Is God a Moral Relativist?

September 28th, 2006 Heinz Kiosk

INTERNET DEBATES about the validity of the theory of evolution are common. On American-dominated websites, newsgroups, and bulletin boards the debate is usually between Christian biblical literalists (of various stripes) on one side against Christians who interpret the relevant biblical passages less literally, atheists, and agnostics on the other side.

A common argument used by those who reject evolution runs follows: “If the Bible isn’t literally true, then there are no absolute moral standards, because absolute morality comes from God. That would be really terrible, so the Bible must be true and evolution must therefore be false.”

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The Earth…Was The Designer Loaded?

September 23rd, 2006 Long Cut

DURING THE COURSE of many CrEvo debates, we on the Evo side are confronted frequently with a form of “the Argument From Incredulity” that goes thus…

“The Earth is so perfect, so well-suited for life, how could it NOT be designed?”

My answer is, “Have you looked at it recently?

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Remembering Chernobyl

September 22nd, 2006 midwifetoad

On the 26th of April 1986 shortly after midnight, to be precise, at 1:23 GMT, there occurred near the Ukrainian town of Chornobyl a tremendous explosion at a huge nuclear power plant, followed by a gradual meltdown of the reactor No. 4. Source

THERE ARE MANY WEB SITES dedicated to Chernobyl as it is now, but few showing it as it was before the disaster. Without further ado, DarwinCentral presents Chernobyl: Before The Fall.

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A New Habitat: Submarine Carbon Dioxide Lakes

September 20th, 2006 Placozoan

RECENTLY RESEARCHERS discovered a freakish submarine lake of liquid carbon dioxide trapped under a layer of sediment in the Okinawa Trough hydrothermal system. An accompanying commentary article reports that globules of liquid carbon dioxide have been found in the deep ocean before, but such lakes were not anticipated since liquid carbon dioxide is less dense than sea water until a depth of 3000-3800 meters (at deeper depths the density once again decreases). This lake was found at a depth of 1400 meters, and is only able to exist because it is capped with a sediment-overlain layer of sulfur-rich carbon dioxide hydrate. Even more amazingly, the carbon dioxide lake appears to contain bacteria.

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Rodents Race to Survive

September 19th, 2006 Placozoan

RECENTLY PURDUE UNIVERSITY published a short news article talking about the unusual evolutionary track of the vole. Apparently the vole has been evolving at high speed, speciating 60-100 times faster than other vertebrates. A key factor in this high rate of speciation is variable chromosome numbers, as with the domestic mouse. The chromosome number ranges from 17-64, although the vole common ancestor probably had 56.

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Intelligent Design Creates Crises of Science and Faith, by Steven B. Case

September 15th, 2006 Desty Nova

STEVEN B. CASE’S opinion piece is a must-read. (If registration is required, go to BugMeNot for an username and password.)

How can you argue the following point he makes?

Irreducible complexity implies that God resides in the “gaps” of our knowledge. Science students who are introduced to the idea that God is only present in what we don’t understand, i.e. the mysteries of the universe, are left with difficult issues to resolve. If God is found in the mysteries, as their understanding of the natural world grows, then God (the mysteries) gets smaller. Read the rest of this entry »

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“Ethical” Stem-cell Kerfluffle

September 13th, 2006 Placozoan

RECENTLY ROBERT LANZA of Advanced Cell Technology made the extraordinary claim that he had succeeded in finding a way to culture embryonic stem cells from a single cell extracted from an embryo without destroying the embryo itself. If this can really be done it can avoid one ethical challenge to embryonic stem cell research. But was this really done? The Washington Post on September 6 published an article describing Sen. Specter and Sen. Harkin’s scathing criticism of Robert Lanza’s research, saying that his group had in fact destroyed the embryos. So what is going on? In order to determine this I first trekked back to the journal Nature to read the original letter (I. Klimanskaya et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature05142; 2006).

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Neanderthals and Humans Coexisted in Europe

September 13th, 2006 Bones

ONE DAY THERE MAY BE A FILM OF IT, perhaps starring Daniel Day-Lewis. It is the epic tale of survival against the odds, while surrounded and outnumbered by competitors with superior technology. The title: The Last of the Neanderthals.

Neanderthals were thought to have gone extinct around the time modern humans arrived in Europe, about 32,000 years ago. But now, the discovery of artefacts in a cave in Gibraltar shows that a remnant population clung on until at least 28,000 years ago. Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens coexisted for thousands of years.

Clive Finlayson at the Gibraltar Museum, and colleagues, recovered 240 stone tools and artefacts from sediments dated to the Upper Palaeolithic period – between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. Mass spectrometry dating puts them between 28,000 and 24,000 years old.

The exciting point is that the tools are all of a type known to palaeontologists as Mousterian: they are flints, cherts and quartzites exclusively associated with Neanderthal manufacture.

“Mousterian technology is firmly associated with Neanderthals across Europe,” says Finlayson, who adds that in the sediment layers where the tools where found there is no hint of intrusion from more recent layers, and no sign of tools made by modern humans.

[snip]

Source.

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Why viral stowaways are a baby’s best friend

September 12th, 2006 Bones

HARMLESS VIRUSES APPARENTLY STOWED AWAY for millions of years in the DNA of mammals have proved to be more than idle passengers.

New research in live sheep has demonstrated for the first time that they help embryos change shape, implant themselves in the womb and grow a placenta. The same almost certainly happens in other mammals, including humans, they say.

The findings provide new insights into how so-called endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) and mammals evolved together to the mutual advantage of both. ERVs typically account for 8% to 10% of the DNA in most mammals, including humans.

[snip]

Source.

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New Species of Bird Discovered in India

September 12th, 2006 Desty Nova

IT WOULD SEEM THAT DISCOVERIES of new species lean towards the less endearing side, but not this time. Unlike the prior recent discoveries linked, the discovery of this tacky-souvenir-shop-perfect bird, has generated a flurry of news articles totalling 64 on compared to, well, 1, 1, and 1 on Google News. PETA members may complain about this perceived inequality, but we at Darwin Central firmly believe that supply and demand is a corollary to natural selection.

Detailed PDF from Indian Birds

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