"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction," Dawkins said at recent book signing in Washington. "A petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak. A vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser. A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, malevolent bully."

thats the most concise, poetic almost, proof of gods existence i've ever seen. just look around. of course, you'd have to step outside your middle class suburban bubbles to do that...jk lol please don't hurt me...

ahem. this is the official gnostic position, placed here in the words of richard dawkins for amusement only by yours truly.

As for the LA Times comment - in the 60's, when I was a Geology student, I was told that "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny" and this has been a 'given' ever since.

see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontogeny

I want to have a kid with a tail! That would be quite something. Who would snip it off? Then again, why'd they snip my foreskin?!? A piece of me is gone forever....

From the article on atheism:

Atheism "always makes a comeback, I think, when religious people get too arrogant," he said. "When they begin to look as though or speak as though they know it all. When they begin to impose themselves in ways that are unwelcome to other people in society."

I think he's right. I know for the most part I tend to ignore the religious until they start to get into my stuff. Let's just hope this time we follow Europe's lead.

ontogeny does not always recapitulate phylogeny and there's no evidence that i'm aware of (as a geneticist) for atavism being the case with either a bottle-nosed dolphin having four flippers or a human being born with a "tail". As far as i know, it is equally likely and more parsimonious to assume random mutation gave rise to these traits and there is no re-emergence of the trait in the population because we capture the animal or socially-ostracize the kid before we can see if natural selection will keep the trait.

i tried to find information on michael lepage and got nothing on anyone that has a history in biology. He totally bastardizes basic concepts of how genes affect traits that we've known for 100 years. Either he has a high school biology udnerstanding or he's dumbed down his material because he thinks the American people aren't bright enough to "get it".

The only part of the article worth reading is the last 2 paragraphs, the rest is free advertising for Mr. Le Page. and here they are:

"Atavism isn't the only explanation for the reappearance of a seemingly extinct trait or body part. It's also possible that some life forms that have lost a certain trait evolve it again "from scratch," through the same mutations that produced it in the first place. After all, different species sometimes develop similar features separately — a process known as "convergent evolution."

But the existence of atavism complicates the case against evolution. Far from undermining Darwinism, throwbacks challenge the creationist idea that every living species emerged full-blown in its present form. Atavism is impossible unless there's something to throw back to — like an ancestor with a tail that nobody wanted to snip off."

Hi tito, a human being has a vestigal tailbone, which is too short to be seen.

If a person's tail becomes long enough to be prominent, do your consider that a random mutation or evolutionary throwback?