Inside Natures Giants - The Crocodile

Inside Nature's Giants dissects the largest animals on the planet to uncover their evolutionary secrets. Most wildlife documentaries tell you how an animal behaves, but by dissecting the animal and studying its anatomy we can we can see how an animal works. Experts in comparative anatomy, evolution and behaviour will put some of the most popular and enigmatic large animals under the knife. Veterinary scientist, Mark Evans, will interpret their findings, biologist Simon Watts tests the animals' physiology in the field and Richard Dawkins traces back the animals' place on the tree of life.

The team uncovers the crocodile's incredible jaw muscles, as biologist Simon Watt travels to Florida to test the huge strength of the massive reptile's bite: the most powerful in the animal kingdom. But while crocodiles' spiked teeth are excellent for gripping prey as they plunge into a death roll, they are useless for chewing. So how do these animals manage to digest large chunks of raw meat and bone? As the experts dissect the digestive system and inspect the stomach contents for clues, they reveal the bizarre plumbing between the heart and the stomach that might provide the key to this puzzle. And they also solve the mystery of this crocodile's premature death.

Donohue vs. Hawking

It's like Bambi vs. Godzilla, except no one would consider Donohue cute and innocent. In an interview, Hawking talked about gods:

"What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."

When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

Straightforward and sensible, that's a scientist talking. Bill Donohue, who is anything but sensible, took exception to all that.

How any rational person could belittle the pivotal role that human life plays in the universe is a wonder, but it is just as silly to say that all religions are marked by the absence of reason. While there are some religions which are devoid of reason, there are others, such as Roman Catholicism, which have long assigned it a special place.

Human life plays a pivotal role in the universe? How? Is the orbit of Mars influenced by human activities, does the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, care in the slightest about a species so remote that they're still waiting for the glimmerings of light from the fires they used to roast a mammoth? We could wink out of existence right now and the universe would go on, fundamentally unchanged.

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The Four Horsemen

You may have heard about this little informal discussion between Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, during which they discuss the level of attacks on them by theists and by their fellow atheists and agnostics.

The so called Four Horsemen of Atheism comprises of two one hour videos and they hit on a number of different topics regarding the reaction to their own books as well as criticisms and common misrepresentations about their ideas.

Anyway, although I know my dad would say, they are just a bunch of pompous, self-righteous cretins I found the videos quite interesting nonetheless:

Video One

Video Two

The Improbability Pump

The following extract is from an Article in The Nation by Jerry A. Coyne:

Imagine for a moment that a large proportion of Americans--let's say half--rejected the "germ theory" of infectious disease. Maladies like swine flu, malaria and AIDS aren't caused by micro-organisms, they claim, but by the displeasure of gods, whom they propitiate by praying, consulting shamans and sacrificing goats. Now, you'd surely find this a national disgrace, for those people would be utterly, unequivocally wrong. Although it's called germ theory, the idea that infections are spread by small creatures is also a fact, supported by mountains of evidence. You don't get malaria unless you carry a specific protozoan parasite. We know how it causes the disease, and we see that when you kill it with drugs, the disease goes away. How, we'd ask, could people ignore all this evidence in favor of baseless superstition?

But that's fiction, right? Well, not entirely, for it applies precisely to another "theory" that is also a fact: the theory of evolution. Over the past quarter-century, poll after poll has revealed that nearly half of all Americans flatly reject evolution, many clinging to the ancient superstition that the earth was created only 6,000 years ago, complete with all existing species. But as Richard Dawkins shows in his splendid new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, the theory of evolution is supported by at least as much evidence as is the germ theory of disease--heaps of it, and from many areas of biology. So why is it contemptible to reject germ theory but socially acceptable to reject evolutionary theory?

One answer is religion. Unlike germ theory, the idea of evolution strikes at the heart of human ego, suggesting that we were not the special object of God's attention but were made by the same blind and mindless process of natural selection that also built ferns, fish and rabbits. Another answer is ignorance: most Americans are simply unaware of the multifarious evidence that makes evolution more than "just a theory," and don't even realize that a scientific theory is far more than idle speculation.

While Dawkins has produced several brilliant books on the marvels of evolution and natural selection, he's never before written at length about the evidence for evolution. The Greatest Show on Earth can be seen as his response to ongoing and nonscientific opposition to evolution. In his previous book, The God Delusion, Dawkins mounted a withering attack on belief that was surely motivated in part by his incessant battles with faith-based creationism. In The Greatest Show on Earth he finally addresses the problem of ignorance, drawing together the diverse evidence for evolution to show that "evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact." Dawkins has two goals here. The first is to change the minds of those who doubt or deny evolution by presenting them with more than 400 pages of scientific evidence. But changing minds is a big job, at least in the United States: in a 2006 Time magazine poll, 64 percent of Americans declared that if science disproved one of their religious beliefs, they'd reject the science in favor of their faith. (The British aren't quite so defiant: one week after its publication, The Greatest Show on Earth debuted at No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list.) More realistically, Dawkins hopes to bolster those who already accept evolution but "find themselves inadequately prepared to argue the case." And here he succeeds brilliantly.

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