Comfort offers up the 'ironclad argument' that bananas are proof of God's intelligent design [ http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Banana_argument ] of the natural world because "the banana and the hand are perfectly made, one for the other."
"Behold, the atheists' nightmare!" declares Comfort, before detailing the many user-friendly features of bananas, which include its "non-slip surface," "tab at the top" for easy opening, and convenient shape which is "even curved toward the face to make the whole process so much easier."
In fact, the banana as we know it is the result of careful artificial selection by humans [ http://cwh.ucsc.edu/bananas/Site/Early%20History%20of%20the%20Banana.html ] over the course of many years. The wild banana is small, seed-filled, and unpalatable. The banana came about through human manipulation of evolutionary mechanisms.
Here it is folks! The winner of the 2009 coveted Golden Crocoduck, awarded for the biggest breach of the Ninth Commandment in pursuit of the Creationist cause. Er... that's the one that orders you not to tell fibs. My thanks to BeforetheNoose for setting up the voting page.
Monotremes seem to have branched off from placental and marsupial mammals way back on the tree of life, and possess some reptilian and avian attributes that no other mammals have.
This is the awards video for the coveted Golden Crocoduck 2010. The award is given every year on the feast day of St Jude Thaddeus (Patron Saint of Lost Causes), October 28, for the biggest breach of the Ninth Commandment in the pursuit of the creationist cause. Past winners: Kent Hovind 2008, Ray Comfort 2009.
Zircons are tough pieces of old rock incorporated into newer material
A tiny 4.4-billion-year-old crystal has been confirmed as the oldest fragment of Earth's crust.
24 February 2014 Last updated at 07:36 ET
The zircon was found in sandstone in the Jack Hills region of Western Australia.
Scientists dated the crystal by studying its uranium and lead atoms. The former decays into the latter very slowly over time and can be used like a clock.
Its implication is that Earth had formed a solid crust much sooner after its formation 4.6 billion years ago than was previously thought, and very quickly following the great collision with a Mars-sized body that is thought to have produced the Moon just a few tens of millions of years after that. Before this time, Earth would have been a seething ball of molten magma.
But knowledge that its surface hardened so early raises the tantalising prospect that our world became ready to host life very early in its history.
"This confirms our view of how the Earth cooled and became habitable," said lead author Prof John Valley, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US.
"We have no evidence that life existed then. We have no evidence that it didn't. But there is no reason why life could not have existed on Earth 4.3 billion years ago," he told the Reuters news agency.
Plate tectonics and weathering have ensured that very little of the Earth's early surface remains to be studied.
Some rock formations that are upwards of 3.5 billion years old persist in select places such as Canada, but the vast majority of Earth's surface rock is modern, less than a few hundred million years old.
The zircons found at Jack Hills are tough pieces of old rock that have been incorporated into the newer, reworked material.
But, barely visible to the naked eye, they still retain insights on the conditions under which they originally solidified.
Previous research had indicated the Jack Hills zircon in Prof Valley's publication to be very ancient, but scientists had concerns that some of its lead atoms might have been lost or even migrated inside the crystal over time.
This would have given the impression the zircon was older than it really is.
However, using two sensitive analytical techniques, Prof Valley and colleagues were able to show the zircon's internal uranium-lead clock was showing a true age.
In doing so, their study suggests strongly a continental crust was present on Earth about 100 million years after the planet formed. And by implication, it tells us that if temperatures were low enough, it could have perhaps even sustained liquid water at its surface.
'Nuff said. This video tallies all the votes and gives you the winner of your 2012 coveted Golden Crocoduck. For those who are bound to comment, the "attack" scene was actually a playful prank from earlier in the interview that I added on ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AkAcNyvV4M ). There was no 'viscious attack' and the injured party was (presumably) fully able to perform his duties.
Normally I would not need to point this out, because the comments were clearly meant to be humorous and the "technical difficulties" screen added on. But someone is bound to chirp "You rail against deliberately distorted videos and yet you're doing the same thing." But there is an obvious difference between videos that are edited for humour and those that are edited for deception.
Try to imagine this debate without Sam Harris being there to correct Deepak. It would have seemed like Deepak was making good points. Thank you SAM HARRIS!
Does God have a future? "Nightline" tackles this and other delicate questions related to faith and spirituality in a "Face-Off" to air Tuesday, March 23.
Deepak Chopra, a physician and best-selling author of "How to Know God," and prominent scholar, philosopher and writer Jean Houston, will face-off against Michael Shermer, founding publisher of "Skeptic" magazine, and Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith."
The panelists will debate the tension between God and science. Is there scientific proof that God exists or has science made it so that God is no longer relevant?
Chopra and Houston contend that the universe is proof that intelligence is at the heart of creation and that a person needs to look beyond what can be seen and touched, while Shermer and Harris argue science and biology can explain what is happening to people when they pray, meditate and believe in God and that evolution can explain why our beliefs developed.
Another nominee for the coveted Golden Crocoduck braves the waters of science with the leaky boat of creationist ignorance.
Note 1: In the video I show the Earth as it is today, and the location of the fossil Troodon and Oviraptor eggs in Montana and Mongolia. I described these as "opposite sides of the world." As a couple of viewers pointed out, the configuration of the continents was different in the cretaceous. However, the places where the different eggs were found are still what could be described as "opposite sides of the world." According to my "Atlas of Evolution", only a few degrees off 180 degrees, in fact. I wanted to use a globe representing the cretaceous, but couldn't find one.
4:17 "Ecological and behavioral implications derived from a dinosaur nesting site" J. Horner, S. Czerkas, E. Olson, Dinosaurs past and present volume II pp. 50-63.
St. Jude Thaddeus Day, dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, is upon us once again, and that means it's Golden Crocoduck time. No, don't expect me to tell you who won in the video description, are you nuts??
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