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From ScienceDaily:

Speed Limit To Pace of Evolution, Biologists Say

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a theoretical model that informs the understanding of evolution and determines how quickly an organism will evolve using a catalogue of "evolutionary speed limits." The model provides quantitative predictions for the speed of evolution on various "fitness landscapes," the dynamic and varied conditions under which bacteria, viruses and even humans adapt.

Oh, the humanity!

Comfort's article defending his asinine version of The Origin of Species (legitimate version pictured right) has been run at the U.S. News & World Report alongside a rebuttal by Eugenie Scott.  Next week we can look forward to an online debate between a NASA Aeronautical Engineer and a four year old boy who thinks the lighting bolt stickers on his Hot Wheels make the cars "go faster."  If my metaphor is unclear, the four year old is Ray Comfort, and no, I do not think the comparison is unfair.

Just for fun, let's take a brief look at what they have to say.  We will start with Ray.

Why are many atheists so angry? Why are they talking about book burnings, threatening to resist the giveaway and rip out the Introduction, etc.? Why was richarddawkins.net encouraging people to collect copies and rip out the Introduction? Professor Dawkins himself said that even though "a lot of people seem to be very worried about this," he wasn't at all worried. Why did he then tell Toronto university students to tear out the Introduction? There have been more than 140 different editions of On the Origin of Species, many with special Introductions, so what's the big deal with this one? If I am (as Professor Dawkins says) "an ignorant fool," why are so many feeling threatened by what I've written? Surely, the Introduction will be ignorance and foolishness, and simply confirm the students' presuppositions that intelligent design isn't worthy of even a first look.

People are being encouraged to rip out your introduction, Ray, because without it they will be left with an historically relevant account of the initial formulation of Evolutionary Theory by the man who conceived it.  I dare say you have never changed the mind of any person reasonably well educated in Evolutionary Theory, and since your arguments never change or evolve *gasp*, we can rest well assured that your introduction will be as baseless and stupid as every other argument you have ever made.  Unfortunately, we live in a society that readily embraces willful ignorance and some may be swayed by your particular brand of foolishness.  These people will then go on to vote and lobby against academic progress and continue to interfere with the work of legitimate intellectuals.  Stupidity is dangerous, and that makes you a WMD.

The problem when arguing with those who believe in atheistic evolution is that they move goal posts by redefining atheism or evolution or the word species. From Darwin to Dawkins, they speak the language of speculation, continually using words like probably, maybe, perhaps, and could've. And Darwinism is as nebulous as a puffy cloud on a hot windy day, forever moving, changing, and expanding—because its bounds are limited only by the fertile human imagination.

The fallacies of equivocation simply never end with this man.  He has been told over and over again that atheism and evolution are not one in the same, and he simply refuses to listen.  That makes him a liar.  I also love his tirades against the supposed "language of speculation" which just so happens to be the language of intellectual honesty.  Mr. Comfort would not know anything about that.

It Burns

When we give away On the Origin of Species to university students, I want every one of them to make sure they don't stop at the Introduction. I want them to thoroughly read On the Origin of Species. When I read the book, I was very impressed with the brilliance of Charles Darwin. If he was alive today, I am sure that he would quickly rise to the top of Disney's imagineers or earn big bucks as a Hollywood screenwriter for science-fiction movies. Among other things, Darwin noted that black bears swam for hours with their mouths open, catching insects in the water. He believed that if they kept their mouths open all day, every day (for a long period of time), that they would acquire "larger and larger mouths, until a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale" (Chapter Six, "Difficulties on Theory").

The irony!  It burns!

There is far more abject idiocy in the remaining article, so read it in full at your own risk.

Okay, Eugenie, bring us out of this pit of despair before we drown in its sweltering pool of inanity.

Unfortunately, it will be hard to thoroughly read the version that Comfort will be distributing on college campuses in November. The copy his publisher sent me is missing no fewer than four crucial chapters, as well as Darwin's introduction. Two of the omitted chapters, Chapters 11 and 12, showcase biogeography, some of Darwin's strongest evidence for evolution. Which is a better explanation for the distribution of plants and animals around the planet: common ancestry or special creation? Which better explains why island species are more similar to species on the mainland closest to them, rather than to more distant species that share a similar environment? The answer clearly is common ancestry. Today, scientists continue to develop the science of biogeography, confirming, refining, and extending Darwin's conclusions.

Likewise missing from Comfort's bowdlerized version of the Origin is Chapter 13, where Darwin explained how evolution makes sense of classification, morphology, and embryology. To take a simple example, why do all land vertebrates (amphibians, mammals, and reptiles and birds) have four limbs? Not because four limbs are necessarily a superior design for land locomotion: insects have six, arachnids have eight, and millipedes have, well, lots. It's because all land vertebrates descended with modification from a four-legged ("tetrapod") ancestor. Since Darwin's era, scientists have repeatedly confirmed that the more recently two species have shared a common ancestor, the more similar are their anatomy, their biochemistry, their embryology, and their genetics.

Oh, she called you on that one, Mr. Comfort.  I guess when you said you wanted college students to read the work you full, you meant you wanted them to read the work minus some of its most convincing evidences.  Is not there a command in the Bible against bearing false witness?  I seem to remember it was part of popular list of ten things YHWH does not want you to do.

It's not just human evolution that Comfort misrepresents. His main gripe is the old creationist standby, the supposed lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. (Darwin addressed the objection in Chapter 9 of the Origin, interestingly not included in Comfort's version.) Comfort sneers at the fossil evidence for the terrestrial ancestry of whales and the dinosaurian ancestry of birds. Too bad for him that he has a knack for picking bad examples: There are splendid fossils of dinosaurs that have feathers and of whales that have legs—and even feet. Faced with ignorance like this, I'm reminded of a jeremiad: "Oh foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not."

But if you are willing to use your ears to listen to what paleontologists say about transitional features and use your eyes to look at the evidence described in the scientific literature (as well as displayed in many museums and science centers around the country), you will find transitional fossils galore. There are clear transitional series from aquatic vertebrates to land vertebrates, from primitive land vertebrates to mammals, from dinosaurs to birds, from land vertebrates to whales, and of course a wonderful series of fossils leading to Homo sapiens. A good place to begin is a marvelous website dismissively mentioned (and erroneously described) in Comfort's introduction, the University of California Museum of Paleontology's Understanding Evolution.

If you will pardon the common vernacular, thank god for Eugenie Scott.  Ray, I hope you are enjoying your Golden Crocoduck.

And so is the Large Hadron Collider.

We live in an age on the verge of tribulation.  At least, that is what seemingly countless individuals keep telling us.  From all sides we are bombarded with warnings of imminent doom from 2012ers, Nostradamus alarmists, whack job cultists, and the less than fringe fundamentalist groups who, like every generation before them, thinks the world will end within a few decades.  Now we have a new group fearing a pending apocalypse, and they point to the Large Hadron Collider as the culprit.
 

In all fairness, I have to say the LHC alarmists are the least eccentric of any apocalyptic group I have ever encountered.  For one, when asked what will cause the destruction of our planet, they can point at an actual object which is manifest in reality and not in their imagination.  They also benefit in that their warnings are generally expressions of apprehension or skepticism as opposed to assertions of fact and lack that twinge of psychosis often associated with 2012ers and their ilk.  Okay, so the comparison is not fair, as many reasonable people seem to fear the possible effects of the LHC and have likewise expressed their concerns reasonably.  This begets the question, is that fear merited?
 
To begin the search for an answer, I return once again to Skeptic Magazine (and yes, this is the second time in the span of a few days I have referenced the most recent issue).  This month's issue includes something of a debate between Lloyd B. Lueptow and Lawrence Krauss, with Lueptow presenting a long argument in favor of caution, and Krauss offering a short rebuttal.  Importantly noted are the qualifications of each in commenting on this topic: Krauss has degrees in mathematics and physics and has received awards from the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics, while Lueptow is someone presumably with a degree in something, as I could find extremely little information on him outside of a book he wrote.  (From the context of the articles, he is evidently a sociologist.)
 
Lueptow's argument is very basic: we do not know enough about physics to adequately predict what will happen.  He points to several conflicting hypotheses regarding what will ultimately happen when we collide protons at such high energy states, each of which could result in a doomsday scenario.

1. Miniature black holes could form which would grow too rapidly and ultimately consume the earth within a few years.  He rejects the consensus that microblack holes will dissolve stating we have no empirical reason to conclude such a thing.
2. Strangelets, a theoretical particle, could emerge and begin a chain reaction that will convert all matter on earth into strange matter.
3. Vacuum instability, a phenomena he admits is complicated and difficult to discuss, could result from these collisions and ripple outward changing the very nature of the cosmos itself.

Throughout the article, Lueptow quotes many scientists in an attempt to demonstrate that they disagree at what level of risk we are operating when we turn on the LHC.  He believes we need more time to discuss the science, and that the scientists need to make their predictions and debates public so that we may be more informed.  He then expresses the sentiment that the LHC should not be used unless scientists are highly certain the likelihood of catastrophe is very near zero.

Krauss, on the other hand, is highly dismissive of Lueptow's concerns.  He argues that Lueptow's proposed approach to science would bring discovery to a veritable standstill, as all new experiments always deal with the unknown on some level.  He furthermore argues that science is based on facts and observable data, so attempting to approach science within a democratic framework is fallacious.  Despite that fact, he then points out that he has yet to encounter a scientist qualified to comment on the experiment who thinks any real danger exists and specifically states that while the men Lueptow cites may be brilliant, they are not experts in any fields pertinent to the LHC, namely particle theory, quantum gravity, and general relativity.  High energy collisions occur as natural phenomena anyway, he claims, even though Lueptow rejects this proposition.  Additionally, Krauss points out that smaller scale collisions have been going on in laboratories for quite some time; the LHC simply ups the ante.  "We need to keep an open mind," says Krauss, "but not so open our brains fall out."

So which side do you fall on?  You can probably guess what I think.  Fire that bad boy up!  The potential for discovery is massive.  Some think the LHC may ultimately provide evidence supporting string theory.  If microblack holes form—scientists say they will not, and if they do they will dissolve nearly instantaneously—we may be presented with the opportunity to study them up close, bringing us one step closer to the coveted Theory of Everything.  (For those who may not know, black holes are of particular interest because they represent systems where all four fundamental forces, electromagnetic, gravitational, strong, and weak, are relevant.  In most molecularly sized systems, gravity is irrelevant.)   Then, of course, we stand to learn much from what the LHC was built to discover: the Higgs boson particle—the particle that gives matter mass.  In my humble opinion, which admittedly is completely irrelevant, I think it would be a shame to see this multibillion dollar marvel of modern science and engineering packed away into a corner because we feared we may come up on the short end of a very small probability.

• The Large Hadron Collider at HowStuffWorks
  

Before I close, I would like to change direction for a minute.  I find it befuddling that our species fears obliteration so greatly that we constantly construct these doomsday scenarios wherein the Earth and all life on it is destroyed in grand and spectacular fashion, while we largely ignore legitimate threats whose consequences are far more subtle and slowly emergent, yet we have sufficient data to declare them legitimate concerns.  I am, of course, speaking about disease and global warming.  He we are worrying that the cosmic lottery will turn up a black hole one hundred meters beneath the surface of France, while we continue to burn tons of fossil fuels per person per year and allow the antivaccine movement to grow louder and stronger despite re-emerging diseases long declared under control.  It baffles the mind, but I think I know what the problem is.  Pandemics and climate change do not necessarily threaten to obliterate humankind as a species.  Instead, they will more likely kill a large fraction if not most of the population of Earth while leaving a few survivors to bear the burden of their ancestor's mistakes.  People are far more impressed by loud, sudden, inescapable catastrophes, and that mindset may ultimately prove our modern societies' undoing.  By comparison, the threat of the LHC is completely impotent.

Just a reminder - this is the International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's work. And this Saturday is Astronomy Day. If you happen to be in Houston, go to George Observatory, Brazos Bend State Park between 3:30 PM and 10:30 PM for lots of fun. Otherwise, look to your local university or science museum. And, in the words of one of my favorite people, keep looking up!

John