#evolution

We rarely consider just how amazing our teeth are. They break food without themselves being broken, up to millions of times over the course of a lifetime; and they do it built from the very same raw materials as the foods they are breaking. Nature is truly an inspired engineer.

We rarely consider just how amazing our teeth are. They break food without themselves being broken, up to millions of times over the course of a lifetime; and they do it built from the very same raw materials as the foods they are breaking. Nature is truly an inspired engineer.

EVERY year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they don’t.

EVERY year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they don’t.

When Occupy Wall Street and similar protests played out over the past year, the phenomenon looked familiar to Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal: He's seen similar moral outrage over economic inequity expressed by monkeys and chimps. And he thinks we could learn a lesson or two from our fellow primates.

Humans owe their big brains and sophisticated culture to a single genetic mutation that weakened our jaw muscles about 2.4 million years ago, a new study suggests.

I suppose we could blame The Curse on The Fall, but then this phylogeny would suggest that Adam and Eve were part of a population of squirrel-like proto-primates living in the early Paleocene. That’s rather unbiblical, though, and what did the bats and elephant shrews do to deserve this?

"JUST suppose that Darwin's ideas were only a part of the story of evolution. Suppose that a process he never wrote about, and never even imagined, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth's history. It may sound preposterous, but this is exactly what microbiologist Carl Woese and physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believe. Darwin's explanation of evolution, they argue, even in its sophisticated modern form, applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth."

"This has three odd consequences. The first is that, by the end of sex, the two individuals have become genetically identical. It’s as if you and your mate began coitus as yourselves and finished as identical twins. The second odd consequence is that, partway through its life, a ciliate can radically alter its genetic make-up; genetically speaking, the transformation is so extreme that it’s as if you changed into one of your children. Talk about being reborn."

"Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed."

"Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangman theorizes that cooking with fire triggered hominids to evolve into humans. His experience in the wild led him to conclude that humans could never live on what chimpanzees eat. Cooking, he thinks, might account for the sharp rise in brain size, and the decrease in the size of teeth, that occurred about 1.6 million years ago in Homo erectus over its predecessor, homo habilis. It might explain our relatively small guts and weak jaws, not to mention certain preferences that seem innately human"

"By any reading of evolutionary theory, creationists ought to have died out ages ago. They serve no function in the planet’s ecosystem, and no other species has survived so long while in such fundamental disagreement with observable reality. If I wasn’t such an ardent believer in secular materialism, I’d wager this is really troubling Darwin in the afterlife."

"This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity."

"The video shows off combat taking place within a massive asteroid belt. Have a look at the video below the cut, and let us know if you think Jumpgate Evolution seems to be your type of game."

"Some lucky evolutionary accident ensured the mammals' safety through a deep sleep, and that accident may still be dormant within us. That which allowed our ancestors to survive millions of years ago might also be a means of our survival now."

"The Tree of Life and "I Believe In Science" slogan in white on a green ringer tee."

"Let’s face it: we’re not exactly becoming brighter by using Google. In fact, in the traditional education sense, we’re getting stupider, at least with certain types of tasks."

"The Tree of Life design celebrates the theory of evolution and was created to give a voice to those who favor traditional biology and oppose the growing American support of various forms of creationism."

"The problem isn’t religion, Wilson said, it’s tribalism. The two often coincide but they are not the same thing. Religion is not a pernicious force in the world. Tribalism is."

"Although humans and non-human primates differ in a variety of seemingly more important ways, Tomasello suggests that "shared intentionality" is the most critical: a propensity for social interaction allowed each of these other capacities to evolve to the

"“Intelligent Design versus Evolution” is a new board game that was designed by actor Kirk Cameron and best-selling author Ray Comfort, to help fight against the what they maintain is the brainwashing of an entire generation."

"Magnetite helps orientation and direction finding in animals. It no doubtingly helps migratory species migrate successfully by allowing them to draw upon the earth's magnetic fields."

"We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable."

"A Republican state lawmaker is criticizing Gov. Brian Schweitzer for comments he made to a newspaper here about the lawmaker‘s belief that the planet is not millions of years old."

"That's the result of a new survey of people's attitudes toward evolution. Notice where the United States lies: nearly dead last. We beat Turkey."

"The most important difference between evolutionists and creationists, Prof Jones concluded, is that scientists are always prepared to say, "I don't know"."

"So now you know why eugenics doesn't work, asshole."

"It seems that evolution is perpetually just that close to collapsing, yet it never does."

"Life might, in the end, be responsible for the presence of continents on Earth."

"The eyes in humans and their closest relatives in the primate world are geared to detect subtle changes in skin tone caused by blood oxygen levels, according to a new study from Caltech."

"These results provide clear evidence that these chickens possess the memory of the past; they have retained the ability to make teeth, under certain conditions. What I am describing is evolution."

"New computer simulations lend further support the notion that cooperation helped early humans escape becoming prey for other animals, researchers report."

"The third rock from the sun might instead be a planet of intelligent squid or technological insects, peering with inhuman eyes at the ancient fossils of long forgotten, curious fish-like creatures with paddling fins that mysteriously died out."

"And He's not going to create a Universe based on rational laws, then not want us to practice our rationality."

"The only reason that "intelligent design" has become an issue in the national news is because reporters like Laurie Goodstein have refused to do their jobs and become actors in the "he said/she said" which passes for reporting in this country, which is e

"Think Differently | Think Biblically" We are all individuals! (crowd: Yes, we are all individuals!)

"Basically what I'm trying to say is HOLY CRAP MONOTREMES ARE WEIRD WHY DO THEY EVEN EXIST."

"Scientific methods or processes are considered fundamental to the scientific investigation and acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence."

"Coming face to face with the details of evolution is really spectacular."

"We are willing to pay any individual *$250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster."

"Mosquitoes are more attracted to people already infected with malaria. And this appears to be because the malarial parasite orchestrates its own onward transmission from within the human body, a new study suggests."

"I have a new theory - Unintelligent Design, which is the same as Intelligent Design, except that the creator is either a moron or Satan."

"I was grateful that we have not only inherited a danger-prone appendix, but a brain that can invent surgery."

"It is not important to know how they work or where they come from; rather, it is enough to know they were created by a Designer, and that somehow they fit into some grand scheme."

"Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do."

"In the nearly ten years since the publication of Behe’s book, by contrast, I.D. has inspired no nontrivial experiments and has provided no surprising insights into biology."

"In order to live in this science-dominated world, you have to be able to discriminate between science and non-science ... They want to rewrite the rules of science."

"These are fantastic creatures with 24 eyes, four parallel brains and 60 arseholes"

'As America strives to "leave no child behind," it’s time that evolution is not left behind in our science classrooms.'

"Yes, it can be measured in the laboratory. Shut up."

"Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over."

"...one explanation for the high incidence of design inferences in American adults may be a lack of quality science education." So forcing Creationism into Science Education only worsens the situation.

"...eyes have evolved many times, often in little more than a blink of geological history..."

Theorizing that the steps toward Modern Man began, "When we moved into a land without lions or tigers, with animals that had never seen a carnivorous ape or learned to be wary of them."

"...the decrease in jaw-muscle size and force eliminated stress on the skull, which 'released' an evolutionary constraint on brain growth."

"...a team of researchers ... has provided new evidence that an alternate theory is actually at work"

"A gene has been identified that appears responsible for key differences between the brain of humans and other primates."