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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 so-called creation-evolution controversy, and its official purpose is to draw such debates out of the science newsgroups, such as sci.bio.evolution.
The first post to talk.origins was a starter post by Mark Horton, dated 5th September 1986 .
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).
The ficticious University of Ediacara is a long-running humourous joke associated with the newsgroup.
True.Origin was founded as a young-earth response to talk.origins.
See also
External links
- Google groups view of talk.origins
- The talk.origins homepage
- The Talk.Origins Archive
- Talk.Origins Foundation
- Talk Design
- Evowiki
- Panda's Thumb weblog
- The University of Ediacara
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