biology

TalkOrigins Archive

TalkOrigins Archive is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand TalkOrigins Archive rather than just read about it. In short: The TalkOrigins Archive is a website that presents scientific perspectives on the antievolution claims of young-earth, old-earth, and "intelligent design" creationists. With sections on evolution, creationism, geology, astronomy and hominid evolution, the web site provides broad coverage of evolutionary biology and the socio-political antievolution movement.

Key takeaways

TalkOrigins Archive belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect TalkOrigins Archive to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of TalkOrigins Archive from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The TalkOrigins Archive is a website that presents scientific perspectives on the antievolution claims of young-earth, old-earth, and "intelligent design" creationists. With sections on evolution, creationism, geology, astronomy and hominid evolution, the web site provides broad coverage of evolutionary biology and the socio-political antievolution movement.

Origins and history The TalkOrigins Archive began in 1994 when Brett J. Vickers collected several separately posted FAQs from the talk.origins newsgroup and made them available from a single anonymous FTP site. In 1995, Vickers, then a computer science graduate student at the University of California at Irvine, created the TalkOrigins Archive web site. In 2001, Vickers transferred the TalkOrigins Archive to Wesley R. Elsberry, who organized a group of volunteers to handle the maintenance of the Archive. In 2004, Kenneth Fair incorporated the TalkOrigins Foundation as a Texas 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The Foundation's purposes include funding and maintaining the TalkOrigins Archive and holding copyrights to Archive articles, thereby simplifying the process of reprinting and updating those articles. The copyright issue has posed a particular problem since the FAQs started off as a small collection with little thought given to copyright but have since mushroomed. In 2005, the Foundation was granted tax-exempt status by the IRS.

Features The FAQs and FRAs (Frequently Rebutted Assertions) on the TalkOrigins Archive cover a wide range of topics associated with evolutionary biology and creationism. These include Mark Isaak's Index to Creationist Claims, a list of creationist positions on various issues, rebuttals, and links to primary source material. The TalkDesign site fulfills a similar role with the Intelligent Design movement. Also hosted is Jim Foley's Fossil Hominids sub-site which studies the evidence for human evolution and has an extensive list of links to websites on both evolutionary biology and creationism. Lastly, the Quote Mine Project examines the use of Quote mining – taking quotes out of context – by creationists. The feedback system collects reader comments and posts a compilation, along with responses, each month. The archive maintains a sister site which addresses Intelligent Design arguments.

Awards and recognition Talkorigins.org has gained awards and recognition over the years:

In 1999, The New York Times called TalkOrigins a "good antidote" to the plethora of creationist websites that had sprung up. The webpages of the National Academy of Sciences, Smithsonian Institution, Leakey Foundation, the National Center for Science Education and other organizations recommend Talkorigins.org. In August 2002, Scientific American recognized Talkorigins.org for its "detailed discussions (some of which may be too sophisticated for casual readers) and bibliographies relating to virtually any objection to evolution that creationists might raise." In October 2006, The Dallas Morning News awarded it Web Site of the Week. The Archive is also referenced in college-level textbooks and has had material from the archive incorporated into over 20 college or university courses.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with TalkOrigins Archive

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what TalkOrigins Archive claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to TalkOrigins Archive before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about TalkOrigins Archive ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of TalkOrigins Archive

In research: TalkOrigins Archive appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses TalkOrigins Archive in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: TalkOrigins Archive is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Biology websites, Criticism of creationism, Evolutionary biology literature, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for TalkOrigins Archive outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study TalkOrigins Archive in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what TalkOrigins Archive means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain TalkOrigins Archive out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is TalkOrigins Archive in simple terms?

Why does TalkOrigins Archive matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study TalkOrigins Archive?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on TalkOrigins Archive.