Free Republic

Education Creationism taught by design CREATIONISM is finding its way into university lecture halls, raising concerns with some academics that the biblical story of creation will be given equal weight to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Compulsory lectures in intelligent design and creationism are going to be included in second-year courses for zoology and genetics undergraduates at Leeds University, The Times Higher Education Supplement (June 23) reveals. But there’s a twist: lecturers will present the controversial theories as being incompatible with scientific evidence. “It is essential they (students) understand the historical context and the flaws in the arguments these groups put...

Despite negative criticism, political jabs, disturbing threats and a recent internet posting stating that he's star-struck and on a world tour, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones candidly discussed-for the first time in the York area......the aftermath of the "epic" Dover intelligent-design trial....... Jones said he was pleased to be at the York County Colonial Courthouse Wednesday on an invitation from the Herbert B. Cohen American Inn of Court meeting where he spoke to about 60 York attorneys and judges........ Jones said. "There are continuing attacks. I think judges and lawyers need to speak out...I've taken some incoming fire." A...

Charles Darwin, the 19th century geologist who wrote the treatise 'The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection' defined evolution as "descent with modification". Darwin hypothesized that all forms of life descended from a common ancestor, branching out over time into various unique life forms, due primarily to a process called natural selection. However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms. This sudden eruption of multiple, complex organisms is...

Some people are very upset that a bookstore in Arizona is selling a book called Grand Canyon: A Different View. The bookstore is operated by the National Park Service, you see, and the different view presented in the book is that the mighty gorge came about as the result of the flood. You know, The Flood. The one starring Noah. Thus has censorship come full cycle from the days of John Scopes.

Mitochondrial DNA Mutation Rates David A. Plaisted Recently an attempt was made to estimate the age of the human race using mitochondrial DNA. This material is inherited always from mother to children only. By measuring the difference in mitochondrial DNA among many individuals, the age of the common maternal ancestor of humanity was estimated at about 200,000 years. A problem is that rates of mutation are not known by direct measurement, and are often computed based on assumed evolutionary time scales. Thus all of these age estimates could be greatly in error. In fact, many different rates of mutation are...