Free Republic

Within less than 20 years, theistic religion will become the developed world's primary organizing and motivating force — not through orderly growth, but suddenly and by default, as today's wrongheaded social patterns and perspectives become untenable Monday, January 09, 2006 by William F. Clark "God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, Prologue "It is really so: the purpose of our lives...

Interview With Father Rafael Pascual ROME, DEC. 14, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Evolution and creation can be compatible, says a philosopher who goes so far as to speak of "evolutionary creation." Legionary Father Rafael Pascual, director of the master's program in Science and Faith at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, puts his comments in context by clarifying that the "Bible has no scientific end." The debate on evolution and faith heated up last summer after Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna published an article July 7 in the New York Times in which he affirmed: "Scientific theories that try to explain away the...

THE first court trial over the theory of intelligent design is now over, with a ruling expected by the end of the year. What sparked the legal controversy? Before providing two weeks of training in modern evolutionary theory, the Dover, Pa., School District briefly informed students that if they wanted to learn about an alternative theory of biological origins, intelligent design, they could read a book about it in the school library. In short order, the School District was dragged into court by a group insisting the school policy constituted an establishment of religion, this despite the fact that the...

THE word creationism, coined in 1868 in opposition to what was then called Darwinism or evolutionism, had fallen on hard times. The proponents of a theory faithfully attributing the origin of matter to God, "the creator," were seemingly overwhelmed by the theory put forward by Charles Darwin and bolstered with much evidence by 20th century scientists. As a result, the noun creationism (like its predecessor, teleology, the study of purposeful design in nature) gained a musty connotation while evolutionism modishly lost its -ism. Then along came the phrase intelligent design, and evolution had fresh linguistic competition. Though the phrase can...

Group of Baptist families face possible loss of children to state "German Christians who choose to homeschool their children are coming under continued enforcement action by the government, with one group of families fearful they may lose custody of their kids..." [ Snip ] "...The families are part of one of two Baptist denominations in the area that reportedly split over the issue of whether or not to continue homeschooling the younger generation..." [ Snip ] "...Guenther says if the parents' attempt to negotiate with government officials fails, the parents could have their children removed from their homes. Thirteen children...

Edited from the final address at the 1996 Mere Creation conference. I'll begin by remembering three important events that occurred when I was a young adult, events which symbolize the ideological shift that occurred in the second half of the 20th century. The first event was the Darwinian centennial of 1959, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species. The celebration was held at the University of Chicago, where I entered law school shortly thereafter. Chicago was a particularly appropriate place to have the Darwinian centennial, because it was associated with other seminal events...

Scientists thought it was settled. The universe, they had decided, is about 20 billion years old, and Earth itself is 4.5 billion years old. Simple forms of life came into being more than three billion years ago, having formed spontaneously from nonliving matter. They grew more complex through slow evolutionary processes and the first hominid ancestors of humanity appeared more than four million years ago. Homo sapians itself—the present human species, people like you and me—has walked the earth for at least 50,000 years. But apparently it isn't settled. There are Americans who believe that the earth is only about...