). One of them is Brent Kelley, an undergraduate at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.Almost everybody I talk to seems to disagree with the “militant” positions that firebrand atheists such as Dawkins and PZ take. They feel they are too extreme and that their outlook too rigid.Why not visit their blog and post a comment? I did.
I might disagree to some extent, but that’s not the point. The point is that the great atheist leaders that many atheists regard so highly are often viewed by outsiders as extreme, unreasonable, and ridiculous. Even those who agree with our cause often feel this way. Which means that if we’re trying to get the public on-board with our ideas and opinions, we’re failing.
We need to work on our image. I’m not sure where to start, but perhaps approaching the problem from the ground up is a nice way to start tackling the issue. What I would suggest is for atheists everywhere to be a little more friendly to not only one another, but also to others outside their atheist circle of friends. Before you attack a theist’s beliefs, ask yourself if the argument is worth it. You probably wont change their mind anyway. Instead, perhaps you could start up a discussion about science and try to explain the scientific viewpoint on this or that. Slowly and gently introducing them to the worldview of scientific naturalism might make them more receptive to atheism and critical thinking. And be open to their ideas too, you might even learn something. Do whatever, just don’t get into a shouting match and reinforce the stereotype that atheists are argumentative, unfriendly, and annoying. [emphasis in original]
Step 3: Learn About the Case against Evolution (1.5 hours). Now students will learn about some of the science that challenges evolution. Watch the DVD Icons of Evolution.This is far too complicated for public school students. The simple answer is that microevolution describes changes occurring within populations and macroevolution describes the history of life. Macroevolution includes things such as speciation that are not part of microevolution and it also includes things like asteroid impacts, ice ages, and drifting continents in order to explain the history of life. There's an important part of evolutionary theory called "Hierarchical Theory" where proponents argue for higher-level mechanisms of evolution such as species selection. They aren't part of microevolutionary explanations. Thus, microevolution is necessary but not sufficient to explain macroevolution [Macroevolution].
- Ask students to explain the difference between microevolution and macroevolution.
-The video mentions the Galápagos finches. Do the finches represent an example of microevolution or macroevolution?It's on the border between microevolution and macroevolution. The value of the work on the Galapogos finches is that the results suggest how new species are formed. They formed from a combination of physical isolation events (different islands) plus microevoutionary events involving natural selection, and random genetic drift. Such speciation events occurred repeatedly in the history of life and these studies show how they can be explained by purely natural causes.
-The video mentions mutations in fruit flies which gave fruit flies an extra pair of wings. Were these fruit flies able to fly better and survive with the extra wings?No.
-Are mutations helpful or harmful? Ask for examples of harmful mutations? How about helpful ones?A harmful mutation is one that decreases fitness. There are hundreds of examples of genetic diseases in humans. A beneficial mutation is one that increases fitness. Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is a classic example but so is HIV resistance in humans. Dozens of field studies have shown that beneficial mutations can arise fairly quickly in populations that are challenged by environmental change. Molecular data documents thousand of beneficial changes to genes and enzymes over time.
-What was the Cambrian explosion?The Cambrian Explosion was a period in the history of life where we see the appearance of new types of animals. The dates are approximately 500 million years ago and the time frame for the visible appearance of these groups ranges from 10-50 million years. It's important to note that the fossils of the Cambrian don't look like any species that are alive today and they don't contain any examples of land life. It's also important to note that the Cambrian explosion doesn't apply to plants, fungus, protozoa, and bacteria.
-Does the fossil evidence show that species have evolved by small gradual changes, or large sudden changes? Do fossils support Darwin’s theory? Why or why not?The are many examples of slow gradual changes over millions of year but there are also examples of patterns called Punctuated Equilibria. In these examples you see very small changes—such as the speciation events in the Galapagos finches—happening at the time of speciation. In other words, the fossil record mimics the sort of thing you see in the Galapagos islands where the small changes occurring at speciation are quickly fixed in the population within ten or twenty thousand years. There's hardly any fossil record of the intermediates showing the transition between these closely related species.
-The video also mentions the origin of life. Does the evidence support the claim that the building blocks of life were present on the early earth? Why or why not?The origin of life is an interesting scientific problem that hasn't been solved. Although it has nothing to do with evolution, it's clearly related. Some scientists think that life arose in a primordial soup containing abundant supplies of all the necessary building blocks we see today. There is plenty of scientific evidence that some of these building blocks—such as simple sugars and amino acids—can arise spontaneously. In fact, many of them have been detected in outer space. Other scientists prefer scenarios where life began much more simply with very small, highly abundant, chemicals that are still around today in the oceans. It will be interesting to watch for new discoveries as you grow up because science is poised to make significant advances in these areas.
-Compared to humans, was the first life simple or complex? How about compared to a calculator, computer, or cell phone? Are living organisms more or less complicated than human technology? What do students think?All available scientific evidence points to a common ancestor that was much more simple than humans, or most other species that are living today. Those primitive ancestors are much less complex than a modern computer because, in addition to having only a few hundred genes (at most), the internal cell biology and biochemistry was undoubtedly sloppy and inefficient. No modern machine is anything like that.
1. By my definition, you aren't "arrogant" if you are right. You are only arrogant when you are close-minded and wrong.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. It a holiday marked by good meals and getting together with friends and family. I've never thought of it in any other context. But then, I treat Christmas the same way (except there are presents).Are atheists thankful? And, if so, to whom? Or what?What is it with people who believe in supernatural beings—especially in those Gods who need to be thanked from time to time? Why are these believers completely incapable of seeing anyone else's point of view? Is there something about believing in "transcendent reality" that affects their brains?
In the Pacific Northwest, which has the highest proportion of non-religious people in North America, Thanksgiving is not always simple for those who do not believe in a transcendent reality.
How do the almost two out five British Columbians who say they have no religion, and especially the 16 per cent who are atheists, approach a festive day that encourages humans to express a sense of thankfulness, particularly for life itself being a gift?
I've been so busy lately that I forgot to mention the latest Carnival of Evolution. This is doubly embarrassing because it features one of my favorite blogs [Carnival of Evolution #28 - Featuring Sandwalk].WELCOME to the 28th edition of Carnival of Evolution! This time the carnival has returned home. Not since the first edition back in August 2008 has an edition been posted here. That is cause for celebration, so let's do that with a little survey. I am interested who reads Carnival of Evolution, so please spend the next two minutes tops taking this brief survey about yourself and CoE. Results will then be posted here for the bemusement of all.
The Velvet Underground was a New York rock band in the 1960s. It was never very popular and never made much money but it's said to have influenced many other, more successful, bands. 
There were many more second and third generation scientists who grew up in the 'phage group. My own supervisor used to refer frequently to Delbrück's "Principle of Limited Sloppiness" as an effective way of doing science. Photo Credits: Top: Delbrück in the early 1940s from Wikipedia. Bottom: Delbrück and Luria at Cold Spring Harbor in 1953.
1. Physics was too easy—he wanted more of a challenge.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a planned set of essays by Mr. Talbott explaining the significance of a revolution in genetics and molecular biology that has only just begun to receive public attention. Although this essay is at times necessarily technical, we trust that our readers will not find it prohibitively so — and we have appended a modest and informal glossary to help smooth the path.You all know where this is going, don't you?
A number of conundrums have helped to nudge molecular biology toward a more contextualized understanding of the gene. To begin with, the Human Genome Project revised the human gene count downward from 100,000 to 20,000–25,000. What made the figure startling was the fact that much simpler creatures — for example, a tiny, transparent roundworm — were found to have roughly the same number of genes. More recently, researchers have turned up a pea aphid with 34,600 genes and a water flea with 39,000 genes. Not even the "chimps are human" boosters were ready to set themselves on the same scale with a water flea. The difference in gene counts required some sort of shift in understanding.I've addressed this before. Knowledgeable experts in the field were predicting 30,000 genes at least as far back as the late 1960s. Their predictions were very close to the mark [False History and the Number of Genes] [Humans Have Only 20,500 Protein-Encoding Genes] [Facts and Myths Concerning the Historical Estimates of the Number of Genes in the Human Genome]. Steve Talbot hasn't done his homework. This isn't a very auspicious beginning.
A second oddity centered on the fact that, upon "deciphering" the genetic Book of Life, we found that our coding scheme made the vast bulk of it read like nonsense. That is, some 95 or 98 percent of human DNA was useless for making proteins. Most of this "noncoding DNA" was at first dismissed as "junk" — meaningless evolutionary detritus accumulated over the ages. At best, it was viewed as a kind of bag of spare parts, borne by cells from one generation to another for possible employment in future genomic innovations. But that’s an awful lot of junk for a cell to have to lug around, duplicate at every cell division, and otherwise manage on a continuing basis.In this day and age, anyone who equates junk DNA with non-coding DNA isn't worth reading. They've lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned.
So what’s going on? These puzzles turn out to be intimately related. As organisms rise on the evolutionary scale, they tend to have more "junk DNA." Noncoding DNA accounts for some 10 percent of the genome in many one-celled organisms, 75 percent in roundworms, and 98 percent in humans. The ironic suspicion became too obvious to ignore: maybe it’s precisely our "junk" that differentiates us from water fleas. Maybe what counts most is not so much the genes themselves as the way they are regulated and expressed. Noncoding DNA could provide the complex regulatory functions that direct genes toward service of the organism’s needs, including its developmental needs.Anyone who states or implies that there is a significant correlation between total haploid genome size and species complexity is either ignorant or lying.
Another conundrum — perhaps the most decisive one — has been recognized and wrestled with (or more often just ignored) since the early twentieth century. With few exceptions, every different type of cell in the human body contains the same chromosomes and the same DNA sequence as the original, single-celled zygote. Yet somehow this zygote manages to differentiate into every manner of tissue — liver, skin, muscle, brain, blood, bone, retina, and so on. If genes determine the form and substance of the organism, how is it that such radically different cellular architectures result from the same genes? What directs genes to produce the intricately sculpted and differentiated form of a complex organism, and how can this directing agency be governed by the very genes that it directs?We've known the basic answer to this "conundrum" for about five decades. Talbott's idea of a revolution is very strange.
1. Steve Talbott is a Senior Researcher at The Nature Institute. "My primary undertaking right now is a critique of conventional science with a view toward establishing the foundations of a new, qualitative science. The project, which requires an extraordinarily radical assessment of contemporary habits of thought, is headquartered here."
I wish I were going to be in Los Angeles next weekend at the Secular Humanism Conference.Science and Religion: Confrontation or Accommodation?I sure hope it's going to be on YouTube!
How should secular humanists respond to science and religion? If we champion science, must we oppose faith? How best to approach flashpoints like evolution education? A wide-ranging examination featuring a spectrum of distinguished panelists:
* Jennifer Michael Hecht (moderator)
* PZ Myers
* Eugenie Scott
* Chris Mooney
* Victor Stenger
The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was given to Robert G. Edwards "for the development of in vitro fertilization". They should have added "in humans."As well as leading to a host of new treatments for infertility, the work also founded the principles behind stem cell research, cloning and techniques that would allow couples to prevent passing on inheritable diseases to their children.The good news is that the Vatican is really, really, pissed! [Vatican official criticises Nobel win for IVF pioneer]. I think it's because the Roman Catholic Church is pro-life.
Christer Höög, professor of molecular biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and a member of the Nobel Prize Committee, said the birth represented a "paradigm shift"
"It showed for the first time that it is possible to treat infertility," he said.
Prof Edwards' work was highly controversial at the time and there was strong opposition to what was seen as 'playing God' and the research had to be privately funded.
There are two main problems with Intelligent Design Creationism. The first is that the IDiots never have anything positive to offer by way of explanation. They complain about how evolution can never do this or that but they never give us a better explanation based on their beliefs. The second problem is that the IDiots often get their science wrong when they complain about evolution. Sometimes this is deliberate, but in many cases it's because they just don't understand what they're criticizing. 
Behe's "Two Binding Sites Rule" is a good example. He argues that in order for two proteins to interact, evolution needs to create a small patch on the surface of each protein where five or six amino acid side chains become compatible with binding. Some of these changes could be neutral so they could arise independently but the analysis of hundreds of known binding sites shows that many of the mutations would be detrimental if they occurred by themselves—a single charged amino acid residue on the surface, for example.Now suppose that, in order to acquire some new, useful property, not just one but two new protein-binding sites had to develop. A CCC requires, on average, 1020, a hundred billion billion, organisms—more than the number of mammals that has ever existed on earth. So if other things were equal, the likelihood of getting two new binding sites would be what we called in Chapter 3 a "double CCC"—the square of a CCC, or one in ten to the fortieth power. Since that's more cells than likely have ever existed on earth, such an event would not be expected to have happened by Darwinian processes in the history of the world. Admittedly, statistics are all about averages, so some freak event like this might happen—it's not ruled out by the force of logic. But it's not biologically reasonable to expect it, or less likely events that occurred in the common descent of life on earth. In short, complexes of just three or more different proteins are beyond the edge of evolution. They are lost in shape space.We're all pretty knowledgeable here but how many of you can immediately refute that argument? If you can't then you have no business accusing Behe of being stupid or silly and of dismissing his book as just another example of creationist ignorance. The correct explanation of the problem will undoubtedly appear soon in the comments. Before peeking, why not try and see how you would answer Behe if you were debating him in front of a large audience of creationists?
1. Behe may have been wrong about the specific chloroquine resistance mutation he used as an example. The two mutations may not have occurred simultaneously. Nevertheless, the principle is sound. If the single mutations are detrimental then you need both to get resistance and the probablity of two such mutations occurring together is 10-20.
Brian Dalton is Mr. Deity. If you haven't been watching all the episodes over the past few years then go to the website and buy the DVD. You won't regret it. 
It's been a week since I issued A Challenge to Theists and their Accommodationist Supporters.This brings me to my challenge. I challenge all theists and all their accommodationist friends to post their very best 21st century, sophisticated (or not), arguments for the existence of God. They can put them in the comments section of this posting, or on any of the other atheist blogs, or on their own blogs and websites. Just send me the link.There have been over 500 comments on that posting and dozens of attempts to meet the challenge, ranging from the fact that Babylon hasn't been re-built to variations of the old Cosmological and Ontological Arguments that have been around for centuries.
Try and make it concise and to the point. It would be nice if it's less than 100 years old. Keep in mind that there are over 1000 different gods so it would be helpful to explain just which gods the argument applies to.
