Obesity? Big Feet? Blame Darwin
From the Wall Street Journal:
Evolution, the theory goes, guarantees survival to the fittest. But we can blame evolution for some of today’s most pressing health problems, such as cancer, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
A 2009 Gallup poll found that 44% of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form within the past 10,000 years. Many of them also think the human body is perfectly designed.
But most scientists—including biologists, anthropologists, paleontologists and geneticists—see the 21st century human body as a collection of compromises, jury-rigged by evolution as our ancestors adapted to changing conditions.
“In many ways, we are maladapted for modernity,” says Stephen Stearns, a Yale evolutionary biologist. He and others in the field are urging medical schools to include more evolutionary thinking when teaching doctors about modern diseases.
For…
Charles Darwin On The Ouija Channel
by Robert David Singer
[Note: If you are not up-to-date with the debate over Evolution, Creationism and Intelligent Design, you will want to read the Preface Notes first, identified by a [p] at the beginning of the sentence. Preface Notes will separate fact from fiction and rumor from humor in my prima facie case for Intelligent Design.]
[p1] Professor Richard Dawkins, one of the greatest living “experts” on blind Watchmakers and selfish gene-centric Evolution got out his Ouija Board to channel the spirit of Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species and the father of Naturalism and Atheism.
Contacting Darwin was considered of a dangerous and controversial nature because if his current residence is Hell then a whole lot of evolutionary biologists will be out of work.
[p2] Dawkins and company agreed it…
California Science Center Sued Over Documentary Attacking Evolution
In the Los Angeles Times:
It may not have the dramatic sweep of “Inherit the Wind,” but a local court case involving a documentary film that addresses the origins of life on Earth has bigwigs in the museum world talking.
The California Science Center, located in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, has been sued for allegedly canceling an October screening of a documentary that criticizes Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
A group called the American Freedom Alliance has sued the L.A. museum, claiming that the center violated both the 1st Amendment and a contract to rent the museum’s Imax theater when it nixed the screening of “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record.”
The AFA, which sued the museum in L.A. Superior Court, is seeking punitive damages and compensation for financial losses,…
Consciousness and the Direction of Structure
This article was written by Tony Wright for Brainwaving and is reposted here by Mr. Wright.
The molecular origins of our species wide insanity
The fundamental causality of our self inflicted suffering
Solving the mystery of human evolution using Darwin’s basic theory required no more than a simple reinterpretation of existing data and the application of basic biological principles. The same approach simultaneously resolves several other major enigmas in disciplines rarely considered within the same context. By following in the footsteps of William of Ockham, the path of least resistance leads to a simple, coherent and elegant explanation for our unique physiological traits and sheds light on the state of our mind.
Your ability to read and understand this article, your perception, state of mind and sense of self is directly related to the co-ordinated…
Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists
Brandon Keim reports in Wired:
On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.
In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a hybrid newcomer who’d already taken baby steps down a new evolutionary path. But playing an unexpected part was chance, and the newcomer singing his own special song.
This miniature evolutionary saga is described in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s authored by Peter and Rosemary Grant, a husband-and-wife team who have spent much of the last 36 years studying a group of bird species known collectively as Darwin’s finches.
The finches — or, technically, tanagers — have adapted to the conditions of…
Vandalizing Darwin: the Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort campaign
Douglas Mesner of the Boston Underground Examiner adds his own acerbic commentary regarding Kirk Cameron’s latest anti-evolution campaign:
A new piece of Creationist drivel asks some inane questions meant to be provocative to the flummoxed “Darwinian fundamentalist”:
“Can you explain which came first—the blood or the heart—and why? Did the heart in all these different species of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals evolve before there were blood vessels throughout their bodies? When did the blood evolve? Was it before the vessels evolved or after they evolved?”
If asked in honest curiosity by a middle school child before entering her first formal biology lessons, the questions might merit praise, and the child might be assumed to genuinely value the answers. Alas, in the case quoted above, the questions are meant rhetorically, believed to have no plausible…
