The argument from antifreeze

Another day, another stupid creationist argument. This time, it’s some pastor whining that biologists don’t understand how animals survive the winter. We don’t?

These insects are not the only ones that hibernate – there are several others butterflies, insects, and even frog that make antifreeze in the fall and hibernate through the winter.  Insects in all stages of life – eggs, pupa, and adult (CHECK THIS) – have been programmed to make various versions of antifreeze chemicals in order to survive freezing weather.  How did the first Mourning Cloak butterfly learn to make anti-freeze?  If it failed even once, the result was death – an evolutionary dead-end.  God designed this butterfly to survive the brutal winter as an adult butterfly.  The next time you see a butterfly very early in the spring – chances are it is a butterfly that knows how to make antifreeze!

How many attempts to survive the winter did the woolly bear caterpillar try?  When did a certain caterpillar “get it right” and survive?  Remember there had to be both male and female surviving to produce eggs and continue the species.  The original Arctic woolly-bear caterpillar had to make this antifreeze so that its cells would freeze without rupturing for not just one winter…but 13 times for 13 winter freezes…always remembering to produce the antifreeze only just before winter arrived.  Then it had to learn to completely rearrange its body structure to turn into a moth on the 14th spring.

How do evolutionists explain this?  They don’t!  The Arctic woolly-bear caterpillar, the Mourning Cloak butterfly, and a myriad of other creatures were designed to survive through the freezing winter.  When you see design, there must be a Designer and that Designer is God.  Those who wish to deny God’s existence see this marvelous design and say evolution did it – random mutational changes filtered by natural selection caused all this marvelous design to happen…but this is just storytelling and hand waving – it explains nothing.

Gosh, what a surprise — an ignorant creationist. Actually, we do. Winters aren’t all-or-nothing — look at a globe, and we have these things called latitudes, where we can see variation in the intensity of winters. Minnesota gets rather cold in January, while Nebraska is milder, and Texas is milder still. That means it’s trivial to find animals with a range that spreads from mild to cold environments, and that natural selection can have both variation and different selection regimes to operate. This isn’t difficult at all.

Furthermore, anti-freezes aren’t hard to generate: these are just small molecules that lower the freezing point or bind nascent ice crystals to suppress ice formation. These things evolve all the time by chance! Ask Sean Carroll.

Insects have evolved a variety of cryoprotective substances. As winter approaches, many freeze-tolerant insects produce high concentrations of glycerol and other kinds of alcohol molecules. These substances don’t prevent freezing, but they slow ice formation and allow the fluids surrounding cells to freeze in a more controlled manner while the contents of the cells remain unfrozen.

For maximum protection, some Arctic insects use a combination of such cryoprotectants and antifreezes to control ice formation, to protect cells and to prevent refreezing as they thaw. Indeed, a new kind of antifreeze was recently discovered in the Upis beetle by a team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Unlike the protein antifreezes of other beetles, snow fleas and moths, the Upis antifreeze is a complex sugar called xylomannan that is as effective at suppressing ice growth as the most active insect protein antifreezes.

The necessity of avoiding freezing has truly been the mother of a great number of evolutionary inventions. This new finding raises the likelihood that there are more chemical tricks to discover about how insects cope with extreme cold.

Carroll has written a book, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution, that explains in detail how the antarctic icefish antifreeze evolved. It’s a truncated pancreatic enzyme; a copy of the enzyme gene acquired a mutation that reduced it to a short 3-amino-acid long fragment (and which was subsequently expanded by duplication to multiple repeated copies) that has chemical properties that suppress ice formation. The blood of the icefish is saturated with this peptide, and it’s produced by the pancreas, just like the original enzyme, secreted into the intestine, just like the original enzyme, and then transported into the circulatory system. The genome of the icefish also contains pseudogenes, copies of original natural ‘experiments’ in the expansion of the antifreeze gene, that provide a record of its molecular history.

Meanwhile, arctic cod also carry an antifreeze protein…but it’s different and of independent origin from the one found in antarctic notothenioid fish.

So, actually, this creationist is completely wrong. Not only can we explain the evolution of antifreezes in animals, we do so in explicit detail, with step-by-step analyses of the molecular events behind them. If you want to see “storytelling and handwaving” that “explains nothing”, you’ll have to go to the loons who say “God did it.”

The Creation “Museum” is not a museum

Kurt Percy, the assistant manager of the Cincinnati Museum Center, has crossed Ken Ham. Percy dared to speak the truth about the Creation “Museum”. I agree whole-heartedly with this comment:

This is not a museum, and this is further proof of that. Please stop referring to it as such. They are not an accredited museum by any association of museums. It is a theme park that misleads the public and it is a pockmark on our region. The fact that someone profits by misrepresenting their faith as science to children and families is shameful. When we wonder why America is falling behind in science education, it is because places like this are allowed to exist. I’m glad to see that their attendance is declining despite generous handouts from the state of Kentucky at the expense of their university funding.

Ken Ham’s “rebuttal” is pathetic. He cites a dictionary definition of “museum” at a manager of an accredited museum.

…an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value; also: a place where objects are exhibited.

So, is Disneyland a museum? A jewelry store? A church? Because you could claim that all of those fit his dictionary definition. A dictionary is a rough guide to common usage, not a definitive explanation of meaning.

Then Ham obliviously makes it worse. He cites other summaries of what constitutes a museum, in particular the American Alliance of Museums Accreditation, and notes that the Cincinnati Museum Center is accredited.

The Creation “Museum” is not. It’s not ever going to be accredited by any legitimate agency. Percy was exactly right: it’s a theme park, equivalent to a Halloween haunted house on a bloated budget, and it is little more than a colossal joke. There is nothing of lasting value there — animatronic Jews and dinosaurs and replica skeletons don’t measure up. There is definitely nothing worth studying; it has no archives, no scientific collection, no employees doing research. It could be blotted out by a meteor falling from the sky, and it would no loss at all to science, only a small loss to Kentucky tourism.

Then Ham closes by bragging about his new zip line ride at the “museum”. Without apparent irony.

I’m just glad someone in Cincinnati is speaking bluntly and honestly about the carnie act playing in nearby Kentucky. Someone give Kurt Percy a promotion.

Express yourself to CFI now

The board meeting at which Ron Lindsay’s behavior at Women in Secularism 2 will be one topic to be discussed is next week. If you are concerned about the direction CFI is taking, if you value it as an organization and want to see it improve, if you think Ron Lindsay has served the interests of CFI poorly, put it in writing and let them know now.

Now! Be constructive. Tell them what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed. This is the time to make a course correction, before the catastrophic crash.

Mattering is a two-edged sword

A lot of people were impressed by Rebecca Goldstein’s talk at Women in Secularism 2 on the importance of mattering for human happiness, it was a real light-bulb moment for many people, I think. We’d like to believe it’s a concept that can be used as incentive for humanist goals, but as Vyckie Garrison points out, it can be used to motivate other purposes, too.

The reason Quiverfull is gaining ground is because it puts a female individual in the position of mattering – of mattering A LOT – to a collective.

If you really want someone to care about you more than anyone – all you need to do is give birth to them. Being a mother guarantees that you will matter – for good or for evil – your child’s life will be intimately wrapped up in yours, even despite the best efforts of a brilliant therapist later in life. (I say this only half-jokingly. We all love our mothers, BUT …)

Nice concept, that ‘mattering’, but as this illustrates, every idea needs a good follow-through as well. What is secularism going to do to allow women to matter?

El Censo Mundial de Ateos ahora en español!

An important message from the Atheist Census: El Censo Mundial de Ateos ahora en español! Más de 220.000 personas han sido contadas en todos los países del mundo – asegúrate de serlo tú también!

(For us non-Spanish speakers: “The World Census of Atheists is now in Spanish! More than 220,000 people have been counted in all countries of the world – be sure you do too!” And actually, there are options to translate it into a whole lot of languages there.)

At least Ohio kids seem smarter than their school board

You sure can spot the creationists by their use of slogans — “teach the controversy,” “strengths and weaknesses,” “teach both sides,” “think critically about controversial subjects” — and they’re all on display at an Ohio school board that is currently debating opening up the curriculum to creationism. The parents and students are resisting, at least.

Please. There is no controversy here. Evolution happened, teach it.

The best argument that one student provided is that “I don’t feel like the people here are educated or prepared enough to deal with it.” Yeah, that describes most school boards.

The Church of England just wounded itself

You may think this is good news, but you should be deeply troubled. The Church of England has officially decided that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

The Bishop of Leicester, who leads the bishops in the House of Lords, said they would now concentrate their efforts on “improving” rather than halting an historic redefinition of marriage.

It represents a dramatic change of tack in the year since the Church insisted that gay marriage posed one of the biggest threats of disestablishment of the Church of England since the reign of Henry VIII.

“Troubled?” you ask, “This is exactly what Myers has favored for years!” But, you see, I didn’t factor in the theological implications. When the source of all objective morality (as we’ve been told God and his priesthood are, many times) undergoes a major revision, we ought to think about what it means. Let us consider the possibilities.

  1. There is a god who cares very much what you do with your genitals, and sometimes he changes his mind. You should find this terrifying. Here’s this all-powerful deity who can send you to paradise or to hell, and the rules for admission can change at any time. Your absolute objective morality is suddenly in flux! You could be cruising along, living the rules of your religion meticulously, and there could be a revision at any time — what if god, on a whim, decided that all marriage was an abomination, and you were supposed to practice free love? Are you prepared to obey?

    1. Related concern: is this retroactive? So if a pair of randy, lonely medieval goatherds were getting it on in a beautiful French meadow and were condemned to hell for it, do they get released now? What’s the PTSD like after a thousand years writhing in unthinkably intense agony?

    2. I’d assumed getting into heaven is like getting tenure — you’re set for the afterlife. But apparently it’s more like working for a psychopathic boss and the rules can change on the fly. This doesn’t sound like a particularly pleasant, stress-free existence.

  2. There is a god who cares very much what you do with your genitals, but the priesthood has been consistently misinterpreting him. This should shake your trust in organized religion — they can get God’s will totally wrong. What if God gave you your genitals for a reason, and you’re supposed to be using them joyfully in all sorts of ways, and the communication between heaven and earth is just totally garbled? He’s up there raging at the phone line like Bill O’Reilly muffing his lines, while the priests are straining to understand what he’s saying in all the bellowing and crackling static. “What’s that you say? Something about penises? Cut off what?” We could be committing all kinds of crimes of omission and emission without even knowing about it!

    1. What if god said, “I gave you men a prostate for a reason, you should be using it”, and all those straight males in a committed relationship who haven’t been getting pegged regularly by their wife are damned to hell? That would be a shocker at the pearly gates.

    2. We don’t know that the priests are getting it right even now. Maybe god really is a bronze-age patriarchal chieftain with bizarrely restrictive rules about sexual behavior, and those untrustworthy priests are translating those rules with more and more errors. You really can’t believe anything they say, whether you like their conclusions or not.

  3. There is a god who really doesn’t care much about what you do with your genitals — he has greater concerns that matter more. Maybe he only has two commandments, “Be excellent to one another” and “Party on!” and all this fussing over specific sexual practices is a gigantic distraction — you’re not going to get grilled about where your penis has been or what has gone into your vagina when you get to heaven at all. All this angst about sexual behavior is simply a reflection of the psychological hangups in the heads of the kinds of people who appoint themselves morality monitors.

    1. I have a suspicion that chopping off young women’s heads for losing their virginity won’t be compatible with “Be excellent to one another”. Neither is beating up people you meet at a gay bar.

    2. We really don’t know what the rules are any more. Maybe we should stop trying to imagine what a cosmic overlord in the sky wants us to do, and look to our fellow human beings for guidelines, instead.

  4. There is no god, no afterlife, no eternal punishment or reward. The priests have been making it all up, using this invisible boogeyman as a goad to get you to serve their earthly whims. You’ve been had, people, rise up and throw off your chains, cast down the church!

I kinda like #4 best.

I have to admit, though, that the most conservative religious people actually have one thing right: if you go around changing any of the rules, if you exhibit any flexibility in interpreting the faith, it means you have cause to question the whole elaborate edifice of religion — every wobble has the potential to cause the whole structure to come crashing down. The church is extremely rickety, which is why reason is such a threat to them.

But I also think that demolition would be a good thing.

At least we know he watched the video

Ken Ham has replied to the conversation we had last night. We talked about the importance of a secular education, deplored creationism, and challenged Ken Ham to a debate in Houston when he’s there to speak at a homeschooling conference.

But what does he respond to? He cries, “Lilandra called me an ape!”

Yes, she did, because humans are apes. It’s not an insult, it’s a statement about what larger group your species is nested within.

Alternatively, maybe Ham objected because he feels a greater kinship to another clade, and would rather be grouped with them: he’s clearly part chicken. He was challenged to a debate; he earlier refused because it was beneath him to debate a non-Ph.D. (his degree is only honorary, but he apparently puts much stock in it), but now that there will be a person with a doctorate on the side of evolution, that excuse has evaporated. And now he’s nattering on about a minor point rather than addressing the bigger issues? For shame.

Aron Ra also comments.

Turkish creationists are creepy

The big kahuna of Turkish creationism is Adnan Oktar, better known as Harun Yahya…in fact, he seems to be the only major player in Turkish creationism. He’s a known con man, and a bit of a playboy, and his organization is more cult-like than any other creationist group I know of. He also is using an unusual ploy: he uses sex and a group of heavily dolled-up young women to promote Islamic creationism. Only in Turkey!

On one recent day, as he often does, Oktar was talking about one of his many exhibitions of fossils that he says disproves evolution.

Oktar and his cult-like organization have been in the Turkish media space for decades. But only last year did he deploy his new weapon in the battle against Darwinism: A flock of ostensibly attractive, curvy young women.

The “kittens,” as he calls them, call him “master” and generally guffaw at the right moments and nod their heads in agreement with whatever he says.

He’s been up to this for a while. He has a series of youtube videos that feature his Stepford houri droning about the miraculous nature of cell biology. If you have some sick fetish about having Barbie read a biology textbook to you in broken English, here you go.

Tonight, on the Nones

I’ll be joining Lilandra and Shayrah on The Nones podcast this evening, along with a few others.

PZ Myers of Pharyngula, Vic Wang of Houston Atheists, and Neeley Rebel Fluke of Orange County Freethought Alliance, and the mister Aron Ra will join Shayrah and me on the n0nes today at 8:00 PM CST. We will be discussing just who is scientifically inept Ken Ham or us. (Hint it isn’t us) We’ll also be further discussing what we are planning to do about Ham’s visit to Houston homeschoolers to hawk Young Earth Creationism as science. 

I think we’ll be making mocking chicken noises in the direction of Answers in Genesis.