PLOS Computational Biology: Impaired Air Conditioning within the Nasal Cavity in Flat-Faced Homo
Don't get me wrong! The human face is beautiful - to another human! Who could look at a human face and see it as ugly?
Well, of course, we're genetically 'programmed' to be attracted to an 'attractive' face. That's why we define it as attractive! But looked at objectively from, say, the point of view of the proverbial space alien studying life on Earth, the human face is surely one of the strangest in the mammalian order. It is rotated down through ninety degrees so that it still points forward even though our spine now points upwards and not forwards like most other mammals.
Religion, Creationism, evolution, science and politics from a centre-left atheist humanist. The blog religious frauds tell lies about.
Monday 28 March 2016
Saturday 26 March 2016
Nature Running Rings Around Creationists
'Fairy-Rings' in Western Australia |
The two sacred chants of the creation industry are, "You can't get order from chaos, so order implies design!" and "Design needs a designer!" They are careful always to avoid saying 'biblical god' instead of 'designer' because they still like to pretend people don't know this is fundamentalist biblical creationism masquerading as science, of course.
Anyone who has seen a snowflake and knows that all the millions of different 'designs' of snowflakes all arise spontaneously from the chaotic distribution of water molecules in air under nothing more than the operation of physics and chemistry will know that claim is false but, as with so many other claims of the creation industry, being false is never seen as a reason not to keep repeating it.
Labels:
Creationism
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Nature
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Science
Friday 25 March 2016
My New Book! Ten Reason To Lose Faith
Faith is a fallacy!
Faith is delusionary. It produces the illusion of knowledge and certainty in the absence of real knowledge and understanding.
Faith is not a virtue; it is the sin of intellectual indolence and the abdication of personal responsibility. It is pretending to know things you do not know. It has failed mankind and now represents a clear and present danger, not just to humanity but to life on Earth itself.
Ten Reasons to Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It, looks at the reasons why people should reject faith and why a 'crisis of faith' is not a problem to be avoided but something that should be welcomed and encouraged because it represents a mind trying to come to terms with reality. A 'crisis of faith' is a triumph of reason and the starting point for personal liberation.
Recent events in Pakistan, Turkey, Paris and Belgium can leave little doubt that faith, far from being the basis of a kind, caring and peaceful society, is harmful to the point of being positively dangerous. Religions which once might have produced united, cohesive societies in relative isolation, now produce ghettoised, mutually suspicious, warring and uncompromising factions in an increasingly globalised, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-faith world where exactly the opposite is needed.
Faith is delusionary. It produces the illusion of knowledge and certainty in the absence of real knowledge and understanding.
Faith is not a virtue; it is the sin of intellectual indolence and the abdication of personal responsibility. It is pretending to know things you do not know. It has failed mankind and now represents a clear and present danger, not just to humanity but to life on Earth itself.
Ten Reasons to Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It, looks at the reasons why people should reject faith and why a 'crisis of faith' is not a problem to be avoided but something that should be welcomed and encouraged because it represents a mind trying to come to terms with reality. A 'crisis of faith' is a triumph of reason and the starting point for personal liberation.
Recent events in Pakistan, Turkey, Paris and Belgium can leave little doubt that faith, far from being the basis of a kind, caring and peaceful society, is harmful to the point of being positively dangerous. Religions which once might have produced united, cohesive societies in relative isolation, now produce ghettoised, mutually suspicious, warring and uncompromising factions in an increasingly globalised, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-faith world where exactly the opposite is needed.
Radovan Karadžić's Faith-Based Initiative
Radovan Karadžić. Genocide for Jesus. |
It was almost prophetic!
The day I was making the very last edits to my new book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith, as though to reinforce one of the central messages in it, the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague announced the conviction of Radovan Karadžić for genocide. Karadžić's crimes were committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war as Orthodox Christian Serbian forces led by Karadžić attempted to impose Serbia's traditional hegemony over neighbouring Bosnia, following the collapse and break-up of former Yugoslavia.
Labels:
Atheism
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Christianity
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Humanism
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Religion
Tuesday 22 March 2016
Unintelligent Design - Rejuvenating Parasites
Schistosoma mansoni |
It gets a bit tedious to keep writing about all these examples of mindless stupidity in biological 'design' but my creationist readers love having something to ignore, or in some cases, post abusive comments on to impress Jesus.
So, not wishing to disappoint, here's another one. It is the discovery, published today in eLife, that a particularly nasty flatworm parasite, Schistosoma mansoni, that causes schistosomiasis in tropical parts of the world, has a simple defense to the human immune system that is trying to destroy them.
My Intelligent (sic) Design believing friends tell me that everything in nature was made by magic by the same magic man they believe also wrote the Bible so they believe this Intelligent (sic) Designer made these parasites especially so they could live in our blood and make us sick. The problem is, it then seems to have
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Parasitism
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Science
Monday 21 March 2016
Snappy End to Creationism!
Early crocodylomorph increases top tier predator diversity during rise of dinosaurs : Scientific Reports
I don't suppose the discovery of a 320 million year-old fossil of a giant crocodile is going to change many creationists' minds about Earth being around 6,000 years old but then nothing ever seems to. Evidence is such a difficult thing when it doesn't tell you what you want to believe - unless you're honest, like normal people.
This particular new example of how creationists need to go to quite idiotic lengths to retain their childish superstition was found by paleontologists from North Carolina University led by Lindsay Zanno, and practically on their doorstep in the Triassic Carnian Pekin Formation. The authors have named this long-legged, bipedal crocodile, the Carolina butcher (Carnufex carolinensis). With its long snout, large mouth, long legs and probable speed, it would have been a menacing beast. C. carolinensis would have been about 9 feet (3 metres) long and about 5 feet (1.6 metres) tall with blade-like teeth.
I don't suppose the discovery of a 320 million year-old fossil of a giant crocodile is going to change many creationists' minds about Earth being around 6,000 years old but then nothing ever seems to. Evidence is such a difficult thing when it doesn't tell you what you want to believe - unless you're honest, like normal people.
This particular new example of how creationists need to go to quite idiotic lengths to retain their childish superstition was found by paleontologists from North Carolina University led by Lindsay Zanno, and practically on their doorstep in the Triassic Carnian Pekin Formation. The authors have named this long-legged, bipedal crocodile, the Carolina butcher (Carnufex carolinensis). With its long snout, large mouth, long legs and probable speed, it would have been a menacing beast. C. carolinensis would have been about 9 feet (3 metres) long and about 5 feet (1.6 metres) tall with blade-like teeth.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Thursday 17 March 2016
Even Fish Walk All Over Creationists
Comparable disparity in the appendicular skeleton across the fish–tetrapod transition, and the morphological gap between fish and tetrapod postcrania
How creationists love those gaps!
Real or imaginary, you'll find creationism's magic creator stuffed into as many gaps as they can find to stuff it into. Until, that is, science actually looks at the gap. At that point there is always one of two outcomes:
How creationists love those gaps!
Real or imaginary, you'll find creationism's magic creator stuffed into as many gaps as they can find to stuff it into. Until, that is, science actually looks at the gap. At that point there is always one of two outcomes:
- The magic creator isn't there and the gap is full of perfectly natural, scientifically understandable stuff.
- The gap wasn't there in the first place. It was either made up, the product of creationist wishful thinking, or, rarely, due to a scientific mistake.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Sunday 13 March 2016
USA Religious Decline Confirmed
Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis?: American Journal of Sociology: Vol 121, No 5
According to data produced in the American Journal of Sociology, the USA should no longer be regarded as an outlier when it comes to religiosity, compared to the rest of the Western, developed world.
Although the movement has been small compared to Europe, there are distinct signs that Americans are moving in the same direction and for pretty much the same reason - each generation is becoming less religious.
According to data produced in the American Journal of Sociology, the USA should no longer be regarded as an outlier when it comes to religiosity, compared to the rest of the Western, developed world.
Although the movement has been small compared to Europe, there are distinct signs that Americans are moving in the same direction and for pretty much the same reason - each generation is becoming less religious.
Labels:
Atheism
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Christianity
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Humanism
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Religion
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Secularism
Tuesday 8 March 2016
New Rattlesnakes Rattle Creationists
Reassessing Those Rattlers | Research Frontiers.
One of the indispensable dogmas of creationism in its desperate attempt to fool people into thinking the Theory of Evolution is fatally flawed is that 'microevolution' and 'macroevolution' are different things needing different processes to explain them. 'Microevolution' is supposedly the evolution of variation, varieties, races, subspecies etc, while 'macroevolution' is supposedly the evolution of a new species.
One of the indispensable dogmas of creationism in its desperate attempt to fool people into thinking the Theory of Evolution is fatally flawed is that 'microevolution' and 'macroevolution' are different things needing different processes to explain them. 'Microevolution' is supposedly the evolution of variation, varieties, races, subspecies etc, while 'macroevolution' is supposedly the evolution of a new species.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Nature
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Science
Monday 7 March 2016
Rotating Rocks of Ages Rock Creationism!
The Cantabrian orocline is a large structure that bends the Variscan orogen of Western Europe in NW Iberia. Photo credit: J. Fernández Lozano et al. |
It's normally the plentiful evidence for evolution and against intelligent (sic) design, provided by the biological sciences, that creationists have to practice ignoring or dismissing with a wave of the hand and denialism, so it must be doubly difficult when evidence from geology shows their superstition is false too.
To make matters worse, this time it involves one of
Labels:
Creationism
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Geology
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Science
Sunday 28 February 2016
Misleading Christians
On Darwin Day, 5 facts about the evolution debate | Pew Research Center
Although all but the most honest creationists will try to pretend that their unscientific, anti-science views are actually good science with masses of scientific support, because that is the impression that the fraudsters who misinform them give them, the evidence from a Pew Research Center study into the views of Americans on evolution, re-published on Darwin Day this year, shows something completely different.
It shows that these unfortunate people are getting their 'science' not from proper scientists but from preachers and pastors who normally have no training in science whatsoever and that their opinions are based on religious dogma, not a rational examination of the scientific evidence. There is a clear correlation too between the degree of fundamentalism in religious affiliation with the degree of rejection of the scientific view of evolution by an unguided, natural process.
Jehovah's Witness (6%), Mormons (11%), Evangelical Protestants (11%) and 'Historically Black' Protestants (16%) all report astonishingly low (by European standards) levels of understanding that humans are the result of evolution by a natural process. This figure only rises to 28% for Mainline Protestants, 29% for Orthodox Christians and 31% for Catholics, still low by European standards.
The mainstream Christian figure is close to that for Muslims at 25%. It may surprise many fundamentalist Christians to discover that they are more extreme in their views than Muslims, who they traditionally regard as extremists.
Although all but the most honest creationists will try to pretend that their unscientific, anti-science views are actually good science with masses of scientific support, because that is the impression that the fraudsters who misinform them give them, the evidence from a Pew Research Center study into the views of Americans on evolution, re-published on Darwin Day this year, shows something completely different.
It shows that these unfortunate people are getting their 'science' not from proper scientists but from preachers and pastors who normally have no training in science whatsoever and that their opinions are based on religious dogma, not a rational examination of the scientific evidence. There is a clear correlation too between the degree of fundamentalism in religious affiliation with the degree of rejection of the scientific view of evolution by an unguided, natural process.
Jehovah's Witness (6%), Mormons (11%), Evangelical Protestants (11%) and 'Historically Black' Protestants (16%) all report astonishingly low (by European standards) levels of understanding that humans are the result of evolution by a natural process. This figure only rises to 28% for Mainline Protestants, 29% for Orthodox Christians and 31% for Catholics, still low by European standards.
The mainstream Christian figure is close to that for Muslims at 25%. It may surprise many fundamentalist Christians to discover that they are more extreme in their views than Muslims, who they traditionally regard as extremists.
Labels:
Creationism
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Evolution
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Fraud
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Science
Friday 26 February 2016
Fundamentalist Christians and Un-Christian Politics
Click to enlarge |
Rarely do I venture into American politics in these blog posts, but the increasingly right-wing political extremism of the Republican Party, as it cements its ties with Christian fundamentalism, becoming, in effect, the political wing of the Christian theocratic and anti-science movement, is worth commenting upon.
First a little test.
Supposing, just for the moment, that Jesus were to return, and was pretty much the way he is portrayed today in his social attitudes, given the following choices, which would he be most likely to go for?
- Would he:
- favour giving even more money to the rich?
- favour giving money to the poor?
- Would he:
- favour leaving the sick to fend for themselves as best they can?
- favour helping the sick to get better, regardless of their income?
- Would he:
- favour sending more people to prison for longer?
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Christianity
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Humanism
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Politics
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Secularism
Wednesday 24 February 2016
The Malevolent Designer Does It Again!
Host cell invasion and replication by the influenza virus. |
For those wingnuts who still believe in intelligent design, the hardest thing to explain, if they ever give much thought to it, is why their putative intelligent (sic) designer so often resembles a malevolent, hate-filled and completely evil designer who hates everything it has designed.
The story goes that this intelligent (sic) designer created the entire Universe just so it could make a tiny planet in a remote part of it (bear with me! I'm not making this up!) so it could make intelligent beings to worship it. So thrilled was it with it's invention, which it had taken an infinite amount of time to think up, that it loves it more than anything.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Health
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Science
Sunday 21 February 2016
Filling The Gap and Evicting Creationism's Magic Friend
"Ribbo" Illustration: Karen Carr. |
To any decent creationist, it's all about those lovely gaps. Gaps in the current knowledge, gaps in the fossil records, gaps in our understanding or ability yet to explain! Any gap will do, and if the right one can't be found, one can easily be invented with a childish parody of science. No-one will ever notice because the target audience couldn't tell a childish parody of science from the real thing. It's all magic anyway.
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Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Tuesday 16 February 2016
Vatican Issues Abuse Cover-Up Code - Omerta!
Catholic bishops not obliged to report clerical child abuse, Vatican says | World news | The Guardian
This report from last week slipped under my radar unnoticed.
The Vatican has issued new training material for newly-named bishops which tells them they don't have any obligation to report cases of clerical abuse of children unless the local law requires it. Their only obligation is to deal with the matter internally. Apparently, the notion of a moral obligation over and above an obligation to merely comply with local laws, to protect children and expose abusers is not a Catholic thing.
This report from last week slipped under my radar unnoticed.
The Vatican has issued new training material for newly-named bishops which tells them they don't have any obligation to report cases of clerical abuse of children unless the local law requires it. Their only obligation is to deal with the matter internally. Apparently, the notion of a moral obligation over and above an obligation to merely comply with local laws, to protect children and expose abusers is not a Catholic thing.
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Atheism
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Catholics
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Christianity
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Religious abuse
Monday 15 February 2016
Shark Bite For Creationists
An ancient dental gene set governs development and continuous regeneration of teeth in sharks | ScienceDirect
Astonishing news today that the creationist industry's intelligent (sic) designer favours sharks over humans.
Although humans notoriously suffer from all manner of dental problems, including dental caries caused by bacteria, abscesses formed in the gums and jaw when these caries erode the tooth to the point where the dentine and root canals are exposed, and gum diseases leading to the teeth actually falling out, sometime by middle age, the intelligent (sic) designer apparently designed a system for replacing teeth but switched it off in humans, and most of our vertebrate relatives, way back in our evolutionary history. It left the genes there, not doing anything useful though.
Astonishing news today that the creationist industry's intelligent (sic) designer favours sharks over humans.
Although humans notoriously suffer from all manner of dental problems, including dental caries caused by bacteria, abscesses formed in the gums and jaw when these caries erode the tooth to the point where the dentine and root canals are exposed, and gum diseases leading to the teeth actually falling out, sometime by middle age, the intelligent (sic) designer apparently designed a system for replacing teeth but switched it off in humans, and most of our vertebrate relatives, way back in our evolutionary history. It left the genes there, not doing anything useful though.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Wednesday 10 February 2016
Gravity Waving Goodbye To Big Bang Doubts?
Gravitational waves: Scientists might be about to announce detection of 'ripples in the fabric of spacetime' | Independent.
It looks like creationists are about to be hit with another scientific discovery they are going to have to work hard to ignore, as another gap slams shut and no god was found in it.
There are persistent rumours in the scientific world that a team working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) system will announce tomorrow that they have discovered 'primordial gravity waves'. These are gravity waves from the first moments of the Big Bang and, if confirmed, could increase our knowledge of exactly what happened in that first few microseconds of the Universe's existence.
It looks like creationists are about to be hit with another scientific discovery they are going to have to work hard to ignore, as another gap slams shut and no god was found in it.
There are persistent rumours in the scientific world that a team working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) system will announce tomorrow that they have discovered 'primordial gravity waves'. These are gravity waves from the first moments of the Big Bang and, if confirmed, could increase our knowledge of exactly what happened in that first few microseconds of the Universe's existence.
Labels:
Cosmology
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Creationism
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Physics
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Science
Sunday 7 February 2016
Lesson From Toulouse - How Christians Lie To Us
Aerial view of the Basilica of Saint Sernin, Toulouse.
This is a blog post I intended to write last Autumn when we got back from Dordogne in France but it got put on the back burner for a while as other things intervened. It is the ludicrously silly tale of Saint Saturnin (or Sarin) of Toulouse, legendary first bishop of Toulouse in Southwest France.
We had some time to kill before our flight home from Toulouse, so spent it in the town, mostly browsing the wonderful vegetable market, but this church down a side street caught our eye so we went to investigate. The church of St Sarin is a wonderful building in mock Romanesque style, slightly reminiscent of Eastern Christian churches. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and houses what are alleged to be St Saturnin's mortal remains. It is supposedly built on the site where his body was hidden after his curious method of execution. Saint Saturnin is known by several names depending on language and local dialect; Sernin in French, Sarnin in Occitan, Sadurní in Catalan, etc.
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Atheism
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Christianity
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Fraud
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Miracles
Friday 5 February 2016
Manny the Bronx Fraud is Still Trying
Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk |
Take these he's recently posted on one of my book's page, for example:
This book is a disaster of intellectual thought. Old refuted arguments are represented by the author and are uninteresting. They expose the author as lacking literacy in science and philosophy. She attempts to spin science in the favor of atheism and while doing so, fails logically. Do not waste your time and money on this rubbish. There are far better sources out there that argue for the atheistic viewpoint. This author, Esther Harrison, is clearly inexperienced as a writer and doesn't have the academic know-how to publish professionally. Lastly, her books are on her blog so you can read it there for free.
Monday 1 February 2016
Diabolically Fishy Problem For Creationists
Devil's Hole pupfish, Cyprinodon diabolis. Image credit: Olin Feuerbacher / US Fish and Wildlife Service / CC BY 2.0 |
Something diabolical indeed for creationism!
Now we have an example of rapid genetic diversification leading to a new species in just a few hundred years, and this could well have happened several times with repeated cycles of repopulation, evolution and extinction.
The Devil's Hole pupfish, Cyprinodon diabolis, has been described as one of the rarest fish on Earth and exists only in a small, aquifer-fed geothermal pool in a
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
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