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The video below is a very creative representation of what the day and night sky on Earth would look like if the earth had rings like Saturn. It is well worth a view.But it puts me in the mind of pondering the delicate balance of life on this earth and, though the artwork in the video is beautiful, I suspect that the presence of rings would dramatically alter life on this earth, perhaps even annihilate it.By way of disclaimer, let me say I am not a geologist or astronomer. But a number of things concern me about the presence of...

A ‘treasure trove’ of fossils including plant specimens collected by Charles Darwin, has been rediscovered. The fossils, which have been lost for 165 years, were unearthed in an old cabinet at the British Geological Survey’s vast fossil collection. They now have been registered and photographed and are available for viewing by the public through a new online museum exhibit at: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/geologyOfBritain/archives/jdhooker/ Just one of the lost fossils collected by Charles Darwin Courtesy of BGS©NERC Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, made the discovery. He recalled, “While searching a cabinet for fossils from the Bristol Coalfield,...

Looks like were all going to be “treated� to a new series on the Discovery Channel wherein British Physicist Stephen Hawking will ponder theological and philosophical questions. A rather strange thing for a scientist to do actually.I have no doubt that Stephen Hawking is a fine, even a brilliant scientist and theoretical physicist. But science has a limit, a limit rightly imposed on itself, which explores the physical world using empirical and evidential models that do not go beyond the physically observable world. Scientists, even theoretical physicists, do well who recognize their sphere, their field. And most scientists are quite...

Scientists have discovered that some ancient, primitive animals had excellent vision. Evidence comes from Kangaroo Island fossils that are over 500 million years old and look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly.   “Our Nature paper reports extremely well-preserved fossil eyes from Early Cambrian (approximately 515 million years old) rocks from Emu Bay on Kangaroo Island,” says UniSA palaeontologist Jim Jago, who was part of the research team. “These are by far the most complicated eyes known from this period of earth’s history. Each eye is seven to nine millimeters across and comprises over 3000 tiny lenses.   ...

Catholic Dogma and Teaching on Creationand the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission on Genesis Catholic Dogma and Teaching on Creation and the Fall And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them....And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth:...

Does the sun revolve around the Earth? One in every three Russians thinks so, a spokeswoman for state pollster VsTIOM said on Friday. In a survey released this week, 32 percent of Russians believed the Earth was the center of the Solar system; 55 percent that all radioactivity is man-made; and 29 percent that the first humans lived when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.

Genetic research proves worm has evolved to be less sophisticated than its ancestorsEvolution is not a steady march towards ever more sophisticated beings and therefore the search for the living "missing links" is pointless, according to findings published by a team of researchers led by Dr. Hervé Philippe of the Université de Montréal's Department of Biochemistry. "Aristotle was the first to classify organisms – from the least to the most sophisticated. Darwin's theory of evolution continued this idea, with the concept of a hierarchy of evolution. This way of thinking has led researchers and skeptics alike to look for less...

Stephen Hawking is wrong, Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday - God did create the universe.The pope didn't actually mention the world-famous scientist, who argues in a book published last month that the laws of physics show there is no need for a supreme being to have brought the world into existence.In fact, Benedict specifically praised - and blessed - science and scientists in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.But he also made clear that part of the role of science is to reveal God in the universe."Scientists do not create the world; they learn about it and...

Okay I have found the perfect Free Republic Thread! Top This! A Pit Bull bites the leg of a Mormon Missionary who is campaigning door to door for Duncan Hunter 2012 and tries to defend himself against the Pit Bull with a Sarah Palin for President yard sign and stumbles into the street where he is hit by a car with a Ron Paul 2000 bumper sticker. Then you would have the perfect Free Republic thread.

It's a question which has troubled science since Darwin: if homosexuality is, at least in part, inherited, how are those genes being passed down to new generations? Canadian researchers say they have found the first evidence to back up the theory that gay men have the evolutionary advantage of being "super uncles", a way of enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives and -- indirectly, at least -- making it more likely their genes are passed on. Paul Vasey, associate professor in the University of Lethbridge's department of psychology, said his research found evidence that gay men may be more...

The water-dwelling ancestors of modern-day mammals, reptiles and birds emerged onto land millions of years earlier than previously believed, researchers report. A set of fossilized footprints show that the first tetrapods — a term applied to any four-footed animal with a spine — were treading open ground 397 million years ago, well before scientists thought they existed. An expert unconnected with the research said the find would force experts to reconsider a critical period in evolution when sea-based vertebrates took their first steps toward becoming dinosaurs, mammals and — eventually — human beings. "It blows the whole story out of the water, so to speak," said Jenny...

Does it matter if nature solves the same problem multiple ways? A NSF-supported study of lizard populations in White Sands, NM, has helped researcher Erica Rosenblum of the University of Idaho begin to answer that question. Published December 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the article describes genetic differences between lizards found in habitats that contain white or dark soils. These stark differences in color are an ideal environment to study natural selection and gene flow. Lizard species that exhibit rapid adaptation to White Sands, NM. Courtesy of Erica Bree Rosenblum, University of Idaho In three...

A salamander allegedly “18 million years old” is the latest fossil to produce astonishingly well preserved soft tissue. This time, it’s muscle tissue, and it is supposedly the most pristine example yet. Background—the “dinosaur connection”...

The Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, which opened its doors earlier this year, boasts this country’s second-largest set of displayed dinosaur remains. The record is still held by the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. Both are located in Montana near a rich cache of world-famous fossils. The Glendive Museum stands apart, however, in that it presents dinosaurs as having been drowned and their remains preserved in the massive worldwide flood described in the Bible. This view has prompted reactionary comments from mainstream scientists ...

Believers in Intelligent Design have often been scorned as being opposed to science, but science itself is showing that it is the evolutionists who are opposed to rational inquiry.Though The New American has no official position on evolution, we have published a number of articles over the years pointing to flaws in the theory and arguing for academic freedom on the subject. We did this most recently in "Allow Intelligence" (May 12, 2008 issue), our very favorable review of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled. In the following article, Selwyn Duke suggests that it's possible to believe in both an evolution of...

The following is by Dr. David N. Menton, Ph.D. It is copyrighted 1994 by Missouri Association for Creation -- The human brain consists of approximately 12 billion cells, forming 120 trillion interconnections. The light sensitive retina of the eye (which is really part of the brain) contains over 10 million photoreceptor cells. These cells capture the light pattern formed by the lens and convert it into complex electrical signals, which are then sent to a special area of the brain where they are transformed into the sensation we call vision. In an article in "Byte" magazine (April 1985), John Stevens...

In recent decades, soft, squishy tissues have been discovered inside fossilized dinosaur bones. They seem so fresh that it appears as though the bodies were buried only a few thousand years ago. Since many think of a fossil as having had the original bone material replaced by minerals, the presence of actual bone--let alone pliable blood vessels, red blood cells, and proteins inside the bone--is quite extraordinary. These finds also present a dilemma. Given the fact that organic materials like blood vessels and blood cells rot, and the rates at which certain proteins decay, how could these soft tissues have...

Steve: You're doing really interesting work. You've decoupled sort of, "Is evolution true?", you know, "What are problems with evolution?", from people's interpretations of whether or not they accept evolution. Regardless of evolution itself, we're just talking about the psychological profiles of how you come to either accept or not accept evolution. Some of that work is yours and some of it you're very well familiar with from other people; so let's talk about some of the basics and some of the surprises about the people who accept and don't accept evolution and their reasons for it. Lombrozo: Sure. So...

For nearly two centuries the debate of how life was formed has raged. Did it occur through evolution or by creation? For many the debate is a theological one. Many Christians reject evolution holding that this theory is contrary to the Bible. Evolutionists often cite their theory as one refuting the existence of God. But can one believe in a creator while simultaneously accepting evolution?

Thanks to Baron Scarpia for alerting us to this website, which outlines the rigorous academic standards [Quote-miners, please note: this is sarcasm] which William Dembski’s students have to achieve in his courses on Intelligent Design and Christian Apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary: http://www.designinference.com/teaching/teaching.htm If you follow the links, you will see that it is full of gems: we won’t spoil them for you by flagging them all up, but – just to whet your appetite – you will notice that, at both undergrad and masters level, there are courses for which 20% of the final marks come from having...

What is portrayed as the debate between religion and science feels increasingly like watching the very bitter dissolution of a doomed marriage. The relationship started out all roses and kisses, proceeded to doubts and regrets, then fights and silences, a mutually agreed separation, and finally to curses and maledictions: “I wish you were dead!” In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss declared “the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science.” Krauss’s essay was the latest eruption of a vituperative argument going on in the scientific community over “accommodationism.” Accommodationists hold that even atheists...

BANDUNG, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesian scientists are reconstructing the largest, most complete skeleton of a prehistoric giant elephant ever found in the tropics, a finding that may offer new clues into the largely mysterious origins of its modern Asian cousin. The prehistoric elephant is believed to have been submerged in quicksand shortly after dying on a riverbed in Java around 200,000 years ago. Its bones—almost perfectly preserved—were discovered by chance in March. The animal stood four meters (13-feet) tall, was five meters (16-feet) long and weighed more than 10 tons. It was considerably larger than the great Asian mammals now...

Re-Analysis of the Marinov Light-Speed Anisotropy Experiment Reginald T. Cahill School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide 5001, Australia E-mail: Reg.Cahill@flinders.edu.au The anisotropy of the speed of light at 1 part in 10^3 has been detected by Michelson and Morley (1887), Miller (1925/26), Illingworth (1927), Joos (1930), Jaseja et al. (1964), Torr and Kolen (1984), DeWitte (1991) and Cahill (2006) using a variety of experimental techniques, from gas-mode Michelson interferometers (with the relativistic theory for these only determined in 2002) to one-way RF coaxial cable propagation timing. All agree on the speed, right ascension and declination of...

AUSTIN – Senate Democrats say they have more than enough votes to remove Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education Tuesday when McLeroy’s confirmation reaches the Senate floor.

Francis Collins, former head of the National Human Genome Research Institute and seminal player in sequencing the human genome, has launched a foundation that seeks to reconcile Christian faith with science. The Washington-based foundation, BioLogos, is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and aims to promote "the search for truth in both the natural and spiritual realms, and seeks to harmonize these different perspectives," according to its website. The BioLogos website also lists several questions (eg. "How does the harshness of evolution align with the idea of a loving God?" and "Can scientific and scriptural truth be reconciled?" and "What...

It may look like a cross between a seal and an otter; but an Arctic fossil could, scientists say, hold the secret of seal evolution in its feet. A skeleton unearthed in northern Canada shows a creature with feet that were probably webbed, but were not flippers. Writing in the journal Nature, scientists suggest the 23 million-year-old proto-seal would have walked on land and swum in fresh water. It is the oldest seal ancestor found so far and has been named Pujilla darwini.

A brilliant burst of gamma rays may have caused a mass extinction event on Earth 440 million years ago—and a similar celestial catastrophe could happen again, according to a new study. Most gamma-ray bursts are thought to be streams of high-energy radiation produced when the core of a very massive star collapses. Such a disaster may have been responsible for the mass die-off of 70 percent of the marine creatures that thrived during the Ordovician period (488 to 443 million years ago), suggests study leader Brian Thomas, an astrophysicist at Washburn University in Kansas. The simulation also shows that a...

Affirming the reality of an intelligent design for the creation and development of the universe is not a scientific theory, but a statement of faith, said the preacher of the papal household. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, offering a Lenten meditation to Pope Benedict XVI and top Vatican officials March 13, said the controversy that has arisen between scientists supporting evolution and religious believers promoting creationism or intelligent design is due mainly to a confusion between scientific theory and the truths of faith. The intelligent-design theory asserts that the development and evolution of life is such a hugely complex process that...

Terrible lizards trapped by terrible Flood Tas Walker A trail of fossilized claw marks found in northern Spain reveals the desperation of animals struggling to escape drowning in the Genesis Flood. ... That the footprints were preserved at all indicates the dinosaurs were engulfed by abnormal conditions. Today footprints are quickly obliterated, especially on a beach or in a strong current. But in the sandstone in Spain even the delicate features of the scratches were preserved, which means that sediment covered the tracks (and the ripple marks) soon after the dinosaur struggled past...

Atheists strategize against book on God Online plot reveals plan to give Christian writing low rating The Christian author whose book "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but You Can't Make Him Think" bumped atheist Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" on Amazon.com's best-seller list says he's uncovered a conspiracy to attack his work...

For the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12, 2009), National Geographic News asked leading scientists for their picks of the most important fossils that show evolution in action ...

In 2009, the eyes of the world will turn to commemorate the anniversaries of the births of the two most influential men of the last one thousand years — the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. No two men of the past millennium have done more to shape the thoughts of mankind or to affect the political and social destiny of nations than Calvin and Darwin — the former for the glory of God, and the latter for unimaginable evil. The following is a synopsis and excerpt...

Here is some interesting, and unexpected, polling data. According to the Discovery Institute’s website : A new Zogby poll on the eve of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday shows a dramatic rise in the number of Americans who agree that when biology teachers teach the scientific evidence for Darwin’s theory of evolution, they also should teach the scientific evidence against it. Surprisingly, the poll also shows overwhelming support among self-identified Democrats and liberals for academic freedom to discuss the “strengths and weaknesses� of evolution.   Over 78% of likely voters agree with teaching both the evidence for and against Darwin’s theory,...

The 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday on February 12 serves as a reminder that in his name scientific McCarthyism is alive and well in America's system of education. The same mentality that kept Galileo under house arrest for the last years of his life is today punishing science teachers who dare to raise scientific questions about Darwinian orthodoxy. Secular fundamentalists have so little confidence that the theory of evolution can stand up to rigorous scrutiny that they are gagging voices of dissent. For instance, one of the world's leading proponents of intelligent design is Dr. Scott Minnich, a biologist...

Darwin, Intelligent Design, and Freedom of Discovery on Evolutionists' Holy Day By Casey Luskin Posted February 10, 2009 February 12 used to be universally recognized as the birthday of Abraham Lincoln—a day celebrating freedom. Needing a patron saint, Darwinists in recent years have converted February 12 into "Darwin Day." There's nothing wrong with celebrating Darwin's birthday—if that's what you really want to do. But in recent years the advocacy of evolution has become increasingly associated with attempts to subvert freedom. To reclaim February 12 for those who love freedom, Discovery Institute and others in the intelligent design (ID) movement are...

According to Darwinian theory, in the past we had a common ancestor with baboons, further back with bananas and still further with bacteria. This dogma has spread like a ‘meme’, which is a contagious idea that propagates in a similar way as a virus by infecting brains, according to inventor of the word, Richard Dawkins.1 In 2002, Roy Britten dispelled the first monkey meme that human and chimpanzee DNA sequences are 98.5% identical.2 He showed that when indelmutations were also taken into account, the difference suddenly became about 5%. The fact that chimpanzee genomes are about 10% larger than that...

The skull of Basilosaurus, from the 1907 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1900 the famous bone sharp Barnum Brown discovered the skeleton of a huge carnivorous dinosaur in Wyoming, and near its bones were a few fossilized bony plates. When H.F. Osborn described this creature as Dynamosaurus imperiosus he used this association to hypothesize that this predator was covered in armor, but as it turned out "Dynamosaurus" was really a representative of another new dinosaur Osborn named Tyrannosaurus rex. Osborn's famous tyrant showed no sign of being covered with armor, and the bony body covering turned out to...

Charles Darwin's tree of life, which shows how species are related, is " wrong" and "misleading", claim scientists. They believe the concept misleads us because his theory limits and even obscures the study of organisms and their ancestries. Evolution is far too complex to be explained by a few roots and branches, they claim. Many of their species swap genes back and forth, or engage in gene duplication, recombination, gene loss or gene transfers from multiple sources. Dr John Dupré, a philosopher of biology at Exeter University, said: "If there is a tree of life it's a small irregular structure...

For years researchers have puzzled over whether adaptation plays a major role in human evolution or whether most changes are due to neutral, random selection of genes and traits. Geneticists at Stanford now have laid this question to rest. Their results, scheduled to be published Jan. 16 online in Public Library of Science Genetics, show adaptation-the process by which organisms change to better fit their environment-is indeed a large part of human genomic evolution. "Others have looked for the signal of widespread adaptation and couldn't find it. Now we've used a lot more data and did a lot of work...

New evidence from a study of yeast cells has resulted in the most detailed picture of an organism’s evolutionary process to date, says a Texas A&M University chemical engineering professor whose findings provide the first direct evidence of aspects, which up until now have remained mostly theory. Working with populations of yeast cells, which were color-coded by fluorescent markers, Katy Kao, assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, and Stanford University colleague Gavin Sherlock were able to evolve the cells while maintaining a visual analysis of the entire process.

The traditional understanding of DNA has recently been transformed beyond recognition. DNA does not, as we thought, carry a linear, one-dimensional, one-way, sequential code—like the lines of letters and words on this page. And the 97% in humans that does not carry protein-coding genes is not, as many people thought, fossilized ‘junk’ left over from our evolutionary ancestors. DNA information is overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it reads both backwards and forwards; and the ‘junk’ is far more functional than the protein code, so there is no fossilized history of evolution. No human engineer has ever even imagined, let alone designed an...

From Sandro Magister of Chiesa, a piece about Pope Benedict XVI's interest in the nature of mathematics within the relationship of faith and science: Scientists of worldwide fame, like Richard Dawkins of England and Piergiorgio Odifreddi of Italy, insistently link mathematics with the profession of atheism. Spread through conferences, articles, and best-selling books, their theories aspire to become a common language and philosophy. In simple terms, the objections to these atheist mathematicians are the ones expressed by a 17-year-old Roman high school student, Giovanni, during a question-and-answer session with the pope in St. Peter's Square, crowded with young people on...

First an explosion as powerful as thousands of megatons of TNT rained meteorites down on North America. Then forest fires broke out across the continent, sending up a thick layer of soot and dust that blocked out the sun. A sudden ice age ensued, and some of the Earth's largest animals went extinct in a blink of geological time. It's well known that a meteorite colliding with Earth is considered the most likely reason dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago. Now a team of scientists says it has found new evidence that a comet triggered a similar extinction much...

First published:Creation 19(4):22–23September 1997by Carl WielandThe chilling revelations of a recent television documentary1 expose the disturbing consequences of evolutionary ways of thinking. Beginning in the 1920s, many thousands of people in the United States were sterilised against their will and without their consent, to prevent ‘undesirable breeding’. Over 8,000 of these procedures took place at a major centre to which such ‘undesirables’ were sent, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution. The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature...

Video here. Classic line when she refers to the flag pin, an "accessory" Obama dislikes. Anyone who has pictures of Sarah Palin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Laura Ingraham, and other both principled and attractive conservative women, please post them all here. Who can post the most? Let the contest begin.

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales. Prof Hawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking. "I haven't read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales." Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look...

In the media, Catholicism is the religious tradition most frequently, and misleadingly, held up for approbation as having no problem reconciling Darwinism with theistic faith. The tradition next most often cited as Darwin-friendly is my own, Judaism. You can bet a new Rabbis’ Letter in support of evolution will garner the usual uncomprehending applause. Boasting 305 signatures so far, the letter holds that "It is possible to be inspired by the religious teachings of the Bible while not taking a literalist approach and while accepting the validity of science including the foundational concept of evolution." The Open Letter Concerning Religion...

One of the world's leading biologists, who is also an ordained Anglican priest, has sparked uproar in both religious and scientific circles by campaigning to teach creationism, along with evolution and the "Big Bang" theory in science classrooms. Creationism, an issue that has triggered furious debates in churches, schools and even courts in the United States, rejects Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and holds that God created the universe and all that goes with it - most of all, man - in six days. The Rev. Michael Reiss has truly stirred the pot - and the fury of his fellow...

The Brunswick County school board is looking for a way for creationism to be taught in the classroom side by side with evolution. "It's really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism," county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday's meeting. "The law says we can't have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists." When asked by a reporter, his fellow board members all said they were in favor of creationism being taught in the classroom. The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told...