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As a Christian, I believe that the universe and its living creatures are the products of intelligent design. This belief is not merely derived from theology but is also supported by rational considerations. There is enormous intelligence embedded in the laws of nature. The greatest scientists over the past few centuries have worked to decode the intelligence mysteriously imprinted in the workings of nature. Scientific laws, as spelled out by Kepler, Newton, Einstein and others, reveal nature as exquisitely orderly. So who encoded this intelligence in nature? Since the universe had a beginning, how did it get here? There is...

There's a shakeup in the cult of neo-Darwinist pseudo-science, and that endearing, monotone high school teacher of "Ferris Bueller" fame is doing the shaking. With his new feature documentary, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" (opening in theaters April 18), Ben Stein – actor, economist, presidential speechwriter and all around really smart guy – squares off with some of the world's most prominent anti-theist elites as he gets to the heart of the question, "Who are we, and how did we get here?" This is not your father's documentary. "Expelled" rocks the house both literally and figuratively. It's gripping, music-packed, comically wry...

Over the years, many people have challenged me with a question like: ‘I’ve been trying to witness to my friends. They say they don’t believe the Bible and aren’t interested in the stuff in it. They want real proof that there’s a God who created, and then they’ll listen to my claims about Christianity. What proof can I give them without mentioning the Bible so they’ll start to listen to me?’ Briefly, my response is as follows. Evidence Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence—the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth,...

...For most of my life, I believed the answers to these questions were fairly straightforward. Everything that exists is created by a Loving God. That includes rocks, trees, animals, people, really everything. All along I had been well aware that other people, very smart people, believe otherwise. Rather than God's handiwork, they see the universe as the product of random particle collisions and chemical reactions. And rather than regard humankind as carrying the spark of the divine, they believe we are nothing more than mud animated by lightning... Trailer requires Shockwave Flash: Super Trailerhttp://www.expelledthemovie.com/playgroundvideo3.swf More trailers here: http://www.expelledthemovie.com/video.php IMDB page:...

The genetic information of organisms--as varied as goldfish and geraniums--is widely available to the global public. So are the biologic codes for many viruses, such as variola (which causes smallpox) and poliovirus. The advance of biological technologies that allow for the construction of specific genetic sequences raises the harrowing possibility that someone, somewhere would use available genetic information to unleash a biological attack. The quandary facing scientists in the life sciences is similar to the issues that confronted scientists at the dawn of the nuclear age: Can potentially dangerous knowledge be made secret? Or should it be kept widely available?...

The history of cosmology – the study of the Universe – for the last five hundred years is often portrayed as a clash between science on the one hand, and the cold hand of religious dogma on the other. Part of this is rooted in fact – the Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation for instance was suspicious of intellectual innovation and experiment, with its harsher elements longing for the certainties of the age before Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. The desire to make the Universe fit into a pre-ordained and orderly scheme that needed no correction reached its infamous,...

The resignation of the [Texas] state's science curriculum director last month has signaled the beginning of what is shaping up to be a contentious and politically charged revision of the science curriculum, set to begin in earnest in January. [snip] Former science director Chris Comer says she resigned from the Texas Education Agency to avoid being fired after officials told her she had improperly endorsed evolution. She had forwarded an e-mail announcing a speech by a prominent scholar on evolution, which the state requires schools to teach. [snip] The [State Board of Education] must vote on any changes to the...

More Americans believe in a literal hell and the devil than in Darwin’s theory of evolution, a new poll found. Over half of Americans, 62 percent, believe in hell and the devil compared to only 42 percent of those surveyed who said they believe in Darwin’s theory, according to the findings of the recently released Harris poll. The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults, taken Nov. 7-13, found that 82 percent of respondents believe in God, according to Reuters. It further showed that 79 percent believe in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, and 72 percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ...

ENNIS - More than a century ago, a wolf-like creature prowled the Madison Valley, killing livestock and letting out screams that one account said would leave a person's hair standing on end. A bullet from a Mormon settler's rifle ended the animal's life and triggered stories of the creature that were passed along through generations of family history and local folklore. The only evidence of the creature's existence was a missing taxidermy mount and a grainy black-and-white photograph of that mount - which fueled strange speculation about what kind of animal it really was. Now after 121 years, the taxidermy...

The Creation Museum has met and exceeded its inaugural year attendance goal, less than six months after it opened its doors. Officials at Answers in Genesis, the apologetics ministry that opened the museum in May, anticipated 250,000 visitors the first year. However, the northern Kentucky-based museum met that goal last week. Melany Ethridge, a spokesperson for the museum, says the big crowds indicate that many are interested in the biblical explanation of creation. "The museum is drawing not only Christians who already believe in the biblical view of Creation, but it's drawing those who are just more curious to learn...

Someday spacecraft will be powerful enough perhaps to journey at extraordinary speeds, spanning the vast interstellar voids. Our technology might develop until we become a vast, powerful intergalactic society, capable of resolving the deepest quandaries ever known. Only then could we definitely answer what is perhaps the ultimate question: "Is the universe shaped like a doughnut?" This last question pertains to an idea attributed to Homer and mentioned by guest star Stephen Hawking in an episode of The Simpsons. In the episode, Lisa Simpson joins Springfield's chapter of the brainy organisation Mensa, which assumes mayoral duties and vows to remake...

The chicken egg has been prepped for surgery – a pea-size hole cut in the shell and covered with sticky tape. And now Hans Larsson, a McGill University researcher, removes it from the incubator, places it under a microscope and prepares to operate. He gently peels off the tape and teases back the membranes that line the shell with tweezers. Through the eyepiece, he can see the tiny dot of a heart, steadily beating. He can also see the bud where he implants a milky bead doused in a protein. He hopes it will coax the embryo to grow a...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Questions about human migration from Asia to the Americas have perplexed anthropologists for decades, but as scenarios about the peopling of the New World come and go, the big questions have remained. Do the ancestors of Native Americans derive from only a small number of “founders” who trekked to the Americas via the Bering land bridge? How did their migration to the New World proceed? What, if anything, did the climate have to do with their migration? And what took them so long? A team of 21 researchers, led by Ripan Malhi, a geneticist in the...

Oct. 11 (UPI) -- British scientists say they have solved a century-old evolutionary question: what makes a fish and a human embryo evolve differently? University College London embryologists have identified a key mechanism in the initial stages of an embryo's development that helps differentiate more highly evolved species, including humans, from less evolved species, such as fish. Early during development, the mass of undifferentiated cells that make up the embryo must take the first steps in deciding how to arrange themselves into component layers to eventually form a fully developed body. In higher vertebrates, such as mammals, two main layers...

The teaching of evolution is becoming increasingly difficult in UK schools because of the rise of creationism, a leading scientist is warning. Head of science at London's Institute of Education Professor Michael Reiss says some teachers, fearful of entering the debate, avoid the subject totally. This could leave pupils with gaps in their scientific knowledge, he says. Prof Reiss says the rise of creationism is partly down to the large increase in Muslim pupils in UK schools. He said: "The number of Muslim students has grown considerably in the last 10 to 20 years and a higher proportion of Muslim...

Atheist Scientists in Uproar over Movie Showing Intolerance of Evidence for Intelligent Design EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed Coming to Theatres in February 2008 LOS ANGELES, October 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) -  Atheist scientists who have become famous for attacking those who disagree with them are now loudly complaining about supposedly being mistreated in a film they haven't seen. Oxford zoologist, Richard Dawkins, has made a lot of money and fame calling people who believe in God "delusional." Yet he is now grumbling that the producers of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed "tricked" him into doing an interview. EXPELLED exposes the intimidation, persecution...

Many people are convinced that human evolution is a fact. Often they will cite the existence of hominids in the fossil record as evidence for their conviction. These creatures presumably represent evolutionary intermediates between an ape-like creature and modern humans. The standard evolutionary model for human origins views Homo habilis as the first member of our genus (Homo). This hominid initially appears in the fossil record about 2.6 million years ago (mya) and seemingly gives rise directly to Homo erectus around 1.9 mya. The direct transformation of H. habilis into H. erectus appeared to gain support from the recovery of...

This is where the game of pass-the-parcel winds up in a dead end--as, eventually, it must. A scientific theory is a falsifiable rule that relates cause to effect. If you push Dawkins and company far enough, you find yourself more or less where Aristotle was more than 2,000 years ago in stating his view that any chain of cause-and-effect must ultimately begin with an Uncaused Cause. No matter how far science advances, an explanation of ultimate origins must always--by the very definition of the scientific method--remain a non-scientific question.

For African bat bugs, the battle of the sexes is quite literally a violent struggle—and now it appears that the bugs are using gender-bending tactics to defend themselves. Bat bugs are small, reddish-brown parasites related to bed bugs that suck the blood of bats and sometimes bite humans. Researchers have long known that male bat bugs ignore females' conventional parts and instead use their sharp penises to stab the females' abdomens, injecting sperm directly into the bloodstream. So the females evolved a defense: structures called paragenitals that guide a male's needle-like member into a spongy reservoir of immune cells. But...

  hen non-biologists talk about biological evolution they often confuse two different aspects of the definition. On the one hand there is the question of whether or not modern organisms have evolved from older ancestral organisms or whether modern species are continuing to change over time. On the other hand there are questions about the mechanism of the observed changes... how did evolution occur? Biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact. It can be demonstrated today and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming. However, biologists readily admit that they are...