparts. Poverty alone, the researchers found, accounted for 52 percent of that difference, cutting it to 7 points. Controlling for the children's home environment reduced the difference by another 28 percent, to a statistically insignificant 3 points -- in essence, eliminating the gap altogether.

In other words, socioeconomic status played a large enough role in the development of the subjects IQ that it virtually eliminated race as a factor at all. The Bell Curve, and Lynn's study of religiosity, both fail to even consider this huge factor.

This is important because all of the nations which Lynn lists as having low IQ scores are developing countries, such as Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, Guatamala, Ghana and Angola.

Here's a graph that compares another study's information on religiosity with the GDP per capita of the listed nations:

Socioeconomic status is clearly a strong factor.

Although I admit that many people who identify as non-believers are very intelligent, such as Carl Sagan, there are also many intelligent people throughout history who were theists. Given the information above, and the many exceptions we have to Lynn's conclusion, shouldn't we reconsider how great a factor religion is on IQ, if it's a factor at all?

In addition, doesn't the fact that some countries, such as Japan and Taiwan, have identical average IQs, but widely varying degrees of religiosity strongly imply that there are other factors at play?

In addition to not accounting for other significant factors, there are other reasons to take Lynn's findings with a grain of salt. Lynn's review work on global racial differences in cognitive ability has been cited for misrepresenting the research of other scientists, and has been criticized for unsystematic methodology and distortion. For example, Many of the data points in Lynn's book IQ and the Wealth of Nations were not based on residents of the named countries. 

The datum for Suriname was based on tests given to Surinamese who had emigrated to the Netherlands, and the datum for Ethiopia was based on the IQ scores of a highly selected group that had emigrated to Israel, and, for cultural and historical reasons, was hardly representative of the Ethiopian population. The datum for Mexico was based on a weighted averaging of the results of a study of “Native American and Mestizo children in Southern Mexico” with results of a study of residents of Argentina.

The datum that Lynn and Vanhanen used for the lowest IQ estimate, Equatorial Guinea, was the mean IQ of a group of Spanish children in a home for the developmentally disabled in Spain. Corrections were applied to adjust for differences in IQ cohorts (the “Flynn” effect) on the assumption that the same correction could be applied internationally, without regard to the cultural or economic development level of the country involved. 

While there appears to be rather little evidence on cohort effect upon IQ across the developing countries, one study in Kenya (Daley, Whaley, Sigman, Espinosa, & Neumann, 2003) shows a substantially larger cohort effect than is reported for developed countries.

In a critical review of The Bell Curve, psychologist Leon Kamin faulted Lynn for disregarding scientific objectivity, misrepresenting data, and for racism. Kamin argues that the studies of cognitive ability of Africans in Lynn's meta-analysis cited by Herrnstein and Murray show strong cultural bias. Kamin also reproached Lynn for concocting IQ values from test scores that have no correlation to IQ. Kamin also notes that Lynn excluded a study that found no difference in White and Black performance, and ignored the results of a study which showed Black scores were higher than White scores.

Initially, this may seem like a petty Ad Hominem attack on Lynn, but I think my concern is valid because it relates to the topic in question. If we have a scientist who routinely falsifies and concocts data relating to IQ scores, and his conclusions are demonstrably false, then we should pause when he releases another study on IQ. I admit that it could be the case that this study is legitimate, but if it's scientific, then it's repeatable. Therefore, it's reasonable to withhold our assent until we see it repeated.

However, even if we did not have valid reason to doubt Lynn's data, we would still have reason to doubt his conclusion.

For example, if Germany has an average IQ score of 102, then that means approximately 50% of the German population has an IQ above 102, and 50% has an IQ below 102. If 79% of the population identify as non-believers, we do not have reason to say that that is the top 79%. 

In other words, it may be the case that just non-believers have below average intelligence as there are with above average intelligence. There may be just as many ignorant non-believers as there are geniuses. Isn't that an important piece of information? Wouldn't that show whether or not religion is the determining factor in IQ? It could very well be the case that the top 21% of Germany's intellectuals are all believers. I doubt that that's the case, but my point is that we are not being given an important piece of information, and we cannot draw conclusions without it.

This study was controversial for a time and while it has faded from media attention, people still believe the myth that the religious are inherently less intelligent than the irreligious, just as people used to believe that blacks were inherently less intelligent than whites. 

So far, we have no good reason to think this.

Growing Evidence of Book of Mormon Claims

Here's a couple of charts I found while looking up information for another post. The first is a list of claims made by the Book of Mormon and whether or not they were confirmed by science, archaeology, etc, in 1842. The second is the same list in 2005.

Religious Experience as Evidence

The Argument from Religious Experience basically says that there are decent reasons for considering at least some religious experiences authentic, therefore there must be some God behind them. The argument is problematic, at best, for obvious reasons.

For example, for all but the most extreme examples, how would you even authenticate something like that? Also, as much as theists hate to admit it, theories that they are hallucinations or neural misfires are valid points.

However, in order to think that they are hallucinations, you must have examined the accounts and found some evidence that they are hallucinations, such as a pre-existent psychological condition, a doctrinal inconsistency, or some other reason to discount it.

To be fair, theists also need evidence to claim that they are legitimate, but the point is that these accounts must be evaluated before any conclusion can be drawn. As long as there remains accounts of religious experiences which have not been investigated, then we must remain agnostic regarding their truth or falsity.

For example, imagine I had a powerful telescope. Through this telescope, you can look out into space and see Russell's Teapot. I would now be a believer in Russell's Teapot. To me, a random china teapot orbiting somewhere in between the Earth and the Sun would be a pretty extraordinary thing. I would likely invite someone else to look through the telescope and see what I see.

What if that person were to say to me, "No. I will not look. It is your burden to prove to me that the teapot is there. Until you prove it, I will assume it is a hallucination."

I would urge him again, "Look! The evidence is there, but you must look. I can't prove this to you, but you can prove it for yourself if you look."

It's true. I might be hallucinating, but the reasonable thing to do is to simply look through the telescope, rather than refuse until I can prove the Teapot's existence with a logical proof.

Argument from Design

The Argument from Design, or the Teleological Argument, is the Argument that the nature of the universe itself is evidence of God, either because life is too improbable or because inanimate objects seem to act with purpose, or for whatever other reason.

Honestly, this is not a very good argument for the existence of God. It's an inductive argument, which means that, at best, it is only probably true. However, we cannot even easily determine how strong or weak that probability is because the evidence is very much a matter of interpretation. It is based on how things seem to be.

However, this argument has gotten some attention over the past decade or so due to the "conversion" of the now deceased Anthony Flew from atheism to theism (specifically, deism.)

In his 2007 book, There is a God, Flew describes what is possibly the one redeeming aspect of this argument.

In other words, even if every particle in the universe had been mingling together for 10 billion years, it would not have been enough time for something like DNA to come about. I suppose it could happen by chance, but not with so little material over so little time.

Many aspects of the Argument from Design are much too subjective to make a good argument, but unlike the Big Bang, the laws of physics, and the exact nature of Earth life, the origin of that life is more demonstrably improbable, if not impossible.

In addition to pure statistics, there are other issues which add to the improbability of life, such as the solubility of amino acids in water and the complexity of even a single-celled organisms DNA, which make it all the more difficult to explain, because even if organic compounds could come together, they would immediately dissolve. Even Richard Dawkins admits that we have no good explanation for the origin of life on Earth.

DNA and the Book of Mormon

For the sake of diplomacy, I try not to disparage the beliefs of other denominations, but it's always a little confusing to me when fundamental Christians attack the Book of Mormon on the grounds that, so far, no DNA evidence has been traced back to Lehi's party.

The reason it confuses me is that these are the same people who deny genetic evidence of evolution.

As long as the discussion is on the LDS church, genetics is rock hard science which cannot be denied or ignored, but when the topic turns to evolution, genetics suddenly becomes this mystical, devilish pseudo-science which is not to be trusted.

I don't mean to make any generalizations about any particular denomination, but there are simply some individuals who need to make up their minds.

Is genetic science reliable, in which case, evidence against the Book of Mormon is inconclusive, but evolution is true and their belief is deeply mistaken?

Or is genetic science unreliable, in which case evidence against the Book of Mormon is inconclusive and their argument falls apart anyway?

Wade E. Miller's Pre-Columbian Horses

A common criticism against the Book of Mormon is it's mention of horses in a Pre-Cumbian era. Next to Elephants in America, it is one of the strangest anachronisms in the Book of Mormon.

Mainstream scholarly thought is that American Horses died out about 10,000 years ago and remained extinct until they were reintroduced by Spanish conquistadors.

In a presentation called Science and the Book of Mormon, given at the eleventh annual FAIR Conference, 6 August 2009, Wade E. Miller mentions carbon-dating done on horse bones found in America. Many of them date back before the known extinction date for horses in America, but a few have dates ranging from 1400 to only 800 years ago.

In the final paragraph, he says,

"Horses weren't here in America after about 10,000 years ago according to Smithsonian archaeologists. As you know horses ... are mentioned as being present among both the Jaredites and Nephites. It might surprise most of you that the history of the horse is mainly here in America. The very first horses come from North America, and their record goes back to about 58 million years ago. Horses were small, forest dwelling animals at the time. It wasn't until much later that horses reached the Old World, being roughly the size of modern forms then. Columbus only reintroduced the horse to America. I've actually done a lot of work with fossil horses from many areas and from different periods of time. A lot of my work has been done on them in Mesoamerica, primarily in Mexico. While the vast majority of dates for these various kinds of horses are well before man was known in the New World, a few of the dates are very surprisingly young. I have Carbon-14 dates on horses that are as recent as 800 years. Other dates are only 1200 years to 1400 years ago. More dates in this range are needed to be able to convince others that horses were indeed here before 1493, when they were reintroduced. Other paleontologists have produced dates on fossil horses that show they lived here long after the 10,000 years before stated. This slide is of a partial horse skeleton that was put together with my colleagues in Mexico. An earlier slide showed the location where it was collected. It was that picture that I said to remember from Durango, Mexico, where a lot of fossils were found within one small area."

I look forward to reading about the details of these and any other results he may have found.

"Atheism is very stupid." - Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was an amazing scientist, and a brilliant individual. Issac Asimov described him as one of only two people he had ever met whose intellect was greater than his own. In addition to the sciences, Sagan wrote frequently on the topic of religion. He once wrote,

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

On another occasion, he wrote,

 "Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."

Quotes like these have led some to believe that he was an atheist, but this is not true. He hated the term. Much like Charles Darwin, Sagan recognized that claiming that there is no God is as irrational as claiming there is one. He once said:

"An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid."

In a March 1996 profile by Jim Dawson in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sagan talked about his then-new book The Demon Haunted World and was asked about his personal spiritual views:

“My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it . . . An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I’m agnostic.”