Disinformation » Evolution

New Hampshire’s New Scopes Trial

aaroncynic — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:40:14 +0000

Via Wikipedia

New Hampshire took an early lead this year in the effort to dumb down school students and erode the separation of church and state in the education system by introducing two anti-evolution bills to its state legislature (h/t Mother Jones). The two laws are the first of their kind in the state since the late 90’s. According to the National Center for Science Education, House Bill 1149 would:

“[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.”

House Bill 1457 would:

“[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes.”

State Representative Jerry Bergevin, who introduced HB 1149, believes such legislation is necessary because he thinks evolution is tied to Nazis, communists, and the shooters in the 1999 Columbine massacre. According to Bergevin, the political and ideological views of Darwin and other believers and evolutionary scientists, along with their positions on atheism, must be taught to students as well. The New Hampshire Republican told the Concord Monitor:

“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: they don’t respect human rights.”

He added “As a general court we should be concerned with criminal ideas like this and how we are teaching it. . . . Columbine, remember that? They were believers in evolution. That’s evidence right there.”

Rep Gary Hopper, who introduced HB1457 said that “science is a creative process, not an absolute thing” and he wants creationism taught in classes “so that kids understand that science doesn’t really have all the answers. They are just guessing.”

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

A Vaccination Against Social Prejudice

Good German — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 04:30:10 +0000

Via ScienceDaily:

Evolutionary psychologists suspect that prejudice is rooted in survival: Our distant ancestors had to avoid outsiders who might have carried disease. Research still shows that when people feel vulnerable to illness, they exhibit more bias toward stigmatized groups. But a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science suggests there might be a modern way to break that link.

“We thought if we could alleviate concerns about disease, we could also alleviate the prejudice that arises from them,” says Julie Y. Huang of the University of Toronto, about a study she conducted with Alexandra Sedlovskaya of Harvard University; Joshua M. Ackerman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Yale University’s John A. Bargh. The group found that the sense of security derived through measures such as vaccination and hand washing can reduce bias against “out” groups, from immigrants to the obese.

The researchers conducted three experiments. The first two (with 135 and 26 participants, respectively) looked at people’s reactions to threats of the flu …

Medical & Biology Students Reject Evolution In Favor Of Creationism

majestic — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:25:55 +0000

Charles Darwin. Maull and Polyblank for the Literary and Scientific Portrait Club (1855).

A growing number of biology and medical students are rejecting the very basis of their chosen subject in favor of creationism, reports Steve Jones in the Telegraph:

…Now, though, we have evolution, the grammar of biology. More and more, students do not like it. I no longer teach medics but I do have a lot of contact with biology undergraduates and go to many schools and to student conferences. Over the past decade there has grown up a determined denial by many people of the truths of modern science.

At University College London we have numbers of Islamic students, almost all dedicated, hard-working and able. Some, unfortunately, refuse to accept Darwin’s theory on faith grounds, as do some of their Christian fellows; and just a couple of years ago a Turkish anti-evolution speaker (a Dr Babuna, as I remember) was invited on to campus to give an account of why The Origin is wrong. He was the scion of an extraordinary – and very rich – anti-evolution organisation based in his native land that has sent out thousands of lavishly illustrated creationist books and has linked Darwinism to Nazism and worse.

Much of their propaganda has been lifted from Christian fundamentalism and there is a certain irony in where it has ended up. I have had plenty of verbal complaints from undergraduates of both persuasions that I am demeaning religion, while others ask that they be excused lectures on my subject, or simply fail to turn up.

In schools things are worse: some kids will walk out rather than listen. Their teachers can be just as bad. The most virulent attack I have had in recent years came from a physics teacher in a respected north London state school, who – to the embarrassment of his colleagues – barracked my talk on evolutionary biology with repeated statements that Darwinism contradicted the laws of thermodynamics. I was forced, uncharacteristically, to be rude.

Anyone, of course, is free to believe whatever they wish. But why train to become a biologist, or a doctor, when you deny the very foundations of your subject? …

Daniel Wolpert: The Real Reason for Brains

phunkychic666 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:35:30 +0000

Via TED Talks:

Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion.

Did Life On Earth Start With A Single Ocean-Sized Mega-Creature?

JacobSloan — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:04:51 +0000

File this under we-are-all-connected: three billion years ago, life on Earth may have been a global mega-organism called LUCA, from which all living things today are descended. Can we get an artist’s rending of this colossal being? New Scientist writes:

ONCE upon a time, 3 billion years ago, there lived a single organism called LUCA. It was enormous: a mega-organism like none seen since, it filled the planet’s oceans before splitting into three and giving birth to the ancestors of all living things on Earth today.

This strange picture is emerging from efforts to pin down the last universal common ancestor – not the first life that emerged on Earth but the life form that gave rise to all others.

The latest results suggest LUCA was the result of early life’s fight to survive, attempts at which turned the ocean into a global genetic swap shop for hundreds of millions of years. Cells struggling to survive on their own exchanged useful parts with each other without competition – effectively creating a global mega-organism.

It was around 2.9 billion years ago that LUCA split into the three domains of life: the single-celled bacteria and archaea, and the more complex eukaryotes that gave rise to animals and plants (see timeline). It’s hard to know what happened before the split. Hardly any fossil evidence remains from this time, and any genes that date that far back are likely to have mutated beyond recognition.

That isn’t an insuperable obstacle to painting LUCA’s portrait, says Gustavo Caetano-Anollés of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While the sequence of genes changes quickly, the three-dimensional structure of the proteins they code for is more resistant to the test of time. So if all organisms today make a protein with the same overall structure, he says, it’s a good bet that the structure was present in LUCA.

Christian Faith Requires Accepting Evolution

Good German — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 03:30:01 +0000

Jonathan Dudley writes on Huffington Post:

As someone raised evangelical, I realize anti-evolutionists believe they are defending the Christian tradition. But as a seminary graduate now training to be a medical scientist, I can say that, in reality, they’ve abandoned it.

In theory, if not always in practice, past Christian theologians valued science out of the belief that God created the world scientists study. Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner’s view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.

These beliefs encouraged past Christians to accept the best science of their day, and these beliefs persisted even into the evangelical tradition. As Princeton Seminary’s Charles Hodge, widely considered the father of modern evangelical theology, put it in 1859: “Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible; and we only interpret the Word of God by the Word of God when we interpret the Bible by science.”

In this analysis, Christians must accept sound science, not because they don’t believe God created the world, but precisely because they do …

Chimpanzees Are Spontaneously Generous After All

Good German — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 04:04:16 +0000

Via ScienceDaily:

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center have shown chimpanzees have a significant bias for prosocial behavior. This, the study authors report, is in contrast to previous studies that positioned chimpanzees as reluctant altruists and led to the widely held belief that human altruism evolved in the last six million years only after humans split from apes.The current study findings are available in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to Yerkes researchers Victoria Horner, PhD, Frans de Waal, PhD, and their colleagues, chimpanzees may not have shown prosocial behaviors in other studies because of design issues, such as the complexity of the apparatus used to deliver rewards and the distance between the animals.

“I have always been skeptical of the previous negative findings and their over-interpretation, says Dr. de Waal. “This study confirms the prosocial nature of chimpanzees with a different test, better adapted to the species,” he continues.

Towards Total Evolution

aaroncynic — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 22:55:40 +0000

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media

It might be odd to say and seemingly unconnected, but when I consider what’s happening on Wall Street, or the halls of government, or the streets of any number of cities across the world, I can’t help but think back to our missions to the moon in the 60’s.

We had a clear goal, a common purpose and yes, it was for the wrong reasons (beating the commies into the 21st century, global superiority, etc) but I like to believe that some piece of every human felt good about doing something so exceedingly evolutionary, so extraordinary, that for one brief second it woke us out of our day to day existence, shook the foundations of all our belief structures and told our collective subconscious “we can do more.”

Because we can. As Bucky Fuller pointed out, we have the technology and capability to feed, clothe, house and provide for every human being on the planet our most basic needs. But instead of doing so, we buy into a belief of scarcity, of hoarding, of fear of losing what little we have. The half percent that sits high atop Reagan’s shining city on a hill is still human, and they’re still afraid too. Sure, they’ve been corrupted by years of power, wealth and gluttony, but they’re still human. We’re all still human. Our hearts still beat, we still yearn for better lives and still want what’s best for each other.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

Evolution of Narcissism: Why We’re Overconfident and Why It Works

BananaFamine — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 03:20:24 +0000

David and Goliath, Osmar Schindler (c. 1888)

Christine Dell’Amore writes in National Geographic:

For years, psychologists have observed that people routinely overestimate their abilities, said study leader Dominic Johnson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Some experts have suggested that overconfidence can be a good thing, perhaps by boosting ambition, resolve, and other traits, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

But positive self-delusion can also lead to faulty assessments, unrealistic expectations, and hazardous decisions, according to the study — making it a mystery why overconfidence remains a key human trait despite thousands of years of natural selection, which typically weeds out harmful traits over generations.

Now, new computer simulations show that a false sense of optimism, whether when deciding to go to war or investing in a new stock, can often improve your chances of winning.

“There hasn’t been a good explanation for why we are overconfident, and this new model offers a kind of evolutionary logic for that,” Johnson said.

“It’s unlikely to be an accident — we’re perhaps overconfident for a good reason.”

For more information, see original article.

Scientists Seek To Create Inorganic Life

JacobSloan — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:03:04 +0000

Scientists in Scotland are attempting to dramatically expand our concept of what we consider “alive” by creating entities that reproduce and evolve, but are made out of non-carbon-based materials. Can plastic truly live? If it displayed the same characteristics that we normally attribute to living things, would it somehow seem “fake”? Via the BBC:

All life on earth is based on organic biology – in the form of carbon compounds – but the inorganic world is considered to be inanimate.

A team from Glasgow University has demonstrated a new way of making inorganic chemical cells. The aim is to create self-replicating, evolving inorganic cells which could be used in medicine and chemistry. The project is being led by Professor Lee Cronin from the university’s College of Science and Engineering.

He said: “What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving, inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology.”

Researchers say the cells, which can also store electricity, could potentially be used in all sorts of applications in medicine, as sensors or to confine chemical reactions.

The research is part of a project by Prof Cronin to demonstrate that inorganic chemical compounds are capable of self-replicating and evolving – just as organic, biological carbon-based cells do.

“Bacteria are essentially single-cell micro-organisms made from organic chemicals, so why can’t we make micro-organisms from inorganic chemicals and allow them to evolve?

Scientists Seek To Turn Chickens Into Mini-Dinosaurs

Pelliciari — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:49:50 +0000

Didn’t we learn anything from Jurassic Park? Scientists have created embryo’s with ‘alligator-like snouts’ and are hoping to be able to further ‘undo’ evolution with future trials. The New Zealand Herald reports:

Harvard scientists are hoping to turn chickens into mini-dinosaurs, according to the Daily Mail.

Scientists at the Ivy League university have ‘rewound’ evolution with chicken DNA to create embryos with alligator-like snouts instead of beaks.

By altering the DNA of chicken embryos in the early stage of their development, the team were able to ‘undo’ evolutionary progress and give the creatures snouts which are thought to have been lost in the cretaceous period millions of years ago.

Evolutionary biologist Arkhat Abzhanov developed the chickens with snouts by cutting a square hole in the shell of a chicken egg and dropping in a small gelatinous protein bead, before watching the embryo develop – stifling the development of certain molecules and preventing the birds from growing certain features.

[Continues at New Zealand Herald]

Are These Evolution’s Future Sluts?

moezilla — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:25:33 +0000

SlutWalk protest in Toronto, 3 April 2011. Photo: Anton Bielousov (CC).

Violet Blue explains why the new SlutWalk protests are “a significant tipping point in cultural evolution” — and she’s serious. “Yes: I think scantily clad girls marching in the streets around the world are agents of change for our species.”

It started in April when a Toronto cop said that to stay safe from rape, women “should avoid dressing like sluts”. Soon “my clothes are not my consent” protests erupted, and the event “had an international identity within a few months,” representing “a huge reclamation and restatement about boundaries and women’s bodies.”

Now sex workers, young exhibitionists, high-heel feminists and random pissed-off women are marching “for the right to dress as they like while having their boundaries respected,” and Violet calls them the true punk rockers — the disruptors. “They’re the ones with the brass ovaries enough to dress like sluts and tell the world to STFU about what they should, or shouldn’t do, with their sexiness.”

“Maybe that’s why its critics are panicking and handwringing as if Invaders From Mars have come out of a time machine from the future in heels and hose, reminding everyone that their face is up here!”

Texas Board Of Education Unanimously Rejects Creationist Textbooks

JacobSloan — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:16:52 +0000

In a shocking turn of events, creationism’s great white hope, Texas, has decided to continue teaching basic biology and natural history in its public school system. The National Center for Science Education writes:

The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In 14-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers–and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC.

Dr. Eugenie Scott, NCSE’s Executive Director is celebrating the decision. “These supplements reflect the overwhelming scientific consensus that evolution is the core of modern biology, and is a central and vital concept in any biology class. That these supplements were adopted unanimously reflects a long overdue change in the board. I commend the board for its refusal to politicize science education.”

Miss USA 2011 Contestants On Evolution

JacobSloan — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 16:07:08 +0000

The fifteen semifinalists hoping to win the title of Miss USA 2011 each weigh in on the question, “Should evolution be taught in schools?” If you are wondering why our society is in a death spiral of decline, this is why.

How A Human Virus Is Killing Endangered Gorillas

BananaFamine — Sun, 22 May 2011 08:04:26 +0000

Photo: FlickreviewR (CC)

Alasdair Wilkins writes in io9:

There’s fewer than 800 Mountain Gorillas left in the entire world, and their survival depends in part on people willing to pay money to go see them. But all this human interaction is bringing gorillas into contact with dangerous diseases.

Although humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, gorillas rank a very respectable second, sharing about 98% of their DNA with us. The current zoological consensus is that there are two distinct species of gorillas, western and eastern, and these are further divided into two subspecies each.

While all the gorilla species are to some degree threatened, the population levels vary wildly. There are at least 100,000 Western Lowland Gorillas in the wild, and 4,000 in zoos, while fellow western subspecies, the rarely seen Cross River Gorilla, is thought to have a remaining population of just 280. As for the eastern subspecies, the Eastern Lowland Gorilla has a relatively healthy population of about 4,000.

And then there’s the Mountain Gorilla. Estimates vary, but the consensus is that there’s at most 800 left in the wild. Conservation efforts for this subspecies is especially difficult because their habitats are located in some of the region’s most politically unstable areas, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, making the gorillas vulnerable to government corruption and even attacks from local militias, such as a 2007 incident in which Congolese guerrilla fighters in Virunga National Park killed and butchered a pair of adult gorillas.

For more information see original article.

The Science Of Why We Don’t Believe Science

JacobSloan — Mon, 09 May 2011 18:02:33 +0000

Wondering how evolution developed us into creatures who don’t believe in evolution? Mother Jones explains why large numbers of people tend to believe things that make no sense, and why the human brain is averse to evidence and reasoning:

An array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called “motivated reasoning” helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, “death panels,” the birthplace and religion of the president (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

When we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers (PDF). Our “reasoning” is a means to a predetermined end—winning our “case”—and is shot through with biases. They include “confirmation bias,” in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and “disconfirmation bias,” in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.

Insects Recover Lost ‘Wings’

Pelliciari — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:58:55 +0000

Female Buffalo Treehopper (Stictocephala bisonia) boring a hole into a branch for laying eggs. Photo: Quartl (CC)

Is evolution backtracking? Physorg reports:

The extravagant headgear of small bugs called treehoppers are in fact wing-like appendages that grew back 200 million years after evolution had supposedly cast them aside, according to a study published Thursday in Nature.

That’s probably shocking news if you are an entomologist, and challenges some very basic ideas about what makes an insect an insect, the researchers said. The thorax of all insects is by definition divided into three segments, each with a pair of legs.

In most orders, there are also two pairs of wings, one on the middle segment of the thorax and another at the rear. Other orders such as flies and mosquitoes have only one set of wings, at the rear, and a few — most ants, for example — have no wings at all.

But no insects today have functional flappers in the first segment next to the head. Their forebear, however, did.

[Continues at Physorg]

Churkey: The Neck Of A Turkey And The Body Of A Chicken

Pelliciari — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:01:52 +0000

The Churkey, also known as a turken or naked neck chicken, has a unique genetic modification which gives the bird its unusual look. Scientists believe this species could help in understanding the evolutionary progression of such birds as the vulture. Also, with it’s featherless neck, the bird proves potential for underdeveloped countries in hot climates. BBC reports:

The “churkey” owes its distinctive look to a complex genetic mutation, according to scientists.

Experts at Edinburgh University set out to discover how the Transylvanian naked neck chicken came by its appearance.

The bird, which has also been dubbed the turken, has the neck of a turkey and the body of a chicken.

The scientists said the effects of the genetic mutation were enhanced by a vitamin A-derived substance produced around the bird’s neck.

This causes a protein, BMP12, to be produced, suppressing feather growth and causing the bird to have its bald neck, according to researchers at the Roslin Institute at Edinburgh University.

[Continues at BBC]

Cancer Cells Are ‘Living Fossils’ Of Our Evolutionary Ancestors

BananaFamine — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:17:28 +0000

Alasdair Wilkins reports for io9:

Cancer is one of the most difficult foes medical science has ever faced, but a controversial new idea might just show a way to victory. A group of scientists have evidence that cancer might be an evolutionary throwback to our most distant animal ancestor.

Astrobiologists Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University and Paul Davies of Arizona State have proposed that cancerous cells are a so-called “living fossil”, the last remnant of a crucial evolutionary juncture some 600 million years ago. It’s been proposed before that cancer dates back to the beginning of multi-cellular animals, an evolutionary innovation that required cells to stop replicating whenever they wanted and start coordinating with the rest of the organism.

Cancer is what happens when these very ancient controls on cell replication break down, causing runaway cellular replication. But here’s where Lineweaver and Davies take the idea a step further – they suggest cancer actually is our earliest animal ancestor. They suggest these organisms were the first to figure out some measure of control over cell replication, but they lacked more precise control over cell growth.

This hypothesis, they argue, fits known tumor behavior better than the view that all cancer cells act independently. They point to angiogenesis, in which cancer cells built blood vessel networks to bring nutrients into the tumor, which suggests cooperation amongst the cells. Indeed, the very act of metastasizing, in which cancerous cells move to other tissue areas, is hard to explain if all the cells are acting independently.

Now, not all of Lineweaver and Davies’s peers accept their new hypothesis. While their framework and predictions have received some praise, the idea that cancer is actually a living fossil for the earliest animal life has been met with controversy. It may be that their hypothesis ends up being more of a useful metaphor for understanding how cancer cells work together than as an actual literal explanation.

Still, assuming this idea is correct, how does it help any of us? Well, Lineweaver and Davies suggest that, if cancer really is our evolutionary ancestor, then its genetic toolkit has been locked in place for 600 million years, and its repertoire of survival methods is infinitely more limited than that of, say, bacteria, which has the capacity to evolve resistance to practically any therapy…

For more information, see original article.

Humanity 3.0: How Will We Evolve Next?

JacobSloan — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:28:24 +0000

Writing in SEED Magazine, Mark Changizi expounds on his vision of human advancement in the centuries to come. He argues that the greatest progress will not come through changing our brains and bodies via genetic engineering or cyborg-like enhancement, but by developing technology that better accommodates the magnificently-designed brains and bodies that evolution has already given us:

Where are we humans going, as a species? If science fiction is any guide, we will genetically evolve like in X-Men, become genetically engineered as in Gattaca, or become cybernetically enhanced like General Grievous in Star Wars. All of these may well be part of the story of our future, but I’m not holding my breath.

There is, however, another avenue for human evolution, one mostly unappreciated in both science and fiction. It is this unheralded mechanism that will usher in the next stage of human, giving future people exquisite powers we do not currently possess, powers worthy of natural selection itself. And, importantly, it doesn’t require us to transform into cyborgs or bio-engineered lab rats. It merely relies on our natural bodies and brains functioning as they have for millions of years.

This mystery mechanism of human transformation is neuronal recycling, coined by neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, wherein the brain’s innate capabilities are harnessed for altogether novel functions.

Growing Your Own Security: Professor Breeding Bomb-Detecting Plants (Video)

ralph — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:55:40 +0000

Spencer Ackerman writes on WIRED’s Danger Room:

The next hydrangea you grow could literally save your life. With the help of the Department of Defense, a biologist at Colorado State University has taught plant proteins how to detect explosives. Never let it be said that horticulture can’t fight terrorism.

Picture this at an airport, perhaps in as soon as four years: A terrorist rolls through the sliding doors of a terminal with a bomb packed into his luggage (or his underwear). All of a sudden, the leafy, verdant gardenscape ringing the gates goes white as a sheet. That’s the proteins inside the plants telling authorities that they’ve picked up the chemical trace of the guy’s arsenal.

Disgust Has Helped Formed Our Morality

ralph — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:34:43 +0000

It’s a controversial opinion but sure is interesting. Keep this in mind next time you encounter someone “hygienically challenged” … Jessica Marshall writes in Discovery News:

More controversially, some argue that effects of disgust are even more far-reaching, influencing how societies operate and possibly forming the evolutionary foundations of morality.

“If I go around leaving poo in your front lawn or spitting in your cups or making nasty smells in public transport or if I go to church in my pajamas, I’m threatening you with my bodily fluids,” Curtis said. “These are manners, but they’re also the precursor of moral behavior. That’s at least one of the ways that morality could have evolved in society: simple rules about not getting other people sick with your emanations.”

Studies have even shown a connection between physical disgust and moral disgust, Curtis said. “If you sit people in a room with bad smells, they punish more severely,” she said. “Your sense of disgust for people’s bad behavior is tied together with your organic system.”

Teeth From Homo Sapiens Older Than Accepted History Of Homo Sapiens

voxmagi — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:44:26 +0000

Qesem Cave, Israel. Source: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University

In keeping with Disinfo’s tradition of challenging accepted boundaries in all things, as well as in the spirit of the disinformation book Underground!, here’s a little jewel of a discovery written by Daniel Estrin for AP via Yahoo News. Homo Sapiens teeth … potentially 400,000 years old. So much for the old timeline of human history!

Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.

A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.

“It’s very exciting to come to this conclusion,” said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.

He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, “this changes the whole picture of evolution.”

The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human’s ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.

Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is “important” because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human…

[continues at AP via Yahoo News]

The Day The Sun Stood Still (With Full Moon Eclipse)

Moontrap — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:06:56 +0000

Today is the winter solstice; the solar nadir in the northern hemisphere. This temporal event in Spaceship Earth’s rotations finds the sun take its lowest path through our sky and the daytime hours are fewest; the axis of light flips; a planetary New Year. This is an event that many wise people have encouraged us to recognise as the origin of our ‘modern’ festive experience. The word solstice derives from the Latin ‘Sol’ meaning Sun and ’sistere’ which means to stand still, because this is exactly what it appears to do. Our sun, having clambered ever lower over the horizon since midsummer, seems to be disappearing, perhaps eternally, an experience which was no doubt a source of unquestionable anxiety to early peoples. When the sun was henceforth ‘reborn’ from the horizon, into a fresh cycle of light, there was much rapture and hedonistic release. It is not hard to recognise a common origin of the many religious rebirth mythologies in this event.

Diagram of the Earth's seasons as seen from the north. Far right: Northern Winter Solstice, Far left: Southern Winter Solstice. Author: Tauʻolunga (CC)

To be reminded of these facts is important, because they are rarely noted in this post(?)-Christian cultural climate, even though their significance is worthy of attention. All eyes are turned to the coming of Christ-mass, the so-called, hallowed, birth-date of a certain Yeshua Ben Joseph, that is now coupled with the modern expectations of techni-coloured and infinitely animated, consumerist delights (To those of a Christian persuasion, seriously note at least this transfiguration of meaning). The anti-consumerist Christmas polemic can be left to adequate others, nevertheless, Christ-mass, and all communal festivals of its ilk, do demand analysis.

The 25th of December was typically the Winter Solstice in the Julian calendar (the Solstice moves relative to our calendars, being a tricksy and absolute astronomical bugger; Universe cares not for our overlays), a time when, amongst others, the pagan festival of Sol Invinctus was celebrated. This festival was eventually hi-jacked by the Catholic Church, and during the Constantine amalgamation, overlain inevitably with their own spurious, yet tangibly co-opted, mythologies. These ‘mythologies’ successfully drew attention away from the deeper resonance and historicity of the occasion.

The 25th of December on the Julian calendar became the 21st in the Gregorian, and the ancient celebration of a new year moved with it, Christ-mass now a specious simulacrum of what it once was. In that a date is only meaningful inside the context of a calendar, there is something to think about as we celebrate the arbitrary ‘New Year’ of January the 1st. In the sense that all calendars are arbitrary (although useful) human overlays on the passage of time, we are brought back to the Winter Solstice.

The Solstice represents something tangible, relatively absolute and inviolable, at a time of year when humans are rightly inclined to celebrate light, life and community, in the darkness of winter. Perhaps now we should reinvigorate it, and put it at its proper place in the pantheon of human occasion. Essentially though, what is important, is that people pay more conscious attention to the moments in their lives to which collective significance is attached, although having said that, by all means find time to feast, dance and revel, in the hedonic experience of your existence, whenever and however you see fit.

Lastly, in these moments of transient collectivity, it seems more important than ever (considering the unfolding realities of our economic and physical climate), to recognise and reinforce the significance and sanctity of community, tribe and environment. The need for the continued avoidance of carriage, into wasteful, and oft insidiously wrought, socially reflexive behaviours, is evermore urgent. We should be chastened by the need to re-rediscover that which is genuinely valuable and nevermind necessary; for the sake of all our well-being. Love and respect do not require the latest glittery plastic toss to substantiate them, communication and empathy are always the most profound and valued of gifts. So, take a stroll and remember to remember, look at the trees, and notice the shape of each others hands.

Ten Strange Consequences Of Evolution

JacobSloan — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 21:45:52 +0000

The human body in itself is a powerful piece of evidence in favor of evolution — many of our physical traits make little sense other than as leftovers from back when we were fishy or four-legged. Smithsonian Magazine examines some of the oddest and most troublesome quirks:

Hiccups: The first air-breathing fish and amphibians extracted oxygen using gills when in the water and primitive lungs when on land — and to do so, they had to be able to close the glottis, or entryway to the lungs, when underwater. We descendants of these animals were left with vestiges of their history, including the hiccup. In hiccupping, we use ancient muscles to quickly close the glottis while sucking in (albeit air, not water). One of the reasons it is so difficult to stop hiccupping is that the entire process is controlled by a part of our brain that evolved long before consciousness, and so try as you might, you cannot think hiccups away.

Backaches: The backs of vertebrates evolved as a kind of horizontal pole under which guts were slung. It was arched in the way a bridge might be arched, to support weight. Then, for reasons anthropologists debate long into the night, our hominid ancestors stood upright, which was the bodily equivalent of tipping a bridge on end. Standing on hind legs offered advantages—seeing long distances, for one, or freeing the hands to do other things—but it also turned our backs from an arched bridge to an S shape. The letter S, for all its beauty, is not meant to support weight and so our backs fail, consistently and painfully.

NASA Finds New Life Form, Made of Arsenic, in the Poisonous Mono Lake

ralph — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:09:05 +0000

New life-forms! Right here on Planet Earth! Jesus Diaz writes on WIRED Science:

Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything.

At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.

But not this one. This one is completely different. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don’t have to be like planet Earth.

No details have been disclosed about the origin or nature of this new life form. We will know more today at 2pm EST but, while this life hasn’t been found in another planet, this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology. I don’t know about you but I’ve not been so excited about a bacteria since my STD tests came back clean. And that’s without counting yesterday’s announcement on the discovery of a massive number of red dwarf stars, which may harbor trillion of Earths.

Did Literacy Steal Brain Power From Other Functions?

Pelliciari — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 21:40:19 +0000

Warning: Reading this may cause parts of your brain to become powerless. From Ars Technica:

The human brain contains many regions that are specialized for processing specific decisions and sensory inputs. Many of these are shared with our fellow mammals (and, in some cases, all vertebrates), suggesting that they are evolutionarily ancient specializations. But innovations like writing have only been around for a few thousand years, a time span that’s too short relative to human generations to allow for this sort of large evolutionary change. In the absence of specialized capabilities, how has it become possible for such large portions of the population to become literate?

The authors of a paper that will be released by Science today suggest two possible alternatives to explain this widespread literacy. Either reading is similar enough to something that our brains could already do that it’s processed by existing structures, or literacy has “stolen” areas of the brain that used to be involved in other functions. (A combination of the two is also possible.) In the new paper, they use functional MRI imaging of brain activity to figure out just what literacy does to the brain, and discover that literacy does take over some new areas of the brain, with mixed effects on other areas of cognition.

Continues at Ars Technica …

Christian Creationism, Krishna Creationism, and the Origin of the Human Species

Michael Cremo — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 23:49:02 +0000

[The following is an excerpt from The Forbidden Archeologist: The Atlantic Rising Columns of Michael A. Cremo, reprinted with kind permission of the publisher, Torchlight Publishing.]

For a long time, Darwinists assumed that anyone who argued seriously against their theory of human evolution must be a Christian creationist. Perhaps that’s why my book Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race came as such a surprise.

In a review of Forbidden Archaeology published in Geoarchaeology (1994, 9:337-340), Kenneth Feder wrote: “The book … represents something perhaps not seen before; we can fairly call  it ‘Krishna creationism’ with no disrespect intended. The basic  premises of the authors are breathtaking…: The prevailing paradigm of human evolution … is wholly untenable. There is what  amounts to a passive conspiracy (the authors call it a “knowledge  filter”) to suppress a huge body of data that contradicts our prevailing paradigm … this purported evidence indicates that “beings quite like ourselves have been around as far back as we care to look—in the Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene and beyond.”

Feder concluded, “We all know what happens when we mix a literal interpretation of the Judeo-Christian creation myth with human paleontology; we get scientific creationism. It seems we now know what happens when we mix a literal interpretation of the Hindu myth of creation with human paleontology; we get  the antievolutionary Krishna creationism of Forbidden Archaeology, where human beings do not evolve and where the fossil evidence for anatomically modern humans dates as far back as the begin ning of the current manvantara.” Of course, I did not invent that fossil evidence, which does show that humans existed hundreds of millions of years ago. In reply to Feder, I say: “We all know what happens when we mix a strong belief in Darwinism with Human paleontology. We get a fundamentalist evolutionary account of human origins, in which human beings evolve from apes and the fossil evidence for humans of our type only goes back about 100.000 years.”

Now let’s talk about my relationships with Christian researchers concerned with human evolution. Among them are three  groups. The first is the Biblical creationists, who believe that God directly created the earth and human beings about 10,000 years ago. These young earth creationists are mostly from conservative Protestant denominations. The second group of Christian researchers is those who believe that God created human beings, but did it by the Darwinian process of evolution. These researchers tend to come from liberal Protestant and mainstream Catholic backgrounds. The third group, are the new Christian academics who belong to the intelligent design movement. They keep their Biblical commitments deliberately vague. To varying degrees, they are against the Darwinian theory.

I have fairly good relationships with young-earth Christian creationists, despite my Vedic spiritual commitments and my old- earth position. The abridged edition of Forbidden Archeology, titled The Hidden History of the Human Race, got a positive review in Creation Research Society Quarterly (June 1995), the main journal of the young-earth Christian creationists. The author, Peter Line, said, “This book is must reading for anyone interested in human origins.” I have also appeared on Christian creationist radio and television shows. Here’s what I say: “Whether we believe the earth has been here for a few thousand years or a few billion years, humans have been here since the beginning. We did not come from apes, as the Darwinists would like us to believe.”

Sometimes, I get into discussions with young-earth creationists about the geological dating methods. They have to reject all of them as totally useless. But I don’t find that to be a very viable  position. The dating methods can be checked against the yearly series of tree rings, which go back thousands of years, and the record of yearly snowfalls found in the Arctic and Antarctic ice core drillings, which go back hundreds of thousands of years. On rare occasions, trees can show more than one growth ring per year, or there can sometimes be more than one layer per year in ice cores. But this doesn’t happen very much. The observed tree rings and ice cores this support the accuracy of various chemical and radiometric dating methods.

My own position is that the dating methods give approximately correct dates. By that I mean they could perhaps be off by as much as a factor of 2 obtained by these methods roughly correspond to the ages for the history of life given in the ancient Sanskrit writings of India. According to the Sanskrit writings, the current creation cycle began about 2 billion years. Still, there are many ways for the application of a particular dating method to a particular case to give an incorrect result. For example, the object being dated could contain contaminants that cause the dating method to give an age that is too young or too old. But in general, if the methods are applied properly, they should give roughly correct ages.

As for the Christians who have chosen to make a compromise with Darwinism (God created human beings but He did it by evolution), I see two problems with their position. First of all, they have to give up any literal understanding of their scripture, which says that God directly created humans in his image. Nowhere in the Bible can one find any statements that God made human beings by evolving them from apes. Second, they have tied their theology to an evolutionary picture of human origins that is contradicted by huge amounts of physical evidence, in the form of anatomically modern human bones, footprints, and artifacts millions of years old. Nevertheless, most Catholic and liberal Protestant scholars and scientists have adopted the current Darwinian evolutionary explanation of human origins.

But I’ve managed to change a few minds. A couple of years ago, Dr. Dennis Bonnette, head of the philosophy department at Niagara University, a Catholic institution in New York State, contacted me by email. He was writing a book on human evolution, from the usual Catholic perspective (God created the human beings, but He did it by evolution). But after he read Forbidden Archeology, he changed his mind and began reworking his book. In the new draft, he suggested that in light of the evidence for extreme human antiquity documented in Forbidden Archeology, Christian scholars might once more take seriously the Biblical accounts at the direct creation of human beings by God. Bonnette wrote: “Scholarly research such as that found in Forbidden Archeology, offers reasonable stratigraphic and other evidence that modern human beings predate proposed transitional hominids, such as Homo erectus. This presents probable cause to doubt current human evolutionary theory. … If human beings did not evolve, then Adam  and Eve did not descend from transitional hominids … (and)  Adam and Eve’s direct divine creation … becomes credible.” Bonnette’s book, The Origin of the Human Species, which came out last year in a philosophy series from a major European academic publisher, is well worth reading for anyone desiring to learn the ins and outs of various Christian positions on the human evolution question.

As for the intelligent design theorists, such as William Dembski and Michael Behe, I have fairly good relationships with them. Behe attended my lecture on forbidden archeology at his university in Pennsylvania, and before the lecture, we had dinner together. He appeared quite interested in the fossil evidence contradicting the Darwinian theory of human evolution. Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial, and one of the chief spokespersons of the modern intelligent design movement, wrote a foreword to my book The Hidden History of the Human Race encouraging scien tists to “examine evidence that was not included in the textbooks and review articles they were given n their college and graduate school classes.”

My relationships with various Christian scholars working on the evolution question are part of a larger strategy. In the world today, we are in the middle of a major renegotiation of our whole picture of reality, the type of renegotiation that takes place only every few centuries. We are moving away from a strictly material and mechanical view of reality and toward a view that incorporates the subtle energies of mind and consciousness. There are many parties to this renegotiation: mainstream scientists, alternative science researchers, religionists, new-agers, and more. As a party to this renegotiation, my policy is to stay in touch with all the other parties, and my relationships with Christian researchers are part of that policy.

Michael Cremo is on the cutting edge of science and culture issues. In the course of a few months time he might be found lecturing at a scientific conference, appearing on a national television show, touring sacred sites in India, or speaking to an alternative science gathering. As he crosses disciplinary and cultural boundaries, he presents to his various audiences a compelling case for negotiating a new consensus on the nature of reality.

He is a member of the History of Science Society, the World Archeological Congress, the Philosophy of Science Association, the European Association of Archaeologists and an associate member of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, specializing in history and philosophy of science.

Besides Forbidden Archeology, he has co-authored The Hidden History of the Human Race with Richard L. Thompson. Other books include Human Devolution, Divine Nature: A Spiritual Perspective on the Environmental Crisis (co-authored with Mukunda Gosvami), and Forbidden Archeology’s Impact: How A Controversial New Book Shocked the Scientific Community and Became an Underground Classic. He is currently writing Forbidden Archeology II.

Are Redheads Descended From Neanderthals?

majestic — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:18:25 +0000

Source: 120 (CC)

In Entangled, Graham Hancock’s debut novel, an essential part of the story involves the so-called “Neanderthal Enigma,” a raging academic debate over what caused Homo neanderthalensis to die out some 35,000 years ago. Hancock’s Neanderthals, called the “Uglies,” play an important role in Entangled. They are depicted as gentle, sensitive, telepathic, creative: They did not make cave paintings but they did use makeup.

Shocking new scientific research suggests that Hancock’s depiction of Neanderthals may be far closer to the truth than even he may have thought. Jennifer Viegas reports for Discovery News via MSNBC:

Neanderthals are often depicted as brutish club wielders, but a new book suggests Neanderthals had a sensitive side, displaying “a deep seated sense of compassion.”

The findings, also published in the journal Time & Mind, are part of a larger study charting how empathy and other related feelings evolved in early humans.

Researchers Penny Spikins, Andy Needham and Holly Rutherford from the University of York Archaeology Department examined archaeological evidence for the way emotions began to emerge in our ancestors six million years ago and then developed through more recent times.

Based on fossils, artifacts and other evidence, the scientists propose a four stage model for the development of human compassion…

[continues at Discovery News via MSNBC]

But that’s not all! Marc Kaufman reports in the Washington Post that there’s a wholesale re-evaluation of how Neanderthals relate to us, saying that

…these often disparaged humans are actually “more like our brothers and sisters than even our cousins.”

and apparently “recent finds suggest quite a few in central Europe were handsome redheads.” So if there’s a ginger in your life…

The Washington Post story is well worth reading if you are interested in the topic — there are many more fascinating items about Neanderthals.

Bill Maher Interviews Richard Dawkins on How to Explain Evolution to Idiots

ralph — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 07:48:18 +0000

They discuss the affairs of the day and Dawkins’ recent book The Greatest Show on Earth: