Sometimes a whole bunch of stories on the BBC amuse me all at once, even when they are not necessarily funny. Is it because I read them in a British Accent? Or because of the quaint bits that can only happen in an Old World news story? Or is it just that the British are different yet the same enough for me to see behind a curtain that might otherwise appear as a wall?
So let’s review the BBC morning news.
By the Quantum Pontiff. Interesting list. Could be an internet meme.
…The park encompasses the giant caldera of a hotspot-fuelled ‘supervolcano’ that last exploded 630,000 years ago, and is famous as the place to see geysers, hot springs and other hydrothermal activity, all powered by that same hotspot. …
In surveying the diversity of living organisms, the 20th century evolutionary theorist Theodosius Dobzhansky did not see “a formless mass of randomly combining genes and traits.” Instead he perceived pockets of discontinuity organized around available ecological niches – clusters of occupied “adaptive peaks” separated by rifts and valleys representing vacant spots in the natural world. Big cats, for example, formed their own mountain chain distinct from the cluster of dog species, and dog species were likewise separated from bears. By looking at the ecological and evolutionary topography of species, life’s pattern would emerge.
The anti-Darwin industry among fundamentalist Christians has produced thousands of pages of misinformation in their attempt to tar and feather the theory of evolution. I have responded to many of these false claims previously. However, one assertion that is especially outlandish is that the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was a devoted Darwinian who funded a program to create “ape-man Superwarriors” in his goal for world domination. As Creation Ministries, publisher of the Journal of Creation and advocate of a young Earth literal interpretation of the Bible, insisted in 2006…