November 24th is the 150th Anniversary of Darwin's 'Origin of the Species'. I visited the San Diego Natural History Museum where they have on display Darwin Evolution/Revolution and spoke with Bradford Hollingsworth, Ph.D - co curator of the exhibition. Check out the video.
New Zealand born evangelical Christian Ray Comfort, aka "the banana man", has published a new 150th anniversary edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, complete with a 50-page creationist introduction.
Working with child actor Kirk Cameron, Comfort and his lackeys will be distributing 50,000 copies of the book for free on 50 college campuses around the US tomorrow.
"All we want to do is propose the opposing and correct view," says Growing Pains star Cameron, who, as far as I can tell, has equally impeccable credentials in evolutionary biology as Comfort--meaning, of course, none whatsoever.
Comfort is known as the banana man thanks to his claim that the banana is "the atheist's worst nightmare", as the fruit was obviously intelligently designed for human consumption.
If you think I'm joking, check out the video above.
In reality, bananas were selectively bred over time by humans to attain their current "intelligently designed" form. Wild bananas contained large seeds, were not "made to sit comfortably in the human hand", nor did they have the "pointed tip for ease of entry".
As for the creationist Origin, I see no need to seriously worry about it. The arguments in Comfort's introduction are so outdated, wrong and at times downright bizarre that anyone with a half a brain will realize immediately that it is bogus; meanwhile, Darwin's well-reasoned, evidence-based text that follows shines with added brilliance by comparison.
The gist of Comfort's introduction is that if you accept evolution, you will burn in Hell for eternity.
"Perhaps the thought of Hell doesn't scare you, because you don't believe in it," Comfort writes. "That's like standing in the open door of a plane 10,000 feet off the ground and saying, 'I don't believe there will be any consequences if I jump without a parachute'." (Need I point out the logical flaw here?)
Comfort's various criticisms of Darwin's "racism", the implications of "social Darwinism", the "lack of transitional fossils" or evolution's violation of the second law of thermodynamics (which demonstrates a blatant ignorance of physics, as well as biology) are laughable. But in case anyone needs to find out why they are seriously wrong, the always-clever folks at the National Center for Science Education have set up a website in response to Comfort's claims:
"The discovery of an early human fossil in southern China may challenge the commonly held idea that modern humans originated out of Africa.
Jin Changzhu and colleagues of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, announced to Chinese media last week that they have uncovered a 110,000 year old putative Homo sapiens mandible from a cave in southern China's Guangxi province.
The mandible has a protruding chin like that of Homo sapiens, but the thickness of the jaw is indicative of more primitive hominins, suggesting that the fossil could derive from interbreeding.
If confirmed, the finding would lend support to the"multiregional hypothesis". This says that modern humans descend from Homo sapiens coming out of Africa who then interbred with more primitive humans on other continents. In contrast, the prevailing "Out of Africa" hypothesis holds that modern humans are the direct descendents of people who spread out of Africa to other continents around 100,000 years ago.
The study will appear in Chinese Science Bulletin later this month.""The discovery of an early human fossil in southern China may challenge the commonly... more
Though Charles Darwin thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, in 1879 he wrote that "I think that generally ... an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.” When he published The Origin of Species 150 years ago, he deliberately avoided the subject of the origin of life. This, coupled with the mention of the 'Creator' in the last paragraph of the book, led many to believe he was not willing to commit on the matter.
Now, an international team, led by Juli Peretó of the Cavanilles Institute in Valencia, refutes that idea and shows that the British naturalist did explain in other documents how our first ancestors could have come into being.
"All organic beings that have lived on Earth could be descended from some primordial form", explained Darwin in The Origin of Species in 1859. Despite this statement, the scientist took it upon himself to understand the evolutional processes underlying biodiversity.
"Darwin was convinced of the incredible importance of this issue for his theory and he had an amazingly modern materialist and evolutional vision about the transition of inanimate chemical matter into living matter, despite being very aware of Pasteur's experiments in opposition to spontaneous generation", Juli Peretó, principal author of this study and researcher at the Cavanilles Institute of Evolutional Biology and Biodiversity at the University of Valencia, explains to SINC.
The study, which is published in the latest issue of the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, demonstrates that Darwin had an advanced idea on the origin of the first species, and was troubled by the problem. "It is utterly wrong to think that he was invoking a divine intervention; it is also well documented that the mention of the 'Creator' in The Origin of the Species was an addition for appearance's sake that he later regretted", affirms Peretó.
According to the researchers, all Darwin's opinions on the origin of life can be found in his private correspondence and in his notebooks. The exception is a review of a book on foraminiferous microorganisms published in 1863 in the London social club Athenaeum, where Darwin "lets his opinion on the spontaneous generation be known".
The international team, comprising Spanish, US and Mexican scientists, has not only examined in detail the phrases, texts and paragraphs of the letters, but has also put into context all Darwin's opinions on the origins of life, available online and in the original manuscripts.
A comment in a notebook dating back to 1837, in which Darwin explains that "the intimate relationship between the vital phenomena with chemistry and its laws makes the idea of spontaneous generation conceivable", gave the researchers their clue.
In another famous letter sent in 1871 to his friend, the English botanist and explorer Joseph D. Hooker, Charles Darwin imagines a small, warm pool where the inanimate matter would arrange itself into evolutionary matter, aided by chemical components and sufficient sources of energy.
In other letters, the naturalist admitted to colleagues such as Alfred Russel Wallace or Ernst Haeckel that spontaneous generation was important to the coherence of the theory. However, "at the same time, he acknowledged that science was not advanced enough to deal with the question (hence his reluctance to speak of it in public) and that he would not live to see it resolved", Peretó points out.Though Charles Darwin thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, in 1879 he... more
University researchers, examined the letter correspondence of 16 famous writers, performers, politicians and scientists, including Einstein, Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Ernest Hemingway, and found that the 16 individuals sent letters randomly following a circadian cycle.University researchers, examined the letter correspondence of 16 famous writers,... more
Kirk Cameron is smearing Darwin, and promoting creationism. In what can only be characterized as religion gone dumb, Cameron, failed child star turned wacky Christian, is teaming up with his equally wacky buddy Ray Comfort in a campaign to deny scientific truth and promote the most ignorant of religious superstition.
Just in time for the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, Cameron and Comfort are promoting an edition of the book that features an introduction claiming to discredit the theory of evolution, making the case for intelligent design.Kirk Cameron is smearing Darwin, and promoting creationism. In what can only be... more
Why do some female animals have horns? This was one of the many mysteries pondered by Darwin. The pickle was, horns on cloven-hooved mammals were thought to have evolved for fighting each other. However, most female cattle and deer don't do this.
But now some clever people from the Uni of Massachusetts and Uni of California have a solution. By noting the presence or absence of horns in 117 species of bovid they discovered horns were most likely in conspicuous species - those living in open habitats and large enough to be clearly visible to predators.
BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Well, it suggests that horns on females evolved as defensive weapons.Why do some female animals have horns? This was one of the many mysteries pondered by... more
On November 21, the 150th anniversery of The Origins of Species, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are going to give out free copies of it. You're probably thinking, "Wait, aren't they part of a creationist organization, why are they giving away copies of the book that completely destroys their belief?" Well, The Banana Man (Ray Comfort) wrote a 50 page introduction. The following is straight from Kirk's mouth:
>The "history" of evolution
>A time line of Darwin's life
>Adolf Hitler's "undeniable" connection of the theory
>Darwin's "racism"
>His "distain" for women
>Darwin's thoughts on the existence of God
>The theory's many hoaxesLet's play a game; you rage, you lose.
On November 21, the 150th anniversery of The... more
A new British film about Charles Darwin has failed to land a distribution deal in the States because his theories on human evolution are too controversial for religious American audiences, according to the film's producer.
Creation follows the British naturalist's 'struggle between faith and reason' as he wrote his 1859 book, On The Origin Of The Species.
The film, directed by Jon Amielm was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has now been sold to almost every territory in the world.
But US distributors have turned down the film that could cause uproar in a country that, on the whole, dismisses scientific theories of the way we evolved.
Christian film review website Movieguide.org described Darwin as 'a racist, a bigot and a 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder.'
The site also stated that his 'half-baked theory' influenced Adolf Hitler and led to 'atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and generic engineering.'
Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.
'That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing,' he said.
'The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
'It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days.
'It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.A new British film about Charles Darwin has failed to land a distribution deal in the... more
It had been billed as the "Loch Alexander monster" - a giant fish that had bitten an unsuspecting woman on the foot and forced the closure of a popular swimming spot in Darwin.
But the toe-biting monster was today revealed as an 80 centimetre estuary cod, which rangers have named "Clary".
"I'm pretty certain this is the one," Roger Matthews said after luring the fish with baby octopus bait.
"It's a ripper. You can certainly stick your foot in this thing's mouth."
Following the biting incident, Darwin City Council closed the lake for two days to allow rangers to catch the rogue fish.
Today's catch is estimated to weigh about four kilograms.
"I wouldn't put my hand in its mouth, put it that way," Mr Matthews said.
He said the cod put up a 15-minute fight, made more difficult after the rangers' outboard motor stopped working.
The fish was caught about 15 metres away from where the woman was bitten.
Rangers will continue to monitor the lake for the rest of the day, just in case there are more cod out there.
Clary will not be going on the barbeque, Mr Matthews said.
"We'd get some nice fillets off it if we were that way inclined, but we're not."
Instead, rangers have relocated it into the ocean.It had been billed as the "Loch Alexander monster" - a giant fish that had bitten an... more
A man stabbed three men, killing two, after they complained about his humming on a train.
The knifeman had been humming to the CD he was listening to whilst on traveling between Kunming to Chengdu in China. Three men in the same carraige took issue with this, wrestled him to the ground and started beating him.
The man, identified only as Yan, then produced a knife.
There's a moral to this story but I'm not sure what it is.A man stabbed three men, killing two, after they complained about his humming on a... more
The Alabama Freethought Association (AFA) doesn't like the sound of "retreat". They call their convivial annual gathering at Lake Hypatia an "advance". The 2009 schedule promised an atheists vs agnostics softball game, a ceremony honouring atheists in foxholes, paddleboats, music, cartoons, and barbecue.
Lake Hypatia is named for the Alexandrian scientist and philosopher murdered by a Christian mob in 415 CE, who has become an unofficial secular martyr. (There being no official secular martyr-selection procedure.) It's by Talladega National Forest. The state considers it Lake Joan, but the AFA sign on County Road 303 says Lake Hypatia. ("Joan ... of Arc?" I asked. "No, probably the developer's sister.")
Arriving on Friday, I found a registration table in the shade outside Southern Freethought Hall. On one side a cheerful blonde was saying, "I was raised p'lyg." On the other a dark-haired woman marveled, "Until a year ago I never knew an atheist. I thought they were all mean hateful people."
The AFA is a chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), based in liberal Madison, Wisconsin. They've been holding the Advance since 1991. It attracts 100-200 people, mostly from the South, many from communities where strong religious norms treat atheism as unthinkable and despicable. At the advance, nonbelief provokes neither shock nor outrage. The 2009 Advance included atheists who were once Black Hebrew, Catholic, Episcopal, Jehovah's Witness, Methodist, Mormon, Pentecostal, Southern Baptist, or United Brethren church members. Or pastors.The Alabama Freethought Association (AFA) doesn't like the sound of "retreat". They... more
Dreaming of Nonsense: The Evolutionary Enigma of Dream Content
Why do we Dream?
Why on earth do our minds conjure up such ridiculous imagery, such inane thoughts, such spectacularly vivid and surreal landscapes, intense emotions—such narrative trash?
Over the years, many psychologists have conjured up their own evolutionary explanations. And it’s a fair assessment of the literature to say that we still don’t know why we dream. After all, although it’s relatively easy to see why sleep itself would have conferred evolutionary advantages (avoiding nocturnal predators, recharging our neural batteries and so on), it’s not entirely clear why we don’t simply sleep without dreaming.
Harvard University psychologist Deirdre Barrett might have some answers for us. In a recent review of evolutionary theories concerning the possible adaptive function of dreaming, Barrett shrugs off the better-known psychoanalytic theories of dreams (for example, Freud’s “wish fulfillment” and Jungian archetypes) as being irreconcilable with a Darwinian framework and instead highlights the major contemporary, biologically informed theories. Remember, the key question for us to consider is why dreaming occurs at all, since it’s not immediately apparent why natural selection wouldn’t have simply engineered a dreamless, non-REM sleep.
On this site there are some of the best current evolutionary contenders in the field of dream studies:
If you're interested into dreams, why we dream and the study of dreams, then you should definitely check this site out. It has some interesting studies.
It would be interesting to hear any of your thoughts on dreams and what they are for?
Why Do We Dream?Dreaming of Nonsense: The Evolutionary Enigma of Dream Content
Why do we Dream?... more
Professor Richard Dawkins delivered this year's Open University lecture at the Natural History Museum on Tuesday 17th March 2009.Professor Richard Dawkins delivered this year's Open University lecture at the Natural... more
A computer simulation predicts that ravens should have evolved a behavior called "gang foraging," which is then observed in real ravens.
Game theory, the branch of mathematics best known for exploring economics, has for the first time successfully predicted animal behavior in nature. It forecast a foraging strategy for ravens that was later observed in the wild.
Game theory analyzes how people (or animals) act in situations where an individual’s success depends on both his own decisions and those of others. In 2002 Sasha Dall, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Exeter in England, used a game theory model to explain why young ravens scout for carrion alone but then recruit other birds to join the feast. This apparently altruistic behavior is evolutionarily sensible, he found, because it helps the scout fight off territorial adults and secure dominance over recruits.
Dall’s model predicted another successful strategy, one that had never been observed in ravens: gang foraging, in which a large group of birds scavenge together. Within a year, behavioral ecologist Jonathan Wright of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology discovered this very behavior in the field. He tracked ravens in North Wales by implanting carcasses with different-colored beads that the birds ingested and later coughed up. Analysis of the beads indicated that ravens in some roosts were searching, eating, and benefiting together, just as Dall anticipated. Wright and Dall merged their mathematical and field-based work in a paper published in February.A computer simulation predicts that ravens should have evolved a behavior called "gang... more
"A descendant of Charles Darwin became the new professor of poetry at Oxford University this weekend, and the first woman to be elected to the role.
Ruth Padel was chosen on Saturday night to succeed Christopher Ricks in the prestigious position, which was created in 1708.
It came after the battle for the post was mired in controversy. Derek Walcott, the Nobel Laureate who was also nominated, withdrew after old accusations resurfaced that he sexually harassed a former student.
Anonymous letters detailing the allegations were sent to more than 100 Oxford professors.
Then a group of academics wrote a letter to The Times, suggesting that the contest should be suspended, and nominations reopened.
Padel, a former chairman of the Poetry Society, received 297 votes from Oxford graduates and academics, compared with 129 votes for Arvind Mehrotra, another nominee.
She said she felt honoured and humbled to be offered the position, adding: "My backers based their support for me on what they felt I could offer poetry and students. Now I shall do my best to fulfil their trust.”
Padel, who follows in the footsteps of WH Auden and Seamus Heaney, intends to forge links between poetry and science.
She said that she had recently read to “undergraduates from physics, zoology, Russian and anthropology, who were excited and passionate about poetry, especially poetry and science.
“That is what I should like to do: to explore what poems can give to students, college by college, department by department, in the humanities and sciences.
“To encourage, across the university, the reading, the writing and above all the enjoying of poetry, ancient and modern, in all its richness and variety.”
Padel has given seminars for the Euroscience Forum Barcelona, the Royal Society and Royal Society of Medicine.""A descendant of Charles Darwin became the new professor of poetry at Oxford... more
"It is an anniversary that not many evangelicals will be celebrating: 150 years since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. The hostility is understandable given the widespread assumption that neo-Darwinian evolution is little more than atheism for biologists. This assumption leads to many Christian youth being sheltered from the undisputed, reigning theoretical framework of the biological sciences. It also leads them to read the Genesis creation narrative in a literalistic fashion as if they were reading an article on cosmology in Nature magazine rather than an ancient near eastern cosmogonic-theological poetic narrative. (Sadly, in their fervor to respect the Bible's authority, they undermine it in the same way that the Catholic Church undermined scripture in its dispute with Galileo.) The result is a suspicion of any Christian who would countenance divinely-guided evolution as broaching an unacceptable compromise with liberalism, secularism, methodological naturalism, atheism ... pick your poison.
These young Christians are thus unaware of the large number of Christian evolutionary biologists back to the great Theodosius Dobzhansky, and indeed all the way back to Asa Gray, a contemporary of Darwin and America's leading botanist of the 19th century. They are often unaware that the Catholic Church embraces evolution, as do leading evangelical scientists like Francis Collins and Denis Lamoureux. Not surprisingly, they also remain unaware that most of those theologians laboring in the theology/science dialogue made peace with Darwin long ago (Alister McGrath, John Polkinghorne, R.J. Russell, Ted Peters, Arthur Peacocke, Ian Barbour and many many others besides).
Many of these young Christians will go off to university in the fall and encounter neo-Darwinism for the first time. They will discover that it is a theory that the vast majority of brilliant, highly educated scientists consider essential to make sense of the natural world. And many of those scientists, familiar only with the same warfare model of Christianity and evolution, will simply reinforce the festering doubts of those students. By the time they come home for thanksgiving, many of these students will be harboring new doubts. Within a few years they will face a crisis of faith. And some will walk away from the church as a result. And the most tragic part is, it doesn't have to be this way."
A very interesting post from a Christian website- So, what are your feelings? Are you a Creationist Christian who rejects Darwin's theories, or have you been able to balance your spirituality with evolution? What mentality represents the majority of Americans?"It is an anniversary that not many evangelicals will be celebrating: 150 years since... more
"As described in an article published this week in an advance, online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the work demonstrates some of the classic principles of evolution. For instance, research shows that when different species directly compete for the same finite resource, only the fittest will survive. The work also demonstrates how, when given a variety of resources, the different species will evolve to become increasingly specialized, each filling different niches within their common ecosystem.
Using molecules rather than living species offers a robust way to do this because it allows the forces of evolution to work over the course of mere days, with a trillion molecules in a test tube replicating every few minutes.
"We can study things very quickly," says Scripps Research Professor Gerald Joyce, M.D., Ph.D., who was Voytek's advisor and her coauthor on the paper. Joyce is the dean of the faculty at Scripps Research, where he is also a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, the Department of Chemistry, and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology.
Two years ago, Voytek managed to develop a second, unrelated enzymatic RNA molecule that also can continuously evolve. This allowed her to set the two RNAs in evolutionary motion within the same pot, forcing them to compete for common resources, just like two species of finches on an island in the Galapagos.
In the new study, the key resource or "food" was a supply of molecules necessary for each RNA's replication. The RNAs will only replicate if they have catalyzed attachment of themselves to these food molecules. So long as the RNAs have ample food, they will replicate, and as they replicate, they will mutate. Over time, as these mutations accumulate, new forms emerge — some fitter than others.""As described in an article published this week in an advance, online edition of the... more
Can eternal truth exist in a changing universe? It’s one of the bigger questions people have struggled with since naturalist Charles Darwin posited the idea that life is the product of almost numberless changes occurring over a sweeping span of time. For NC State senior John Coggin, it’s more than an academic question.Can eternal truth exist in a changing universe? It’s one of the bigger questions... more
A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God, asks Mark Vernon.
The Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension", has been won by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.
Quantum physics is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behavior of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood.
The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.
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This is what I mean about the "grey" area between science and religion... scientific support for the possibility of an intelligent designer. It's not as hard to comprehend as you may think and it has nothing to do with religion at all!From the Link:
A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled... more
