Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory – Page 15

VIEW HEADLINES ONLY

The Evolution of Omnipotence

March 11, 2004

With a headline like “New Theory: Universe Created by Intelligent Being,” one might think that National Geographic News has gone creationist and rediscovered Genesis 1. The opposite would be true. The article by John Roach explores the radical thinking of a lawyer/scientist named James Gardner, who has just published a book, Biocosm: The New Scientific […]

Education

Evolution Battle Heats Up in Ohio

March 10, 2004

CNN has reported that the Ohio school board voted 13-5 in favor of an optional set of lessons called “Critical Analysis of Evolution.” The usual opponents are lining up on both sides; some scientific organizations are claiming it is a “religious effort cloaked as science,” but others consider it a victory for students and for […]

Geology

Rethinking the Geological Layers

March 5, 2004

One of the most formative ideas in Darwin’s intellectual journey was the concept of gradualism, the principle of “small agencies and their cumulative effects.” This idea became a dominant motif in his philosophy of life. Describing how the assumption of gradualism permeated his last book (on earthworms) shortly before his death, Janet Browne, in her […]

Politics and Ethics

Science Journal Editors Face Accountability

March 4, 2004

This quote by a journal editor comes from a news item in the Mar. 4 issue of Nature:1 “Like everybody else, we are much more interested in other people’s accountability than we are in our own,” explains Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), who helped to draft the new code. “Editors are […]

Education

Evolution 101: Pro-Evolution Educational Website Opens

February 29, 2004

Berkeley has a new website for educators and students named Understanding Evolution. For students, it presents topics on (1) Nature of Science, (2) Evolution 101, (3) Evidence, (4) Relevance of Evolution, (5) Misconceptions, and (6) History of Evolutionary Thought. For teachers, there is additional material on (6) Teaching Evolution, (7) Overcoming Roadblocks, (8) Potential Pitfalls, […]

Uncategorized

Was There a Single Common Ancestor for All Life?

February 29, 2004

Lucy (the alleged human ancestor) had a distant ancestor named LUCA. That’s the assumption of many evolutionary biologists. LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, is the mother of us all: the bird and the worm, the bee and the flower, the man and his dog. In the Darwinian creation story, sex had not yet evolved, […]

Bible and Theology

Evolution of Language Debated

February 27, 2004

The Feb. 27 issue of Science features the topic of the evolution of language.1 The thousands of words in 10 articles might be summarized by the title of a book review by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy: “Many Perspectives, No Consensus.”2 Since there are many perspectives and no consensus, language evolution is one of the subjects Darwinists love. […]

Bible and Theology

How Darwinians Approach the Golden Rule

February 22, 2004

Is nothing sacred? Gretchen Vogel has written a piece on “The Evolution of the Golden Rule” in the Feb. 20 issue of Science.1 Jesus Christ and most religious teachers have taught the Golden Rule as a moral principle and a sacred duty, but to Darwinians, it must have evolved like everything else. Yet […]

Intelligent Design

Scientists Probe Differences Between Living and Nonliving Chemicals

February 15, 2004

“All life forms are composed of molecules that are not themselves alive. But in what ways do living and nonliving matter differ? How could a primitive life form arise from a collection of nonliving molecules?” Any article beginning with questions like that is bound to be interesting. That’s how Rasmussen et al. tantalized readers of […]

Education

New Website Aids Slow Process of Dethroning Darwin

February 13, 2004

A new website, Darwin and Design.com, based on the book co-authored by Stephen Meyer and John Angus Campbell, has been announced by Discovery Institute. Meanwhile, Ohio anticreationists are trying to caricature a proposed lesson plan on critical analysis of evolution by identifying it with intelligent design theory. �Intelligent design isn�t even covered in this lesson,� […]

Dumb Ideas

Darwinians Excel at Games

February 10, 2004

Martin Nowak (Harvard) sure got good press for his evolutionary game theories last week. In Nature,1 he retold the glorious story of how he and Karl Sigmund met in an Austrian mountain cottage and applied the “prisoner’s dilemma” game to a new theory for social evolution. The same week, in Science,2 as part of a […]

Early Man

Evolutionists Publish Racist Book

February 6, 2004

“Disturbing” is how Robert N. Proctor (Penn State) describes a new book by two prominent evolutionists in the Feb. 5 issue of Nature.1 The book is Race: The Reality of Human Differences by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele (Westview, 2004), and Proctor has a lot of politically correct diatribe to heap on it, though reluctantly: […]

Uncategorized

Darwinian Phylogenists Do the Funky Chicken

February 5, 2004

Fredrik Ronquist is active in phylogenetic systematics, the art of drawing evolutionary trees from DNA comparisons. And he admires Joseph Felsenstein, an “icon in the field.” But when he reviewed Felsenstein’s new book, Inferring Phylogenies (Sinauer, 2004) in the Feb. 5 issue of Science,1 he had mixed feelings about the author’s biases and his choice […]

Darwin and Evolution

Why Darwin Is Like Yoda, and Darwinism Like Marxism

February 4, 2004

Homage for the master is palpable in John Vandermeer’s review (Science, Jan. 23)1 of a thick new book entitled Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution by Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman (Princeton, 2004). Vandermeer seems almost worshipful in his opening lines: The nascent germ of many novel ideas in biology can be traced directly or […]

Darwin and Evolution

E-I-E-I-O in Old McDarwin’s Animal Farm

February 3, 2004

Some beliefs about origins are more equal than others.

All Posts by Date

[archives type="yearly" cat_id="1517"]