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Bible and Theology

Evangelist Takes On Darwin
September 27, 2009
What would Darwin do?  Just in time for the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species, his magnum opus has been reprinted with an introduction not by a scientist or historian, but by a Christian evangelist.  He and a Christian movie actor are trying to get their special edition to students at major universities.  Talk […]
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Biology

Human Evolution Celebration Exposed
September 24, 2009
The evolutionary story of human origins is often told like a cultural myth that is intuitively obvious.  Humans emerged in Africa after their ancestors came down from the trees and walked upright.  They began to hunt with stone tools and used fire.  They migrated north out of Africa and populated Europe, overtaking the Neanderthals who […]
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Education

Do You Need a Darwinian Doctor?
September 8, 2009
Visualize a cartoon of Charles Darwin as Hippocrates.  It accompanies a book review in Science by Peter T. Ellison (Harvard).1  Ellison realizes that the mass of material doctors need to master is formidable, but thinks that “Evolutionary biology, however, is no longer an expendable topic in medical education.”     The book is Principles of […]
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Dumb Ideas

Mutation: Not a Bug, a Feature
September 2, 2009
Evolutionary biologists are sometimes risque with the way they discuss mutations.  They treat them almost like magic wands, able to produce wondrous new organs and functions by accident. Health to them, death to you:  One article on Science Daily discussed a mutation that causes congenital heart disease in humans, but may have been a stepping […]
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Education

Appendix to The Origin: “Darwin Was Wrong”
August 21, 2009
The appendix, that lowly dollop of tissue relegated to vestigial organ status by the Darwinians, is alive and well with new respect.  Science Daily announced results of the “first-ever study of the appendix through the ages.”  Conclusion: “Charles Darwin was wrong: The appendix is a whole lot more than an evolutionary remnant.  Not only does […]
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Birds

Sexual Selection Discounted in Toucan Bill
July 28, 2009
Darwin thought that the large bill of the toucan might be an ornament produced by his theory of sexual selection.  A new study says, rather, that the bill serves as a heat radiator the bird uses to control body temperature.  National Geographic News summarized a paper in Science that explained the process.1  The authors studied […]
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Cell Biology

Biological Big Bang: Another Explosion at the Dawn of Life
July 23, 2009
Eugene Koonin and two friends from the NIH went tree-hunting.  They examined almost 7,000 genomes of prokaryotes.  They found trees all right – a whole forest of them.  They even found 102 NUTs (nearly universal trees) in the forest.  Unfortunately, it’s not what they wanted to find: a single universal tree of life that Darwin’s […]
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Uncategorized

Divining Plant Evolution from Uncooperative Data
July 3, 2009
A new book on plant evolution came out.  How well does it do explaining the diversity of the world’s plants via Darwin’s theory of natural selection?  The answer depends on how forgiving you can be with details that don’t fit very well.     The book is Paleobotany The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants. […]
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Politics and Ethics

Science as Tyranny
June 3, 2009
Movements since the late 19th century have employed science as justification for tyrannical ideas.  Ziauddin Sardar wrote in Nature, “Misplaced faith in science, as rational dogma, as the enemy of pessimism, as a theory of salvation, often serves as the glue that binds modernity and fascism together.”1  Could that happen again?     Sardar, the […]
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Uncategorized

Science Special Issue on Darwin: Is Ignorance Evidence?
February 9, 2009
It’s fair to confess that scientists cannot be expected to know everything.  Often, though, ignorance is presented as evidence that a paradigm needs to continue.  The idea is that by following the consensus paradigm, scientists can hope to one day fill in the blanks in our knowledge.  How long should this practice continue with a […]
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Politics and Ethics

Evolutionists Hunger for Morality
February 9, 2009
Nature is completely sold over to naturalistic evolution, yet cannot escape the question of morality.  Science depends on morality, but it is not clear in their statements that they acknowledge any universal moral standard.  Christian standards of honesty seem to be assumed.  But if everything in biology (including human behavior) emerged by natural selection, then […]
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Bible and Theology

Darwin Still Doesn’t Do Well in Polls
February 4, 2009
British Darwin defender Richard Dawkins is gnashing his teeth over the latest poll in Britain that shows “More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a ‘designer’ must have lent a hand,” according to the UK Guardian and UK Telegraph.  Dawkins […]
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Dumb Ideas

Darwin Praise Service Begins
February 1, 2009
The celebrations in honor of Charles Robert Darwin for his 200th birthday (Feb. 12) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his influential book On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection (Nov. 29th) are well underway.  It is hard to think of any other scientist who gets the kind of gushy adulation heaped […]
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Education

Which Evolution Should Be Taught?
December 19, 2008
Two articles in Scientific American’s cover feature on evolution in preparation for Darwin Day (12/15/2008, 12/16/2008) quoted a favorite line by Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”  Assuming a teacher or textbook writer wants to illustrate how true this proverb is, which evolutionary proposal should be presented?  Recent articles […]
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Uncategorized

Sci Am Jumpstarts Darwin Day
December 15, 2008
It’s not even Christmas or 2009 yet, but the cover stories on Darwin have started to hit newsstands.  Latest to feature a whole issue to Darwin is Scientific American.  Predictable themes are all there: Darwin was a genius, he was the greatest scientist in history, evolution is the keystone of all biology, and creationists are […]
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