Posts Tagged ‘creationism’

We just got an extra 80K years.

Posted in Eli's Blog on December 5th, 2008 by Eli – Be the first to comment

While I often trash National Geographic (along with other popular-science magazines) in favor of true Scientific Journals, this one is a bit interesting, and states that the paper reflecting this find is due to appear in Geology. According to NeoGeo they’ve found some stone tools predating the earliest Homo Sapiens remains by 80,000 years. These tools are apparently sophisticated enough that they are attributed to Homo Sapiens, and date to about 276,000 years ago (the oldest Homo Sapiens remains are about 195,000 years old).

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Roger Ebert, I knew there was a reason I liked that guy.

Posted in Eli's Blog on December 4th, 2008 by Eli – Be the first to comment

While I do not always agree with Roger Ebert in his movie reviews, I must say that of any movie critic in the popular press i find his reviews the most useful. Weather or not he liked the movie I can usually determine if I would personally enjoy a film from his review. This speaks volumes, so it was a little concerning a few months back when on Roger Ebert’s website a Q&A about creationism appeared. Something about it didn’t quite sit right with me. Mr. Ebert seemed to intelligent to buy into creationism, so I thought it was either a prank, joke, or someone at the Sun-Times with access pulling a fast one.

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Wear it proud.

Posted in Eli's Blog on December 1st, 2008 by Eli – Be the first to comment

Wearscience.com has some great t-shirts for those at all interested in the creationism/ID vs. evolution debate. The discworldy shirt is calling my name.

abiogenesis gets yet another boost.

Posted in Eli's Blog on December 1st, 2008 by Eli – Be the first to comment

According to this article on ScienceNOW, a  molecule of glycolaldehyde (an essential molecule in the formation  of ribose, one of the constituents of RNA) has been discovered in a a massive star-forming region in the Milky Way.

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Is THIS transitional enough for you.

Posted in Eli's Blog on November 26th, 2008 by Eli – Be the first to comment

Over on Panda’s Thumb they’ve got a great little write up on a Triassic fossil found in china. It is that of  Odontochelys, a clear mid-point between turtles and reptiles. The thing has reptile-like teeth and broad flat ribs as well as belly armor, but no shell on it’s back. Not quite a crocoduck, but a “lizurtle” (turtizard?, oh I like that, sounds like a pokemon… tutrizard! I choose you!) to be sure. I’ll be having Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron eating their hats now please.

Oh, this one’s originally posed by PZ Myers, so I’m sure you’ll find they information on pharyngula as well.

There is a nother nice write-up on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Poor Kent Hovind, he’s even more wrong than he ever imagined.

Posted in Eli's Blog on November 26th, 2008 by Eli – Be the first to comment

One of Kent Hovind’s more ridiculous claims in his creationist videos is that Earth is the sole repository of water in the universe. Aside from just being patently false (water is the second most common molecule in the universe right after H-H), scientists now have compelling evidence that aside form Earth and Jupiter’s Moon Europa that one of Saturn’s Moons, Enceladus, may have liquid water near it’s surface (let’s not forget all the ice that’s floating around the solar system as well).

I personally cannot wait until we have the technonlogy to get an unmanned space vehicle that can not only go and look, but either grab-and-analyze or bring the samples back to earth for further study. If you keep up with science news at all, and realize that this is just a hint of the full wonder of the universe I don’t see how you can be satisfied with a few hundred pages of “scripture” to provide you with an explanation.

More IDiots that just don’t get it.

Posted in Eli's Blog on November 25th, 2008 by Eli – Be the first to comment

I found this interesting link over on Intelligent Design The Future, it’s a further link to an Amazon page for the book “Billions of Missing Links”. It is billed as a rational look at the mysteries science cannot explain, however I would never use the word “cannot” how about “has yet to explain”, this would be an accurate, however less sensationalist description.

It’s true science has yet to explain everything, and each discovery in turn raises more questions, this is how knowledge advances. The book essentially complains that each fossil we find creates more “missing links” it is apparent that the Intelligent Design crowd will never be satisfied unless every living thing on this earth has fossilized and we’ve uncovered all these non-existent fossils. They’ve completely bypassed any version of “reasonable” evidence and will use even the tiniest gap to shoehorn their views in. This is the “god of the gaps” argument taken to an irrational extreme.

The fact is that every fossil is transitional, evolution doesn’t stop (although evidence does show that it may slow down for periods of time), and every species is on it’s way to becoming an entirely new species guided by the forces of natural selection.

To take a quote from the post,  “Every “link” discovered brings many more questions (missing links) than answers”. Of course it does! This is how science works, each discovery leads to more questions which leads to more discoveries. This isn’t lik escripture where you write it down, close the book and it’s done. Knowledge is continously being uncovered, questions being answered which lead to new and better questions. If a discovery ended all questions than science would grind to a halt. We’d know all we could ever possibly want to know about the universe. Of course this is what the ID movement and it’s theist backers want. They want science to come to a halt, as we’ve entered a dawn of discovery that has already squeezed thier bronze-age myths into irrelevance.