YES - the Young Earth Science podcast 2080 (Biological Essentialism)

How old is the earth?  Does it matter?  On today's podcast we will see how biological essentialism implies a young earth.  Is a bat a flying rat?  Have kangaroos always been kangaroos?  What is a liger?  What are ORFan (orphan) genes?  Learn more here about these fascinating topics.  Biological essentialism teaches that organisms vary within limits (see ch. 3 of YES - Young Earth Science).  Richard Dawkins made his opinion on essentialism clear:

... essentialism has been applied to living things and Ernst Mayr blamed this for humanity’s late discovery of evolution - as late as the nineteenth century.  If, like Aristotle, you treat all flesh-and-blood rabbits as imperfect approximations to an ideal Platonic rabbit, it won’t occur to you that rabbits might have evolved from a non-rabbit ancestor. [1]

Andrew Shtulman, Psychology Professor at Occidental, gave a talk at UCLA in 2011 on the topic of "Cognitive constraints on the understanding and acceptance of evolution."  He recognized that essentialism is a primary reason why people fail to adopt Darwinism.  Children at an early age develop an essentialist WorldView.  They quickly come to realize that crabs and seahorses belong to different Essential Types of Life (ETL's).

ORFan genes are unique to certain organisms and no similar genes have been found in supposedly related animals.  That is, there is no apparent "parent" genes in other organisms.  For instance, more than half of the proteins of the leaf-cutter ant (see above) are unique to itself among the expressed proteins.  

Biological essentialism leads to catastrophism and that favors a young earth perspective.  What evidence would be required to verify a young earth?  Let us hear from you:  YoungEarthScience@yahoo.com

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Note:

1) quoted in YES – Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (IDEAS, Big Spring, TX, 2014), p. 73.

X-Files, Catastrophism and a Young Earth

In the first episode of the X-Files (Sep. 10, 1993), special agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) said this about alternate explanations,

J. Harlen Bretz proposed a huge flood through Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington that formed the Channeled Scablands.  The flood cut canyons up to 900 feet deep‼  For decades, Bretz suffered ridicule for his radical views.  However, in 1963, the International Association for Quaternary Research sent a telegram to Bretz ending “We are now all catastrophists.”  Bretz received the Penrose Medal (highest geology award) and claimed, "Perhaps, I can be credited with reviving and demystifying legendary Catastrophism and challenging a too rigorous Uniformitarianism." [1]

Should we always trust the experts?  Sometimes they are dead wrong.  Two intriguing books highlight this fact:

Consider the great Life-on-the-Moon hoax of 1835.  The New York Sun reported about research claimed to be from the Edinburgh Journal of Science that claimed that sentient beings were seen on the moon. [2]  This discovery was allegedly made by the very real mathematician, astronomer and chemist  Sir John Herschel (son of William Herschel who discovered Uranus ♅).

Scientific fraud is real.  In 2005, it was revealed that anthropologist Reiner Protsch von Zieten had fabricated false dates for ancient human fossils for decades. [3]  If the common dating methods are wrong and most of the rock record was formed catastrophically, then Young Earth Science (YES) is plausible.     

Are members of the academic elite ever willing to challenge ensconced conclusions?  Former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy of Science, Philip Kitcher, boldly declared that, “it is not necessary, and it may not even be true, that all species are historically connected.” [4]  If our favorite planet is young, evolution is left out in the cold.

Be curious - learn the facts that support YES - Young Earth Science.

Notes:

1) YES - Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (IDEAS, Big Spring, TX, 2014), p. 93.

2) Regret the Error by Craig Silverman (Union Square Press, NYC, 2007), pp. 30-35.

3) Wrong by David Freedman (Little, Brown & Co., NYC, 2010), p. 256.

4) see the bottom of p. 347.