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    Wasp-like bee found

    A fossil showing a bee with very wasp-like features has been found, encased in amber. Evolutionary theory predicts this. It predicts that we'll find fossils which share traits of two animals that share a common ancestor. This is just another transitional fossil amid the many already found...
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    The Second Law (Revisited)

    There is a popular (and incorrect) argument floating around creationist circles, that goes as follows: There are a number of flaws with the argument. In general, it's quicker to completely ignore Premise 1, and focus on the obviously false P2. That premise says entropy must always go up...
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    Probability of Specific Events versus General Events

    In another thread, someone was talking about convergent evolution. This is where a feature (like wings, for instance) is produced by two seperate evolutionary pathways. The person seemed astonished by how unlikely that was to happen. What I am going to try and explain here is why the...
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    The Cause of Everything

    It always puzzles me when people ask 'what caused the universe?'. When I think of the universe, I think 'everything that exists'. Obviously, we don't quite know what this comprises of, and some people think it includes gods and some don't, and some people think it includes branes and strings...
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    Entropy and Closed Systems

    Entropy is so often abused by creationists. The claim they make is usally something like this: "The Second Law states that the entropy always goes up! That means the disorder of a system will always go up! But evolution states that systems (populations or individuals, I can never tell what...
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    A Few Numbers

    It's often claimed that it would take millions of beneficial mutations in the DNA of a species to change from one species (such as dinosaurs) to a rather different sort (modern birds). This is probably fine. But it's also claimed that there isn't enough time for this to happen - which is what...
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    Extrapolation

    There are only a few premises of evolutionary theory - inherited characteristics, varied traits in a populations of individuals, differential reproductive success. From this, it's fairly easy to predict what will happen. A population will, over time, become more adapted depending on what...
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    A simple explanation

    I posted this in response to Carico, but since it seems to have been wasted there, and I think it probably serves as a good introduction to evolution for anyone, I'm posting it here, in a new thread. I've tried to simplify it as much as possible (not hard, since I only know the basics myself)...
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    Darwin vs. Kelvin - Age of the Sun

    Back in 1862, a chap named William Thomson (though you'd better know him as Lord Kelvin) estimated the age of the sun. Back in then, we didn't know about stars produced energy via fusion (that would have to wait until the 1930s). So Kelvin (and, independantly, another chap named Hermann von...
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    Product of a Mind

    I stumbled across this picture. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you think whoever came up with this must have been a pretty creative person? There is an argument about ID here, but I'm going to make it a bit more interesting, and see if people can guess the argument. I may drop hints if...
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    Centres of mass, and other things...

    Edit: Probably better suited to another forum.
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    For your listening pleasure...

    Flat earth, N-Rays, and the Earth going around the sun - these are all claims made by various people, often very smart people, through history. The interesting part is that these people often gather support. The BBC is running a series about this, and has some shows available to listen to...
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