Dr Paul Allen

English: Happy human, a secular humanist logo made in blender quick. Some edges could be cleaner.. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Are people good? Is humankind basically benign? In our current belief system, which we might term liberal secular humanism , which has held sway in the West since the Second World War , and which promotes human progress and well-being, only one response is permitted: Yes, of course! Any suggestion that there might be something wrong with people as a whole, with Man as a species, is absolute anathema. But today, two circumstances come together to prompt me to pose the question once more. The first is the ending, this week, of my 15 years as Environment Editor ofThe Independent. It has been a privilege beyond measure to work for so long for a wonderful newspaper which has put the environment at the heart of its view of the world. We are proud of all we have done about it, from raising the question, in 2000, of the mysterious disappearance of the house sparro...

On display at Lausanne Natural History Museum in Rumin palace Homo habilis (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Researchers leading a study into fossilized human remains in Kenya claim to have found that there were at least three distinct species of humans living in Africa two million years ago, providing a twist to the theory of evolution . The findings were published in the journal Nature and detail the exact measurements of the face, jawbones and teeth of the human species that researchers say roamed Africa around 1.78 to 1.95 million years ago. "Our past was a diverse past," said Dr. Meave Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi, who led the research, "our species was evolving in the same way that other species of animals evolved. There was nothing unique about us until we began to make sophisticated stone tools." Previously held theories of evolution suggested that humans evolved directly from a common primate ancestor, which stands in opposition to tr...