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Tag Archives: Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin vs. Thomas Aquinas: What Follows from Our Nature?
At his blog recently, Thomist philosopher Edward Feser wrote the following: “For Aquinas, what is good for us is necessarily good for us because it follows from our nature. As such, even God couldn’t change it, any more than he … Continue reading
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Tagged art, Charles Darwin, evolution, philosophy, poetry, science, Thomas Aquinas
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Fossilized Republican Found in Georgia?
Responding to the discovery in the Republic of Georgia of a 1.8-million-year-old Homo erectus skull (possessing about one-third the volume of the average human skull), a wag from Seattle under the moniker of “1west,” commenting this morning in the thread … Continue reading
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Tagged Charles Darwin, comedy, evolution, humor, Politics, Republicans, science
4 Comments
Charles Darwin Gets the Hook to Jane Austen on British Currency!
__________ Charles Darwin has been on the ten pound bank-note for over a decade, but now The Guardian reports that Jane Austen is about to take a turn there: Austen will take her place on the £10 note in 2017, … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, Charles Darwin, England, evolution, feminism, Jane Austen, science, women's equality, women's rights
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Why Do Grandmas (Post-Menopausal Women) Exist?
Judith Shulevitz at The New Republic homes in on two theories: the “stopping-early hypothesis” and the “grandmother hypothesis”: In 1957, the evolutionary biologist George Williams proposed what is called the “stopping-early” hypothesis: Middle-age women need baby-free time to usher their youngest children into … Continue reading
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Tagged America, Charles Darwin, elderly, evolution, life, medicare, obamacare, senior citizens, social security, taxes
6 Comments
A Great Stephen Gould Quote on Evolution
What appears below can be found at the beginning of Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995). It’s hard to contrast the West’s religious era with its secular era more clearly. So much is implied in the way Gould has put this: … Continue reading
Beauty Explained
Sounds right to me. ___________ A quick thought: what if the very things that move us in landscape paintings (water in the distance, grassy fields, etc.) are the very same stimulants that our ancestors followed out of Africa 60,000 years … Continue reading
The Human Lowdown
Here’s our basic human story based on genetics. 60,000 years ago there was drought in Africa brought on by an ice age to its north. The human species lived only in Africa and had dwindled to perhaps 2,000 individuals. They looked like … Continue reading
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Tagged anthropology, atheism, Charles Darwin, evolution, Genesis, genetics, science, the Bible
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Definition and Origin of the Phrase “The Whole Nine Yards”
Blaise Pascal once wrote someone the following: “I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” Today we might say that Pascal gave his reader, not the short version of his thought, … Continue reading
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Tagged Charles Darwin, evolution, language, memes, Richard Dawkins, words
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Would Nietzsche Have Liked the New Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas?
Look at this quote from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873). It is Nietzsche’s description of the Dionysian forces that lurk beneath our artistic and “illusory consciousness” (our Apollonian dreams of coherence and control; the … Continue reading
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Tagged Apollo, Charles Darwin, Dionysus, evolution, nature, Nietzsche, Perot Museum, science
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Are Scientists Part of a Grand Conspiracy to Deny God’s Existence?
As part of a conspiracy series for British television, the BBC took five young earth creationists on a road trip to meet some prominent American scientists, including biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago and anthropologist Tim White of Berkeley. Were the … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, Charles Darwin, conspiracy theories, creationism, evolution, God, jerry coyne, Jesus, science, YEC
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Evolution vs. Intelligent Design Watch: Junk DNA is Not Junk
This is in the New York Times today: The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, biology, Charles Darwin, evolution, God, intelligent design, junk DNA
28 Comments
What’s the Difference Between an Environmentalist and a Free Market Conservative?
Actually, not that much. Both are children of the Romantic tradition, but whereas one is enamored of nature, the other is enamored of capitalism. One posits leaving nature (with its natural selections) alone; the other posits leaving the market (with … Continue reading
Correlation-Causation Fallacies and the Origin of Religion
In the below video, a pigeon—let’s call it Shirley—engages in a correlation-causation fallacy. Shirley clearly presumes—insofar as pigeons can presume anything at all—that the machine is releasing food to her because she’s making a half-turn to the left. In reality, of … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, b.f. skinner, Charles Darwin, critical thinking, evolution, faith, origin of religion, psychology, reason
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NYC Seeks Ban on “Dinosaur” and “Evolution” in Standardized Tests. Sam Wineburg Has a Wonderful Retort.
When CNN reported last week on the fifty words that the New York City Department of Education seeks to ban from its standardized tests, the list was discovered to include “dinosaur” and “evolution.” Fundamentalist Christian, Orthodox Jewish, Mormon, Jehovah Witness, … Continue reading
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Tagged America, atheism, Charles Darwin, creationism, evolution, God, Jesus, Judaism, muhammad, school
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Evolution for Evangelicals: Biologos Recently Held a Conference in NYC
Here’s a bit of what Christianity Today reported about it: The most sobering moment for attendees of the Biologos “Theology of Celebration” conference in New York City, March 20–22 [2012], came when David Kinnaman of Barna Research presented findings on … Continue reading
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Tagged Adam and Eve, apologetics, atheism, atheist, Charles Darwin, creationism, evangelicals, evolution, Genesis, Jesus, lewis black
12 Comments
40,000 Years B.C.: Four Human Types, One Earth
If you were to get in a time machine and go back to 40,000 years B.C., you would find at least four types of humans on Earth. That, at any rate, is what is reported in the New York Times today in … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, before the dawn, cave men, Charles Darwin, evolution, Genesis, human origins, Neanderthals
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Shopping Rage: Black Friday’s Competitive Shopping Road Rage
From the Los Angeles Times today comes this disturbing little item worthy of a scene from Dante’s Inferno: In Porter Ranch, a woman pepper sprayed customers at a Wal-Mart in what authorities say was a deliberate attempt to get more “door … Continue reading
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Tagged America, black friday, Charles Darwin, competition, consumerism, evolution, shopping, survival of the fittest, wal-mart
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On Evolution, Women Scientists Weigh In
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Tagged atheism, atheist, biology, Charles Darwin, creation, creationism, evolution, geology, God, nerds, science
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Naturalism, Supernaturalism, and Motivated Reasoning
At the ID website, Uncommon Descent, a person who goes by the name of “Mirrortothesun” makes the following thread comment: Here’s the problem with every single post on this site, including this one. They are all examples of motivated reasoning. … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, Charles Darwin, creationism, critical thinking, evolution, Genesis, intelligent design
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Charles Darwin’s Thinking Path
I love this image from Wikipedia Commons. It’s the path that Charles Darwin frequently trod at the grounds of Down House, his home. Darwin called this his “Thinking Path.”
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Tagged Charles Darwin, critical thinking, evolution, natural selection, nature, reason, saints, science, solitude, thinking, walking
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Prometheus Unbound 