The Talk.Origins Archive

Posts of the Month for 2006

January: Large Numbers and Deep Time
Marc offers a glimpse into the world of large numbers, noting that human beings often drastically underestimate the quantities involved in nature, and explores what this could mean for evolution and the origin of life.
January part 2: Trying To Keep Up With the Joneses
catshark rebuts Discovery Institute press release criticizing Judge Jones' devastating anti-ID decision in the case Kitzmiller v. Dover.
February: Identifying Fossils
Richard Forrest takes exception to a creationist's claim that the fossil of an extinct plesiosaur is in reality nothing but the bones of a crocodile, and explains how fossil species are identified and dated by real paleontologists.
March: The History of Creationism
Lenny Flank discourses on the history of the creationist movement in the United States, from the Scopes Monkey Trial to today's intelligent design movement.
April: The Precambrian Song!
chris.linthompson imagines what Bob Dylan might have sung, if only he were a primitive cnidarian swimming in the warm seas of the ancient Ediacaran Period.
May: The Evolution of Organs
R. Norman explains how the evolution of internal organs, a basic animal trait closely tied to the origin of multicellularity, could have evolved, and illustrates the point with examples of intermediate stages in living species.
May Editor's Pick: Honor Your Family
Tuokku rhapsodizes on why it really is cool and awe-inspiring to be descended from monkeys, as well as to share a bond of kinship with every other living creature on Earth.
June: How Species Originate
Following in the footsteps of the good Charles Darwin himself, John Wilkins sketches out what biologists have learned about the various ways in which new species evolve.
July: The Fallacy of Nonfunctional Intermediates
SJAB1958 responds to creationist claims that complex, functional organs cannot evolve in many small, incremental steps by giving a case study in the evolution of an important irreducibly complex system.
August: The Constancy of Constants, Part 2
In a sequel to his post from October 2001, Steve Carlip provides further detail about the scientific experiments and evidence pointing to the conclusion that the basic physical constants of nature have undergone no significant change over the history of the cosmos.
August part 2: An Atheist's Defense of Religion
Noctiluca gives reasons for non-believers to value human religious belief and recognize the contributions it has made.
September: Irreducible Complexity as an Evolutionary Prediction
Chris Ho-Stuart shows that antievolutionist Michael Behe's central argument was anticipated in 1918 by a famed geneticist, who argued that irreducible complexity was not just a possible but an expected result of evolution.
October: Scientific skepticism of Piltdown Man prior to the exposure of the hoax
Robin Levett, following a heated discussion on the extent to which scientists had used Piltdown Man to promote evolution, is reduced to presenting the evidence.
November: Design as an evolutionary process
Mark Isaak shows that the design processes used by people follow an evolutionary path closely enough that an insight into one may shed light on the workings of the other.
December: Why SEX is not a regressive step in evolution
John Wilkins briefly narrates the development of gene sharing from bacteria to modern animals, explaining how new beneficial characteristics from many individuals are thus joined.

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