evolution

Reading through randman's recent thread: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215456 I've raised for myself questions that I've bumped into before and couldn't answer properly. I'm confused by the taxonomy of birds. Education by Wikipedia has failed me. I think the...

Humans Didn't Evolve From Apes - How Do We Know? I apologize in advance if this is a stupid question, but I've only just developed an interest in science/biology/evolution after a misspent youth and am playing catch up! When looking at fossils of early hominids such as Australopithecus...

UkBmhM0R2A0 Discuss.

This goes into the subject very thoroughly. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scientific_evidence_of_evolution_being_a_hoax

Recently I went on vacation with my family. There's a little girl in the family who was asking about my sugar glider. She called it a flying squirrel. I said no, its a marsupial. She asked why it looked like a squirrel. I then explained that it was an example of convergent evolution, when to...

From Panda's Thumb, folks. Pass the word...

Gary Bradley, an adjunct professor at the Seventh Day Adventist operated La Sierra University, has been on the radar of the adminstration because he doesn't accept young Earth creationism and this provoked problems with the church and school. Now, Bradley has been asked to resign for consuming...

I just participated in a poll from the "God, Religion, and You blog on the Orange County Register: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/evolution-301183-believe-percent.html?cb=1306108573 It's ongoing, the current results stand as: Poll Results from the Orange County Register "Does the Bible...

I was having a heated discussion with my christian mother recently, prompted by her snorting in derision at a comment of David Attenboroughs on a nature documentary (I normally avoid the subject), and her crowning argument for creation over evolution was the human clitoris. The idea being that...

New instruction material prepared by the Board of Education says the 'null hypothesis' has to be that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/142452/20110507/texas-controversy-over-teaching-evolution-brews.htm

Hello, On ongoing discussions in Evolution:facts topic, it has been popped up:- It will be more productive to relate Instinct with Immune response. Does it suggest that innate immunity is linked to Instincts & other immunities to Learned behaviour? If so, whether we are losing or gaining...

We have tried to show that Bigfoot does not exist, but, because of the difficulty of convincing believers that that the existence of the beast is absurd, based on lack of evidence, I think it should be attacked based on evidence that does exist For example, evolution does not seem to promote...

Editing images to links. Over in this 30-page monstrosity of a thread in the Religion and Philosophy section, one of the arguments advanced against modern evolutionary theory (and the scientists who practice it) was that the drawings of Ernst Haeckel at the end of the 19th century comparing the...

Define "kind".

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what different models to explain the origin of higher taxa actually posit. This thread is not so much to argue which one is correct but to understand what the theories themselves actually are. Taxa refers to the different classifications with species...

I've been trying to find technologies that have been developed or improved based on knowledge gained through research into evolution, but they have (surprisingly) hard to find on the web. Can anyone help me out?

How the Penis Lost Its Spikes Humans ditched DNA to evolve smooth penises and bigger brains. OK, so the title is an attempt to be a smart a$$. Obviously evolution is not a species driven process. We men did not will this to happen! I am confused by the story though. From the article: "Now...

As stupid as this is, its not what you're expecting. It is about the "debate" between people who hold to theistic evolution and people who believe intelligent design and the general question of whether evolution is compatible with christian doctrine. There are a few bits I wanted to highlight...

[There doesn't seem to be any actual science in this book so I started the thread in R&P rather than SMM&T] "Dr" Jerry Bergman has written a new book entitled The Dark Side of Charles Darwin. In doing so he appears to have finally given up an any attempt to maintain touch with reality...

A long time ago (in a galaxy far far away), I remember learning the definition of symbiosis involved 2 species interacting with each other in a mutually beneficial way. Parasitism was defined as something all together different (one species benefits from the interaction, the other is harmed.)...

This ought to ruffle some feathers around here: http://slatest.slate.com/id/2284422/entry/6/#add-comment What sort of biology teacher rejects evolution? Can they even be good at their job? That's sort of the equivalent of me rejecting the foundations of tonal harmony. What about the 60% that...

Well actually just the The Blue Mountain School District in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Apparently Evolution is unscientific therefore Atheism is a religion. :eek::confused::rolleyes::jaw-dropp "Press Release" here And he adds: ETA: Our favourite Minnesotan has a deconstruction...

I wondered what is the current state of Science regarding Cambrian Explosion and Punctuated Equilibrium? Some YTuber just pretty much confused me with quote-mining Gould. He has like brought up 10 different quites from Gould regarding no intermediates, species stay species etc. And honestly i...

How is it that we humans can wake up from sleep with our necks feeling like a thousand pain cannons are firing into them? How is this possible when the neck felt fine when going to bed? Why is there a prostate wrapped around a tube through which liquid waste is dispensed and why does this...

Holocause denial is a crime in some countries because of the atrocities of the second world war. Couldn't denial of evolution be criminalised along the same lines so as to undermine the (Koranic literalist) Islamic fundamentalism which caused 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan? There's even more...

In another thread I said morality is either derived from biology or the only other option is some kind of magical source. Does morality stem from a magic sky man sprinkling pixie dust in the eyes of newborns? Do we pull it out of thin air? It was said this is a false dichotomy. So I'd like to...

Is there a scientific consensus about the species that is the direct progenitor of homo sapiens? I know there are many cousin species and ancestral species, but I haven't found any info on this. A "parent species of homo sapiens" doesn't really bring up anything useful.

So apparently bears are hanging around humanity quite a bit now, which is making them fat and lazy and also endangering them rather. I believe the prevailing theory of how dogs were domesticated tells a rather similar story - wolves started hanging around human camps eating our garbage...

Beck denies evolution: "I haven't seen a half-monkey, half-person yet" Video at the link above.

Apparently all the discussion over the years with William Dembski concerning the reasonableness of intelligent design has been utterly pointless: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/are_we_at_all_surprised.php ~~ Paul