Pro-Science News
By David MacMillan. 7. The religion of evolution. The final set of creationist misconceptions about evolution surrounds its supposed religious, moral, and ethical implications. These objections prove difficult to address, simply because they have little or no objective basis and are almost purely philosophical or religious. This section will concentrate mostly on explaining the relationships and connections between these arguments, as systematically refuting them would delve deep into philosophy and theology and is far beyond...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
NCSE is pleased to announce the launch of the Climate Science Students Bill of Rights, which articulates the principle that all students deserve the best climate science education available as part of a 21st-century science education. Sponsoring the bill of rights along with NCSE are Climate Parents, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Alliance for Climate Education.
Michael Zimmerman reports today in the Huffington Post that the Presbyterian Church (USA) has declined to endorse the Clergy Letter Project and declare the second Sunday in February to be Evolution Sunday. Specifically, Reverend John Shuck, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and his congregation are longtime supporters of the Clergy Letter, and Reverend Shuck proposed that the General Assembly of the church vote to support Evolution Sunday. A subcommittee voted the...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Photograph by Helena Insko. Opposable thumb. Ms. Insko submits this photograph of a fully opposable thumb as evidence of evolution and writes, “My mom and I have been voting in the photo contest as long as I can remember (I’m 10). When my mom told me the theme was how we know evolution is correct, this is my answer (and my hand).”...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
While searching for the source of this cartoon, I ran across the website of Samuel Varg, a Swedish magician and skeptic. Mr. Varg has posted an interview with Kenneth Miller on YouTube and promises interviews with Candida Moss and John Safran. Mr. Varg and his colleague Anders Hesselbom were unusually well prepared. Professor Miller, in turn, was an excellent spokesperson for theistic evolution, though I had to take issue with his claim that the universe...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
This cartoon Ken Ham, The Lie: Evolution, illustrations by Steve Cardno (Master Books, 1987). See also here. was shown as part of an otherwise innocuous PowerPoint presentation to a freshman biology class at Grady High School in Atlanta and caused a bit of a flap, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The teacher and the district science coordinator apparently refused interviews, but the student newspaper reports, based on interviews with students, that the teacher did not...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Rick Warren and others sent the most genteel invitation to perpetuate rank discrimination to President Obama this week. It is really quite eloquently stated. It asks that religious groups receiving federal grant money be allowed to continue discriminating against LGBT people, as a waiver from rules that would apply to others receiving those grants. My […]
By David MacMillan. 6. Genetic evidence. Revised July 4, 2014. Perhaps one of the clearest and most obvious confirmations of evolution is the convergence between the evolutionary paths of descent determined by fossil evidence and the phylogenetic tree generated by algorithms analyzing genetic information. Because the tree of universal common descent is real, not invented, it leaves the same fingerprint in every part of nature that life touches. Matching trees can be found in global...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Writing in the July 2014 issue of the American Geoscience Institute's magazine Earth, Scott K. Johnson relates his experience in engaging in evolution outreach in a not-so-usual venue: at his local county fair.
The Wyoming state board of education voted on July 1, 2014, to recommend a halt to the development of a new set of science standards for the state, according to Wyoming Public Media (July 1, 2014).
A follow-up on the Nye-Ham debate in the Reports of the National Center for Science Education: Andrew J. Petto said it wasn’t a real debate, which is sort of true, but the most interesting observations, to me, were those made by John W. Patterson. Prof. Patterson, an engineering professor, correctly gives Ken Ham credit for not obfuscating, for not pretending that creationism is based on anything but his interpretation of the Bible. He thinks that...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Here are the finalists of the 2014 photography contest. We received approximately 24 photographs from 10 photographers, somewhat fewer than in previous years. Most of the pictures were excellent, and we had to enlist our wife to help narrow the number of finalists to 5. To choose the finalists, we considered what we thought were the scientific and pictorial qualities of the photographs, and also attempted to represent as many photographers and present as much...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
You may get an idea how science really works from an article by Boston science writer Kate Becker in today’s Boulder Daily Camera. (I think the column is exclusive to the Daily Camera.) Becker describes the Bicep2 experiment, which looked for evidence of cosmic inflation by examining the polarization of the cosmic background radiation. The authors of the paper announced its conclusion before the paper had been submitted for review; since then, others have criticized...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
By David MacMillan. 5. Evolution of evolution. Most creationists believe that the theory of evolution was developed out of an ideological commitment to explaining life apart from God. Explanations of the history of evolutionary theory often point out personal struggles in the lives of prominent scientists – Darwin most often, of course – in support of this belief. “Secular scientists wanted a way of explaining a world that didn’t require God, so they invented this...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
NCSE is pleased to announce that the latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education is now available on-line.
NCSE is pleased to announce the next of a new series of on-line workshops aimed at broadening and deepening the networks that make our work possible. The next workshop focuses on involving students, who have a direct stake in the integrity of science education, in science education advocacy.
"What are they teaching your kids about global warming?" asked National Journal (June 26, 2014). The answer is provided by "a patchwork of climate instruction guidelines that largely leaves teachers to their own devices, facilitating massive disparities in global-warming education from school to school and state to state."
"Political debates surrounding climate change and creationism are now making their way into America's schools, as more states are deciding whether to adopt or reject new common science standards "that put a greater emphasis on controversial topics like global warming and evolution," according to US News and World Report (June 20, 2014).
John Freshwater’s petition for a writ of certiorari has been placed on the SCOTUS docket for a September 29, 2014, conference....
Richard B. Hoppe
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