"Baylor University Denies Research Scientists' Academic Freedom." This is, sadly, a problem that occurs routinely in academic circles, especially where faculty and administration lean left, which is just about everywhere.

Another not-so-positive review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The author, David Warren, does note something somewhat chilling, though:

In my recent musings on Darwinism, I have been perhaps a bit coy about why I have been raising it at all. This is because it is "in the air," thanks partly to books by Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others. But those books are themselves symptomatic of the intellectual moment in the West, when opponents of Christianity are moving beyond smug disapproval toward active persecution.

No one in the media quite seems to see that.

Lucy is getting people talking in Houston. According to the Houston Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg:

The first public crowds to observe Lucy's 3.2 million-year-old bones on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science responded with a wide range of human emotion: eye-rolling doubts, probing questions, witty jokes, tears of awe, and deep, philosophical dialogue weighing the spiritual, the scientific and what it means to be human.

For some, the lightbulb comes on, if dimly.

Still, [a visitor] said it was important to her to see the exhibit and expose her son to the idea of evolution for the first time: "All kids should know the evolution side and the religious side, because there's something to it or we wouldn't be finding millions and millions of years-old stuff."

Yes, there is something to it.

John Tory has since clarified that teaching creationism would only happen in religion class. TheStar notes:

The clarification from the party office stated that the "Ontario curriculum does not allow for creationism (or any other religious theory) to be taught in science classes in Ontario's public schools," and that Tory "clearly stated that any school to be included in the proposal (for funding) must teach the Ontario curriculum."

Interesting politics north of the border.

John Tory, running for election in Canada, has proposed teaching creationism in faith-based schools and using public funds to support such schools.

Sorry about the light posting. Teaching four classes, working full time and having a child with incipient walking pneumonia have taken their toll.

Update on the Orangutan story. The story notes that it is the research of Erica Cartmill, not Matt Cartmill. My bad.

Whenever I find people tempted to believe that the fossil record was created by the worldwide flood in Noah's time, I always point them here, Mark Isaak's TalkOrigins page, on what would be involved. It tends to be a jolt of reality. The site also posts rebuttals from creationists and commentaries on the rebuttals. That is more than you would get from ICR.

Playing charades with orangutans. A Foxnews story relates the research of Matt Cartmill on primate communications. The story notes:

"The orangutans made a clear distinction between total misunderstanding, when they tended to give up on the signals they'd used already and use new, but equivalent, ones to get the idea across, and partial misunderstanding, when they tended to repeat the signals that had already partially worked, keeping at it with vigor," Cartmill said. "The response showed that the orangutan had intended a particular result, anticipated getting it and kept trying until it got the result."

[Richard]Byrne noted that "looking at the tapes of the animal's responses, you can easily work out whether the orangutan thinks it has been fully, partially or not understood."

I guess we all need to communicate.

Apparently the Geico ads aren't so far off. "Study: Men With 'Cavemen' Faces Most Attractive to Women." Take that, you metrosexuals!!

I am not a fan of recent earth creationism, but if this story is true, this kind of silencing is worse. It seems as though there is a fine line being drawn in predominantly Islamic countries between Islamic-based creationism and Christian-based creationism. I wonder if Charles Johnson knows about this.

Bigger and better chronometric dating methods on the horizon. Hat tip to the ASA.

The area of the brain responsible for "free won't" has been found. Hat tip to the ASA.

The American Scientific Affiliation has a science blog here.

The Texas Board of Education is leaning away from ID. Among the surprising statements:

Creationism and intelligent design don't belong in our science classes," said Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, who described himself as a creationist. "Anything taught in science has to have consensus in the science community – and intelligent design does not."

ID must be falling on hard times if self-described creationists are rejecting the teaching of it at the public school level.

Another paper about the teeth of Chororapithecus with a bit more detail. My friend Art Durband at Texas Tech says "it must be nice when you can get a Nature paper out of a few teeth." Yes, indeed.

More hominid remains have been found that seem to push the ape-human split back even further. As Yohannes Haile-Selassie says:

The most startling implication of the find, the scientists agree, is that our human progenitors diverged from today's great apes -- including gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees -- several million years earlier than widely accepted research based on molecular genetics had previously asserted.

Another interesting point the article notes:

"We know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes," the authors of the paper noted.

But the new fossils, dubbed Chororapithecus abyssinicus by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleoanthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that.

That's one of the things I love about this field. Nothing is ever set in stone.

A friend of mine here at the lab handed me an old opinion piece by William Provine in the September 8, 1985 issue of The Scientist, called "Scientists, Face it! Science and Religion are Incompatible." Amongst other things, he says:

Humans and other animals make choices frequently, but these are determined by the interaction of heredity and environment and are not the result of free will. No inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life.

Aside from the adherence to E.O. Wilson's sociobiology, this seems sad. It is also dogmatic. Atheists seem to get very agitated when they are described as having great faith in their position.

I saw Provine speak at the University of Tennessee some years back, along with Eugenie Scott of the NCSE. She is a self-described agnostic who is sympathetic to the religious position and he was absolutely derisive of her position. His was a Richard Dawkins-style atheism: very arrogant and borderline venomous. He had a brain tumor at the time and seemed to think that he did not have much time left. That was at least ten years ago and he is still kicking.

The Independent reports on the success of the new Creation museum in Kentucky. Amid the derision, there are some interesting bits:

But wait at least one second before dismissing Ham as a crackpot. For starters, his is about the slickest museum you are ever likely to visit. It has an interactive cinema that tells the creation story according to Genesis, with wind gusts in the auditorium, vibrating seats and squirts of water, as well as a state-of-the-art planetarium. Its animatronics are worthy of a world-class theme park. In fact, the principle designer also helped build exhibits for Universal Studios in Florida.

Something else impressive: the construction of the museum was funded entirely by private donations; it doesn’t carry one dollar of debt.

Impressive, indeed. There is also an interesting mini biography of Ham.

Only in today's charged climate would this actually make news: "Ohio School to Mark Darwin's Birth, Work."

David Flanigan tackles the notion of evolution in Blog.Critic and largely gets the concept of "theory" wrong. He states:

According to the late Stephen Jay Gould — Harvard professor and leading spokesperson for evolutionary theory right up until the time of his death in 2002 — Evolution, while still a theory, is also a fact. Is it me, or is this approach faintly reminiscent of former President Clinton parsing the meaning of the word "is" in front of a grand jury?

Its nothing of the sort. A theory takes a large number of known facts that are related and tries to explain the relationship between them using scientific mechanisms. Gravitational theory does this, as does evolutionary theory.

He gets other things wrong as well. He states:

Supporters of evolution would argue that we have indeed observed this phenomenon, but there's a bit of bait-and-switch going on here. We can see micro-evolution in action, also known as "adaptation," but macro-evolution, the shifting of one species to a new and entirely different species has never been observed.

This isn't true. There have been numerous examples of observed macroevolution. Here is a good piece from Talkorigins that examines exactly that area.

He makes the statement "Has anyone ever observed the transition of any species into an entirely different and distinct one? The answer to this is a resounding "no."" This is facile, like Ken Ham's "were you there?" question. Has anyone ever watched the continental plates move? Of course not. But we know that they do.

Biological processes take time, just like any other natural processes. In the process of tackling the science of evolution, Mr. Flanigan makes it sound as if he does not understand the science involved.

Eugene Volokh muses about Taner Edis, Islamic science and a response by Ace of Spades.

An editorial in the Boston Globe by Sally Lehrman addresses why understanding the theory of evolution is so important to those following the issue. One of the critical problems in the education field is the lack of knowledge:

As one of their complaints, intelligent design proponents claim that schools should do a better job of explaining evolution. They may very well be right. While people who believe in the scientific method do not accept the antievolution lobby's claim of "irreducible complexity," are they prepared with a coherent response? They might say "survival of the fittest" with conviction but only have a hazy recollection of terms like "descent with modification," "natural selection," and even "mutation."

This problem is a microcosm of the problems of American education in general. Hat tip again to NCSE.

Jesse Smith of The Smart Set visits the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Light on evaluation of the science at the museum but a fascinating read about the political and social aspects of the debate. Hat tip to NCSE.

More commentary on the Homo habilis finds that have rattled the cages of more than a few palaeoanthropologists.

Tim Weaver and Chris Stringer claim that the Neandertal physiognomy owed less to evolutionary adaptations than to chance. Hmmm. Not sure I agree but I will have to read the article first.

Steve Paulson of Salon interviews Taner Edis on why Islamic science is so far behind western science. An interesting bit of similarity:

Q: Is there outright hostility to science in Muslim countries?

A: Not at all. In fact, you'll typically find that, at least superficially, they are very positive about science. Even many devout Muslim apologists say Islam is supposed to be a scientific religion -- a religion that supports science down to the last detail. But this notion of a science-positive Islam is often combined with ignorance about the details of science and an openness to some deeply pseudoscientific ideas.

It is a good interview.

Richard Leakey condemns the Lucy tour.

An online interview with Fred Spoor about the new finds at Koobi Fora. Here is a quote concerning how important the discoveries are:

If fact, Homo habilis and Homo erectus both come in at about the same time, in bout 1.9 million. And at about 1.4, Homo habilis disappears, Homo erectus continues then. But it means that they lived side-by-side for about, almost, half a million years and that must surely mean that they really had separate ecological niches to survive in this way for such long time. And then you can ask the question, is it likely that one was actually the ancestor of the other, because classically, Homo habilis has been portrayed as the ancestor of Homo erectus who either gradually or through a rapid speciation gave rise to erectus.

Time to rewrite that section of the class.

A nice PR piece in the Miami Herald for the work that continues to go on at Olduvai Gorge.

VisionTV, Canada's self-described "multi-faith, multicultural broadcaster" is in hot water for airing a program called Dil Dil Pakistan by a Muslim fundamentalist who is reported to have said that Israel was using the holocaust for ""legitimizing" crimes against humanity." Among the other transgressions:

Dil Dil Pakistan faced further controversy this week for showing a documentary on Muslim creationism credited to Haruan Yahya, the pen name of Turkish author Adnan Oktar.

It seems that we are seeing the rise of the Muslim creationist movement.

A somewhat more sensationalist story from the Times Online.

Well, this will rattle a bunch of cages. According to the story, Homo habilis and Homo erectus may have overlapped by a significant period in time.

"Their co-existence makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis," said co-author Professor Meave Leakey, palaeontologist and co-director of the Koobi Fora Research Project.

Read the whole thing.

Here is the CNN transcript of the Situation Room interview with Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. It is a short part of the program as a whole, so I am reproducing it in full.

CARROLL (voice over): "One Million B.C.," a popular sci-fi fantasy movie of the late 1960s where humans battled dinosaurs on prehistoric Earth. A new museum doesn't believe that story is fiction or fantasy, but a biblical fact, now on display at the newly opened Creation Museum.

KEN HAM, FOUNDER, THE CREATION MUSEUM: We believe that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, and that's what the bible would teach, because all land animals were made on the same day as Adam and Eve were made.

CARROLL: The religious controversy getting traction at a recent Republican debate where three presidential candidates took a stand against evolution.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm curious, is there anybody on the stage who does not agree -- believe in evolution?

CARROLL: Surely, any number of scientists would debate the theory behind these exhibits, which show dinosaurs living side by side with humans. Here the bible's account is taken word for word, that Earth and all its inhabitants were created in six days. A much different account of what you will hear at a natural history museum.

MIKE NOVACEK, PROVOST, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: There's absolutely no scientific evidence aligned with the notion that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

CARROLL: But Creation Museum director Ken Ham says if Christians don't take the bible literally, they undermine its message. So he's confronting the theory of evolution head on.

HAM: The purpose of the museum is really to give people information that's currently being censored from the public schools, from the secular universities, information they don't hear about that actually shows that evolution is not fact.

CARROLL: Demonstrators who disagree with the museum's message protested outside the opening today.

HAM: They do not want children even hearing the possibility that evolution has problems or that it could be wrong. They Don't even want them to hear that. They don't want them to hear the other side.

CARROLL: And if that means believing there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, then so be it.

I have long believed that if the recent earth creation message REALLY got into the public schools and universities, it would be the worst backfire in history because it would expose the YEC arguments to scrutiny on a level that it does not currently get by academia. It would be shown for the sham science that it is. There at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, only one side of the story is being told, and anyone with even a cursory background in science can spot the holes in the arguments. Is this what Ken Ham really wants?

Apparently, there is big money to be made in creationism.

Don't like your modern diet? Check out what people of the palaeolithic ate (or at least what some people think they ate).

Well, this certainly throws a monkey wrench into the Replacement model of modern human origins:

An international team of researchers reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that Asians appear to have played a larger part in the settlement of Europe than Africans did.

The team, led by Maria Martinon-Torres of the National Center for the Investigation of Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, reached that conclusion after analyzing more than 5,000 fossil teeth from early hominins, an early form of human predecessors.

After studying ancient teeth from Africa, Asia and Europe, the researchers reported that early European populations had more Asian features than African ones.

If this bears up, it lends support to the idea that the wave of Homo erectus/rudofensis that moved out of Africa contributed more to the modern gene pool than replacement supporters suggest.

In advance of the Nova special on the Dover School Board case of ID, you could read this.

Off-topic but really cool! Apollo is making the moon landing films available for free online.

More on the PBS Nova film on the Dover trial, and the guy behind it.

Set your VCRs/TiVos. NOVA is going to air a program on the Dover trial on November 13. Although PBS tilts to the left, NOVA normally shoots pretty straight.

Is the multiregional evolution model of modern humans sunk? Roger Highfield doesn't think so.

In case you want a creationism encyclopedia from a Christian perspective, here is Vance Ferrell's 700 page tome. Just a quick glance found him putting forth the "shrinking sun" argument that was demolished over twenty years ago. WHACK!!

I have changed the url of the blog. It is now http://scienceandcreation.blogspot.com which is a better name.

John Hawks gets bizarre mail.

Altruism in chimpanzees. I guess I am just not that surprised.

Joshua Rosenau points out the elephant in the living room about William Dembski's "new" research.

The 'Caveman' creators fight back by arguing that lampooning stereotypes is EXACTLY what they had intended.

The creation museum in Kentucky has outdone itself! 100 000 visitors in two months is quite something.

Pope Benedict Accepts Evolutionary Theory

Pope Benedict XVI comes through in the clutch!! He managed to get right what Ken Ham and all the other YECs persistently don't:

"This contrast [between evolution and God] is an absurdity, because there are many scientific tests in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and enriches our understanding of life and being.

"But the doctrine of evolution does not answer all questions, and it does not answer above all the great philosophical question: From where does everything come?"

I knew he had it in him.

Okay, I have never been that fond of the Geico caveman ads simply because I thought they were silly (although the one with the cheesy airport music was kind of funny). But this is ridiculous. A caveman show with racist undertones? Give me a break. Who are they supposed to be slamming? Palaeoanthropologists?

William Dembski says there is new ID research that will bring its credibility up. The interview begins:

CA: Dr. Dembski, ID has come a very long way since its inception; and ID proponents are making inroads in a vast array of scientific disciplines such as astronomy, biology, and chemistry. How has your own work in mathematics (namely, The Design Inference and No Free Lunch) helped or influenced the development of novel ways of doing science?

Here come the softballs!

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology weighs in on the creation museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. This paragraph says it best:

"Ken Ham is not recognized as a scientist or educator among experts in the fields of geology and paleontology, and his views on the interpretation of Biblical texts are extremist. Visitors to his ‘museum’ may arrive knowing little about these sciences, but they will leave misled and intellectually deceived,” said Dr. Kevin Padian, professor and curator, University of California, Berkeley and president of the National Center for Science Education.

I need to get up there.

Jeff Jacoby, a regular for National Review, tackles ID in a Boston Globe column. You have to read down a bit to get to the punch line.

Even Starbucks is getting into the act. People need to get over their fear of religion or develop some thicker skin.

Another slow day. The whole family is sick. Here is another picture of the inlet. I got this picture a bit better.

And now for something completely different...

The Death knell of the multiregional hypothesis? Not so fast, says John Hawks.

Josh Wingrove reports in the Edmonton Journal that just down the road from the Canadian creationism museum in Big Valley, Dinotour, a guided tour by Phil Currie through the Alberta Badlands, one of the best dinosaur hunting grounds in the world, took place.

The Scopes Trial recreation is going on this weekend, with shows Friday and Saturday.

The Death Knell of the Multiregional Hypothesis? An article in the Independent reports on a study by Manica et al. that finds a recent African ancestry for all modern humans using both genetic and morphometric evidence. I will find out what the Nature article says.

Glenn Reynolds points out a NYT article on the rise of Islamic Creationism.

"Darwinism at AEI" is the title of an article that appears in the American Spectator, which can be accessed here at the Discovery Institute's site. The article gets so many things wrong, it is hard to know where to start. The author, Tom Bethell is a regular contributor to both the American Spectator and the National Review and is a Washington Correspondent--in other words, perfectly qualified to talk about "Darwinism." He writes"

Darwinism is best seen as 19th century philosophy—materialism—dressed up as science, and directed against a theological argument for the existence of God.

Oh? And what exactly is "Darwinism?" He never says. If you are going to take pot shots at something, you ought to at least define it for your audience. One thing he does get right, but for the wrong reasons is that "Darwinism" lends itself to no particular philosophical stance:

The truth is that Darwinism is so shapeless that it can be enlisted in support of any cause whatsoever. Steven Hayward, a resident scholar at AEI, made this clear in his admirable introduction. Darwinism has over the years been championed by eugenicists, social Darwinists, racialists, free-market economists, liberals galore, Wilsonian progressives and National Socialists, to give only a partial list. Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer, Communists and libertarians, and almost anyone in between, have at times found Darwinism to their liking. Spencer himself first used the phrase “survival of the fittest,” and Darwin thought it an “admirable” summation of his thesis.

The truth is that evolutionary theory is not shapeless at all but has very concrete processes that can be identified, observed and predicted. If Mr. Bethell did any work in the natural sciences, he would know this. He continues:

The underlying problem is that a key Darwinian term is not defined. Darwinism supposedly explains how organisms become more “fit,” or better adapted to their environment. But fitness is not and cannot be defined except in terms of existence. If an animal exists, it is “fit” (otherwise it wouldn’t exist).

This is patently silly. Traits are either selected for or against in any given population. We see that from generation to generation in the fluctuation of gene frequencies. That is what evolution is. Over time, genes (which code for how an animal is going to look) either increase in a population or are selected out. Those genes change how an animal is going to look and are directly affected by the environment. This is simply extrapolated to the fossil record. Based on what we know of how observable species change, we predict what should be seen in the fossil record. If we do, the hypothesis is right. If not, the hypothesis is wrong and we go back to the drawing board.

About ID, he says:

Intelligent Design is not like that. It is aggressive and therefore potentially dangerous. It says to the Darwinians: “You don’t have the evidence to support your claims. Your lab results and fossils don’t support your theory. Organisms are way too complex to have arisen by chance. Take all the time you want, it won’t be enough. Even though we don’t know how it happened, these critters must have been designed somehow.”

THAT'S JUST IT! Intelligent Design supporters don't know how it happened. Furthermore, without a mechanism, they will NEVER know how it happened. That is why ID is not science and why it should not be confused as such. He claims that ID is informed by science, not religion and that is why it has made scientists angry. That is not why it has made scientists angry. It has made them angry PRECISELY because it isn't science. It has no methods, no models and no hypotheses. It only has an untestable theory. I'm sorry but even if you could show that my model is wrong, it doesn't make your model right.

Scientists take on Islamic creationism in Turkey.

There is a new book out called The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man, which chronicles the history of the priest's palaeontological travels as they pertain to the discovery of the remains of Homo erectus at Zhoukoudian. He had an odd theology, especially for a Jesuit, and was once implicated as having perpetrated the Piltdown hoax. As my father remarked, however, this is not likely. "He was a singularly humourless man." It ought to be an interesting read.

I am not reading much these days. I have a long overdue eye appointment next week to take care of this problem. After that, I have a lot of things to catch up on.

Lucy is now creating controversy of a different sort.

According to Salon.com, the "American Taliban" has targeted evolution. According to the article, there is more at Panda's Thumb. Of course the American Taliban, in this case, is a group of misguided Christians. After reading the emails, though, I tend to (in one of the rare instances) agree with the Discover Institute that the emails are hoaxes. I know A LOT of Christians and none of them are this thick.

New Hominid Discoveries in the Afar Triangle

There have been some new discoveries in the Afar region of Africa that fill the gap between A. anamensis and A. afarensis. This is great news. The story, from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is long but worth the read. This is the fun part:

The fossil hominids from the Woranso-Mille area sample a time period that is poorly known in human evolutionary studies. An outstanding question in the study of early human evolution, says Haile-Selassie, relates to the relationship between the earlier Australopithecus anamensis (4.2 - 3.9 million years) and the later Australopithecus afarensis (3 - 3.6 million years). Researchers have hypothesized an ancestor-descendant relationship between these two species based on their similarities. However, there has been no fossil record from the 3.6 - 3.9 million years time frame thus far to test, confirm, or falsify this relationship. Haile-Selassie adds that the fossil hominids from the Woranso-Mille study area dated to between 3.5 and 3.8 million years ago sample the right time and play a major role in testing the hypothesis with fossil data. The Woranso-Mille fossil hominids from the deposits younger than 3.5 million years extend the geographic distribution of Australopithecus afarensis further to the north of Hadar, where the species is best documented.

Hopefully, these specimens (40 so far) will give us some much needed information about this time period. This is a great example of hypothesis testing using predictive models. It is also a great test of evolutionary theory. Stay tuned.

Here are two sides of the same coin: EvoWiki and CreationWiki. As with any wiki, be careful about what you read and follow up on the resources and cited references.

Mark Isaak edits a huge list of rebuttals to creationist claims on the Talk Origins site. Some are more successful than others. Here is the list.

A (relatively) new post on why Michael Behe's Irreducible Complexity is a wash.

Slow news day so far. As I wrote a bit back, I now work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This is a picture of the drive in. Not a bit like the spaghetti junction that is I-40. Clicking on the picture will pull up a bigger image. I got the water a bit wrong on the middle image because I forgot to hold down the auto exposure lock button. Oh well.

A new study suggests something that I have always thought to be true: "Science Not to Blame for Non-Religious Scientists." Elaine Ecklund, a sociologist at the University of Buffalo states:

"Our study data do not strongly support the idea that scientists simply drop their religious identities upon professional training, due to an inherent conflict between science and faith, or to institutional pressure to conform."

Read the whole thing. Hat tip to CR4.

I subscribe to Acts and Facts, the ICR's monthly magazine. It always contains a piece by John D. Morris, the son of ICR founder, the late Henry Morris. This month's piece is called "What if Evolution Were True?"

Its hard to find more disinformation in any six paragraphs of creationist literature anywhere. I have commented in parentheses. He writes:

What if all life evolved from a common ancestor by means of gradual changes as Darwin suggested? What evidence would we expect to find? Certainly we would expect to find the fossilized remains of the myriads of ancestral creatures which lived and died over the millenia. (We have.) At least some of the intermediate forms would have been fossilized. (they were). Remains of many varieties of present creatures have been found, including some extinct varieties, but the true in-between forms bridging gaps still elude us. (No they don't.)

He continues:

We would also expect to discover a universal trend in science which leads to more complexity in nature, paving the way for an increase in genetic content. Instead we discover the universal second law of science, which invariable points toward a degradation of quality in every duplication of information, such as in reproduction and more randomness in every unguided process.

For the umpteenth time, the earth is not a closed system!!!!! John Derbeyshire is right. WHACK!!!

Steve Paulson of Salon.com has an interview with Ronald Numbers. In it, he points out something not well known, I don't think:

There's a stereotype that creationists just aren't that smart. I mean, how can you ignore the steady accumulation of scientific evidence for evolution? Is this a question of intelligence or education?

Not fundamentally. There is a slight skewing of anti-evolutionists toward lower levels of education. But it's not huge. One recent poll showed that a quarter of college graduates in America reject evolution. So it's not education itself that's doing this. There are really dumb creationists and there are really dumb evolutionists. Of the 10 founders of the Creation Research Society, five of them earned doctorates in the biological sciences from major universities. Another had a Ph.D. from Berkeley in biochemistry. Another had a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. These were not dumb, uneducated people. They rejected evolution for religious and, they would say, scientific reasons.

If you haven't read Numbers' book, The Creationists, I would highly recommend it. Its disappointing that he has not been able to reconcile his belief with his science.

Taner Edis, who teaches physics at Truman State University, has written a book titled The Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam. I plainly have too much to read.

I just picked up Harun Yahya's 750-page Atlas of Creation. You, too, can get yours here.

Sequencing the Neandertal DNA.

I hear the New York Times has a story on human origins by John Noble Wilford. I won't link it but if you do a search for it, it will probably come up.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has an entire section on the creationism museum here. Be sure to catch the second article involving the lawsuit that has been filed against Answers in Genesis by another creationist group. It is nothing short of surreal.

Creationism as a threat to human rights? Oddly, it seems that the focus is not against the Christian fundamentalist movement, however:

"All leading representatives of the main monotheistic religions have adopted a much more moderate attitude," it added, noting that Pope Benedict XVI stated in a recent book that the Catholic Church did not share the creationists' Biblical literalism. The report highlighted a recent Muslim creationist campaign by Turkish writer Harun Yahya, whose lavish 750-page "Atlas of Creation" has been distributed free to schools in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Spain.
The report cited University of Paris biologist Herve Le Guyader, who called the challenge from Islamic thinkers "much more dangerous than the previous creationist initiatives, which were often of Anglo-Saxon origin."

It is still silly to call it a threat to human rights.

Tom McNamee of the Chicao Sun Times has an editorial on the Field Museum's stance on evolution. He begins:

Right from the get-go, there on a sign at the entrance to the Evolution exhibit at the Field Museum, real science takes a stand: "Evolution is one of science's best-supported theories." Perfect. A profound truth flatly stated, without a hint of equivocation.

His article is highly critical of the ID creationism position but in it, he has a throw away line that is, perhaps, symptomatic of why the debate is so polarizing.

And then there was that debate on TV a couple of weeks ago among the nine men running for the Republican nomination for president. When the moderator asked them to raise their hands if they ''didn't believe in evolution," three hands went up -- Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

I was stunned. I was mortified.

I turned to my son and shook my head and said: "Jesus. ..."

The use of "Jesus" as a swear word shows contempt for all things Christian and just makes Christians dig in their heels. Anyone who takes their Christian faith seriously and was reading the editorial just got mad and turned the page. Also, as a Christian who supports the theory of evolution, it just makes my job a whole lot harder. If it seems as though I am focusing on something seemingly minute here, consider that the use of the word "Jesus" as a swear word causes the same sort of moral outrage in Christians that the Mohammed cartoons did for your average Muslim. No, we don't react violently because we are told not to, but the insult level is the same.

The Council of Europe has refused to debate a resolution on creationism. William Dembski doesn't like the resolution to begin with.

Robert Pringle and Paul Ehrlich have an editorial in the Sacramento Bee about Senator Sam Brownback's evolution stance. In response to Senator Brownback's assertion that no one has ever witnessed speciation, they have an interesting analogy:

Brownback's argument rests on the fact that no person has ever seen a species produced by a gradual process. Then again, no person has ever seen a giant redwood tree grow from a seed. But one can find redwood trees of all sizes and observe their incremental growth within years.

Good point.

Inherit the Wind is playing on Broadway with Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. Now that would be a good show!!

Most of the time, I am a card-carrying Republican (although that is probably more because I disagree with just about all of the positions in the DNC platform than that I am happy with the current Republican leadership, which I am not). Sometimes I just plain break with the party, though.

Well, this sort of turns the forest fringe argument on its head. Bipedalism may not have been as unique as it is thought. From the Knoxville News Sentinel article:

Starting about 24 million years ago, the rain forests in East and Central Africa dwindled and became patchy. Apes that had spent almost their entire lives in the forest canopy had to walk from tree to tree.

Early human ancestors probably spent more time feeding on the forest floor, the researchers say. Compared to balancing on a springy branch, walking on the ground would have been easy.

The ancestors of chimps and gorillas, on the other hand, became more specialized at going up and down trees — holding on with both their hands and feet. They kept that same posture on the ground, which is why they often knuckle-walk, supporting their weight with their hands as well as their feet.

It has been long thought that humans evolved because they alone could exploit the forest fringe environment while the monkeys took over the savannah and the higher apes took over the forest.

Got the quiz to work. It is nothing short of astounding and is on a third grade level.

Great. When I go to get the ecards, it tells me i have an invalid email address.

ChristiaNet has a page of "Free Evolution Tracts." FORE!!

Here is a somewhat more in-depth article courtesy of the AP. Since it is from the AP, though, you never know how much to believe.

A huge flightless bird/dinosaur fossil has been unearthed in China. From the USA Today story by Calum MacLeod:

BEIJING — The dinosaur world's latest star had a toothless beak, waved feathered arms incapable of flight and may have hunted only plants. But if you met Gigantoraptor erlianensis in a Mongolian forest 70 million years ago, best to have given it a wide berth. At more than 16 feet tall and roughly 3,000 pounds, the beast could stand eyeball-to-eyeball with a tyrannosaur, Chinese researchers say.

According to the paper in Nature, this find remarkably resembles other finds where feathers are present, hence the designation. It is awfully big to have feathers, though.

There doesn't seem to be much going on in the news today but I will post something if it does turn up. In the meantime, perusal of just about any newspaper will turn up a letter about either the creation museum or a related topic.

The Chicago Field museum has a traveling exhibit on Charles Darwin and his support for the theory of evolution. According to a story in the Chicago Tribune:

Using the naturalist's personal effects, hundreds of specimens, historical photographs, notebooks, manuscripts, living animals and film, the exhibit vividly explains evolutionary theory and re-creates the upper crust world of Victorian science in which Darwin, the son of a wealthy physician and financier, was reared.

The story gives a nice little run down of Darwin's life.

Buried behind the subscription wall at Natural History is an article by Richard Milner about the number of books that the Dover trial hath wrought. Here is the bibliography of the books (and movie) that he reviews:

Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement edited by John Brockman Vintage, $14.00

40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin[R], and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania by Matthew Chapman HarperCollins, $25.95

Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross Oxford University Press, $19.95

Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul by Edward Humes, HarperCollins, $25.95

Flock of Dodos: The Evolution--Intelligent Design Circus (comedic-documentary film: 85 minutes) Written and directed by Randy Olson Prairie Starfish Productions, home video to be distributed by New Video,August 28, 2007, $26.95

Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools Edited by Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch Beacon Press, $14.00

Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design By MichaelShermer Times Books, $22.00

The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA by Gordy Slack Jossey-Bass, $24.

Natural history has a story on "Faces of the Human Past, written by Richard Milner and Ian Tattersall. It is a good summation of the highlights of palaeoanthropological discovery and attempts to determine what our predecessors looked like.

I just realized that my photograph is missing. It was stored on the server of my old job at UT. I will have to fix that.

Lucy comes to Houston!

"Evolution and Dissent" at the Boston Globe.

Another take on why scientists don't debate creationists from the Buffalo News. It is interesting to read this article in light of the Gallup Poll data.