Free Republic

June 9, 2009 — “The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.”  That statement is not being made by creationists, but by science reporters describing work at Oregon State University that cast new doubt on the idea that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs.  The main idea: their leg bones and lungs are too different.     Science Daily’s report has a diagram of the skeleton showing...

Opinion What 'Ida' give for a missing link By: Casey Luskin, OpEd Contributor 6/8/08 As a follower of the evolution debate, I love it when new “missing links” are found. Not only does the media plunge headfirst into a crusade for Darwin, but suspiciously, it is only after unveiling the breakthrough that evolutionary biologists admit how precious little evidence they previously held for the evolutionary transition in question. Take the recent media coverage of a fossil primate named “Ida,” hailed as the “eighth wonder of the world,” whose “impact on the world of palaeontology” is being compared to “an asteroid...

So-called “junk DNA” has fallen on hard times. Once the poster child of evolutionary theory, its status has been increasingly challenged over the past several years. Functions for junk DNA have been cited at other places on this website1 and in the Journal of Creation2. In The Great Dothan Creation Evolution Debate,3 my opponent’s main argument, to which he returned again and again, rested on junk DNA. I warned that this was an argument from silence, that ‘form follows function’, and that this was akin to the old vestigial organ argument (and thus is easily falsifiable once functions are found)....

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...

Viral Life from Outer Space? Not Likely. by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Since a whole, functioning cell could not possibly emerge spontaneously from non-living matter, many evolutionists believe that simpler viruses were the first step towards the development of life. Researchers in Finland conducted a test on the survivability of viruses inside bacterial spores, which some scientists hypothesize may have travelled through space on meteoroids to seed life on earth. What the study discovered, however, is that life springing from space-borne viruses was highly unlikely. The question of life’s beginnings has been vexing to Darwin’s supporters. After a lifetime of speculating...

Junk DNA RoundUp (and Rebuttal): How Neo-Darwinism Creates Junk-Hypotheses, Then Resists Their Demise Sometimes after explaining how the now-defunct junk-DNA mindset was encouraged and fostered by neo-Darwinian evolution, evolutionists respond by asserting that nonetheless some individuals from their camp explored function for junk-DNA. This, they claim, absolves their neo-Darwinian camp from any charges of science-stopping, and shows that the neo-Darwinian paradigm did not hinder research into junk-DNA. But if a 2003 article in Science is any indication, then it seems that the neo-Darwinian paradigm did indeed impose a taboo on research into function for junk-DNA. As the article stated:Although catchy,...

In chapter 10, six measures for quantitatively evaluating information (especially its semantics) were identified, namely semantic quality, relevance, timeliness, accessibility, existence, and comprehensibility. Let us now investigate the role of these parameters in the Bible...

Where do inventions come from? Where do scientists find ideas to improve existing technology? Increasingly, the marvels of life—from the microscopic to the massive—inspire engineering breakthroughs. Knowingly or not, scientists are imitating God’s own incredible designs. His first encounter with the humpback whale fin at a sculpture gallery drove biologist Frank Fish to study the strange design. Puzzled by the fin’s “bumpy” leading edge, he first thought the sculptor had made a mistake. Learning that the sculptor was right, Fish spent years studying the design, which defies traditional theories that would suggest a smooth edge.[1] In his research—later confirmed by...

Protein Springs Keep Crabs Happy June 1, 2009 — Crabs and crayfish contain “exquisite” protein springs around their mouth parts that enhance motion, signaling, and sensing of their environment, Science Daily reported, about work done at the University of Cambridge.     The protein involved, called resilin, is almost perfectly elastic.  “The exquisite rubbery properties of resilin are known to be put to use as energy storage mechanisms in jumping insects and as biological shock absorbers in many animals,” said Malcolm Burrows, who conducted the study.  Using just one muscle, crabs and crayfish can move little feet (maxillipeds) around their...

Some Myths About the Quranic Science Written by Mumin Salih Tuesday, 02 June 2009 Islamic Woodooo Recently, Muslims scholars started to falsely claim that the Quran foretold many scientific discoveries that were not known in its time. None of the Muslims’ claims stands scientific or logical analysis. One wonders how the Muslim scholars dare to make such claims despite the obvious contradiction between the Quran and science. The answer to this question is that Muslim scholars became alarmed during the last decades as an increasing number of ordinary Muslims started to learn modern science. To pre-empt any suspicion about the...

une 4, 2009 — According to evolutionary theory, the extra processing required for living in social groups should make brains bigger. Not so, found a couple of scientists who looked into the question. There’s no general correlation. --snip-- Another evolutionary myth has been falsified, and Seth Shostak has been embarrassed again. Keep up the good work...

No Seal of Approval for Evolution by Frank Sherwin, M.A.* The recent discovery of an incomplete northern Canadian fossil is causing waves in certain evolutionary circles.1 Some scientists claim that Puijila darwini is a flipper-free pinniped (a group that includes walruses, sea lions, and seals) that is supposedly a long sought-after Darwinian transition between a land and freshwater animal. But although a BBC headline proclaimed it a "missing link," this status is made doubtful by the article's uncertain verbiage. Terms such as "probably," "very likely," "suggest," "hint," "apparently," "may have," and "appears to have" are used to describe this animal...

June 3, 2009 — Movements since the late 19th century have employed science as justification for tyrannical ideas. Ziauddin Sardar wrote in Nature, “Misplaced faith in science, as rational dogma, as the enemy of pessimism, as a theory of salvation, often serves as the glue that binds modernity and fascism together.”1 Could that happen again? Sardar, the editor of Futures, was reviewing a new book by Christine Poggi, Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism (Princeton, 2009). He began,...

Sea Urchin Teeth Are Designed to Grind Stone by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Sea urchins are spiny marine animals. Some of them like to hide in holes that they dig out of limestone in the ocean floor, using teeth that are ground down and yet remain sharp. What makes these teeth so special that they can drill through rock and not go blunt?...

Envying the Tooth of the Sea Urchin March 31, 2009 — Did you know the lowly sea urchin has a tooth?  It’s not just any tooth: it’s “a remarkable grinding tool,” according to a team of international scientists.  They even used the word “exquisite” in the title of their paper in PNAS.1  Humans might benefit from knowing more about this tool.  “The improved understanding of these structural features,” they said, “could lead to the design of better mechanical grinding and cutting tools.”     The sea urchin “tooth” is not really a tooth, but a hard rod with a serrated...

101 evidences for a young age of the earth...and the universe Can science prove the age of the earth? There are many different categories of evidence that the cosmos and the earth are much younger than is generally asserted today...

“Junk” DNA: Darwinism’s Last Stand? We are often told that the evidence for evolution is “overwhelming.” If “evolution” is defined as “change over time” or “minor changes within existing species,” this is a truism. But what if “evolution” means Charles Darwin’s theory? According to Darwin, all living things are descendants of a common ancestor that have been modified by unguided processes such as random variation and natural selection. Despite the hype from Darwin’s followers, the evidence for his theory is underwhelming, at best. Natural selection—like artificial selection—can produce minor changes within existing species. But in the 150 years since the...

When talking with friendly journalists, theistic evolution proponent Francis Collins typically insists that he wants to initiate a “dialogue” about faith and evolution. But Collins and his colleagues at the Biologos Foundation seem curiously averse to engaging in real dialogue. A case in point is a cranky blog entry posted this week by theistic evolutionist Karl Giberson, Francis Collins’ colleague at Biologos. Giberson, whom I debated at Biola University a few months ago, denounces Discovery Institute’s new Faith and Evolution website as “slick, well-resourced, rhetorically clever, profoundly misleading, and almost completely devoid of any real science.” Whew! Giberson’s own post...

Evolution As Catch-All Explanation June 3, 2009 — If you were taught a precise definition of neo-Darwinism in school, it doesn’t seem to matter to many evolutionists in the media. In practice, the word “Evolution” seems to act as a catch-all category for explaining anything and everything – whether or not random mutation and natural selection were involved. Some purpose and design can even be tossed into the mix as long as Evolution is the hero of the story. Here are some recent examples of how Evolution is employed to explain whatever:...

When and Why Anti-Darwinism First Arose I'm a big fan of Rod Dreher. His Crunchy Con blog rarely fails to enlighten me, so I've been looking forward to his reflections on faith and science, generated by his current visit to Cambridge University as a Cambridge-Templeton fellow. Rod blogged today in response to a lecture and discussion in which evolution came up. He writes that "Darwinism wasn't initially opposed by Christians" and credits William Jennings Bryan with rallying the faithful against evolution. This is worth some further elaboration. How soon did opposition to Darwinism develop? Among whom, and why?...