Past “What’s New”
Added February 26, 2008:

The New What’s New. The TalkOrigins Archive is transitioning its “What’s New” page to a weblog format.

Added December 15, 2007:

Edward Max responds to “AFDave”. Dr. Edward Max takes up criticism from YEC blogger Dave Hawkins.

Added June 5, 2007:


The Mullerian Two-Step: Add a part, make it necessary
(or, Why Behe’s “Irreducible Complexity” is silly).
A simple and concise explanation for why the anti-evolutionary argument from “irreducibly complexity” is flawed — gradual evolution by natural selection readily evolves “irreducibly complex” structures.

Added November 30, 2006:


October 2006 Feedback.

Added November 28, 2006:


October 2006 Post of the Month: Skepticism of Piltdown Man.

Added October 31, 2006:


The Origin of Life.
A discussion of the main models on the spontaneous origin of life
that aims to show how cellular complexity could have gradually emerged
from simple systems - in contrast to the sudden appearance of
complexity that creationists claim to have been necessary at the
beginning of life. Central issues like the composition of the early
atmosphere of the Earth and the origin of the homochirality of amino
acids and sugars are reviewed as well.

Added October 19, 2006:


September 2006 Post of the Month: Irreducible Complexity as an Evolutionary Prediction.

Added October 9, 2006:


The Discovery Institute Quote Mines Stephen Jay Gould.
The newest addition to the
Quote Mine Project
shows how Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute misrepresents what Gould
and others wrote in a brief for Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals.

Updated October 9, 2006:


Awards, Honors, and Favorable Notices for The TalkOrigins Archive.
A listing of honor received by the TalkOrigins Archive. Updated to mention
that the Archive was listed as “Web Site of the Week” by the
Dallas Morning News.

Updated September 28, 2006:


The Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines.
The Archive’s systematic debunking of the creationist habit of
misleading quotation now has a new article,
The Discovery Institute Quote Mines Judge Jones, that
discusses how the Discovery Institute selectively quotes
Judge Jones’ decision in
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area
School District in aid of its “bait and switch” claim of scientific
evidence in support of intelligent design. There are several other recent
updates listed in the Project
What’s New page.

Added September 18, 2006:


August 2006 Post of the Month: The Constancy of Constants.

Updated September 16, 2006:


Macroevolution.
In evolutionary biology today macroevolution is used to refer to any
evolutionary change at or above the level of species. It means the
splitting of a species into two or the change of a species over time
into another. This FAQ has been expanded,
updated, illustrated, and rewritten.

Added August 20, 2006:

Hendren v. Campbell:
Decision Against a Creationist Textbook.
A 1977 decision of an Indiana superior court ruling
against a textbook produced by the Creation
Research Society. In some respects this case
resembles a young-earth creationist version of the 2005
Kitzmiller

case. Introductory material, links, as well as the full text of the
judge’s memorandum opinion are provided.

Added August 17, 2006:

July 2006 Post of the Month: The Fallacy of Nonfunctional Intermediates.

Updated July 25, 2005:

Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion “Dates”:
Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable Data.
Young-Earth creationists consider the helium diffusion studies of
D. Russell Humphreys
and others to be one of their greatest achievements in arguing for a 6,000
year old Earth. A geologist shows that these studies are extensively
flawed and include: serious miscalculations in their data, sampling the
wrong rock type, failing to eliminate possible
contamination, using equations that are based on
invalid assumptions and relying on questionable data.
Appendices C and
D have been added in response to Dr. Humphreys’ most recent statements in
his January 2006 “Trueorigins” essay.

Added July 25, 2006:


June 2006 Post of the Month: How Species Originate.

Added July 3, 2006:


May 2006 Post of the Month: The Evolution of Organs.

Added May 11, 2006:


April 2006 Post of the Month: The Precambrian Song!

Added April 13, 2006:

March 2006 Post of the Month: The History of Creationism.

Added March 18, 2006:


February 2006 Post of the Month: Identifying Fossils.

Added February 17, 2006:


January 2006 Post of the Month: Large Numbers and Deep Time.

Added January 25, 2006:


Evidence for the Big Bang. This article covers the evidence which leads
cosmologists to believe the Big Bang happened, deals with common objections
to the theory, and discusses alternative models and questions that still remain
to be answered.

Added January 24, 2006:


December 2005 Post of the Month: Unanswered Questions.

Added January 10, 2006:

How Old is the Earth:
A Response to “Scientific” Creationism.
A classic and often-referenced 1984 paper by G. Brent Dalrymple. The
paper contains short but accurate expositions of radiometric dating
methods and discussions of creationist criticisms and attempts to date
the Earth as young. It includes material difficult to find elsewhere,
such as the discussion of mixing isochrons and the effect of
neutron-capture reactions. Dr. Dalrymple is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences, a winner of the National Medal of Science,
a former president of the American Geophysical Union,
and the author of
The Age of the Earth.

Added January 10, 2006:


November 2005 Post of the Month: Handling Challenges to Evolution.

Added December 31, 2005:


Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District:
Decision of the Court.
Dover, Pennsylvania case which a judge ruled that
intelligent design is creationism, is not science,
and does not belong in science classes of
public schools.

Added December 8, 2005:


Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District:
Plaintiffs’ Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.
This how the pro-evolutionary biology side is asking the
judge to rule in the intelligent-design
case in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Updated November 29, 2005:


The Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines.
The collecting of quotes to attack evolution is often called “quote mining”
and is a very common tactic used by those who wish to deny evolution or
modern evolutionary biology.
A creationist on the talk.origins newsgroup posted a large collection
of such quotes which he copied from a creationist website.
This resulted in other participants
looking up those quotes. The results, gathered in the Quote Mine Project,
show that many of the quotes are blatantly out-of-context.

Updated November 24, 2005:


Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion “Dates”:
Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable Data.
Young-Earth creationists consider the helium diffusion studies of
D. Russell Humphreys
and others to be one of their greatest achievements in arguing for a 6,000
year old Earth. A geologist shows that these studies are extensively
flawed and include: serious miscalculations in their data, sampling the
wrong rock type, failing to eliminate possible
contamination, using equations that are based on
invalid assumptions and relying on questionable data.

Added November 17, 2005:


October 2005 Post of the Month: From Hypothesis to Theory.

Added November 6, 2005:


Edwards v. Aguillard: Affidavit of Creationist Dean Kenyon.
Dean Kenyon presented this to the federal courts in defense of creationism in 1984.
It has the same arguments that Kenyon would call “intelligent design” after
the defeat of creationism in the Supreme Court.

Added November 1, 2005:


September 2005 Post of the Month: Who Chooses the Winner?.

Added October 12, 2005:


Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District:
Dover, Pennsylvania Intelligent Design Case.
This page currently has some transcripts from the
trial in HTML format.

Newsflash September 28, 2005:


NCSE Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District blog.
This resource includes podcasts, news summaries, and legal documents
from the Dover “Intelligent Design” trial. The
Panda’s Thumb has
a

summary article that also useful for following the trial and
getting background information. [These are all off-site links.]

Added September 19, 2005:


August 2005 Post of the Month: An Exercise in Similarity.

Added August 23, 2005:


July 2005 Post of the Month: The Evolution of Homeothermy.

Added August 4, 2005:


June 2005 Post of the Month: Reply to a Creationist.

Added July 14, 2005:


Information Theory and Creationism.
Both young-earth and intelligent-design creationists often claim
that evolution is impossible because of various claims about information
such as mutation and natural selection “cannot create information.”
This article provides
a brief background on Information Theory and explains how Creationists
such as Werner Gitt and Lee Spetner misuse one of the greatest contributions of the
20th Century. (This FAQ is more technical than most. It is hoped that
a less technical version will eventually be posted.)

Added July 1, 2005:


Kansas Evolution Hearings:
Transcripts of an Intelligently-Designed “Kangaroo Court”.
A transcript of the “science hearings” held by a subcommittee of the
Kansas Board of Education composed of three creationists in May, 2005.
A background article and many relevant links are also provided.

Also See: What’s Old for archived What’s New items.

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Posted by admin, filed under What's New. Date: February 27, 2008, 2:30 am |