The animals’ remains don’t look like traditional fossils. They’re more like fossil echoes: chemical traces of a compound only produced — at least in modern times — by demosponges, descendants of what some scientists consider to be the last common ancestor of all animals.
“It is, definitively, the earliest evidence for animals,” said geochemist Gordon Love of the University of California, Riverside, lead author of the study published Wednesday in Nature.
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week’s Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: “They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.”
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give “credit” to God, Attenborough added: “They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”
Using argon-argon dating—a technique that compares different isotopes of the element argon—researchers determined that the volcanic ash layers entombing the tools at Gademotta date back at least 276,000 years.
Many of the tools found are small blades, made using a technique that is thought to require complex cognitive abilities and nimble fingers, according to study co-author and Berkeley Geochronology Center director Paul Renne.
Some archaeologists believe that these tools and similar ones found elsewhere are associated with the emergence of the modern human species, Homo sapien.
“It seems that we were technologically more advanced at an earlier time that we had previously thought,” said study co-author Leah Morgan, from the University of California, Berkeley.
First of all this suggests that Humans were the expected outcome of God’s creation and while it is easy to understand this flawed logic, after all, we are the outcome of God’s creation, this should not be confused with a forward looking goal. In fact, it is easy to argue that God’s Creation was set in motion to eventually result in a form of life which could gain spirituality and a soul and thus become aware of His existence. Furthermore, even if God had set in motion a Darwinian process, He could still have intervened, as I have explained above, without violating natural law. In other words, the process would still appear purely Darwinian and at the same time would be guided.
So contrary to the fallacious claims that ‘true Darwinists’ cannot be ‘true Christians’, it is self evident that such a position is not logically tenable.
What I find puzzling is why people are intent on rejecting the good science of Darwinism and evolutionary theory as somehow being incompatible with their faith. That shows both a disregard for science, which is a typical ID Creationist affliction, as well as a significant lack in faith.
Here, it was clear that there simply is no controversy. In contrast to the arguments over bacterial trees and the origin of eukaryotes, none of the researchers felt compelled to explain or justify their focus on the role of mutation and selective pressure. Concerns, when they arose, were simply focused on identifying the consequences of selection. As such, Discovery’s focus on presenting a controversy here seems hallucinatory.
Welcome to Expelled Exposed, a detailed look at the Ben Stein movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. We’ll show you why this movie is not a documentary at all, but anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none.
To learn why the claims made in Expelled are false, find out The Truth behind the Fiction. For information on the producers and their actions, go Behind the Scenes. To learn more about evolution and intelligent design, or to see what other people thought of Expelled, view our links to other online Resources.
how do people who don’t believe in evolution deal with the following story?
A 3-year-old boy fell into an exhibit occupied by gorillas at the Brookfield Zoo this afternoon, and was rescued by a female gorilla that cradled the child and brought him to zookeepers.The boy injured his head when he fell 18 feet onto the exhibit’s concrete. He was alert when taken to a hospital, although his condition was later listed as critical.Seven gorillas were on display in the exhibit. One of them, Binti, a 7-year-old female with a baby gorilla on her back, picked up the child, cradled him in her arms and placed him near a door where zookeepers could retrieve him, said Sondra Katzen, a spokeswoman for the zoo, 10 miles west of downtown Chicago.
so, no real suprise here: american’s don’t know what the crap they believe.
it’s still scary, though, that they can claim both things:
The data indicate some seeming confusion on the part of Americans on this issue. About a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution’s explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were created as is about 10,000 years ago.
It might seem contradictory to believe that humans were created in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years and at the same time believe that humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. But, based on an analysis of the two side-by-side questions asked this month about evolution and creationism, it appears that a substantial number of Americans hold these conflicting views.
Those of you who follow the DF RSS feed know how the weekly sponsorship works. There’s one sponsor per week, and two posts: on Monday, an entry that appears only in the RSS feed, written by the sponsor; then on Friday, a thank-you post that appears on both the DF website and in the RSS feed, written by me. (You’re reading one of the latter now.) The rule for […]
Neven Mrgan: Some time later, I worked on a twitter client with my pal Buzz. A friend of his who worked at Apple told us this little story. One day while riding the elevator at Infinite Loop, he found himself in the freakiest scenario any Apple employee can imagine: alone, with the elevator door opening to let Steve in. Being a well-adjusted individual, Buzz […]
Tim Bajarin, “Why Google and Microsoft Hate Siri”: Yes, Siri is an important product for enhancing our user interface with the iPhone. But Siri is in its infancy. When it grows up, it will be the front end to all types of searches conducted on iPhones, iPads, Mac’s and even Apple TV. And, if I were Google or Microsoft, perhaps I too would be playing down the […]
Looks gorgeous and clever. Reminds me of HAL. Here’s CEO Tony Fadell — that Tony Fadell — introducing the company in a blog post: “So what are you working on lately?” a friend asks over lunch. “I started a new company. We make thermostats.” They chuckle, take a bite of their salad, “No, seriously. What are you doing?” “I’m serious. Thermostats.” ★ […]
National Geographic Traveler’s latest edition features Best Trips 2012 and in addition to Peru, and Panama, and Greece, Iceland, Thailand, Dresden, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Oman, Costa Brava, Croatia and other exotic places there sits Pittsburgh. Yes. Pittsburgh! Suck it, World. Or Peetsboirg, as my awesome Mexican in-laws pronounce it. My God, I oughta start a […]
Mac OS X Hints: Before Lion it was possible to run an external display off a laptop and have the internal display disabled, even if you opened the lid. This can be useful for a myriad of reasons including energy saving and better Wi-Fi reception. With Lion the internal display will always turn on when the lid is opened, even if there is already an external d […]
When I’m in a Wine and Spirits store, perusing the whiskey section, more times than not I’m approached by a store clerk that really doesn’t know what they are talking about. I don’t mean that to sound ugly because most times that’s perfectly fine (I know what I want or I’m just checking things out). However a recent encounter had me thinking about a customer […]
On the 1896 five dollar bill, "the entire obverse was covered with artwork representing electricity." The $2 bill offered an image representing science, with youth gracing the $1. […]
Speaking of fascinating new imaging technology, Lytro today started taking preorders for their new “light field technology” camera. The result allows you to “focus” the image after it was taken. Sounds amazing, and the examples look good. I’ll let others be the guinea pigs on this, but I’m tempted. (In another sign of the changing times, their desktop editin […]
Some say he lived some 155 to 150 million years ago, and that he had a brain the size of a walnut. All we know is, he's not The Stig, but he is the Stig's prehistoric cousin. The oldest Stig.... in the world. $16.99 - $18.99 […]
Photo: Poptech David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and author. Avi Solomon What fascinates you about the nature of time? David Eagleman We all go through life assuming that time is an external river that flows past us. But experiments in my laboratory over the past decade have shown that this is not precisely the case. Time is an active construction of the br […]
Here's a magical demonstration of superconductivity from Tel-Aviv University. Of course, superconductors are key to the future vision for high-speed maglev trains. (Thanks, Ariel Waldman!) […]
Jonas Pfiel's "Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera" sports 36 cameras and contains firmware that stitches their output together to form a global panorama; you throw it into the air and at the top of its arc, it takes a snap and processes it. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) […]
The Very Large Array is a spectacular piece of a scientific equipment with a less-than-compelling name. Located in New Mexico, you've seen this radio observatory pop up in the background of movies, album covers, and on Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This year, the Very Large Array, which has been around since the 1970s, got some much-needed electronic upgrad […]
[Video Link] The great science reporter Robert Krulwich of NPR has a beautiful story up from earlier this year about epically tall trees in the ancient forests of California. I missed this when it was first published, but it's been making the rounds again this week on Twitter. Krulwich begins by introducing us to a tree in Humboldt Redwoods State Park i […]
Steve Jobs is dead. The combination of pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant meant the odds were inevitably stacked against him. (The immunosuppressants needed to prevent organ rejection would impair his immune system's ability to respond to a recurrence of the cancer, making a relapse much more likely.) In medicine, even great wealth can't buy […]
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