by Richard William Nelson | Jun 20, 2010
Why Evolution is True, one of the best-selling books in support of evolution written by Jerry Coyne and endorsed by Richard Dawkins, conveniently fails to address one minor evolutionary issue—the origin of life problem. Charles Darwin had been stonewalled by this problem, too, in The Origin of Species.
In the mid twentieth century, using a simple laboratory experiment, Stanley Miller (pictured left) and Harold Urey (pictured right) were the first to demonstrate how life may have started from simple molecules and energy. In the excitement, addressing the scope of the Miller-Urey probability issue was postponed.
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by Richard William Nelson | Jun 6, 2010
This is the story of the Ida Fossil Fiasco. “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals, with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters,” said Sir David Attenborough, who narrated the BBC documentary in May 2009.
“The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo.”
Really? According to Jørn Hurum, the paleontologist from Oslo University’s Natural History Museum, who assembled the scientific team –
“It tells a part of our evolution that’s been hidden so far. It’s been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there’s almost nothing to study.”,
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by Richard William Nelson | May 30, 2010
In a letter to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, his closest friend in 1857, Charles Darwin confided, “I cannot swallow Man [being that] distinct from a Chimpanzee.” Chimp genetics, by extension of Darwin’s theory, were expected to be similar to humans. Charles Darwin writes in his Autobiography –
“My Descent of Man was published in February 1871. As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable products, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law.”
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by Richard William Nelson | Apr 25, 2010
Each fossil record discovery has a unique story, and the Archaeoraptor composite is an exceptional example. In November 1999, a feature article in National Geographic titled “Feathers for T. Rex?” emerged as one of the most spectacular disasters in the history of paleontology. Archaeoraptor disaster rivals the Piltdown Man saga, alleging –
“A true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds.”
The Archaeoraptor storyline began in 1997 in northeastern Liaoning Province, China, following its discovery by farmers (pictured above). At the time, the fossil appeared to have a bird’s body with small, terrestrial dinosaur’s teeth and tail. The name given, Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, was in recognition of its discovery site.
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by Richard William Nelson | Apr 18, 2010
Darwin had a significant influence on Karl Marx (pictured left). Struggle and survival are central to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The full 1859 title of The Origin is – On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and the Survival of the Fittest in the Preservation of Favoured Races.
Darwin’s premise about survival and struggle in nature paralleled Karl Marx’s premise about class struggle. Marx summarized the importance of “struggle” in the first line of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 –
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
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This is the story of the Ida Fossil Fiasco. “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals, with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters,” said 
Darwin had a significant influence on 