John Solum

I had to go up to the North Campus of the University of Michigan (where the College of Engineering is located), and I saw the following sign:

Here's what I think: someone got a hold of "Icons of Evolution" as is coming to make us see the error of our ways. I think this would be a great opportunity to hand out Nic Tamzek's article.

<a href="http://www.antievolution.org/people/wells_j/tdo_wells.htm" target="_blank">http://www.antievolution.org/people/wells_j/tdo_wells.htm</a>

I'll let all of you know what they say.

John

John Solum

Well, I went to the first of the two talks, and it was awesome. It was over 2 hours long, and I didn't ask any questions after the talk since I had to get home. He's giving a repeat performance tomorrow, at what I think is a larger meeting, and I'll be prepared. I'm going to make a list of URLs refuting the topics he went over, and I'll make copies of them to hand out. Plus, I'll be able to stick around tomorrow, so I'll get to ask questions (tonight's lecture gave me a great chance to prepare).

Here's a few highlights:

The Cambrian explosion (all phyla appear without precursors - I plan on pointing out that he's not accurately portraying the distribution of fossils in the geologic record).

Human evolution (he "debunked" Ramapithecus, the Australopithecines (they were just chimps according to Lord Zuckerman), Peking & Java Man, Neanderthals and Cro Magnon, Nebraska and Piltdown Man). Actually, this part of the talk reminded me of Jack Chick's Big Daddy.

He plugged some work done by Lubenow (the same guy who fell for the April Fool's joke about Neanderthals playing instruments like the "xylobone")

Archaeopteryx was just a bird that's unrelated to modern birds (I plan on inviting people to come to the museum across the geology department to compare the skeleton of Archaeopteryx to small theropods for themselves)

National Geographic and Archaeoraptor

Whale evolution - based on just a few fragments (I LOVED this one, the museum has a great display of fossil whales) except for Basilosaurus, which wasn't related to modern whales (he didn't mention Dorudon).

The Miller-Urey experiments: Earth's early atmosphere was oxidizing (he mentioned that "oxidized minerals" have been found in rocks of all ages)

He mentioned the bacterial flagellum and Behe (I'll definitely refer people to the URL for the video debate between Ken Miller and Behe where Miller uses a 3-component (IIRC) mousetrap for a clip board and a 2-component mousetrap for a tie tack).

Haeckel's embryos. This was straight out of Icons of Evolution.

THE PAULUXY TRACKS!!! I couldn't believe it when he said that. This is the first chance I've had to use the AiG page detailing arguments creationists shouldn't use.

I stayed around to listen to 2 questions from the audience, and some of the topics the speaker mentioned were C-14 dating of living molluscs indicating that they were thousands of years old and the "He-problem" (i.e., not enough radiogenic He in the atmosphere) invalidating U-Pb dating.

Here are the books he reccommended:

Darwin on Trial, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Icons of Evolution (he referred to it constantly), Darwin's Black Box (according to him Behe isn't an evolutionist anymore), The Wedge of Truth,Bones of Contention, Not By Chance, Darwin's Enigma: Ebbing the Tide of Naturalism, and finally A Case Against Accident and Self-organization.

If any of you in the Ann Arbor area can make it, please come, I don't think I'll be able to ask all the questions and make all the comments I'd like. It ought to be a hell of a good time.

I want to close by saying that I don't think the guy's dishonest, he's just deluded. He hasn't done his homework. That doesn't excuse him, but it's better than outright lying (which is the impression I got with the AiG speaker I listened to earlier this month).

Kevin

If I may help, here's a few websites:

Glenn Morton debunks this interpretation of the Cambrian "Explosion" here:
<a href="http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/cambevol.htm" target="_blank">Phylum Level Evolution</a>

Talk origins probably has one of the best fossil hominid FAQS of any place on the net:
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/" target="_blank">Fossil Hominids FAQ</a>

However, this is a good site as well for debunking specific claims about "Lucy", which I might point out that Solly Zuckerman never studied. This is a complete fabrication, and I'd hit him hard on it if he were to say it again (and he probably will). Zuckerman's study was in 1970, and Donald Johanson's discovery of Lucy was in 1973. This is one of Gish's flagrant lies and it's taken on a life of its own among the creationists.

Well, anyway, onto the site. If this guy tries to claim that "Lucy" was a chimp, just show him this set of anatomical characteristics, and ask whether or not the pelvis clearly indicates bipedality.

<a href="http://msumusik.murraystate.edu/~ssettle/http/anatomy.htm" target="_blank">Anatomical comparison of A. afarensis, humans, and chimps.</a>

That must be Lubenow's Bones of Contention, which is not to be confused (though I'm fairly sure that was Lubenow's intent) with Roger Lewin's excellent book of the same title.

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lubenow_cg.html" target="_blank">Link to a review of Bones of Contention</a>

You might also want to get his opinion on the most recent fossil find.

Xu, X. et al. (2002) "A basal troodontid from the Early Cretaceous of China". Nature 415:780-784.

It's in last week's issue.

I don't suppose he'll bother to mention how the scientific paper that was written up had been rejected by two peer review processes before it went to National Geographic? Also, another thing that I think gets missed in this discussion is that these are really fossils. The fraud was to make a chimera of these two for purposes of increasing its value on the market, but both halves are perfectly interesting in their own right. Xu Xing (who is the lead author on the paper describing the most recent fossil bird find above) recognized the back end as the counterpart of a specimen he was studying. The back half, along with Xu's specimen, entered the peer reviewed journals as Microraptor zhaoianus.

You should also mention the two recent fossil finds which support the monophyletic relationship of the whales and the artiodactyls.

Gingerich et al., "Origin of Whales from Early Artiodactyls: Hands and Feet of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan", Science 293, p. 2239.

All ages? This is yet another flagrant lie. UCSD scientists working with sulfur to sulfate ratios in early sedimentary rocks noted an absence of oxygen from the earliest atmosphere, and saw that the global rise in oxygen occured between 2.1-2.5 Gy BP.

<a href="http://unisci.com/stories/20003/0804002.htm" target="_blank">Record Of Oxygen From Ancient Atmosphere Seen In Rocks</a>

Ian Musgrave deals with a possible evolutionary pathway of the eubacterial flagella here:

<a href="http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~e21092/flagella.htm" target="_blank">Evolution of the Bacterial Flagella</a>

I'd counsel against clashing with the person over the analogy of the mousetrap. Although Behe takes it seriously (oddly, he chastises some of his critics when they fail to rebut it, as if he were asserting that a moustrap is a biological system that must be explained by evolution), it's basically pap. What you should do, rather than legitimize the analogy by arguing against it, is point out how the analogy fails to take into account how biological systems work. First of all, evolution doesn't have it in "mind" to build a specific structure, so removing one part to see if it functions is not a way to adequately "reverse engineer" evolutionary trends. What often happens is that evolution will proceed by duplicating an existing gene or genes and modifying it (them), or modifying existing genes without duplication so that all segments of a pathway can evolve together.

You should point out that Haeckel's views were not actually consistent with Darwinism, and were instead an attempt to fuse the ideas of Darwin and Lamarck. The idea that adult stages can be recapitulated in embryological development presupposes that adult characteristics are transmitted to the offspring of the next generation. What traditional Darwinian evolution would predict is that embryos from related organisms should share some processes of their embryological development in common, and they do. Not only are there homologies in the anatomies of the developing embryo, there are common developmental processes(<a href="http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo7.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://sdb.bio.purdue.edu/fly/aimain/aadevinx.htm" target="_blank">here</a>). Haeckel's views of the "law of terminal addition" entails a straight ladder-like progression to human, rather than a Darwinian branching tree, or bush.

You should refer to this site for more information about the drawings:
<a href="http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo5.html" target="_blank">Haeckel and the Vertebrate Archetype</a>

<a href="http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/chap23.html" target="_blank">http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/chap23.html</A> contains much interesting information on evo-devo.

Let us know how he reacts to the fact that this has been abandoned by his comrades.

Which is a good date, for the carbon in the shells. The carbon in mollusc shells is not atmospheric and is old carbon, and will date old on a C-14 test. The only carbon that can be dated on a C-14 test is atmospheric carbon.

Also, the He argument is dealt with here:

<a href="http://www.tim-thompson.com/resp3.html" target="_blank">Is the Earth Young?</a>

-remainder snipped-

John Solum

Thats exactly the point I was going to make. Zuckerman never examined the fossils, so his claims are meaningless.

I'm sure he won't mention it, but I will.

I'm definitely going to plug whale evolution. Gingerich is on the faculty here, and there're a couple of grad students working on whale (and sea cow) evolution right now. The students at the U of M have a wonderful opportunity to learn more about whale evolution.

I didn't really plan on mentioning the mousetrap analogy, I think it was just the coup des gras of Miller's presentation. Videos of that presentation (as well as videos from a lot of other presentations) are archived here:

<a href="http://www.meta-library.net/perspevo/index-frame.html" target="_blank">http://www.meta-library.net/perspevo/index-frame.html</a>

Thanks a lot for the links, I've included them in my list.

John

John Solum

Here's the list of URLs that I'll be handing out. I'd appreciate suggestions. I think I'll upload a copy of the list to my personal webpage and then include the URL for that, so people can just go there and click on the links instead of having to type them all in to their browser. But for now, here they are:

Arguments creationists shouldn’t use (from the young earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis)
<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/faq/dont_use.asp" target="_blank">http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/faq/dont_use.asp</a>
(Includes the Paluxy dinosaur tracks, Dubois and Java Man, and the claim that there are no transitional forms, etc.)


Cambrian explosion
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/dec97.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/dec97.html</a>
From the American Scientific Affiliation (an organization of Christian scientists)
<a href="http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/evolution/PSCF12-97Miller.html" target="_blank">http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/evolution/PSCF12-97Miller.html</a>
<a href="http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/cambevol.htm" target="_blank">http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/cambevol.htm</a>

Hominid fossils
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/</a>

Anomalous human fossils
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_anomaly.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_anomaly.html</a>
Peking Man
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_peking.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_peking.html</a>
Java Man
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_java.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_java.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/gibbon.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/gibbon.html</a>
Lucy
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piths.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piths.html</a>
<a href="http://msumusik.murraystate.edu/~ssettle/http/anatomy.htm" target="_blank">http://msumusik.murraystate.edu/~ssettle/http/anatomy.htm</a> (anatomical comparison of A. afarensis, chimpanzees, and humans)
Piltdown man
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piltdown.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piltdown.html</a>
Nebraska man
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/wolfmellett.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/wolfmellett.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lubenebr.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lubenebr.html</a>

Paluxy tracks
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/sor-ipub.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/sor-ipub.html</a>
From the creationist organization Answers in Genesis:
<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/faq/dont_use.asp" target="_blank">http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/faq/dont_use.asp</a>

Archaeopteryx
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx.html</a>

Feathered dinosaurs, etc. (includes dinosaurs with possible precursors to feathers)
<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020214/sc_nm/science_birds_dc_1&cid=585" target="_blank">http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020214/sc_nm/science_birds_dc_1&cid=585</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html#protoavis" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html#protoavis</a>
<a href="http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/sinosaur.htm" target="_blank">http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/sinosaur.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/sinonews.htm" target="_blank">http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/sinonews.htm</a>

Archaeoraptor
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/jan00.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/jan00.html</a> (scroll down)

Fossil Whales
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/</a>
<a href="http://www.angelfire.com/fl/direpuppy/mindblocks.html" target="_blank">http://www.angelfire.com/fl/direpuppy/mindblocks.html</a>

Earth’s early atmosphere
<a href="http://unisci.com/stories/20003/0804002.htm" target="_blank">http://unisci.com/stories/20003/0804002.htm</a>

Probability of abiogenesis
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/apr98.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/apr98.html</a>

Embryology
<a href="http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Books/Chapters/Ch%2010/Haeckel.htm" target="_blank">http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Books/Chapters/Ch%2010/Haeckel.htm</a> (includes photographs of embryos)
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb99.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb99.html</a>
<a href="http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo5.html" target="_blank">http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo5.html</a>
<a href="http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/chap23.html" target="_blank">http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/chap23.html</a>

Radiogenic Helium in the atmosphere
<a href="http://www.tim-thompson.com/resp3.html" target="_blank">http://www.tim-thompson.com/resp3.html</a>


Book Reviews, etc.

Marvin Lubenow (author of Bones of Contention)
<a href="http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/icr_suckered_by_april_fool's_joke.htm" target="_blank">http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/icr_suckered_by_april_fool's_joke.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lubenow_cg.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lubenow_cg.html</a> (review of Bones of Contention)

Icons of Evolution (by Jonathan Wells)
<a href="http://www.antievolution.org/people/wells_j/tdo_wells.htm" target="_blank">http://www.antievolution.org/people/wells_j/tdo_wells.htm</a>
(includes Miller-Urey experiment, Darwin's Tree of Life, Homology in Vertebrate Limbs, Haeckel's Embryos, Archaeopteryx: The Missing Link, Peppered Moths, Darwin's Finches, Four-Winged Fruit Flies, Fossil Horses and Directed Evolution, and From Ape to Human: The Ultimate Icon)

Not by Chance (by Lee Spetner)
<a href="http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.htm" target="_blank">http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.htm</a>

Darwin’s Black Box (by Michael Behe)
<a href="http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/box/behe.htm" target="_blank">http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/box/behe.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/textbooks.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/textbooks.html</a>
<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/science/creationism/behe.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/science/creationism/behe.html</a>
<a href="http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~e21092/flagella.htm" target="_blank">http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~e21092/flagella.htm</a> (the bacterial flagellum)

Phillip Johnson (author of Darwin on Trial)
<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/science/creationism/johnson.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/science/creationism/johnson.html</a>

Evolution a theory in crisis (by Michael Denton)
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/denton.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/denton.html</a>


Video clips of speakers on creation and evolution
<a href="http://www.meta-library.net/perspevo/index-frame.html" target="_blank">http://www.meta-library.net/perspevo/index-frame.html</a>

tgamble

How about including info on Denton's latest book where he supports evolution?

A few others.
<a href="http://members.aol.com/ps418/tran.htm" target="_blank">http://members.aol.com/ps418/tran.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/</a>
<a href="http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_00.htm" target="_blank">http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_00.htm</a>

<a href="http://home.mmcable.com/harlequin/evol/HovindLie.html" target="_blank">http://home.mmcable.com/harlequin/evol/HovindLie.html</a>

<a href="http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/FEvolutionCase.htm" target="_blank">http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/FEvolutionCase.htm</a>

<a href="http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/Design.html" target="_blank">http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/Design.html</a>

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/</a>

jhallum

Arggh. I missed last night's talk, and I've got a prior commitment for tonights talk. It'd be nice to get there and see you clean house. Good luck, man.

John Solum

Thanks for the links tgamble, I included some of them. I'll try to track down the reference to Denton that you make, I've heard the claim before, but I don't remember where.

jhallum
Thanks for the moral support. After talking with the guy, it seems like he's interested in continuing a discussion of evolution, maybe he'll give another talk in the future.

Here's what happened tonight:

Tonight's talk was much shorter (only fifty minutes with about 10 minutes for questions), but I did have a conversation for an hour and a half with the speaker after the talk. He went over the same material tonight as he did yesterday, so I'll only list the claims that I was able to ask questions about.

The Cambrian Explosion:

Here's what I said:
-it lasted ~10 million years, it wasn't an instantaneous event
-there are multicellular Precambrian fossils
-Organisms with hard parts first appear at that time, and so at least part of the explosion is due to the fact that hard parts are more easily fossilized than hard parts
-the Cambrian fauna isn't composed of modern animals, and major groups of animals appear at later times (I mentioned amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals)

He used the quote from Icons of Evolution that Lord Valentine discusses in his FAQ (he mentions it in this thread: <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000260)" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000260)</a> about evolution being "top down" when it should be "bottom up." I didn't get around to this quote though.

Human evolution
-I pointed out that Zuckerman didn't directly examine the Australopithecine fossils, and so his conclusions aren't very good.
-I pointed out that Java and Peking Man are both examples of Homo Erectus, and that there are a lot of other Homo Erectus fossils.
-I pointed out that Lucy has some skeletal features that are more similar to modern humans than they are to chimps (he said Lucy was basically a chimp). He agreed that Lucy had some human-like features but that it had more chimp-like features, at which point I said if it has human-like features and ape-like features why doesn't he consider it a transitional fossil? Before anyone corrects me, I want to say that I realize that humans didn't evolve from apes, but that we share a common ancestor. That wasn't the point that I was trying to make. I just wanted to highlight the transitional nature of Australopithcines.

That's all the questions I had time to ask during the question and answer segment of the talk. We had to get out of the room after that because another group was waiting to use it. I did hand out 7 or 8 copies of my list of URLs to people in the audience (there were around 12 people in attendance).

As I said earlier, after the talk the speaker and I had a long conversation. Here's a few of the things we went over:

Whale evolution:
I said that he hadn't presented all the evidence for whale evolution, and that he had a great opportunity to learn more about whale evolution my visiting the Natural History Museum on campus since some of the people directly involved with the discovery of fossil whales work there.

Bird evolution:
I said that he should visit the museum and look at the skeleton of Archaeopteryx and compare it to the skeleton of a theropod dinosaur. I said that the fact that it's classified as a bird doesn't negate the fact that it has reptilian features.

We talked about Archaeoraptor for a bit, and I said that National Geographic wasn't a scientific journal, and so Archaeoraptor shouldn't be portrayed as a fraud that duped the paleontological community. He agreed, and said that he'd be more careful in the future.

We talked about the earth's early atmosphere, and I pointed out that there's a difference between the atmosphere containing oxygen and the atmosphere being oxidizing. I talked about BIFs and stromatolites and deposits of easily-oxidized detrital minerals in the Precambrian. He said that he'd be more careful in the future.

I than said that amino acids had been found in meteorites and detected in a nebula, and so it looks like they form in nature pretty easily. He said that while that may be the case, there's a big difference between amino acids and living creatures (I talked a bit about the God of the Gaps argument here and said that I didn't think it's a good idea to base an argument for the existence of God on a current lack of understanding). He talked about DNA, and how even the simplest cell is too complex to have formed naturally. I have to admit that I didn't do a good job of addressing his points. I said that it's not my field, and that I couldn't really comment on that. It looks like I'll have to fill that hole in my knowledge (I'll be prepared next time).

We talked about the Paluxy tracks a little, and his source was a video entitled "The Mysterious Origins of Man". He said that he didn't consider it the gospel truth, but that he thought it was interesting, and he asked if I'd heard of it. I said that I had, but that I wasn't familiar with it, and that I'd look into it (I'll see what Google turns up, but if anyone would like to reccommend a link or two, I'd appreciate it).

I think the guy's honest. He acknowledged his mistakes, and said he'd correct them, and we agreed to talk more in the future. He's not YEC, in fact he said he's heard bad things about their research. He asked me about what I thought of YEC, and I told him that I wasn't impressed (I took the opportunity to plug my thrust faults FAQ). He asked me about the He argument, and I explained that YECs didn't consider known mechanisms that remove He from the atmosphere. He asked me about the living molluscs that were carbon-dated at thousands of years old, and I explained that the data were meaningless because the molluscs didn't get their carbon from the atmosphere. He accepted both of those arguments.

I gave him my email address, and we both decided that we contine our discussion on line and in person at a later date. I'm really looking forward to it, as I said earlier, he really does seem like an honest guy, he's just been exposed to a lot of shoddy scholarship.