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Language, according to the American neurobiologist William Calvin, is “the defining feature of human intelligence”. With due respect to the communication skills of dolphins, chimpanzees, birds and bees, Homo sapiens is the only existing species with the power of speech. It seems to be among the qualities that separates us from other animals, that makes us human. When the FOXP2 gene and its role in language was first identified in 2001, therefore, it is hardly surprising that scientists immediately began to ask questions about its role in evolution. Might this be a “language gene” that sets humans apart, a passage...

Researchers have carried out the largest study of differences between human and chimpanzee genomes, identifying regions that have been duplicated or lost during evolution of the two lineages. The study, published in Genome Research, is the first to compare many human and chimpanzee genomes in the same fashion. The team show that particular types of genes - such as those involved in the inflammatory response and in control of cell proliferation - are more commonly involved in gain or loss. They also provide new evidence for a gene that has been associated with susceptibility to infection by HIV. "This is...

Dinosaurs, dragons and Darwin were discussed Friday during the contract termination hearing of suspended Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher John Freshwater. David Millstone, attorney for the Mount Vernon school board, introduced several handouts allegedly distributed by Freshwater in class. Former Freshwater students Simon Souhrada and Kate Button testified the dinosaur handout implied that humans and dinosaurs probably coexisted, contradicting the generally accepted theory of evolution. Button said Freshwater told her class there was new evidence that dinosaurs probably were around when people were, because of the global incidence of legends of dragons. Both students also alleged Freshwater indirectly made...

A second Mount Vernon student said his 8th grade science teacher burned a cross on his arm with an electrical device, but that he didn't tell his parents or complain about the incident. And two school teachers, one of whom spent most of last year in Freshwater's class, described being uncomfortable with what he was teaching. Simon Souhrada, 17, said Freshwater used a high-voltage static electricity device to burn a cross on his arm four years ago. But, he testified, "it never even registered with me as being anything, really." Simon, now a junior at Mount Vernon High School, said...

VATICAN CITY, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI cited Galileo as a scientist of deep religious faith as he opened a conference on creation Friday at the Vatican. In his address at the Pontifical Academy of Science, the pope said that scientific findings on the origins of the universe are compatible with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. ''Saying that the foundation of the cosmos and its developments are the fruit of the creator is not saying that creation is only about the beginning of the history of the world and of...

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Given the often amicable relationship between science and religion throughout the history of Islam and Christianity, the current hostilities, centred around creationism and evolution, seem something of a historical anomaly. And many commentators suggest that they are also a geographical anomaly, in that the promotion of creationism and intelligent design is restricted to Islamic countries and the United States. But the latter suggestion is not quite true. While creationism and ID enjoy more "official" support in Islamic countries than anywhere else, and while the...

The oldest known cases of malaria have been discovered in two 3,500-year-old Egyptian mummies, scientists announced. Researchers in Germany studied bone tissue samples from more than 90 mummies found in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, now called Luxor. Two adult mummies from separate tombs had tissues containing ancient DNA from a parasite known to cause malaria, the researchers announced at a conference last week. In addition, a separate team at University College London recently found that a pair of 9,000-year-old skeletons—a woman and a baby—discovered off the coast of Israel were infected with the oldest known cases of tuberculosis...

The Board of Education in tiny Dover, Pa., earned a dubious distinction in 2004, becoming the first public district to require teachers to introduce religion while casting doubt on evolution. Although Christianity is serious business in Dover, the idea of supplanting science with religion angered many parents. So, in 2005 - with the ACLU and the National Center for Science Education in Oakland - some parents sued to stop the religious requirement. The epic First Amendment case was Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District. One reporter covering the case was Lauri Lebo, who grew up near the town of about...

Faith Motors by: Bethany Stotts, October 29, 2008 What do the body’s molecular structure and car engines have in common? Both are clearly made by someone, argued biochemist Dr. Fazale Rana at a recent Reasons to Believe (RTB) conference, titled “What Darwin Didn’t Know.” The organization’s stated purpose for the Washington, D.C. conference was to demonstrate that if Charles Darwin were living in the modern era, his Origins of Species might have concluded something quite different. The son of a Muslim professor at North Dakota State University and a Catholic science and math teacher, Dr. Rana described what it was...

A flaw in intelligent design is the question of who designed the designer, he said. He said the fossil record shows a period of billions of years before the evolution of humans. "There's nothing creative in terms of a spark of creation or an overnight Genesis event," he said. Jacoby said that like the nine months it takes for someone to be born, God works in sometimes lengthy scientific processes. "What was God doing for 3.5 billion years?" he said. "God takes his sweet time." Shermer said it was a "cosmic accident" that human life developed on the planet. Vestigial...

Wow. I swear I see letters in this newspaper every day – and some days I don’t even bother – in which almost every bit and piece is some right-wing conservative’s opinion. Great. It’s nice to know Republicans still hate abortion and cling to the Bible as if they found Moses’ 500-year-old bones in the dust somewhere in the Middle East. Maybe it’s not the newspaper’s fault. These pro-life advocates tend to be more vocal than the average intelligent, educated individual – though I am finding that these are a minority in the area, which is “pro-life, pro-gun, pro-family.” Ha!...

In May 2008, Bloomsbury auctions announced the sale of a letter by Albert Einstein, in which the famed physicist railed against religious beliefs as "childish superstitions . . . the expression and product of human weaknesses." The letter was something of a curiosity, not because it suggested Einstein harboured a certain hostility toward religion, but because the sentiments it expressed seemed markedly at odds with Einstein's much friendlier public pronouncements about religion, including an exceptionally famous quote about the relationship between science and religion: "Religion without science is lame; science without religion is blind." Since Einstein's letter was a private...

Due to their underground habitats, moles' eyes have been modified by natural selection in ways very different from those of surface-dwelling animals. New research, offers a detailed anatomical and genetic examination of the changes that result from living life in the dark. A team of researchers led by J Martin Collinson from the University of Aberdeen has carried out the first molecular study of the entire process of lens development in a subterranean animal - the Iberian mole, Talpa occidentalis, which has permanently closed eyes unlike the closely related European mole found in gardens throughout Britain. According to Collinson "Our...

Researchers have put forward a simple model of development and gene regulation that is capable of explaining patterns observed in the distribution of morphologies and body plans (or, more generally, phenotypes). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See also: Plants & Animals Evolutionary Biology Developmental Biology Biotechnology Computers & Math Computational Biology Mathematical Modeling Computer Modeling Reference Allele Trait (biology) Computational genomics Developmental biology The study, by Elhanan Borenstein of the Santa Fe Institute and Stanford University and David Krakauer of the Santa Fe Institute was published in this month's issue of PLoS Computational Biology. Nature truly displays a bewildering variety of shapes and forms....

Eugenie Scott, a national expert on the teaching of evolution, will speak at the University of Central Florida on Monday, Nov. 3. Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, will discuss “Florida’s Academic Freedom Bills: Creationism du jour?” at 7:30 pm in room 101 of the College of Sciences building. Her presentation is free and open to the public. Scott and the NCSE are among the biggest opponents of intelligent design being taught in science classrooms. She has written several books, including “Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools.” She also...

One of the smallest dinosaur skulls ever discovered has been identified and described by a team of scientists from London, Cambridge and Chicago. The skull would have been only 45 millimeters (less than two inches) in length. It belonged to a very young Heterodontosaurus, an early dinosaur. This juvenile weighed about 200 grams, less than two sticks of butter.

The courts have made it very clear that biblical creationism — even with the lipstick of Intelligent Design — cannot be taught in U.S. public schools. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Kurt Goedel, Alan Turing and B.F. Skinner are other luminaries on Dennett's list of philosophers who weren't actually philosophers. But when Newtown explained planetary motions with a single equation, when B.F. Skinner proposed that human societies were governed by subconscious behavioral rewards and when Darwin presented his theory of natural selection, they were being scientists. They were not positing belief systems. Taken together, their collective scientific ideas presented...

It appears, however, that some members of the State Board of Education are working on a different agenda. Last week, they appointed three anti-evolution activists, including a leader of the "intelligent design" religious campaign, to a six-member panel that will review proposed new science curriculum standards. The new standards will shape how science education is taught in Texas for the next decade, and it would be a terrible mistake to water down the teaching of evolution in any way. Given the concerns about the state's future work force, the appointments are a troubling signal. At a time when most educators...

There’s a new dinosaur at the base of the bird family tree. It lived between 152 million and 168 million years ago in what is now northern China. A previously unseen type of feather covered the body and limbs of this pigeon-sized creature, says Fucheng Zhang of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. Those structures were too short and of the wrong design to have functioned as flight feathers, he says. The creature also sported four long, ribbon-like feathers on its tail, Zhang and his colleagues report in the Oct. 23 Nature.

"YOU cannot overestimate," thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, "how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about... how Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only scientific way of doing it... I'm asking us as a world community to go out there and tell the scientific establishment, enough is enough! Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation needs to be understood as part of natural reality." His enthusiasm was met with much applause from...