Genesis Expo, Portsmouth, UK (part 2)

This is part 2 of my assessment of Genesis Expo, the creation museum in Portsmouth. (Click here for part 1.)


Display 7 – ORIGIN OF MAN

From the concluding paragraph of this display: "Measurements of the actual mutation rates of mitochondrial DNA, reported in Nature Genetics in 1997, lead to an estimate of some six to ten thousand years since the first woman." I'd like to see this report, as it makes little sense here. What is meant by "the first woman"? A woman who had no parents? How can you tell, from DNA, that an ancestor has no antecedents? What about the possibility of near extinction of an already ancient race? This display, visually feeble as it is, seems to be an attempt to baffle with pseudo-science.

Display 8 – QUOTES


Here we have an incredibly tacky mock-up of a tombstone – a relief of Darwin's head, in profile, under which is inscribed "HERE LIES THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION". The grave and stone are crudely modelled in unpainted polystyrene – is this a not-so-veiled reflection on the creationists' view of Darwin? Subtle it's not. Three quotations from Dr. Albert Fleischmann, Dr. Michael Denton and Prof. Louis Bounoure are followed by one from Charles Darwin himself:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting focus to different distances, for admitting light and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

This is a favourite quote of creationists, and it comes from The Origin of Species. The very next sentence - not quoted in the display - is this:

"Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real."

(page 217 of the 1979 Gramercy/Random House hardcover edition)

This is quote mining, and it does the creationists no credit, as anyone who bothers to check on the original will find out.

Display 9 – APES AND MAN


Differences between apes and humans are listed in this display, and they all sound plausible (I'm no expert). But in the middle is one emphasised (in Pamphlet 344) sentence: "Apes come from apes and men come from men." It doesn't appear to be derived from anything else in the display, and no evidence is presented to support this assertion, nor to suggest why it might be an argument against evolution.

Display 10 – BOMBARDIER BEETLE

Now we get on to even shakier ground, muddling up an argument from irreducible complexity with the proposition that fire-breathing dragons existed in the past. The display contains an enlarged model of a beetle that defends itself by projecting hot noxious gases at a potential predator. The insect does this by a complex chemical process within a reservoir at its rear end. The display claims that this process has to be exactly right, with the precisely correct mixture, otherwise the beetle would be eaten, or blow itself up, and is therefore irreducibly complex, and must have been designed by a rocket scientist (or other intelligence).

Apparently this is not so - a Google search for "bombardier beetle" leads to the Talk Origins website, where an entirely plausible evolutionary process is described in detail. Once again the creationists are saying that because they can't imagine how a living creature could evolve, it must therefore have been designed. This is called the argument from ignorance (though it might be more accurately described as the argument from failure of imagination).

And what about the fire-breathing dragons? Some dinosaurs apparently had skull passages similar to the bombardier beetle's impressive ductwork, and since by creationist standards dinosaurs existed alongside early humans, this would explain the stories of dragons.

Display 11 – CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY

This display illustrates Chinese writing, and claims – somewhat tortuously – that the Chinese language incorporates the Genesis story: Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood. It didn't make much sense to me, and seemed a bit irrelevant. It seems to be claiming that each Chinese character contains a story, separate from the use of the character in language – and the story is that of creation as told in Genesis.

Display 12 – ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

The Big Bang, Dark Matter (called "Cold Dark Matter" here), the Anthropic Principle, and a quotation from Sir Fred Hoyle, lead to this final paragraph:

"The Genesis Expo declares that this precise Universe was designed meticulously, and that 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' Of course He did!"

Cosmology is a big subject, and an important one, and some of the world's best brains are working on the question of the origin of the universe. That the universe isn't instantly understandable is no excuse for falling back on obsolete myths, or pretending to use pseudo-science to support non-scientific ideas. Creationists' opposition to evolution comes down to one thing: evolution science contradicts scripture - in their eyes therefore, it must be wrong. As for the Anthropic Principle, I refer creationists (and anyone else interested) to Douglas Adams' excellent explanation of why this is no argument for special creation:

"...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise."

That's all 12 displays, which taken singly or as a whole, don't add up to much. The arguments seem dated and simplistic - though I suspect that the target audience includes schoolchildren. The many pamphlets on sale, however, are a different matter. Whether these are as soundly researched and referenced as they first appear remains to be seen (which I hope will be the subject of another post), but before we get to the pamphlets we will no doubt want to browse in the shop - that will be next.

UPDATE 2009-03-08:

Click here for part 3.

Genesis Expo, Portsmouth, UK (part 1)

To assess Genesis Expo in detail will take some time, so I'll limit this post to the first six of the 12 display cases that comprise the bulk of the exhibit – the remainder will follow. I'm basing this assessment not only on my memory but also on the pamphlet I picked up (amongst others) in the shop, entitled "The Genesis Expo at Portsmouth" by Dr. David Rosevear, January 2003. This pamphlet is a guide to the exhibition, and appears to contain the same text as that shown below the display cases (and apparently also available in audio through what appeared to be pre-war earphones, which – forgive me – I avoided for fear of infection).

I should make it clear that I have no special qualifications to assess a creationist exhibit. My secondary school studies were biased towards the sciences, and my degree is in architecture. I'm interested in the creationism-versus-evolution debate, as any regular reader of this blog will know, and my particular worldview is based on atheism – by which I mean "lack of belief in a god or gods". How I came to this view is chronicled in earlier posts.

Genesis Expo is located on the harbour front at Portsmouth, opposite the bus station and within sight of Portsmouth Harbour railway station, about 15 minutes' walk from Gunwharf Quays shopping centre and the Spinnaker Tower. Its entrance doors open into the "out" end of the museum's shop, and you pass by the benign but crudely modelled figure of a dinosaur to enter the passages containing the exhibits, which are frankly a bit tatty. The blurb on the website describes the lighting for these as computer-controlled, so I was surprised not to hear the clatter of a punched-tape reader.



Display 1 – MISSING LINKS



The theme of the first display case is that modern science has shown that Charles Darwin was wrong. Much is asserted, such as "...each fossil shows separate Creation" and "...there is no halfway stage between the reptile and the bird." There are quotations from Dr. Colin Patterson and Stephen Jay Gould that imply that there are no transitional fossils. My understanding, however, is that there are plenty of transitional fossils, such as archaeopteryx and tiktaalik, and further, that all living things can be considered to some extent transitional.

Display 2 – LIVING FOSSILS



"This display shows you something fossilised, and alongside it a present day example which is just the same as the fossil." It does this in a slide show on a pair of small colour monitors, but it's not evidence against evolution. The assumption here is that if an animal or plant evolved into something different, the original species must become extinct. This is not what evolution theory states. There's no reason for the original species to die out if it is still fit for its environment, while the evolved species, perhaps after migration to different conditions, continues.

Display 3 – RAPID SEDIMENTATION


The rate at which sedimentary layers are formed is here put forward to support the view that the Earth is young. The ash from Mount St. Helens is given as an example of rapid sedimentation, from which it is inferred that sedimentation could not have taken a longer period. What is not mentioned is the possibility that even if rapid sedimentation did occur, discrete periods of sedimentation could have been separated by longer periods of time. Geology is a complicated subject, but once again the Talk Origins website has a wealth of material relevant to this argument.

Display 4 – MOLECULAR BIOLOGY


Two arguments are put forward here: first, that the biological "make-up" of different species is different, which shows that for instance, "...the blood of a fish is just as far removed from the jawless eel as our own is" though quite what this is supposed to prove I'm not sure – maybe that these creatures, and humans, were separately created. This is possibly an argument about the non-similarity of different species' DNA, though it's so vaguely worded it's hard to tell.

Second, biological molecules are complex, showing, for instance, that "...yeast is not more primitive than humans just because it is more simple." This appears to be suggesting that humans are on a par with yeast, though I don't think that's what the creationists want you to believe.

The display concludes with the argument from irreducible complexity, but in simpler language, citing the mouse-trap as an example. Irreducible complexity has, however, already been soundly debunked.

Display 5 – ORIGIN OF LIFE



This display contains a representation of the Miller-Urey experiment, which attempted to replicate the conditions in a "primordial soup" and thus, by stimulating this soup with electricity, to produce the building blocks of life. My understanding is that the experiment did produce certain amino acids, which are required for life, though it didn't produce life itself. Bearing in mind that the only prerequisite for the origin of life is a self-replicating molecule, the fact that the odds against this happening by chance are very high does not mean that it can't happen. After all, it only needs to happen once. (The odds against any particular person winning the lottery are very high, but not infinite – people do win the lottery.)

The concluding paragraph of this display betrays the creationist mind-set, claiming that even if scientists were ever successful in creating life, it would only support the idea of intelligent creation rather than chance evolution - presumably because life in this case would have been created by intelligent scientists.

Display 6 – INFORMATION & GENETICS



"...as a carrier of information, the DNA is 45 million million times more efficient than a mega chip." You may be wondering what exactly a mega chip is, but apparently it would take a pile of them as high as the moon to contain all the information in all the world's libraries. If you place all that information on DNA, it would occupy only one per cent of the volume of a pin-head. So now you know.

"The science of Information Theory tells us that information only comes from an intelligent source." This, I think, is spurious. Human intelligence has produced information, therefore all the information that humans have produced has come from an intelligent source. But even though this may lead you to conclude that because the digital information present in DNA is similar to digital information produced by computer programmers, DNA is therefore produced by the celestial software developer - it's a flawed argument because it's extrapolation from a sample of one: an intelligence produced information, therefore all information must have been produced by an intelligence.

Just as molecular machines that were once believed to be irreducibly complex have now been plausibly shown to be the product of evolution, it's entirely feasible that the complex digital information in DNA evolved from something containing less information, which evolved from something containing even less, and so on, right back to the first self-replicating molecule. All it takes is the input of energy, and that's what the Sun provides. The final paragraph states, "...information is lost by chance changes, so mutations in living things cause a loss of genetic information." This, I understand from my limited reading on the subject, is simply incorrect.

That's probably enough for one post. Come back soon for the remaining six displays, and some discussion of the other pamphlets I picked up.


UPDATE 2009-03-04:

Click here for part 2.

Here's Boris, who frolicked with early humans (!)

Meet Boris, the jolly dinosaur who waits for you behind these doors...

Further to yesterday's post, today I visited my friendly neighbourhood creation museum, and what a fascinating visit it was. More later.

UPDATE:

Just thought I'd list the pamphlets I picked up at Genesis Expo today:

• "The Genesis Expo at Portsmouth" Dr. David Rosevear, Jan 2003
• "Language: has it evolved?" Dr. Clifford Watson, 1984, reset 1993
• "Decrease in the Speed of Light" Malcolm Bowden
• "Information: The Third Fundamental Quantity" Prof. Werner Gitt, May 1991
• "Radiometric Dating Methods" Prof. D. B. Gower, Nov 1987
• "How Old is the Earth?" A. J. Monty White, Nov 1991

Each of the above were 15p (I think one of them was only 10p), but I also picked up a free copy of "Creation" Vol 15. No. 9, March 2008. Added to these (by the curator on the till) were the following:

• "Introducing the Creation Science Movement" (which is an invitation to join, at £10.00 per year)
• "Putting the Pieces Together - Does Science really prove there is no God?"

Watch this space...

CLICK HERE for part 1

Defying Darwin

From the Guardian, about ten days ago:

"Defying Darwin - The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades - and yet creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs. Who exactly are they? And just what do they believe? Stephen Moss reports"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/17/evolution-versus-creationism-science

"They do it differently in the US. The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (motto: "Prepare to believe!") measures 70,000 sq ft, cost $27m to build, was designed by someone from Universal Studios, and promises "murals and realistic scenery, computer-generated visual effects, over 50 exotic animals, life-sized people and dinosaur animatronics, and a special-effects theater complete with misty sea breezes and rumbling seats". The museum, opened in 2006 by creationist group Answers in Genesis to promote "true history", looks Edenic on its website. By contrast, Britain's creation museum, Genesis Expo, is housed in a former bank next to the bus station on the harbour front in Portsmouth. It does not appear to have any connection with Hollywood, and is an animatronic-free zone. The sign stretching across the front of the building is peeling, an elderly volunteer from a local church is manning the front desk, and the museum is only slowly converting its stock of creationist videos to DVD. The upside is that Genesis Expo is free to enter."

(I live in Portsmouth - I think I should pay a visit to "Genesis Expo".*)

*UPDATE 2009-02-28:

I did - click here for a taster.

What's brewing at the United Nations?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uadgk2kveRU


This is worrying. Blasphemy is a victimless crime, and freedom of speech is the most important freedom in a civilised society. Check out this Edger post for more on the subject:

http://theedger.org/2009/02/15/in-defence-of-johann-hari/

Whence British Sk(c)epticism?

I come home. There's a large yellow envelope on the mat. The latest issue of Locus, I surmise, preparing my brain to peruse "the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field". But no, it's not Locus - the envelope proclaims "Skeptical Inquirer". Great, one of my favourite mags.

But on opening the envelope I find the autumn 2008 issue of "The Skeptic" - a magazine I recall I've recently subscribed to. So, still great - I'd been wondering when I'd receive the first issue of my subscription. This issue has a special feature entitled "Making UFOlogy History", which, it turns out, comprises book reviews by David Clarke.

I'm pleased to receive a British sceptical publication, but confused by the Americanized spelling of the title, and surprised to find that the yellow envelope is franked with $3.60 in postage - presumably, I discover from the masthead inside the mag, from Amherst, New York.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. I'm delighted that such a publication exists (that's why I subscribed). But the fact that "The Skeptic" is published by the American organisation "The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry", and sent to me from the US, surely says something significant - though I'm not quite sure what - about the state of the UK sceptical movement.

All I can say is, "Roll on TAM London!"

OK, not cancer. How about rewiring kids' brains?

Hard on the heels of the unfounded "Facebook and Twitter will give you cancer" scare, we have the Daily Mail now warning that in addition they will reprogramme children's brains:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1153583/Social-websites-harm-childrens-brains-Chilling-warning-parents-neuroscientist.html

Here's a summary:

A neuroscientist says social networking websites shorten attention-spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred. That's it. No evidence is cited, or even suggested to exist. Here are a few quotes from the neuroscientist, as reported in the article:

"My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain..."

"I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues..."

"It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations..."

"Of course, we do not know whether the current increase in autism is due more to increased awareness and diagnosis of autism, or whether it can - if there is a true increase - be in any way linked to an increased prevalence among people of spending time in screen relationships."

Fear, wonderment, difficulty of seeing, and lack of knowledge - not exactly the soundest basis for such conclusions, is it?

Susan Greenfield is a respected scientist, but the Mail's article gives the impression that her warning is nothing more than unsubstantiated opinion.

(via Derren Brown Blog)

UPDATE 2009-02-25:

Ben Goldacre appeared with Aric Sigman on BBC Newsnight the same day, in a segment also featuring recorded sound-bites from Susan Greenfield. Her statements are indeed unfounded - she admits as much. Watch the Newsnight segment on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8LlUME-IM


...and there was a follow-up on this morning's Today Programme, with Colin Blakemore injecting a modicum of common sense into the whole affair (thereby backing up Ben Goldacre's position):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7909000/7909623.stm