For an introduction to this project please see this post.

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Here's a string of ideas I aim to draw on to create discourse for thinking about ourselves as having evolved:

1. There's nothing in the universe except:
   
      -  matter acted on by physics
   
      -  whatever's involved…

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I'm a materialist, so let's not get confused. I'm an atheist, and this is all hypothetical musings, not meant to convince anyone that the supernatural exist. So, no misunderstandings that fly oh so freely on the internet please. No long comments explaining to me that until there is proof of the supernatural I should reject the claim of one; I know this. Next on my house-keeping list, I'm going to be getting into hard areas to speculate on; I realize I set up what is likely false dichotomies,… Continue

I hate to bag on my own colleagues, but the evidence is overwhelming: most high school biology teachers either do not teach evolution or undermine their own teaching by giving nods and winks to creationist ideas. (See Most high school biology teachers don’t endorse evolution, by Valerie…

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While many reasonable adherents do , to one level or another, believe in evolution. Why should evolution have any bearing on religion one way or the other? Some of these levels of belief range from belief in

“micro-evolution” to accepting most of the concepts and ideas of

cosmological and biological evolution, in view of an absent watchmaker.

So, what scientific reason can evolution have with such a seemingly

strong opposing view against it? After all, in March 2009, a…

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I published this piece at my blog and thought you all might appreciate it.



As you may know, my universe has no room for the possibility of a god. And in general I don't care what other people think and believe as long as their suppositions and practices don't affect me in any way. You can believe in fairies and unicorns and believe you have to bay at the moon 2 times a night to stop from… Continue

One of the innate human characteristics that separates us from other animals on earth is our insatiable need to find out "why". Our natural need to seek for things like food and a mate is shared with other animals, but the questioning of why things happen is a unique to humans. It is ingrained in us, from the first day we start searching… Continue

My recent blog piece "At the edge of knowledge" spawned an awesome amount… Continue

We know nothing.



The collective knowledge of all the people on earth that have ever lived is but a drop in the ocean of all possible knowledge in the universe. (1) And the amount of knowledge any one person has is… Continue

A butterfly I designed using Charles Darwin's Finches. The different finch heads and beaks carefully arranged to form an image of a butterfly. The bird's eyes compliment the butterfly's unique wing design.

I'm currently taking American Literature 1 (from colonization to the Civil War) and had to read some Thomas Paine for class. Two excerpts from the Age of Reason, to be exact The First, sections 8 and 9. And in section 8 I found this quote:… Continue

I've been reading the post and discussion from Alber Crombie's discussion, "Are Theists Unnatural?" with great interest. I started writing an entry to their discussion and found myself writing the proverbial War and Peace in response. Rather than deluge their discussion with my… Continue

It was about 10 years ago I heard about computer viruses and their similarities to human viruses or natural viruses . That comparison was very interesting for me and even this comparison ignited an idea in my mind: if we call natural viruses live or semi live beings then we can call computer viruses alive or semi alive too.

Here Ramadan has begun a few days ago and my parents like many other Muslims fast in this month and they practice rituals more than other months. Once I was looking at… Continue

I was reading through news and I came across an article about black coats in gray wolves and how they are becoming more prevalent in North America . Through studies they found that the darker coat doesn't improve camouflage as a predator or as prey. But further prodding revealed that the protein that causes the black coat is the same that helps prevent inflammation and infection in humans. I'll allow you to put 2 and 2 together but this is lovely evidence for evolution, speciation, and natural… Continue

An occasionally used creationist tactic is declaring that evolution isn’t a scientific theory but a circular argument preached with the zeal of a religion. Evolution, they say, isn’t repeatable under laboratory conditions and if it’s not repeatable, it’s not science. Can we put evolutionary mechanisms to the test and show exactly how we can reproduce them in a lab?

( read on... )