The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

One of the causes of "just-so" storytelling about human evolution is the fact that, until comparatively recently, people did not write things down or manufacture a lot of objects.

People like Pascal Boyer can write books like Religion Explained, secure in the knowledge that no documents or extensive artifacts are likely to turn up from 50 000 years ago that challenge his claims.

To see what difference this makes, consider the case of King Tut's tomb. Archaeologists have unearthed an extensive story of the short-lived effort of one Pharaoh to convert Egypt to monotheism. We actually know a fair bit about what happened there, due to deciphering writings and examining extensive artifacts.

Now and then a brief light is shone on a far earlier era, and here is one: An Australian cave painting depicts a marsupial lion, according to "Cave Painting Depicts Extinct Marsupial Lion " by Stéphan Reebs, Natural History Magazine (09 May 2009):

Several well-preserved skeletons of the leopard-size beast have been found. Now, a newly discovered cave painting offers a glimpse of the animal's external appearance.

In June 2008, Tim Willing, a naturalist and tour guide, photographed an ancient painting on a rockshelter wall near the shore of northwestern Australia. Kim Akerman, an independent anthropologist based in Tasmania, says the painting unmistakably depicts a marsupial lion.

It shows the requisite catlike muzzle, large forelimbs, and heavily clawed front paws. And it portrays the animal with a striped back, a tufted tail, and pointed ears.

Those last three features aren't preserved in skeletons, but Aborigines would have known them well. Australia's first people landed on the continent at least 40,000 years ago and were contemporaries of the big predator.

Similarly, an article in Science, 323 (30 January 2009) pushes back:

In 2002, a discovery at Blombos Cave in South Africa began to change how researchers view the evolution of modern human behavior. Archaeologists reported finding two pieces of red ochre engraved with crosshatched patterns, dated to 77,000 years ago. Many experts interpreted the etchings as evidence of symbolic expression and possibly even art, 40,000 years earlier than many researchers had thought (Science, 11 January 2002, p. 247). Now the Blombos team reports on an additional 13 engraved ochre pieces, many dated to 100,000 years ago. The researchers suggest that some of the engravings may represent an artistic or symbolic tradition. If so, the timeline for the earliest known symbolic behavior must once again be redrawn.

Go here for more (paywall).

When timelines are getting redrawn this often, my advice is - for now - forget them. At some point, our ancestors differentiated themselves from knuckle-dragging apes, and that was an event with great consequences, about which we have almost no information.

Here is the contest question at Uncommon Descent: Question 3: In 400 words, to be judged in two weeks, and printed as a post: What do we really know about human evolution that could not simply be overturned by a new find? The winner will receive a free copy of Expelled. The contest will be judged in two weeks, May 27.

You must go to Uncommon Descentto enter.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack is my blog on neuroscience and spirituality issues, which supports The Spiritual Brain:

Religion: Why writing things down matters

Coffee!: Zombies: A science-based explanation?

Free will: an interesting new experiment

Addiction: Ideas that do not help

How medicine lost, and then slowly regained its mind

Freedom of religion: One benefit is more piety

Neuroscience: Exploring how brains wire and rewire:

Religion: Why writing things down matters

Neuroscience: Who do voodoo? You do, apparently (you might if you are a neuroscience researcher) - another paper says so

Subversive Thinking responds to Mesner review of The Spiritual Brain

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

On March 2, 2009, the controversial* Turkish intellectual Adnan Oktar responded to my questions about doubting Darwin in Turkey.

Turkey is of increasing interest in Western circles because of its application for membership in the European Union. And materialist atheists have been freaking out in the pop science press about Darwin doubt in Turkey.

Modern Turkey emerged from the breakup of the Ottoman empire, under secularist Kemal Ataturk.**

I became interested years ago when a Turkish friend kindly sent me a number of the books produced by Adnan Oktar and his associates, under the pen name Harun Yahya. I finally got a chance to correspond with him. Here are his responses to my questions. (I will also shortly post a review of Evolution Deceit, probably the most succinct and comprehensive of the critiques of overblown claims for Darwinian evolution.)

O'LEARY: How did you become interested in the evolution controversies? The conventional wisdom offered by many media sources in North America is that doubts about Darwin are a product of American evangelical Christianity in the deep rural South, and can only be understood with reference to that culture. Unless there is something I am missing, your doubts could not have stemmed from that culture. From what, then, did they stem?

Go here for more.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).