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Politics and Ethics

Did Murder Evolve?
February 3, 2008
Is it appropriate for scientists to speculate on the evolution of murder?  Nature had no problem with it.  They allowed Dan Jones, a freelance writer in Brighton, UK, to publish a lengthy article on how murder and warfare evolved.  No other explanations for these scourges were mentioned except to dismiss them.  Nature has apparently incorporated […]
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Biology

Walking Fish Gets Good Mileage
January 16, 2008
In 2006 (04/06/2006), 05/03/2006), Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago announced his missing link: Tiktaalik, a fish with wrist bones that he claimed were transitional between fish and four-footed creatures, or tetrapods. Since then he has taken his fish on the road and is getting good mileage for evolution.
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Dumb Ideas

Two Fossil Explosions Are Better than One
January 5, 2008
“If one is good, two is better” might work with cookies, but not with headaches.  Evolutionary paleontologists have just gotten a second headache and seem almost happy about it.  How can this be?  Read this article in Science Daily to learn how some evolutionists seem to be masochists.  As if the Cambrian Explosion were not […]
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Dumb Ideas

Blast Your Way to Evolutionary Progress
December 15, 2007
The cartoony slogan “Evolve or perish” garnered support from a new story about evolution.  Dave Mosher on Live Science shamelessly titled his article “Catastrophic impacts made life flourish,” describing the theory by Birger Schmitz [U of Lund, Sweden] that the Ordovician extinction was caused by a meteor impact.  Out of the wreckage, a plethora of […]
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Politics and Ethics

Could Evolutionary Racism Re-Emerge?
December 11, 2007
It is a tragic matter of record that some of recent history’s most brutal racial genocides were justified on Darwinian principles (see CMI articles about the Herero genocide, the Nazi genocide, and the Aborigine genocide).  The perpetrators acted on what they believed were inexorable laws of nature, that evolution had equipped some races as superior […]
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Dumb Ideas

Males on “Evolutionary Overdrive”
November 17, 2007
A press release from University of Florida claims males evolve faster than females, and suggests a reason.  It’s because males are simpler.  Some quotes: The observation that males evolve more quickly than females has been around since 19th century biologist Charles Darwin noted the majesty of a peacock’s tail feather in comparison with the plainness […]
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Uncategorized

Evolution: Onward and Downward
November 13, 2007
A story in New Scientist explores a growing realization about evolutionary trees: over time, things have gotten simpler, not more complex.  Better cut down the tree in your textbook and start over. If you want to know how all living things are related, don’t bother looking in any textbook that’s more than a few years […]
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Dumb Ideas

Monkey See, Monkey Rationalize
November 10, 2007
It’s a quirk of English that rational and rationalize have opposite meanings.  Be that as it may, the latter may have evolved into to the former, according to a story in the New York Times.  A monkey study using children as control subjects seems to indicate that Capuchin monkeys, like us, occasionally rationalize bad choices. […]
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Bible and Theology

Modern Nazi Killer Bears Darwin’s Standard
November 8, 2007
Another terrible school shooting imitating the Columbine rampage has occurred, this time in Finland (see CNN).  Before killing eight students and himself, the 18-year-old murderer stated in a rambling note, “I am prepared to fight and die for my cause.  I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human […]
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Cosmology

Myths from Hell
November 1, 2007
Many speak of God’s green earth and rejoice in its beauty, but James Trefil tells us it was born from hell.  In his article in Astronomy (Dec 2007), entitled, “Earth’s Fiery Start” he spoke with eyewitness confidence: Earth hasn’t always been a green and pleasant place.  In fact, our planet’s infancy was a violent, chaotic […]
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Intelligent Design

When Bad Religion Confronts Good Science, and Vice Versa
October 31, 2007
A spooky Halloween thought: there are still witch doctors in the world today.  If they were harmless spooks, they could be dismissed as kooks, but they can have a devastating impact on the ecology as well as the souls of men.  National Geographic had a disturbing story this month about the witch doctors of Uganda, […]
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Dumb Ideas

Machiavellian Monkeys Made Us Compassionate
October 28, 2007
Love, loyalty, patriotism – all the qualities that imbue a romantic novel with soul – came from Rhesus monkeys acting badly.  This is the belief of Dario Maestripieri, a primatologist and Associate Professor in Comparative Human Development and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, according to an article in Science Daily.     Dr. […]
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Early Man

Prominent Biologist Espouses Darwinian Racist Views
October 17, 2007
The history of evolutionary thought includes many aspects modern evolutionists would rather forget, such as racism and eugenics.  Old ideas that blacks are evolutionarily inferior have cropped up again, though, not from some redneck schoolhouse but from the co-discoverer of the DNA structure.  James Watson, outspoken secular humanist, let loose with some comments about racial […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Will Darwinism End With a Big Bang?
October 8, 2007
We may be seeing the end of Darwinism as we know it.
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Dumb Ideas

Darwin Saves Junk, Makes Treasure Out of It
October 5, 2007
The Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week award goes to a press release from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which began by personifying Evolution1 as a tinkerer in its own junkyard:   Evolution has mastered the art of turning trash to treasure – though, for scientists, witnessing the transformation can require a bit of patience.  […]
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