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It seems we have all been guilty of defaming Neanderthal man. Research by a team based at the University of Bristol suggests that, far from being a lumbering, witless no-hoper, he was capable, 50,000 years ago, of producing forms of cosmetic adornment and even of primitive jewellery. In 1985, finds in Murcia, Spain, had suggested that this might be so; and now an expedition led by Professor João Zilhão of Bristol has uncovered a shell which shows "a symbolic dimension in behaviour and thinking that cannot be denied". All of which suggests some decent equivalence with the hitherto far more...

Believers in human-caused global climate change have been placed under an uncomfortable spotlight recently. That is thanks to the Climategate scandal, centering on e-mails hacked from the influential Climate Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia. The e-mails show scientists from various academic institutions hard at work suppressing dissent from other scientists who have doubts on global warming, massaging research data to fit preconceived ideas, and seeking to manipulate the gold standard “peer review” process to keep skeptical views from being heard. Does this sound familiar at all? To me, as a prominent skeptic of modern Darwinian theory,...

Millions of high school and college biology textbooks teach that research scientist Stanley Miller, in the 1950’s, showed how life could have arisen by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Miller, in his famous experiment in 1953, showed that individual amino acids (the building blocks of life) could come into existence by chance. But, it’s not enough just to have amino acids. The various amino acids that make-up life must link together in a precise sequence, just like the letters in a sentence, to form functioning protein molecules. If they’re not in the right sequence the protein molecules...

Problems with Evolutionary Theory Why is there a problem with evolution in the first place? Someone once asked you, "What should I believe?" Remember what you told them? Basically I said you should only believe what there is evidence for. After spending years studying evolution in bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs, I can tell you that, first of all, there is evidence for small changes in organisms as they adapt to small environmental fluctuations. Second, there is evidence that new species do arise. We see new species of fruit flies, rodents, and even birds. But when the original species is...

Thank you Ben Stein!!! This movie is a MUST SEE!

Signature in the Cell Named One of Top Books of the Year by Times Literary Supplement Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design is being named one of the top books of 2009 in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement (TLS) annual "Books of the Year" issue. The selection was made by prominent philosopher (and noted atheist) Thomas Nagel at New York University. The books issue is not online yet, but the TLS website has posted a preview of Nagel's endorsement of the book. Below is Nagel's reason for selecting the book : Stephen C....

Researchers have described remarkably well-preserved tissue discovered inside a salamander fossil. The fully intact muscle tissues also had blood-filled vessels, and they had not been mineralized like most fossils. This “fresh meat” find is depicted as the “highest quality soft tissue preservation ever documented in the fossil record.”[1] But given its assigned age of 18 million years old, it shouldn’t be there at all...

Canada’s Macleans news site recently published an article titled “Darwin movie too evolved for U.S. audiences”. The article refers to the decision of US film distributors to “pass” on the film “Creation”—the dramatized story of Charles Darwin’s struggle while writing the Origin of Species. The refusal to distribute a film premiered and acclaimed at the Toronto Film Festival seems to have again roused the Canadian media’s scorn of the “backward Americans” of which—according to Gallup—only 39% believe Darwin and his evolutionary theory. It is interesting how very differently the Canadian and world media treated America during WW II when far...

At National Review Online, conservative curmudgeon John Derbyshire has weighed in on the Climategate scandal by encouraging conservatives not to jump on the anti-science bandwagon. I share his worry and find his advice is good so far as it goes; but I think Derbyshire’s defense of science might actually encourage the skepticism he wants to prevent. Most of the trouble comes from his invocation of the word “science,” and his claim that science has a magisterium.His article is called “Trust Science.” I’m not sure what that means. What is “science,” and how do we “trust” it? Imagine if someone said:...

New species might arise as a result of single rare events, rather than through the gradual accumulation of many small changes over time, according to a study of thousands of species and their evolutionary family trees. This contradicts a widely accepted theory of how speciation occurs: that species are continually changing to keep pace with their environment, and that new species emerge as these changes accrue. Known as the 'Red Queen' hypothesis, it is named after the character in Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There who tells a surprised Alice: "Here, you see, it takes...

Last February I mentioned the events that would commemorate the life and work of Charles Darwin in 2009. I had no idea at the time that I would be invited to participate in one of these events. But there I was, precisely 150 years after On the Origin of Species first appeared, seated with other scientists in front of a packed room that featured, among other interesting things, a life-sized model of a baleen whale. The venue was the National Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, and the occasion was a panel discussion titled Design without a Designer? [1]...

David Queller and Joan Strassmann, evolutionary biologists at Rice University, recently proposed a new way to describe what makes an organism a unified whole. They defined an organism as an entity made up of parts that cooperate well for an overall purpose, and do so with minimal conflict. But how do parts like these get together, and where does purposeful behavior come from?...

With millions of eyes on Copenhagen, this seems an appropriate time to ask whether ID thinking has any relevance to understanding the Earth's environment. Can design concepts help us weigh the diverse and often conflicting messages? I think ID is helpful, because features of the Earth's environments and ecologies start to take on new meaning. In this blog, I am thinking particularly of negative feedback mechanisms. Human design engineers will use negative feedback to promote stability and positive feedback to amplify an input signal. They select the mechanisms they need to achieve the desired effect. By analogy, if the Earth...

“Darwin’s finches” are a variety of small black birds that were observed and collected by British naturalist Charles Darwin during his famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle in the early 1800s. Years later, Darwin argued that subtle variations in their beak sizes supported his concept that all organisms share a common ancestor (a theory known as macroevolution). The finches, whose technical name is Geospiza, have since become classic evolutionary icons...

William Lane Craig is not only one of the world’s leading Christian apologists but he has actually made outstanding original contributions to philosophy. Yes, Craig publishes popular-level books. Unlike Dawkins, however, who in 20-years plus has been purely a popularizer (of Darwinian evolution, materialist science, and atheism), Craig continues to publish at the highest levels of the academy addressing scholars of the highest caliber (and gaining their respect). Dawkins, by contrast, increasingly appeals to the lowest common denominator. It’s in this light that Dawkins glib dismissal of Craig should be viewed: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE SHORT VIDEO OF DAWKIN's...

esearch has shown that humans like to help, even before they are old enough to have been taught how to do so. This innate characteristic distinguishes humans from their supposed closest evolutionary family member, the chimpanzee, which doesn’t demonstrate the same altruistic behavior. In studies on the subject, at only 18 months old, toddlers were observed to consistently aid unrelated adults in simple tasks such as opening a door or picking up a clothes pin. Researchers assumed then that altruism, or unselfish concern for the welfare of others, evolved early in humans. But does this conclusion necessarily follow from the...

This recent BBC News header[1] was typical of the news headlines worldwide on the story: Michelle Obama racist image sparks Google apology Apparently, the image referred to was a photograph of Mrs Obama that had been manipulated to give her the facial features of a monkey. I say “apparently”, because the mock-up photo no longer appears as the #1 ranking on Google’s list of image search results for “Michelle Obama”.[2] It is very clear however from the news reports of the “race row”[3] that in the last days that the picture was Google-accessible, it stirred many people. Such was the...

“The Totalities of Copenhagen” William Dembski Bret Stevens’ article today in the WSJ, “The Totalities of Copenhagen,” again shows the strong parallels between the global warming debate and the evolution debate, especially with the proclivity of AGW and evolution advocates to quash all dissent. Consider, from his piece, the following characteristics of the AGW advocates: ...

In his new book, The Deniable Darwin (Discovery Institute Press, 2009), published just before the ClimateGate scandal broke, mathematician David Berlinski explained that scientists should not be trusted to check themselves--no more than anyone else on the planet, and maybe less so, since grant money is involved. Now he writes on his blog, "I Told You So." From The Deniable Darwin: My own view, repeated in virtually all of my essays, is that the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences than toward anything else. It is not a view that...

The current treatment of young-age creationists in the scientific community and society at large is unfair and unwise. Scientists and philosophers of science, including old-age creationists and naturalists, should respect youngage creationists as legitimate contributors to science. Young-age creationists offer to the current origins science establishment a competing rational viewpoint that will augment fruitful scientific investigation through increased accountability for scientists, introduction of original hypotheses and general epistemic improvement...