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Praised until recently as dogma, Darwin’s theory of evolution is now fading away, discredited by the same science that bore its poisoned fruit. Instead, the Christian vision of a supernatural design is being increasingly affirmed. “Evolution is now a datum proven beyond any reasonable doubt and no longer a theory, it’s not even worth taking the trouble to discuss it.” This is what a spokesman proclaimed at the Festival of Science held in Genoa in November 2005, thereby neglecting a very important aspect of modern science—the need to be open to new perspectives. Instead, the truth is quite the opposite....

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait. And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.

Expelled seems to me to be the right-wing analog of Fahrenheit 9/11...An effort to take a preexisting belief about the illegitimate use of power, find some facts to fit to it, and do the rest of the work with insinuation and innuendo... ...But the obvious question for ID proponents is never asked: OK, this great science is being suppressed, so please show me the data, lab notebooks, scientific work papers, unpublished manuscripts, and so on that contain all of these amazing discoveries that nobody will confront. But we never see it... ...One argument the movie makes, without any support that...

...about intelligent design and evolutionIn the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, narrator Ben Stein poses as a "rebel" willing to stand up to the scientific establishment in defense of freedom and honest, open discussion of controversial ideas like intelligent design (ID). But Expelled has some problems of its own with honest, open presentations of the facts about evolution, ID—and with its own agenda. Here are a few examples—add your own with a comment, and we may add it to another draft of this story. For our complete coverage, see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—Scientific American's Take. 1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin...

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Florida education officials voted on Tuesday to add evolution to required course work in public schools but only after a last-minute change depicting Charles Darwin's seminal work as merely a theory. Bending to pressure from religious conservatives, the State Board of Education on a 4-3 vote included the "theory" language as part of a retooling of the state's science standards for public school education. The compromise would require teaching that Darwin's proposal -- that natural selection has driven the evolution of many species from a few common ancestors over billions of years -- has yet to...

Roger Highfield reports new work that shows feathery dinosaurs might not have been as common as experts thought Feathers are flying once again over Chinese fossils used to back the theory that birds descended from dinosaurs. Prof Theagarten Lingham-Soliar at the University of KwaZulu Natal, claims today to have "refuted" a suggestion that primitive bristle-like structures that adorn the tail of Psittacosaurus are prototype feathers, as claimed by those seeking evidence to back the widely accepted idea of avian origins. Psittacosaurus (the "parrot-lizard", named after its strong beak), stood about 4ft tall, was a plant-eater with strong back legs and...

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,...

Residents of various continents becoming increasingly different ~~~snip~~~ If evolution had been proceeding steadily at the current rate since humans and chimps separated 6 million years ago, there should be 160 times more differences than the researchers found. That indicates that human evolution had been slower in the distant past, Harpending explained. “Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation,” the study says. “The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and...

A FRUIT picking trip to NSW ended in the death of a Scottish backpacker over a row about creationism and evolution. English backpacker Alexander Christian York, 33, was today sentenced to a maximum of five years jail for the manslaughter of Scotsman Rudi Boa in January last year. Mr Boa, 28, died on January 27 after being stabbed by York at the Blowering Holiday Park, near Tumut. ... The Scottish couple and York, neighbours at the caravan park, were becoming friends and spent the night of January 27 drinking at the Star Hotel in Tumut. However, towards the end of...

On February 18, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan appeared on the ABC program, "This Week With David Brinkley." He was asked by newspaper columnist George Will, "On the subject of culture, do you favor the teaching of creationism in public schools?" Buchanan answered, "I believe that God created heaven and earth. I believe in the Bible, George. I believe that children should not be forced to believe the Bible, but I think that every child should know what's in the Old and New Testaments." This prompted liberal commentator Sam Donaldson to ask, in a tone of unconcealed condescension and ridicule, "Did...

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...

Greetings. Many of you reading now know that Free Republic has played host to a great many debates on the scientific, philosophical and theological significance and viability of origins. The debates bandy back and forth the theories of naturalistic evolution and divine creation. After a few caustic crossfires on YouTube, a fellow named Ryan proposed a semi-formal debate. To be fair, I suggested we hold it on a public forum like Free Republic. FR is no stranger to these debates, and that way any moderating of the discussion remains objective. To distinguish quotes, any time I quote Ryan, it will...

Evidence of early humans living on the coast in South Africa 164,000 years ago, far earlier than previously documented, is being reported in the Oct. 18 issue of the journal Nature. The international team of researchers reporting the findings include Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and three graduate students in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. “Our findings show that at 164,000 years ago in coastal South Africa humans expanded their diet to include shellfish and other marine resources, perhaps as a response to harsh environmental conditions,” notes Marean,...

Scientists have discovered how a microscopic organism has benefited from nearly 80 million years without sex. Bdelloid rotifers are asexual organisms, meaning that they reproduce without males. Without sex, these animals lack many of the ways in which sexual animals adapt over generations to survive in their natural environment. Although other asexual organisms are known, they are thought to become extinct after relatively short time periods because they are unable to adapt. Therefore, how bdelloid rotifers have survived for tens of millions of years has been a mystery to scientists. Bdelloids typically live in freshwater pools. However, if deprived of...

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...

At the start of this sensible book about the "weight and fitness crisis" in America, the Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett tells us some shocking things. By 1995, she says, two-thirds of Americans were overweight, hundreds of thousands were dying fat-related deaths, being overweight was people's most common gripe and obesity was poised to overtake smoking as the biggest cause of preventable death. All of this, she says, accounted for $99 billion in medical costs. ... The problem, in other words, is bad, and it's getting worse, and we can't seem to stop it. So why does fattening food – sugar,...

Source: Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Date: September 11, 2007 New Method Can Reveal Ancestry Of All Genes Across Many Different Genomes Science Daily — The wheels of evolution turn on genetic innovation -- new genes with new functions appear, allowing organisms to grow and adapt in new ways. But deciphering the history of how and when various genes appeared, for any organism, has been a difficult and largely intractable task. A scanning electron micrograph of one of the seventeen fungal species analyzed in the study. (Credit: Image courtesy / Janice Carr, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Now a team...

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit against the Roseville Joint Union High School District that was filed by a Granite Bay man unhappy with how evolution was being taught in his children's school. The father, Larry Caldwell, spent much of 2003 and 2004 trying to persuade the Roseville high school district to alter its biology curriculum to include arguments against evolution. After many meetings and discussions about his proposals, the school board rejected them. Caldwell then sued the district, four administrators and two school board members, alleging they had violated his constitutional rights in the process of considering...

Link Only: It turns out we may not be 'big-brained apes' after all - Researcher says Darwin's theory overstated the similarities between human, animal brains

Loving Our ChildrenFor the past few years, I’ve been telling BreakPoint readers about our culture’s undeclared war on people with Down syndrome. Earlier this year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended that all pregnant women, regardless of age, undergo amniocentesis. Obviously that’s to put them under increasing pressure to abort the child if a genetic defect is detected. I thought that I heard every possible argument for and against this barbarism, but I was wrong. Apparently, in addition to asking themselves “what would Jesus do?” women should ask themselves “what would Darwin advise?” But Dr. Frank Boehm of...

The soil on Mars may contain microbial life! Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, will declare on Friday the Viking spacecraft may have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin. That is roughly comparable to biomass levels found in some Antarctic permafrost, home to a range of hardy bacteria and lichen. Developing....

The discovery of a new species of great ape that roamed Africa 10m years ago has forced scientists to rethink the earliest steps of human evolution. Fossil hunters working along the Afar rift in central Ethiopia unearthed remnants of teeth they claim belonged to the primitive ape, a previously unknown species of gorilla they named Chororapithecus abyssinicus. The finding, if confirmed, will redraw the evolutionary tree of primates, suggesting that humans and chimpanzees must have split from their gorilla-like ancestors 3m years earlier than thought. Geneticists have previously put the date at which the human and chimpanzee lineage split from...

Did life begin on comets? 18:17 17 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Hazel Muir Clay particles seen in Comet Tempel 1 suggest comets once had warm, liquid interiors that could have spawned life, a controversial new study argues (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD)Tools If you buy a lottery ticket this week, what are the odds that you'll win the grand prize then get struck by lightning as you pop open the champagne? Vanishingly small, but still much higher than the odds that life on Earth first evolved on our planet, according to an ardent proponent of the notion that life came from space....

A former home-school student from the Kansas City area has been awarded a $50,000 scholarship to Liberty University after winning a research paper contest sponsored by an apologetics ministry. Twenty-year-old Karin Hutson won the contest with her 3,000-word research paper titled "Evolution of Ethics," which looked at the impact of Darwin's beliefs on morality worldwide. The "Research Paper Challenge" was introduced last year as a way to equip students to defend the truth and authority of the Holy Bible. Dale Mason, vice president of Answers in Genesis, which sponsored the competition, says the contest helps Christians give a better defense...

ChristiaNet.com, the world's largest Christian portal with twelve million monthly page loads, conducted a recent poll asking, "Is the Earth billions of years old?" Regardless the selection of "Yes", "No" or "Unsure", these Christian voters agreed that, "In the beginning God created..." "A point of confusion seems to be whether there is a gap of time between the beginning of universe and the creation of Adam", stated Bill Cooper, President of ChristiaNet. Out of 797 polled, 43% believed the Earth is less than billions of years old. The vast majority of this group felt the Earth is between 6,000 and...

Archaeologists have found an eight-million-year old forest of cypresses, well preserved and not fossilised, in Bukkabrany in north eastern Hungary. "The discovery is exceptional as the trees kept their wooden structure, they neither turned into coal nor were petrified," Tamas Pusztai, the deputy director and head of the archaeological department at the local Otto Herman museum who oversaw the excavation, told AFP. Archaelogists announced the find last week after uncovering the mysterious forest of taxodiums, a kind of swamp cypress, after a few days of digging. Miners working in a brown coal mine had first uncovered several tree trunks that...

Professional paleontologists from around the world are concerned about the misrepresentation of science at the newly opened Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. The Creation Museum has been marketed to the public as a “reasoned, logical defence” for young-earth creationism by Ken Ham, the President and CEO of Answers in Genesis, which runs the Creation Museum. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a world-wide scientific and educational organization concerned with vertebrate paleontology, contends that the museum presents visitors with a view of earth history that has been scientifically disproven for over a century...

Tom Henderson is not much of a watchmaker. He shakes a small glass jar containing a tiny metallic gear, a brass bezel, a scarred watch crystal and dozens of other nearly microscopic, shiny objects. But, no watch. He vigorously rattles the container again. Still, no watch. For Henderson, a retired NASA engineer and creationist speaker, that is the point. No watchmaker — no watch. He’s carried the somewhat-out-of favor message of special creation to nine foreign countries in the past several decades because he is convinced that how we believe the world came to be it is important. His is...

Geologists have found the remains of a huge underground rainforest hidden in a coal mine in Illinois. The fossil forest, buried by an earthquake 300 million years ago, contains giant versions of several plant types alive today. ... Also surprising is the presence of remains from mangrove-like plants. "It was always assumed that mangrove plants had evolved fairly recently," says Falcon-Lang.

n extremely rare "living fossil" caught by a fisherman in Indonesia is being examined by scientists. The 1.3m-long (4.3ft), 50kg (110lb) coelacanth is only the second ever to have been captured in Asia and has been described as a "significant find". An autopsy and genetic tests are now being carried out to determine more about the specimen. Coelacanths provide researchers with a window into the past; their fossil record dates back 350 million years. These fish are odd in appearance, looking almost as if they have legs because of their large-lobed fins - they are sometimes dubbed "old four legs"....

Science fiction reported as science fact? That's the claim of a staff member with Answers in Genesis in reaction to a recent scientific "discovery." Dr. David Menton, a speaker with the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, says the recent announcement that scientists have found a possible link between two species of early humans is more fiction from those who want to promote the false theory of evolution. He says he sees a double standard in how evolutionists handle their so-called discoveries in comparison to other scientific fields. "The intriguing thing is that in any legitimate branch of science, these articles...

Myths of Evolution - Part 1 If the theory of evolution is such a sure thing, why have so many doubts been raised about it? Why do so many fight so hard to prevent alternatives from being seriously considered? Most important of all, what does the evidence really show? by Mario Seiglie Here at the start of the 21st century, the theory of evolution remains the dominant explanation in schools and the mass media about the appearance and the wondrous variety of more than a million living species on planet earth. Of course, not all areas of the world place...

Is The Design of Modern Science Defective?: A review of Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism [Editor's Note: This post was written by a Discovery Institute legal intern, Guillermo Dekat. Mr. Dekat is a law student at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. He holds a bachelor's degree in biology from the Air Force Academy.] A review of Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism By: Cornelius G. Hunter (Brazos Press, 2007) In law, one who sells a product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user is held strictly liable for the...

A population of butterflies has evolved in a flash on a South Pacific island to fend off a deadly parasite. The proportion of male Blue Moon butterflies dropped to a precarious 1 percent as the parasite targeted males. Then, within the span of a mere 10 generations, the males evolved an immunity that allowed their population share to soar to nearly 40 percent—all in less than a year. “We usually think of natural selection as acting slowly, over hundreds or thousands of years," said study team member Gregory Hurst, an evolutionary geneticist at the University College London. "But the example...

Is Darwin due for an upgrade? There are growing calls among some evolutionary biologists for just such a revision, although they differ about what form this might take. But those calls could also be exaggerated. There is nothing scientists enjoy more than the prospect of a good paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts are the stuff of scientific revolutions. They change how we view the world, the sorts of questions that scientists consider worth asking, and even how we do science. The discovery of DNA marked one such shift, the theory of plate tectonics another. Many scientists suffer from a kind of...

Pick up any biology textbooks, books, articles. And you will see the pervasive use of the word "design" - biological designs in cells, tissues, structures, bio-systems, organisms, etc. So, Darwin theorized that this design is due to blind natural forces. The alternative theory of course must be that this design is not due to blind natural forces, but is real design, i.e. intelligence-caused design. (I) Darwinist Theory: Design is due to blind natural forces (II) ID Theory: Design is intelligence-caused design Is Darwinist theory falsifiable? If Darwinist theory is falsified, then of course ID theory is affirmed. Similarly, if ID...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The discovery of a primitive, shrew-like mammal fossil in Mongolia has revived the view that its modern mammal cousins arrived just as the dinosaurs made their dramatic exit about 65 million years ago, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. Recent studies have placed the arrival of modern mammals at anywhere from 140 million to 80 million years ago, long before an asteroid crashed into Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs."The fossil itself is the least interesting part of the story scientifically," said John Wible of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, whose research appears in the...

Empirical science and religion differ in some fundamental ways. Scientists look for questions to ask. Priests (preachers, rabbis, etc) just provide answers. Science has theories that are subject to change. In 1896, physicists believed that atoms were the smallest particles of matter. A year latter J.J. Thomson overturned this theory by reporting his discovery that atoms were actually comprised of smaller charged particles he called "protons", "electrons" and "neutrons". Later research demonstrated that Thomson's particles were comprised of even smaller particles. Religion has truths that are to be accepted without question. Those who question these truths may be treated as...

The three Republican presidential candidates who indicated last month that they do not believe in evolution may have been taking a safe stance on the issue when it comes to appealing to GOP voters. A Gallup poll released Monday said that while the country is about evenly split over whether the theory of evolution is true, Republicans disbelieve it by more than 2-to-1. Republicans saying they don't believe in evolution outnumbered those who do by 68 percent to 30 percent in the survey. Democrats believe in evolution by 57 percent to 40 percent, as do independents by a 61 percent...

PRINCETON, NJ -- The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain. Independents and Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe in the theory of evolution. But even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant...

Modern humans first emerged about 100,000 years ago. For the next 99,800 years or so . . . nothing [economically speaking] happened. Almost everyone [except for a numerically insignificant elite] lived on the modern equivalent of $400 to $600 per year, just above subsistence level . . . Then - just a couple of hundred years ago, maybe 10 generations - people started getting richer. [And that trend has accelerated] . . . If you're earning a modest middle class income of $50,000 a year, and if you expect your children, 25 years from now, to occupy the same modest...

Link Only: Poll shows belief in evolution, creationism

The man picked by the Creation Museum to play Adam leads quite a different life outside the Garden of Eden. Records show that Eric Linden owns a pornographic web site called [name voluntarily removed for Free Republic post]. He's been pictured there in a T-shirt brandishing the site's sexually suggestive logo. Linden grew up in Columbus. The 27-year-old appears as Adam in one of 55 videos featured on visitor tours at the Petersburg, Kentucky museum. The museum -- which opened last month -- tells the Bible's version of how Earth was created. Museum officials today stopped airing the 40-second video...

The current US presidential debates are almost certain to see the candidates asked to comment on spiritual issues, but some Americans are worried about the trend towards religiosity in public life. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will be challenged on their beliefs At my twins' annual school camp in West Virginia, you are meant to leave your troubles behind. It is an idyllic couple of days - a communing with nature which my wife gallantly insists is simply too enjoyable for her to take part in - it has to be a dad's experience. Actually it is not that...

Compared with the $27 million Creation Museum that just opened its doors in Kentucky, Canada's first museum dedicated to explaining geology, evolution and paleontology in biblical terms is a decidedly more modest affair. The Big Valley Creation Science Museum, which opens next week, was built for C$300,000 ($278,000) in the village Big Valley, Alberta, population 308, a two-hour drive northeast of Calgary. The Canadian museum features displays on how men once walked among dinosaurs, a giant model of Noah's Ark, a set of English scrolls tracing the family of King Henry VI back to the Garden of Eden, and an...

There have been many scholarly and unimpeachable arguments written in opposition to the theory of evolution. Still, people will believe what they want to believe. Evolution theory has been pounded into the heads of children for many decades and it is very difficult to dislodge wrong thinking when so many teach that it is right. In spite of this theory being promoted in almost every major theme of study (i.e. mathematics, social studies, history, psychology, etc.), the adoption of evolutionary beliefs by both science and academe has done nothing to better our society. No drunkard has repented; no harlot has...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Primitive fish already may have possessed the genetic wiring needed to grow hands and feet well before the appearance of the first animals with limbs roughly 365 million years ago, scientists said on Wednesday. University of Chicago researchers were seeking clues behind a momentous milestone in the evolution of life on Earth -- when four-legged amphibians that descended from fish first colonized dry land. These first amphibians paved the way for reptiles, birds and mammals, including people. "What we're interested in here is the transition from fin to limb -- a great evolutionary event," palaeontologist Neil Shubin,...

The National Association of State Boards of Education will elect officers in July, and for one office, president-elect, there is only one candidate: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts against the teaching of evolution. Scientists who have been active in the nation’s evolution debate say they want to thwart his candidacy, but it is not clear that they can. The candidate is Kenneth R. Willard, a Kansas Republican who voted with the conservative majority in 2005 when the school board changed the state’s science standards to allow inclusion of intelligent design, an ideological cousin of...

Today we reach an anniversary of sorts, unremarked, but remarkable nonetheless. It was 260 years ago this week that a young Scottish naval surgeon by the name of James Lind did something truly revolutionary. In those days of English naval supremacy Britannia ruled the waves, but the royal navy itself was ruled by scurvy. Only a few years earlier, Commodore George Anson had attempted the royal navy's first circumnavigation of the globe. He left the Portsmouth naval yards in command of seven ships and 2,000 men. He returned two years later in one ship with just 188 men remaining. Some...