For its commencement speaker this year, Emory University has chosen John Hopkins neurosurgeon and humanitarian Ben Carson. Carson’s personal story and scientific accomplishments are extraordinary (as his CV attests), which presumably led Emory seniors to put him on their list and administrators to choose him. Because Carson is famous and has already given 73 other [...]
Tags:Ben Carson·commencement speaker·creationism·Emory University·Johns Hopkins·NOMA·non-overlapping magisteria·Seventh Day Adventist·Stephen Jay Gould·young earth creationist
Ever since humans began thinking and talking about the world, they have had ideas about its nature and cosmic placement. Cosmological thinking surely goes back to the Upper Paleolithic and has been fodder for debate for perhaps 45,000 years. Systematic thinking on the subject began 2,500 years ago when a group of thinkers (mostly in [...]
Tags:cosmology·directed evolution·directional evolution·Full House·mathematic fallacy·microbial world·mode of life·nature of universe·progressivism·progressivist·Stephen Jay Gould·teleology·Tim Maudlin
The priest and paleontologist was present at the beginning, more or less. When the hoaxed Piltdown “fossils” were discovered in 1912 and the “Peking Man” (Homo erectus) site at Zhoukoudian was excavated in the 1940s, the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was there. What he was doing has always remained something of a mystery.
While [...]
Tags:Amir Aczel·convergence·Homo erectus·mysticism·Omega Point·Peking Man·Piltdown Man·Stephen Jay Gould·Teilhard de Chardin·The Jesuit & The Skull·Zhoukoudian
As Nicholas Wade reports, the prominent evolutionary theorist George Williams recently died. It is somehow fitting that Wade, who tells group level selection stories about the evolution of religion in his book The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved & Why It Endures, should write Williams’ obituary. Although Williams’ interests were broad, he is best known [...]
Tags:Adaptation and Natural Selection·Darwin's Cathedral·David Sloan Wilson·gene level selection·George Williams·group level selection·Matt Rossano·multilevel selection·neolithic·Nicholas Wade·Paleolithic·Richard Dawkins·Stephen Jay Gould·the evolution of religion·The Faith Instinct·The Selfish Gene
In May of this year, John Avise — an evolutionary biologist at UC-Irvine — published an article (“Footprints of Nonsentient Design Inside the Human Genome“) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s leading scientific journals. The article, which attacked Intelligent Design “theory” on the ground that an omnipotent and [...]
Tags:accomodationists·Adam and Eve·Augustine of Hippo·Catholic theologians·Diarmaid MacCulloch·fall from grace·Footprints of Nonsentient Design Inside the Human Genome·human genome·intelligent design·John Avise·justification for God·Leibniz·non-overlapping magisteria·non-sentient selection·problem of evil·problem of suffering·Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences·Protestants·rebellion·sin·Stephen Jay Gould·The Reformation·theodicy·theology·unintelligent design
I recently found an excellent blog, Homo religiosus — The Natural History of Religion, written by the German scholar Dr. Michael Blume. After I linked to his blog, Michael came over here for some reading. He also had a question, which I answered, and he responded. The issue we are discussing — higher fertility rates [...]
Tags:adaptive assumptions·cultural evolution·earliest religions·fertility·group level selection·Homo religiosus·hunter-gatherers·Michael Blume·Neolithic Revolution·Panglossian Paradigm·religion as adaptation·religion as byproduct·reproductive fitness·Richard Lewontin·Sarah Hrdy·shamanisms·shamans·spandrels·Stephen Jay Gould
