Goosebumps Are Proof of Evolution

Chicago Biologist Jerry Coyne wrote a really cool (and really short, for all you with ADHD, like me) post about how goosebumps are evidence of evolution:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/vestigial-organ%e2%80%94goosebumps/


In other news, LiveScience had a really cool article about the four winged dinosaur:

http://www.livescience.com/animals/dinosaur-birds-glided-trees-100125.html

And PloS Biology published a really cool article that I will be blogging on shortly about evolutionary robotics:
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000292

The Panda's Thumb blog linked to that article through a post titled "It is still a robot" (lol).

After All These Years... Proof!

Modern Day Miracles?

That's the title of my new article on DB Skeptic. Here's an excerpt:

Can miracles occur today?

Let’s look at the evidence by examining three kinds of miracles: One type is “Marian apparitions”. Another is the spontaneous remission of cancer, in which malignant tumors reduce or disappear, and can’t be attributed to any standard medical treatment. The final type is what I call “mundane miracles”, seemingly inexplicable and fortunate events which people attribute to the supernatural.

ICR's Bogus Science

I emailed the man who had done the research that ICR distorted. Here is my email to him:

Hi Dr. Brennecka,

Are you aware that some young earth creationists from the Institute for Creation Research are citing your latest work? You can view what they've written about it here:
http://www.icr.org/article/5161/

Also, there was a youtube user who made a video about the incident and cited the ICR article as distorted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFozOBz7eig

My question is: How do you feel about the article and the video? Which, if either, is accurate?

Sincerely,
Ryan

He responded to me:

Hi,

The YouTube video pretty well sums it up. The ICR article is a horrible twisting of our study and if I thought they would listen to reason and logic (which creationist are by definition not going to do) I would send them a note to try to straighten them out. That ICR author is paid to twist real science so it fits an agenda. That is all. Websites and articles like his are really frustrating because it takes so much time (years and years of research) to do things right and think them through, but any moron can put up a website with whatever lies he or she wants.

Thanks for your email, and hope that helps.

Greg

(He also gave me permission to post his email.)

The Greatest Antiapologists

I want to make a list. Two lists, actually.

I want to make a list of the men and women who have written books, essays, websites, and blogs that give religious apologetics a lot to worry about. I want to make one list a list of men from 40+ years ago who wrote against religion: people like Robert Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, and Percy Shelley along with links to their finest works.

The second list would consist of people from within the last forty years along with links to their work, and would include people like John L. Mackie, Richard Carrier, and Daniel Dennett.

So please comment with the names of your candidates and (optionally) links or mentions of their finest works.

Charles Darwin the Skeptic

My admiration for the man only grows with time. Here's an excerpt from a post on LiveScience:

Darwin's correspondence to friends, family, and colleagues reveals he held very skeptical views about psychics, the paranormal, and alternative medicine. For example, in a Sept. 4, 1850, letter to his second cousin Rev. William Darwin Fox, Darwin was scathingly dismissive of psychic powers (clairvoyance) and homeopathy:

"You speak about Homeopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one’s ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homeopathy common sense & common observation come into play, and both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever." (Here Darwin is referring to the illogical homeopathic premise that tiny amounts of a drug are more effective than larger doses.)

Darwin then notes that in order for homeopathy to be scientifically tested, it would need to be studied against a control group: "How true is a remark I saw the other day...in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homeopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes in everything..."

Arif Ahmed

I had never heard of Arif Ahmed until a few days ago, but after listening to his debates with William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas, I am convinced that he is someone I definitely want representing atheism. He did a great job pointing out the fallacies in Dr. Craig's arguments and a super job at arguing against the resurrection with Dr. Habermas. Both of these debates must be listened to by believers and nonbelievers alike.