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.
History
The first post to talk.origins was a starter post by
Mark Horton, dated .
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, in which only
spam and excessive crossposting are 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, the equally fictitious
Evil Atheist Conspiracy 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.",
cascades, 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 Archive.
See also
