Confessions of a Conservative Atheist
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As opposed to the traditional view of evolution by natural selection, niche selection theory holds that we aren’t passive participants in our fate. Therefore, a new study about changes in our diet and our teeth millions of years ago should not have been surprising. Sometimes, even the experts can miss the forest for the trees… Continue reading The second most underrated and misunderstood evolutionary concept
Scientists discover a new cell that lives like a virus and a new rule of life that can best be seen as the opposite of a regular rule, introducing chaos into the operation of a cell at a fundamental level. Scientists like tidy groupings, where you are either in or you’re out. At least since… Continue reading Evolution, two recent discoveries, and how there remain more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy
Almost everyone knows that an octopus is much smarter than we would expect for a boneless creature that lives in the ocean, but next to no one expected they would achieve their intelligence using some of the same genes and chemical processes we do. Octopi and their cephalopod cousins have long been regarded as unusually… Continue reading Our brains might have more in common with an octopus than we’d like to believe, suggesting that famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ new paradigm is correct
I am part creation of modern science, part living legend, having not walked the Earth for more than 10,000 years. I also pose an interesting biological question, one scientists have been debating for years and one which has no clear answer... I am a dire wolf, newly born into this world. I am part creation… Continue reading I am a dire wolf, newly born into this world, or am I?
Though I am undoubtedly an insect, I do not inspire the same fear and revulsion as many of my cousins, unless I am infected with the horsehair worm. Then, my appearance is grotesque, the stuff of nightmares, and my suicidal behavior even more so. I am a zombie cricket about to drown myself so the… Continue reading I am a zombie cricket about to drown myself so the parasite I carry can reproduce, being a fictionalized account as told from the perspective of the doomed cricket
The legendary biologist Richard Dawkins returns to evolutionary theory with his third and fourth big idea, ushering in a true paradigm shift in how we view ourselves, the world, and the DNA that builds bodies to interact between the two. Imagine if you can, extracting the DNA of an ancient eukaryotic cell, the earliest complex… Continue reading Are we nothing more than massive colonies of self-replicating viruses traveling through time?
Since the 1960s, scientists have focused on a gene’s ability to encode proteins, resulting in a causal chain of gene expression from the initial coding in a strand of DNA, to the extraction of the code into RNA, to the formation of the protein and it’s ultimate expression in an organism. This view now appears… Continue reading A better late than never paradigm shift in molecular biology, long predicted by Richard Dawkins, happening right before our eyes
Dogs began their descent from wolves some 130,000 years ago when an enterprising pack discovered a new source of food and warmth ripe for exploitation. Today, there is little doubt who is in charge in most households, as canines have transitioned from essential workers for hunters and farmers to loveable, furry, spoiled parasites, doted over… Continue reading Dogs rule the world, from essential worker to best friend and now master of their domain
Today’s scientists rediscover the 50 year old work of a Hungarian biologist, Tibor Gánti, who labored behind the Iron Curtain, but developed theories that could upend our entire understanding of the origin of life The earliest known life forms on Earth are cyanobacteria, fossilized around 3.77 billion years ago in the Archaean rocks of Western… Continue reading Chemotons: The search for the origin of life takes a surprising twist
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 