The latest news from those militant atheists is that Michael Newdow, and many others, are suing to block the religious element of the presidential swearing-in ceremony. And guess who will be interviewed on Atheists Talk radio at 9am Central time? Michael Newdow! Call in and egg him on, or moan about the futility of it all.
This week, Nature magazine published a short list of recent important developments in evolutionary biology that support the theory of evolution, as a tool to help explain that evolution is definitely a dynamic and useful theory in our field and to demonstrate that the evidence is still growing. Here’s a short summary of the 15 stories the editors picked out, but you should also read the freely available article, 15 Evolutionary Gems. Teachers, put this in your classroom!
The discovery of Indohyus, an ancestor to whales.
The discovery of Tiktaalik, an ancestor to tetrapods.
The origin of feathers revealed in creatures like Epidexipteryx.
The evolution of patterning mechanisms in teeth.
The developmental and evolutionary origin of the vertebrate skeleton.
Speciation driven indirectly by selection in sticklebacks.
Selection for longer-legged lizards in Caribbean island populations.
A co-evolutionary arms race between Daphnia and its parasites.
Non-random dispersal and gene flow in populations of great tits.
Maintenance of polymorphisms in populations of guppies.
Contingency in the evolution of pharyngeal jaws in the moray.
Developmental genes that regulate the shape of beaks in Darwin’s finches.
Evolution of regulatory genes that specify wing spots in Drosophila.
Evolution of toxin resistance.
The concept of evolutionary capacitance: the idea that environmental stress can expose hidden variations that are then subject to selection.
Everyone and their mother is sending me a link to this flickr set, via Boing Boing, of something called “cephalerotica”. I just don’t know…there are all these clumsy mammals inserted into the art that distract from the erotic part.
This is just sad. Lately, Casey Luskin has been quaveringly protesting that poor Michael Behe got a bad shake in the Dover trial, and that Ken Miller misrepresented him in his testimony. Alas, this little mouse didn’t just get caught in a mousetrap — he got blown away by an elephant gun. Ken Miller has a guest post at The Loom in which he demolishes Luskin. I almost feel sorry for him.
Charlie Daniels has chimed in with a little squeak of outrage at Newdow’s lawsuit. His post is titled “He Must Be a Miserable Man“, and I think it must be self-referential since it is an astonishing collection of stupidities. Foremost, here’s one that I can’t believe anyone would say:
If we deny God His rightful place in the affairs of this nation should we expect Him to intervene when we need protection? Just what do you think has kept us safe from terrorist attacks since 9/11? It certainly wasn’t the atheists.
I expect atheists did contribute, as did Christians and Muslims and other Americans. What does Charlie Daniels think has prevented further attacks? Does he seriously believe there’s an invisible man flicking away terrorists at the border?
I’m actually most curious about the logic behind the claim that a god gets credit for the absence of hijackings in the last seven years, though. What was he doing in 2001? Napping?
This is a rough situation: a graduate student from New Zealand, working here in the US, got that sorrowful phone call telling her that her father had died. You know how graduate students are — poor. So she needs some help, and is asking for donations. There are a lot of us, you know, so if we each chipped in just a little bit, we can help her through these difficult times.
I was a grad student once, and I also got that same sad phone call on the day after Christmas, 15 years ago. At least I didn’t have to fly to the other side of the world to say farewell.
I have just returned from my last long drive of the season, finally and regretfully shuttling the last beloved member of the Myers clan off to the distant Minneapolis transportation hub. Now, at last, I can relax, shed of my patriarchal obligations (speaking of which, the hair is getting a bit long and wild, and the beard is looking a bit ferocious…I may have to do something to tame them). I’ve also feeling the fatigue of waging the war on Christmas — my trigger finger is all calloused, and the recoil bruises on my shoulder would make you weep to see them — so it’s nice to have a little armistice until they start up again, six months from now. I’ve even got a little time to catch up with the neglected blog!
Here are a few quick tidbits.
The quixotic Michael Newdow is suing to have godly invocations dropped altogether from the presidential swearing-in ceremony, and our very own Minnesota Atheists have joined in. I don’t think they stand a prayer. It’s still a good thing to keep speaking out about it, so I support them wholeheartedly.
You need a poll to crash. How about one from Lynchburg, VA, home of Liberty University, where they are asking, Atheist group files suit to keep religion out of inauguration. Okay? So far, 17% say OK, 83% say not OK. That might change soon.
A bus matron who was supposed to be assisting a young man with cerebral palsy, Ed Wynn Rivera, abandoned him on the bus, still strapped to his seat, while it was parked in the depot…for seventeen hours. She had a good excuse, though.
Hockaday admitted to knowing that Rivera was still on the bus when it was locked up on one of the coldest nights of the year. Her rationale for leaving? She apparently didn’t want to be late for church.
Good news from Texas! The final draft of the state science standards is done, and by all accounts, it is good.
But with the “weaknesses” requirement removed and a new definition for science, the new plan makes it clear that supernatural explanations like creationism and intelligent design have no place in public classrooms, said Dan Quinn with the Texas Freedom Network, an Austin-based nonprofit group that opposes religious influence on public education.
Good work, Texas scientists and educators!
I hope you all enjoyed your godless holiday. It was much more pleasant than the religious one.
This year’s Edge question was What will change everything? What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see? As usual, a lot of interesting people offered diverse answers, and you can read them all there.
You’ve probably got better answers. Feel free to leave them here in the comments.
Somebody else is being denied the right to marry. A woman who worked at a Catholic high school was fired because her fiance was divorced.
Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm inside? Our wanna-be overlords of the high priesthood promise us a future of arbitrary regulation of our private lives.
