Recent genetic studies suggest that Humans and Sharks shared a common ancestor 450 million years ago. At first this might seem unlikely, but humans and sharks do share some traits that aren’t found in fishes - they copulate (internal fertilization), and they bear live young. According to the ABC article, we also share some DNA having to do with our sperm and immune system
Be aware of the most popular Creationist arguments for a Young Earth which many of them see as their best hope in their holy crusade against evolution (and reason). Many of their claims sound like they are based in science, but they don’t stand up to even the most casual scrutiny.
If you have some time, poke through Dave Matson’s posting:
How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? (1995) A comprehensive, point-by-point refutation young-Earth arguments and other creationist claims made by Dr. Kent Hovind (”young Earth creationist and dinosaur hunter”) in the Hovind-Patterson debate.
Or why, if you want to be ruled by a religion, you should move to Iran. This is just a quick scribble about why Christian fundamentalists are just as bad as Islamic fundamentalists. They have just as bad of a track record. Democracy requires two things to remain strong (and even possible): an educated populace, separation of church and state.
For those of you who followed the Dover Trial in PA closely, you still may have missed this little tid-bit. Wikipedia states that ‘Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. is the first direct challenge brought in United States federal courts against a public school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.’ The parents of several students brought suit against the school board after they decided to mandate that Biology teachers read a prepared statement to the effect that evolution is ‘just a theory’ and that an alternative, in ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) exists and that books on the theory were placed in the library.
We are in the middle of a revolution. The Information revolution is transforming how business gets done and what individuals do for a living just like the industrial revolution did in a past century. The internet allows us to share information quickly and easily, a technology that we all thought would speed the advancement of science as the brilliant minds in Universities around the world partnered and compared notes. Although this certainly has happened, the medium of the internet has also allowed the forces of ignorance to share their seductively simple and deceptive messages with an ever broadening audience as well. This became very evident as I investigated the Carbon-14 radioactive dating method on the interenet tonight.
