Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
I was skimming through George Barry O’Toole’s The Case Against Evolution (1926) recently, and I was struck by the following sentence (from a chapter on “Homology and its Interpretation”): “In practice, however, the classifications of systematists are often very arbitrary, and we find…
Last week, we explored what it takes to become a fossil and what exactly fossils are. Hopefully, you have some appreciation for the relatively rare conditions necessary to become a fossil. But let’s say you beat the odds and die along a floodplain and get buried in sediment before decaying or…
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Robert Henson's The Thinking Person's Guide to Climate Change (American Meteorological Society, 2014). The preview consists of chapter 14, "The Predicament: What Would It Take to Fix Global Warming?" Henson writes, "The global warming…
Last week on Fossil Friday, we encountered a little ocean delight and we asked, what’s its genus...and its very lovely common name? The common name should have been obvious. Just look at it—it looks like a flower, and sure enough this organism is called a “sea lily.” But what was the…
This week’s Fossil Friday is from our Fossil Friend Dan Phelps. He just got the fossil cleaned up recently, and let me tell you, the before and after images are pretty amazing. Maybe if we ask nicely, Dan will post them in the comments below. But in the meantime, can you figure out the genus…
“In the year 1806 the French Institute enumerated not less than eighty geological theories which were hostile to the Scriptures; but not one of those theories is held to-day.” In part 1, I explained that Luther Tracy Townsend’s Collapse of Evolution (1905) attributes that sentence to “…
Attitudes toward evolution and the compatibility of science and religion were addressed in a new survey (PDF) from the Public Religion Research Institute (which, as NCSE previously reported, was mainly focused on climate change). Presented with "Evolution is the best explanation for the origins…
A new survey (PDF) from the Public Religion Research Institute hopes to help to explain, in the words of its report's subtitle, "Why Americans are Conflicted about Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science." Included in the survey was a series of questions probing beliefs about climate…
In last week’s somewhat belated post, I gave a long introduction to this question: What does it take to become a fossil, and what does it take to be found? I made the claim, too, that if you can understand how rare quality fossil finds are, you can begin to appreciate all that we do know and get…