[Hat tip to my colleague and friend T.R. for referring me to this story and for these prefatory remarks:] The National Science Foundation are the primary gatekeepers to government funded scientific research, and in particular are the enforcers of the global warming and Darwin cults, making sure that any scientist who wishes to receive grant money toes the line on the politically correct story. The news story below describes how a good number of them spend their day. The novel excuse offered by one of the miscreants reminds us, in its inventiveness, of some of the excuses offered by Al Gore acolytes for why the earth is warming, notwithstanding that its been cooling for the past decade. EXCLUSIVE: Porn surfing Read More ›

Is Dawkins pulling the wool over our eyes? Dawkins: “Lenski and a different set of colleagues investigated this phenomenon [bigger cells] by taking two of the [E. coli] tribes, called Ara+1 and Ara-1, which seemed, over 20,000 generations, to have followed the same evolutionary trajectory, and looking at their DNA. The astonishing result they found was that 59 genes had changed their level of expression in both tribes and all 59 had changes in the same direction. Were it not for natural selection, such independent parallelism, in all 59 genes independently, would completely beggar belief. The odds against it happening by chance are stupefyingly large. This is exactly the kind of thing creationists say cannot happen, because they think it Read More ›

Mark, Canadian columnist to the world (and “human rights” commission survivor), discusses a recent fossil find with Hugh Hewitt:

HH: Well, we cannot let this day pass without recognizing two important things. First of all, we’ve discovered a primate that’s 1.2 million years older than Lucy, and apparently a competition between ancient bones has broken out, Mark Steyn. Are you indifferent as to which is the older and allegedly part of our family tree?

MS: Yes, I am, really. I never get terribly excited about so-called evolution stories, because it seems to me that it’s the tiny little bit of us, I can’t remember what it is now, I think it’s not just that we’re, whatever it is, 97% ape, but we’re supposedly 86% or something pumpkin. And clearly, if that’s true, then there’s something not terribly useful about the scale. It’s the tiny little percentage that separates us from the rest of this stuff that makes the difference.

HH: Well, that pumpkin stuff explains radio producers. I’d never thought of that before.

In case anyone cares what I think, after the “Ida” fiasco, I have sworn off accepting any fossil tales in the early days of their discovery. Time will tell if this is anything to write home about.

See also: Scientific American quietly disowns Ida fossil Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith has written a blog on human exceptionalism at Secondhand Smoke, his blog at First Things, in light of the recent publications about  “Ardi”, the hominid that is supposedly “pretty close” to the common ancestor of humans and chimps way back 4.4 million years ago.

Human exceptionalism received a boost today with the news that human beings apparently did not evolve from apes…I bring this up because some Darwinsists and other assorted materialists have attacked human exceptionalism on the basis that our supposed emergence from the great apes and/or our genetic closeness means that we should not think of ourselves as distinctive. I never thought that was in the least persuasive.  What matters is what we are now, not what might have been millions of years ago or how we got here…

And that brings me to Ewen Callaway’s review in New Scientist of the book Not a Chimp: The hunt to find the genes that make us human authored by Jeremy Taylor. As Mr. Callaway explains, Jeremy Taylor’s book sheds light on the issue of genetic similarity:

In this book, his first, the former BBC producer synthesises recent genetic, behavioural and neuroscientific research to argue that far more than a handful of genes divides humans from our evolutionary cousins, 6 million years removed.

Take that 98.4 per cent, an oft-repeated figure that has been used to argue that chimps deserve human rights. True, Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes share an extraordinary amount of genetic similarity – yet humans and mice share almost as much.

Read More ›

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Richard Dawkins www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

THE END OF CHRISTIANITY: FINDING A GOOD GOD IN AN EVIL WORLD is now at the publisher’s warehouse. The official release date is November 1. I’ve received the US, UK, and international editions. They all look fantastic. I just learned from the publisher that 2,500 wholesale pre-orders are in the system (the biggest being from Costco and Wal-Mart). Of the twenty or so titles I have at Amazon.com, this one is selling the best (go here for the Amazon.com listing). So the launch is looking very very good. Stay tuned for a fun promotional website coming down the pike.

Dr. Karl Giberson President, BioLogos Foundation Dear Dr. Giberson: As a professor, author and President of the BioLogos Foundation, you have powerful communication tools at your disposal. You have access to major media outlets and you speak with scientific authority. In short, you are a teacher with a very large audience. This is an enormous teaching responsibility which I am sure you take seriously. For this reason I want to alert you to a fundamental mistake which you and the BioLogos Foundation have made. Given the magnitude of your teaching responsibility I hope that you will carefully consider this situation and take the appropriate corrective measures.   Read more