Think evolution doesn’t affect you?

One of our Texas biology instructors, Steve Bratteng in Austin, wrote for the Austin American-Statesman about the reality of evolution-based medicine:  It works.

If you are unaffected by one of these maladies, you’re very lucky.  If you are affected by one of these maladies, thank Darwin that evolution helps treat these problems, or at least helps understand what’s going on.

Steve presented this list of 13 questions to the Texas State Board of Education in 2003, to several grumbles.  The creationists at the Discovery Institute couldn’t answer them, either.

450,000

At current rates, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub goes over 450,000 visits sometime Tuesday, February 12.

Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday!

Charles Darwin’s Birthday!

New visitors vastly outnumber returning visitors, the machines claim.  Either I’m offending a lot of people, or more people than one might imagine turn their cookies off.

Thank you for dropping by.

Rebuild the Beagle, get the t-shirt

Ready for Darwin Day? Need the t-shirt?

Over at the Beagle Project, where they work to build a replica of H.M.S. Beagle, the ship in which Darwin sailed the world, you can buy a t-shirt that celebrates the ship and contributes to the funding of the construction.

Evolution Sunday, even in Texas

It was easy to miss it in most Texas churches yesterday, but it was Evolution Sunday. Darwin’s birthday, February 12, comes this week.

Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow offered an explanation that deserves reading outside of Dallas. I think he’s a little optimistic, saying “hundreds” of preachers participate — in Texas? Really?

Blow writes:

“Evolution Sunday offers an opportunity to educate our congregations that science is a gift,” said the Rev. Timothy McLemore, senior pastor at Kessler Park United Methodist Church in Oak Cliff.

“If we believe God is truth, we don’t need to shrink from truth in whatever way it presents itself. We don’t have to be threatened.”

The State Board of Education is set to review and revise science curriculum standards in Texas. And Dr. McLemore said he is “deeply concerned” about attempts to inject religion-based “intelligent design” theories into science classes.

“It seems profoundly unhealthy,” he said. “Do we really want the government deciding what religious beliefs and viewpoints are taught in school? It’s our job to promote our understanding of faith, not the government’s job.”

Even in Texas. We can hope government officials in Texas are listening.