Free Republic

The Ice Age has been a longstanding problem for uniformitarian thinking, with many unsolved mysteries. No mere tweaking of today's climate conditions would cause such a catastrophe. A creationist model based on the revealed events of Scripture, however, offers a possible answer...

Evolutionary philosophy is a bottom-up storytelling project: particles, planets, people. Naturalists (those who say nature is all there is) believe they can invent explanations that are free of miracles, but in practice, miracles pop up everywhere in their stories. This was satirized by Sidney Harris years ago in a cartoon that showed a grad student filling a blackboard with equations. His adviser called attention to one step that needed some elaboration: It said, "Then a miracle happens." Examples of miracles in evolutionary philosophy include the sudden appearance of the universe without cause or explanation, the origin of life, the origin...

While Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species has been described as “a grand narrative—a story of origins that would change the world”,1 ironically his book very pointedly avoided the question of the origin of life itself. This ought not be surprising. Darwin’s theory of the origin of species “by means of natural selection”2 presupposes self-reproduction, so can’t explain the origin of self-reproduction. Unfortunately, many proponents of evolution seem unaware of that. They don’t acknowledge that natural selection requires pre-existing life. As leading 20th century evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky lamented: ...

Probably you have heard the expression, ‘Seeing is believing’, but is that always true? In fact, quite often it’s the other way around: ‘Believing is seeing’. This is true of geology, for example. Geological evidence does not speak for itself, and so it must always be interpreted. And how we interpret that evidence is always influenced by our beliefs. A good example of this is found on a roadside interpretive sign near the Sheep Rock Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in central Oregon. This is where the John Day River flows through a water gap[1] called...

The ideal of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconceived theories, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate, unbiased conclusions that constitute truth, is nowadays regarded by serious philosophers of science (and, indeed, most scientists) as a simplistic myth...

I looked over the Halloween article but I was wondering how to explain that to my eleven year old. Do you have any articles written to children on this?—T.H., U.S. Many people celebrate Halloween without considering the history of the holiday. They put on costumes, attend parties, eat candy, and even pull pranks on neighbors. In fact, Americans spend billions of dollars each year decorating and preparing. But there’s more to Halloween than jack-o-lanterns and scary stories. Let’s take a quick trip back in time to see where some of these customs came from—and if Christians should take part. To...

Researchers are recovering beautiful fossils from the Cerrejón Formation of Colombia. One was a giant snake, called the “Titanoboa.” Most recently, a study examined the formation’s fossilized flora, which looked the same as modern plants, and the rainforest environment in which they lived.[1] This research dovetails nicely with other studies on ancient earth’s turbulent climate. There is evidence of dramatic...

Modern Men Are Wimps Oct 23, 2009 — Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?  Our ancestors were much stronger, says the author of a new book on anthropology.  PhysOrg reported on a book by Peter McAllister that says today’s males don’t measure up physically to their counterparts even a century ago, let alone those in the Roman empire and earlier. According to McAllister humans have lost 40 percent of the shafts of the long bones because they are no longer subjected to the kind of muscular loads that were normal before the industrial revolution,” the article said.  “Even our...

Years ago, National Geographic published a remarkable photograph of a polystrate fossil, a fossilized tree that extended stratigraphically upward through several layers of rock in Tennessee. Its roots were in a coal seam, and the overlying deposits included bedded shale and thin carbon-rich layers. An advocate of any form of uniformitarianism would believe that it took many, many years to deposit this sequence of layers (much longer than it takes for a tree to grow and eventually die and decay), yet one vertical fossil extends through them all. This one fossilized tree offered a direct contradiction to the evolutionary mantra...

"The evolutionary lie is so pointedly antithetical to Christian truth that it would seem unthinkable for evangelical Christians to compromise with evolutionary science in any degree. But during the past century and a half of evolutionary propaganda, evolutionists have had remarkable success in getting evangelicals to meet them halfway. Remarkably, many modern evangelicals…have already been convinced that the Genesis account of creation is not a true historical record. Thus they have not only capitulated to evolutionary doctrine at its starting point, but they have also embraced a view that undermines the authority of Scripture at its starting point.” —Dr. John...

Charles Darwin admitted that the sudden appearance of fully formed creatures in fossil deposits was one of the biggest problems with his hypothesis that nature generated living creatures through natural selection. His vision of organisms gradually morphing from one kind to another over vast time spans predicted that most fossils should reflect that steady grading from one basic body plan to another. Some scientists believe they have found a creature that bridges one of the many gaps in the fossil record, although it requires a significant reworking of evolutionary theory. The crow-sized pterosaur fossil from China has been named Darwinopterus...

Complex machines often have lots of knobs provided for adjustment: think of a jumbo jet, a television set or a DVD player. With a radio set you can twiddle the knobs to tune a different station or increase the volume or adjust the tone. But you can twiddle the controls on your radio as much as you like, it won’t change into a TV set. The natural changes we see in living things are like twiddling the knobs on a complex machine: they can fine-tune the settings, but cannot create something completely new. For example, an enzyme in a bacterium...

It's a pretty safe bet that whatever book you pictured in your feverish little brain when you heard the phrase "Robert Crumb adapts Genesis" will never match, or perhaps even compare to, the actual product. When surrounded by as much anticipation and hype as this book has been, (virtually every blogger on the block has declared this the de facto "book of the year," or at least the "book they're most looking forward to") there is bound to be some disappointment. That's especially true if what you were expecting was anything more than the all-too-literal, note-for note interpretation that Crumb...

This is amazing. The wood alone would have cost him a fortune.     Man builds working replica of Noah's Ark (exact scale given in Bible) In Schagen , NetherlandsThe massive central door in the side of Noah's Ark was opened to the first crowd of curious townsfolk to behold the wonder. Of course, it's only a replica of the biblical Ark , built by Dutch creationist, Johan Huibers, as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible.The ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high an d 20 cubits wide. That's two-thirds the length of a...

Professor Ellen van Wolde, described as "a respected Old Testament scholar and author" in the London Telegraph, claims the first sentence of Genesis – "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" – is not a true translation of the Hebrew. "She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world – and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals," the report says. How this little morsel has eluded scholars for the past 3,000 years was...

The Legends of Genesis: The Significance and Scope of the LegendsARE the narratives of Genesis history or legend? For the modern historian this is no longer an open question; nevertheless it is important to get a clear notion of the bases of this modern position. The writing of history is not an innate endowment of the human mind; it arose in the course of human history and at a definite stage of development. Uncivilised races do not write history; they are incapable of reproducing their experiences objectively, and have no interest in leaving to posterity an authentic account of the...

Augustine: young earth creationist--theistic evolutionists take Church Father out of context --snip-- Augustine was not vague about the age of the earth, the historicity of Adam and Eve as our first ancestors, or the events in the Garden of Eden and the worldwide flood later in Genesis. However, his doctrine of creation was complex...

Plant geneticist Dr John Sanford began working as a research scientist at Cornell University in 1980. He co-invented the ‘gene gun’ approach to genetic engineering of plants. This technology has had a major impact on agriculture around the world...

The church is not the only place our children should be taught biblical truth. Parents can do many practical things to combat the evolutionary indoctrination their children face...

DETROIT (Billboard) - KISS, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Genesis, the Hollies, LL Cool J and Jimmy Cliff are first-time contenders for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, organizers said Wednesday. They join returning candidates ABBA, the Chantels, Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, the Stooges and Donna Summer. Five of the 12 nominees will be chosen for induction from ballots cast by more than 500 music industry voters. An announcement of the inductees is expected in January, and the Hall's 25th annual induction ceremony will take place March 15 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City....

What is meant by laws of nature? Presumably it is the business of science to uncover them. Yet few people, and few scientists, ever unpack the term. Many would be surprised to know that there are deep controversies among philosophers about the meaning of "laws of nature." Creationists have the high ground in this arena...

In chapter 46 of Genesis, Jacob and the rest of the 70 family members set out to reunite with Joseph (who is now vice-regent of Egpyt). Verse 28 tells us Jacob "sent Judah before him to Joseph, to point out the way before him to Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen." As I finished the verse I wondered why Jacob chose Judah -- who was the fourth oldest son -- and not Reuben, the eldest. In that culture it was virtually always the first born who had honors such as that placed on him. I believe the...

The Cave Of Lot's Seduction And The Monestary It InspiredBy konstantine D. Politis Special to The Daily Star Monday, October 25, 2004The cave of Lot's seduction and the monastery it inspired Jordanian site of Deir Ain Abata testifies to a thriving Byzantine and Umayyad-era Christian community Amman: The ruins were first discovered during an archaeological survey at the south-east end of the Dead Sea in 1986, near a spring named Ain Abata. After further investigations it was evident that the site - near today's Ghor al-Safi, the biblical city of Zoara - was none other that the Sanctuary of Agios...

WASHINGTON—When Andi Kasarsky’s husband died six years ago, members of her synagogue came to sit shiva—the customary Jewish ritual of mourning—with her. They came in shifts for days, many of them strangers, to share her grief. And although Kasarsky was mourning her husband, many of the grievers were gay. She was so touched by the support that Kasarsky, 54, became a more faithful member of Bet Mishpachah, an unaffiliated Washington congregation of around 200 gays and lesbians. She’s just one of many heterosexuals who are finding God in predominantly gay houses of worship. “Mishpachah means family and they were truly...

The Genesis enigma: How DID the Bible describe the evolution of life 3,000 years before Darwin? CHRISTOPHER HART 18th July 2009 The revalation came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force. 'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.' The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully...

New Voices in Evolution Activism: From Madalyn Murray O'Hair to Eugenie Scott by Lawrence Ford* Recently, the prestigious publication Scientific American honored Eugenie Scott as one of its ten most influential science people in America, along with a manager at a computer chip company, an electric car industry executive, an infectious disease physician, and even Bill Gates from Microsoft. Who is Eugenie Scott and why is she being honored? Did she contribute to lifesaving cancer research? No. Did she invent a device that will help millions of people in need? No.Kate Wilcox of Scientific American writes of Scott: Thomas Henry...

"LET US MAKE MAN..." Gen 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." To Whom was God speaking? Was the Father speaking to the Son? Or was the Son speaking to the Father? Was it the Holy Ghost speaking to the "other two"? Is there a proper interpretation of this verse which does not divide God into...

Saddened by the wickedness of man, God directs the righteous Noah to build an ark for his family and two of each species of animal. Together, they ride the ark through 40 days and 40 nights of torrential rains that God unleashes upon the Earth. And when the waters subside, Noah and the animals return to land. "That seems almost like a fairy story," said archaeologist Randall Price, who is director of Liberty University's new Center for Judaic Studies. "But we believe it was an actual event." This summer Price, 57, plans to continue on a journey to prove just...

Pictures of a piece of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (meaning: sacred land or high land), eastern Turkey or former western Armenia, because Noah's Ark is in pieces!

NEW YORK (CNN) -- In the midst of the ongoing culture wars, can it be a good idea to put out a comedy about two Stone Age men who wander into the Bible? Harold Ramis thinks so. "Year One," which he directed, concerns two men -- played by Jack Black and Michael Cera -- who leave their home and, in their travels, meet biblical characters such as Cain, Abel, Abraham and Isaac. Among the locales: ancient Sodom, which "didn't seem worse than Las Vegas to me," Ramis told CNN. "Year One" comes out Friday. Ramis, whose writing and directing credits...

The controversy surrounding evolution touches on our most central beliefs about ourselves and the world. Evolutionary theories have been used to answer questions about the origins of the universe, life, and man. These may be referred to as cosmological evolution, biological evolution, and human evolution. One’s opinion concerning one of these areas does not dictate what one believes concerning others. People usually take three basic positions on the origins of the cosmos, life, and man: (1) special or instantaneous creation, (2) developmental creation or theistic evolution, (3) and atheistic evolution. The first holds that a given thing did not...

Despite “decades of persistent failure to create life by the ‘spark in the soup’ method,”[1] evolutionary biochemists are still trying to find an exclusively naturalistic explanation for how the first cell developed. Many possible chemical precursors to life have been systematically ruled out by rigorous experiments. What they have found is that the molecules necessary for life are found exclusively within cells that are already living. One explanation proposed by evolutionists...

String theory “philosophy” challenged --snip-- The big bang is fundamental to cosmic evolution or the idea that somehow the universe made itself. The article majored on the varying ideas that emanate from big bang philosophy, such as dark energy and dark matter etc. that are used to solve some of the “science” problems of the big bang. It then went on to say that string theory is just another one of these ideas with no basis in experimental science...

Isolated hunter-gatherer tribes are often viewed in the West as being primitive (pre-agriculture), not-yet-fully-evolved relics of the Stone Age.[1,2] Such people are frequently dubbed ‘The People That Time Forgot’—a concept widely recognized, even by those unfamiliar with Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic 1924 novel (or the 1977 Hollywood movie).[3] However, faced with intriguing new evidence, anthropologists are having to completely rethink the ‘Primitive Worlds: People Lost in Time’[4] stereotype...

Dangerous Turn Ahead: Traveling down the road to compromise by Henry Morris, Ph.D.* Genesis 1:1 states, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." This is the first and foremost apologetic. If a person stumbles on this one profound truth, a lifetime of doubt and confusion lies ahead for him, full of uncertainty about the ultimate purpose for being alive. But when a Christian attempts to alter this ultimate statement of reality to fit the compromising philosophies of men--even scientifically-trained professionals--then woe to him for his unbelief and, even graver still, for teaching others that unbelief. The following...

Joshua C from Arizona asks about a pre-Fall role for the immune system, given that God created everything “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Medical doctor Carl Wieland responds...

Facilitated variation: a new paradigm emerges in biology Alex Williams Facilitated variation is the first comprehensive theory of how life works at the molecular level, published in 2005 by systems biologists Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart in their book The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma. It is a very powerful theory, is supported by a great deal of evidence, and the authors have made it easy to understand. It identifies two basic components of heredity: (a) conserved core processes of cellular structure, function and body plan organization; and (b) modular regulatory mechanisms that are built in special ways that...

Recently the Brits have found out what really separated them from mainland Europe: catastrophic flooding!...

Now a Creationist CMI Ph.D. scientist and author explains to an outside website what turned him to biblical creation How does someone with an essentially secular upbringing and secular education become a staunch supporter of biblical creation? (See also previous Boundless article A Theory of Creation). There was no single reason, but many pieces of evidence that accumulated into an overwhelming case...

“Charles Darwin and his followers have shown how all life on the planet evolved from a single source. The mechanism they call evolution by natural selection means competition, extinction and the emergence of new life forms without the need for a director or conductor. The Creator shimmers and vanishes like a mirage.” So says political pundit Andrew Marr, one of the BBC’s most senior journalists, in the first of his three BBC2 programmes celebrating evolution and its legacy during the last century and a half. While there was much to agree with in this thought-provoking series, Marr is careful to...

Worldwide FLOOD Worldwide EVIDENCE When the Bible refers to a worldwide Flood in Genesis 7–8, that’s exactly what it means. Not local, not metaphorical, not some crazy dream—the waters covered the whole earth. Don’t just take our word for it, though. Take a look at the evidence right beneath your feet...

Have you mowed your lawn lately? If so, you may have committed a grave ‘plants rights’ crime, according to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Biotechnology. In what reads like a clever parody, their twenty-four page report argues that plants may well be deserving of nearly the same reverence a human life is due (of course, in practice, these hypocrites would treat plants with greater reverence than human lives, see below). --snip-- Ironically, the great apologist G.K. Chesterton predicted a century ago the move toward plant rights when he discussed animal rights (although he can hardly have been serious when...

Science Still in the Dark about Dark Energy by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Evolutionary astronomers have a problem. The universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, but if general relativity is an accurate cosmological model, and if the universe is made up of the kinds of matter and energy that are directly detectable (like atoms and light), then its expansion should be slowing. Astronomers “fixed” this problem by theorizing that “75% of the energy density of the universe exists…as dark energy.”[1] This non-detectable dark energy allows the man-made model to match astronomical observations. However, scientists are aware that dark energy itself...

Noah’s Flood is critically important to the question of the age of the earth, as explains Dr. Terry Mortenson in this article on p. 62. For over eighteen centuries virtually all Christians understood Genesis to recount a universal Flood that completely covered the whole earth, leaving no dry land anywhere at the height of the event. However, during the past 200 years many Christians have been swayed by secular ideas and have abandoned the clear hermeneutic of Scripture for belief that the Flood was local and covered only the Mesopotamian Valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (the area of...

--snip-- Global Warming One of the most common refrains about the environment from the news media goes something like this: [insert disaster here] is coming if we don’t stop [insert bad thing some scientists claim we’re doing to destroy the earth]. Recently, most of these reports are somehow tied into global warming. While some of the evidence suggests that the earth has warmed recently (see sidebar for information), many scientists build their conclusions upon a faulty view of earth’s history. If we start with the Bible, we know how old the earth truly is, what happened in history (e.g., the...

Creation institute sues coordinating board By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz April 21, 2009 The Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has sued the state’s higher education agency for denying permission to offer a master’s degree in science education. The Bible-oriented group contends in a lawsuit filed last week in federal court that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board violated its civil rights. The suit, first reported by the Dallas Morning News, argues that the coordinating board discriminated against the institute because it doesn’t support evolution. Members of the coordinating board, who are gubernatorial appointees, voted 8-0 a year ago to...

Evolutionists often attempt to use observational science—arguments from biology, paleontology, geology, or even astronomy—to support their belief. But the really interesting thing is that they base all their arguments on principles that ultimately come from biblical creation! As strange as it may sound, evolutionists must unwittingly assume that creation is true in order to argue against it. That means that Darwin was (in a sense) a “creationist.” All evolutionists must borrow the principles of biblical creation in order to do science (even though they would deny this). Here is why...

Progressive creationist anthropology: many reasons NOT to believe A review of Who was Adam? by Fazale Rana with Hugh Ross Although mostly written by Fazale Rana, the book is said to equally represent the work of Hugh Ross. Their salvos against biblical creationists are mostly confined to the earlier chapters of the book, with the first shot being to blame us for the biblical perspective on human origins not being ‘at the high table of scientific debate’ (p. 12). Here they characterize the approach taken by creationists as largely attacking human evolutionary models, but seldom offering ‘a viable theory of...

Speciation and the Animals on the Ark by Daniel Criswell, Ph.D.* Many people who use biological data to support an old-earth position believe that the appearance of millions of animal species does not support a young earth interpretation of creation. Nor do they think that a recent global Flood would support the existence of a great number of animals today if Noah only took two of each kind on the Ark. However, the science of how speciation occurs, and the definition of a species versus the biblical kind, does explain how many variations of the same kind of animal can...

Dinosaur herd buried in Noah’s Flood in Inner Mongolia, China by Tas Walker Published: 14 April 2009 An international team of scientists have uncovered graphic evidence of the deadly terror unleashed on a herd of dinosaurs as they were buried under sediment by the rising waters of Noah’s Flood in western Inner Mongolia (figure 1).[1] Dinosaur bones were first discovered at the site, located at the base of a small hill in the Gobi Desert, in 1978 by a Chinese geologist. After about 20 years, a team of Chinese and Japanese scientists recovered the first skeletons, which they named Sinornithomimus,...