In “Male Wolf Spiders Swipe Other Males’ Dance Moves – After watching them on TV” (PopSci ), Dan Nosowitz reports Researchers at the University of Cincinnati performed an experiment on a type of the widespread and unnerving wolf spider that shows that these invertebrates may be much more complex than we give them credit for. The spiders were capable of observing, remembering, and mimicking mating dances, just like cast members on Jersey Shore. Invertebrates have never been known to have this kind of abilities to learn, remember, and imitate behaviors, so the study is definitely breaking some ground. Check out video of the spider’s dance moves below. Sure, but let’s not forget that, in addition to entertainment, the male wolf Read More ›

Eric MacDonald, a former Church of England clergyman who is now an atheist, knows that prayer doesn’t make sick people better. Dr. John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, a former physics professor at Cambridge who is also an Anglican priest and theologian, who recently wrote Questions of Truth: Responses to Questions about God, Science and Belief (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), in collaboration with Nicholas Beale, FRSA, believes that at times, prayer “may” result in “remarkable physical recovery,” although often it does not (see the “Science of Prayer” video here). Whom should we believe? In yesterday’s post, which was entitled, Is this the Dumbest Ever “Refutation” of the Fine-Tuning Argument?, I exposed the silly fallacies in atheist philosopher Anthony Grayling’s criticisms of Read More ›

Evolution professor Lawrence Krauss is now saying that the universe, and everything in it, came from nothing. Not only that, but there are probably billions and billions of universes that have spontaneously arisen. Occasionally a universe happens to have all the right properties for life to arise spontaneously within it, and that would be us.  Read more

With regret, ENV recently noted the passing of biologist Lynn Margulis. Margulis, a scientist whom I admired greatly, was never a stranger to controversy, going so far as to call neo-Darwinism “a complete funk” and asserting that “The critics, including the creationist critics, are right about their criticism. It’s just that they’ve got nothing to offer by intelligent design or ‘God did it.’ They have no alternatives that are scientific.” She was a scientist who wasn’t afraid to think creatively, disregarding the scorn of her colleagues. According to the Telegraph, a response to one grant application she made said: “Your research is crap. Don’t ever bother to apply again.” Click here to continue reading>>>

This morning we noted the 50th peer-reviewed pro-ID scientific paper published. Having been on this beat for a decade now, I can safely say that no one who is not involved can have any idea how difficult an achievement that is, in the face of a corrupt, tenured establishment that is unashamed to use outright suppression. Indeed, this very year, Granville Sewell had an accepted paper rejected from a journal because a Darwin troll started bawling about it to an editor of that journal. The wrong was never righted, though some justice was done. Because it is only recently that any justice has even been attempted in this area, we can reasonably assume that more such papers would be in Read More ›