talk.origins (often capitalised to Talk.Origins or abbreviated as t.o.) is a moderated Usenet discussion forum concerning the origins of life, and evolution. It remains a major venue for debate in the creation-evolution controversy, and its official purpose is to draw such debates out of the science newsgroups, such as sci.bio.evolution.
Contents |
History
The first post to talk.origins was a starter post by Mark Horton, dated 5 September 1986 [1] In the early 1990s, a number of FAQs on various topics were being periodically posted to the newsgroup. In 1994, Brett J. Vickers established an anonymous FTP site to host the collected FAQs of the newsgroup. In 1995, Vickers started the TalkOrigins Archive web site as another means of hosting the talk.origins FAQs. It maintains an extensive FAQ on topics in evolutionary biology, geology and astronomy, with the aim of representing the views of mainstream science. It has spawned other websites, notably TalkDesign "a response to the intelligent design movement", Evowiki, and the Panda's Thumb weblog. The group was originally created as the unmoderated newsgroup net.origins as a 'dumping ground' for all the various flame threads 'polluting' other newsgroups, then renamed to talk.origins as part of the Great Renaming. Subsequently, after discussion on the newsgroup, the group was voted to be moderated in 1997 by the normal USENET RFD/CFV process and only spam is censored. The moderator for the newsgroup is David Iain Greig (and technically Jim Lippard as alternate/backup).
Culture
The group is characterized by a long list of in-crowd jokes like the fictitious University of Ediacara[1], the equally fictitious Evil Atheist Conspiracy [2] which allegedly hides all the evidence supporting Creationism, a monthly election of the Chez Watt-award for "statements that make you go 'say what', or some such."[2], pun cascades and a strong predisposition to quoting Monty Python and a habit of calling penguins "the best birds". Apart from the fun, the group includes detailed and reasoned rebuttals to creationist claims. There is an expectation that any claim is to be backed up by actual evidence, preferably in the form of a peer-reviewed publication in a reputable journal. The group as a whole votes for a PoTM-award (Post of The Month), which makes it into the annals of talkorigins.org. [3]
See also
References
- ^ First post in (then) net.origins. Google Groups (1986-09-05).
- ^ Robert Grumbine explaining the concept of Chez Watt. Google Groups (2005-05-05).
- ^ TalkOrigins.org Post of the Month Archive. talkorigins.org (2007-08-12).
External links
- The Talk.Origins Archive
- Talk.Origins Foundation
- The talk.origins homepage
- Panda's Thumb weblog
- Google groups view of talk.origins
- Talk Design
- Evowiki
- CreationWiki response to talk.origins' Index to Creationist Claims
- Chez Watt Archive
Some important posts
- Starter message for talk.origins by Mark Horton, dated 5th September 1986
- First cross-post of discussion to talk.origins, by Karl Kluge dated 8th September 1986
- First replied-to post to talk.origins by Wayne Throop, dated 10th Sepember 1986
- The post by David Bostwick announcing the passing of the moderation vote dated May 5th 1997
