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Ball State University, a public institution in Muncie, Indiana, is purportedly looking into claims that a course centered around the subjects of creationism and intelligent design constitutes a violation of the separation of church and state. The college purportedly began its investigation after the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a church-state separatist group, sent a letter of complaint regarding physics and astronomy professor Eric Hedin. Hedin’s offense? He apparently encourages students to read books by scientists, journalists and proponents who embrace intelligent design. The description of his course, as reported by World on Campus, claims that students will “investigate physical...

Bill Nye used to be “The Science Guy” on PBS. Now he’s just a godless hater. The former host of the “educational” TV show targeted to preteens, which aired from 1993 to 1998, said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots. And that we ought not pass along that belief to our children. “I say to the grownups,” Nye condescended, “if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, your world that’s inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it.”...

Paging Nicholas Wade. He’s the New York Times science writer who worships at the altar of Darwinism. Two years ago, he reported that biologists, led by Svante Paabo of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, had determined that Neanderthals mated with modern humans. That “scientific” finding provided a convenient explanation for what happened to humanity’s supposed ancestor: We interbred with them until they disappeared. Now comes a new study, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that the finding reported by Wade, were wrong. There was no mating, no “hybridization,” between Neanderthals and Homo...

I appreciated the comments of Leroy Stucky (Western Front, June 28) defending the biblical view of the beginning of mankind, the world and the universe, otherwise known as creationism. Creationism will always be a very difficult doctrine to accept, as long as people exclude the supernatural influence and presence of an almighty God who, in my opinion, started the whole process. I have never read an issue of The American Spectator magazine, but recently at the library I happened to pick up the May 2012 issue. The magazine, I found out, is very conservative, but not necessary Christian. However, included...

Good things are happening beneath the media radar. Stephen Meyer, the director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, spoke the other evening at a forum called “Socrates in the City.”... In his talk, inquiring how life first appeared from simpler pre-existing chemicals, Meyer emphasized the concept of biological information, which is embedded in DNA. Think of it as analogous to software code. Bill Gates said that “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Software contains instructions that direct computers to accomplish various functions. Likewise, DNA contains instructions for...

A lawsuit between Jet Propulsion Labs and a NASA mission specialist who claims he was demoted for his beliefs begins Wednesday, the latest in a series of court cases featuring intelligent design proponents suing former employers. David Coppedge was employed at the JPL for 14 years and served as an information technology specialist on the Cassini mission to Saturn before being demoted. He first took his case to court in the summer of 2010 and was later fired in Jan. 2011. In the complaint, Coppedge alleges that he was demoted and disciplined for discussing intelligent design with co-workers and distributing...

Professor of Atheism Richard Dawkins grows increasingly shrill. His outbursts include the following, not very recent, but typical: __________________________________ It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that). __________________________________ You can, of course, make any point you like providing you don't care about first premises. One thing which evidently fails to enter Professor Dawkins' mental universe is the idea -- accepted by many scientists -- that the theory of evolution is broadly correct, but as an...

California Science Center The state-run California Science Center (CSC) has paid $110,000 to settle a lawsuit by American Freedom Alliance (AFA) against CSC for violating AFA's First Amendment free speech rights to advocate intelligent design (ID). As part of the settlement, the CSC also has invited AFA to present the ID event it previously cancelled. CSC rented its IMAX theater to AFA to show Darwin's Dilemma, a science documentary advocating ID. However, when CSC learned the film would portray ID favorably, CSC cancelled AFA's event. AFA filed suit in California Superior Court alleging viewpoint discrimination and breach of contract. "This...

Education is one of the things that nearly every American agrees is important. I am one of those people. I do everything in my power to give my children every educational opportunity. I was well-pleased with my education choices when, today in my child’s 3rd-grade class, the teacher turned on some music, and half of the children were excited because it was Beethoven, and they each spontaneously told which Beethoven piece was their favorite. However, to educate properly, the primary principle that you must operate with is this – education needs to be sensitive to the nature of humans. If...

Governor Rick Perry on evolution, in an interview with the Associated Press: "There are clear indications from our people who have amazing intellectual capability that this didn't happen by accident and a creator put this in place. Now, what was his time frame and how did he create the earth that we know? I'm not going to tell you that I've got the answers to that. I believe that we were created by this all-powerful supreme being and how we got to today versus what we look like thousands of years ago, I think there's enough holes in the theory...

Bachmann: Schools should teach intelligent design By CNN Political Reporter Peter Hamby New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann explained her skepticism of evolution on Friday and said students should be taught the theory of intelligent design. Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota, also proposed a major overhaul of the nation’s education system and said state administrators should be able to decide how they spend money allocated to them by the federal government. "I support intelligent design," Bachmann told reporters in New Orleans following her speech to the Republican Leadership Conference. "What I support is putting all science...

On Easter, Pope Benedict XVI spoke out against both creationism and evolution, or so it looked anyway. About the biblical account of Genesis, he said, "It is not information about the external processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being." So much for literal creationism. But then he seemed to take a swipe at science, proposing that mankind cannot be just another product of evolution. "It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning...

A new Texas bill would make it illegal for colleges to fire or refuse jobs to professors based on their research on intelligent design or other theories on the origin of life that question evolution. The measure from Republican state Rep. Bill Zedler would prohibit public institutions of higher education from discriminating against or penalizing faculty members or students, in regard to employment or academic support, based on their "conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms." The bill, HB 2454, was received by the Higher Education...

Dr Martin Gaskell is a respected expert on supermassive black holes and a long-serving research fellow at the University of Texas. In 2007, Dr Martin Gaskell applied for the position of director at the new MacAdam student observatory at the University of Kentucky. He stood "breathtakingly above the other applicants in background and experience" according to the chairman of the selection panel, but he did not get the job. Unsurprisingly, he sued. It is not controversial to state that English-born Gaskell is a devout Christian. He has also said that he is sceptical about certain aspects of evolutionary theory and...

In his January Diary, John Derbyshire comes down on the side of the University of Kentucky for refusing to hire Martin Gaskell, a superbly qualified astronomer, for the sole reason that he expressed sympathy for intelligent design. The case of Professor Gaskell, who sued UK for religious discrimination, needs to be understood in the context of widespread anti-Christian discrimination in academic science. I thought readers might be interested in some background on the story and many others like it to which Brother John did not draw our attention. The University of Kentucky chose to pay a $125,000 settlement to Gaskell,...

CREATIONISM and intelligent design will be taught in Queensland state schools for the first time as part of the new national curriculum. Creationists dismiss the science of evolution, instead believing that living things are best explained by an intelligent being or God, rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. The issue of creationism being taught in schools has caused huge controversy in the US, where some fundamentalist religious schools teach it as a science subject instead of Darwin's theory of evolution. In Queensland schools, creationism will be offered for discussion in the subject of ancient history, under the...

Signature of Controversy is a new e-book that counter-argues to criticism of Stephen Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell. It consists of various essays by David Berlinski, David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, Richard Sternberg and Stephen Meyer. Here is a paragraph from the intro: Published in 2009, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design is recognized as establishing one of the strongest pillars underlying the argument for intelligent design. To call the book fascinating and important is an understatement. No less interesting in its way, however, was the critical response and it is...

Dear Ms Scott, Thank you for your recent letter informing me of the efforts of your fine organization to discourage the teaching of creationism, elsewise known as intelligent design. The answer to your questions is: yes, I did know that “evolution was under attack.” But unlike you, I am not that concerned about it. I’m certainly not concerned enough to part with the $100 you ask for. Like you, I’m convinced that the Earth is more than six-thousand years old. The evidence that its age is four-and-a-half billion years old, plus or minus a few tens of millions, is multitudinous....

THE eye has long been an evolutionary battleground. Ever since William Paley came up with the watchmaker analogy in 1802 - that something as complex as a watch must have a maker - creationists have used it to make the "argument from design". Eyes are so intricate, they say, that it strains belief to suggest they evolved through the selection and accumulation of random mutations. Recently, evolutionary biologists have turned this argument on its head. They say that the "inside out" vertebrate retina - curiously structured so that its wiring obscures the light sensors and leaves us with a blind...

Paul Thagard1 and Scott Findlay1 Philosophy Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada Published online: 20 August 2009 Abstract Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is central to modern biology, but is resisted by many people. This paper discusses the major psychological obstacles to accepting Darwin’s theory. Cognitive obstacles to adopting evolution by natural selection include conceptual difficulties, methodological issues, and coherence problems that derive from the intuitiveness of alternative theories. The main emotional obstacles to accepting evolution are its apparent conflict with valued beliefs about God, souls, and morality. We draw on the philosophy of science...

A change in leadership certainly makes a difference. Past recent administrations at Baylor University in Waco have maintained sensible policies protecting scientific integrity against those who would force their dogmatic religious beliefs on unsuspecting students paying top dollar for higher education. The previous administrations have resisted efforts by some professors in the so-called "Intelligent Design" movement who sought to distort the principles of modern science to include religious teachings tantamount to creationist fundamentalism. Dr. Bob Marks is one of these professors in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department who has caused friction with the administration for promoting his Intelligent Design...

1. Intelligent Input Required for Life. In a significant peer-reviewed article in the September 2009 journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics authors William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II use computer simulations and information theory to challenge the ability of Darwinian processes to create new functional genetic information. This paper is in many ways a validation of Dembski's core ideas in his 2001 book, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, which argued that some intelligent input is required to produce novel complex and specified information. 2. Signature in the Cell. Stephen Meyer...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Fossils of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur have been found in slabs of Utah sandstone that were so hard that explosives had to be used to free some of the remains, scientists said Tuesday. The bones found at Dinosaur National Monument belonged to a type of sauropod—long-necked plant-eaters that were said to be the largest animal ever to roam land. The discovery included two complete skulls from other types of sauropods—an extremely rare find, scientists said.

The Church of England's governing body on Friday approved a motion that emphasizes the compatibility of belief in both God and science. Dr. Peter Capon, a former computer science lecturer, introduced the motion arguing that "rejecting much mainstream science does nothing to support those Christians who are scientists ... or strengthen the Christian voice in the scientific area." He urged Christians to take scientific evidence seriously and avoid prejudging science for theological reasons. The vote comes as more than 850 congregations throughout the globe are celebrating Evolution Weekend with the aim of demonstrating that evolution poses no problems for their...

It is time to take stock: What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists. If we are to look for ID achievements, then, it must be in the realm of natural theology. And there, I think, the movement must be judged not only a failure, but a debacle. Very few religious skeptics have been made more open to...

Mississippi's House Bill 586, which if enacted would have required "scientifically sound arguments by protagonists and antagonists of the theory of evolution" to be presented in the state's schools, died in committee on February 2, 2010, according to the legislative website. In 2009, the bill's sponsor, Gary Chism (R-District 37), introduced a bill, HB 25, requiring biology textbooks in the state to include a hybrid of two previous versions of the Alabama evolution textbook disclaimer; that bill also died in committee.

It seems we have all been guilty of defaming Neanderthal man. Research by a team based at the University of Bristol suggests that, far from being a lumbering, witless no-hoper, he was capable, 50,000 years ago, of producing forms of cosmetic adornment and even of primitive jewellery. In 1985, finds in Murcia, Spain, had suggested that this might be so; and now an expedition led by Professor João Zilhão of Bristol has uncovered a shell which shows "a symbolic dimension in behaviour and thinking that cannot be denied". All of which suggests some decent equivalence with the hitherto far more...

Believers in human-caused global climate change have been placed under an uncomfortable spotlight recently. That is thanks to the Climategate scandal, centering on e-mails hacked from the influential Climate Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia. The e-mails show scientists from various academic institutions hard at work suppressing dissent from other scientists who have doubts on global warming, massaging research data to fit preconceived ideas, and seeking to manipulate the gold standard “peer review” process to keep skeptical views from being heard. Does this sound familiar at all? To me, as a prominent skeptic of modern Darwinian theory,...

Millions of high school and college biology textbooks teach that research scientist Stanley Miller, in the 1950’s, showed how life could have arisen by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Miller, in his famous experiment in 1953, showed that individual amino acids (the building blocks of life) could come into existence by chance. But, it’s not enough just to have amino acids. The various amino acids that make-up life must link together in a precise sequence, just like the letters in a sentence, to form functioning protein molecules. If they’re not in the right sequence the protein molecules...

Problems with Evolutionary Theory Why is there a problem with evolution in the first place? Someone once asked you, "What should I believe?" Remember what you told them? Basically I said you should only believe what there is evidence for. After spending years studying evolution in bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs, I can tell you that, first of all, there is evidence for small changes in organisms as they adapt to small environmental fluctuations. Second, there is evidence that new species do arise. We see new species of fruit flies, rodents, and even birds. But when the original species is...

Thank you Ben Stein!!! This movie is a MUST SEE!

Signature in the Cell Named One of Top Books of the Year by Times Literary Supplement Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design is being named one of the top books of 2009 in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement (TLS) annual "Books of the Year" issue. The selection was made by prominent philosopher (and noted atheist) Thomas Nagel at New York University. The books issue is not online yet, but the TLS website has posted a preview of Nagel's endorsement of the book. Below is Nagel's reason for selecting the book : Stephen C....

Researchers have described remarkably well-preserved tissue discovered inside a salamander fossil. The fully intact muscle tissues also had blood-filled vessels, and they had not been mineralized like most fossils. This “fresh meat” find is depicted as the “highest quality soft tissue preservation ever documented in the fossil record.”[1] But given its assigned age of 18 million years old, it shouldn’t be there at all...

Canada’s Macleans news site recently published an article titled “Darwin movie too evolved for U.S. audiences”. The article refers to the decision of US film distributors to “pass” on the film “Creation”—the dramatized story of Charles Darwin’s struggle while writing the Origin of Species. The refusal to distribute a film premiered and acclaimed at the Toronto Film Festival seems to have again roused the Canadian media’s scorn of the “backward Americans” of which—according to Gallup—only 39% believe Darwin and his evolutionary theory. It is interesting how very differently the Canadian and world media treated America during WW II when far...

At National Review Online, conservative curmudgeon John Derbyshire has weighed in on the Climategate scandal by encouraging conservatives not to jump on the anti-science bandwagon. I share his worry and find his advice is good so far as it goes; but I think Derbyshire’s defense of science might actually encourage the skepticism he wants to prevent. Most of the trouble comes from his invocation of the word “science,� and his claim that science has a magisterium.His article is called “Trust Science.� I’m not sure what that means. What is “science,� and how do we “trust� it? Imagine if someone said:...

New species might arise as a result of single rare events, rather than through the gradual accumulation of many small changes over time, according to a study of thousands of species and their evolutionary family trees. This contradicts a widely accepted theory of how speciation occurs: that species are continually changing to keep pace with their environment, and that new species emerge as these changes accrue. Known as the 'Red Queen' hypothesis, it is named after the character in Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There who tells a surprised Alice: "Here, you see, it takes...

Last February I mentioned the events that would commemorate the life and work of Charles Darwin in 2009. I had no idea at the time that I would be invited to participate in one of these events. But there I was, precisely 150 years after On the Origin of Species first appeared, seated with other scientists in front of a packed room that featured, among other interesting things, a life-sized model of a baleen whale. The venue was the National Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, and the occasion was a panel discussion titled Design without a Designer? [1]...

David Queller and Joan Strassmann, evolutionary biologists at Rice University, recently proposed a new way to describe what makes an organism a unified whole. They defined an organism as an entity made up of parts that cooperate well for an overall purpose, and do so with minimal conflict. But how do parts like these get together, and where does purposeful behavior come from?...

With millions of eyes on Copenhagen, this seems an appropriate time to ask whether ID thinking has any relevance to understanding the Earth's environment. Can design concepts help us weigh the diverse and often conflicting messages? I think ID is helpful, because features of the Earth's environments and ecologies start to take on new meaning. In this blog, I am thinking particularly of negative feedback mechanisms. Human design engineers will use negative feedback to promote stability and positive feedback to amplify an input signal. They select the mechanisms they need to achieve the desired effect. By analogy, if the Earth...

“Darwin’s finches” are a variety of small black birds that were observed and collected by British naturalist Charles Darwin during his famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle in the early 1800s. Years later, Darwin argued that subtle variations in their beak sizes supported his concept that all organisms share a common ancestor (a theory known as macroevolution). The finches, whose technical name is Geospiza, have since become classic evolutionary icons...

William Lane Craig is not only one of the world’s leading Christian apologists but he has actually made outstanding original contributions to philosophy. Yes, Craig publishes popular-level books. Unlike Dawkins, however, who in 20-years plus has been purely a popularizer (of Darwinian evolution, materialist science, and atheism), Craig continues to publish at the highest levels of the academy addressing scholars of the highest caliber (and gaining their respect). Dawkins, by contrast, increasingly appeals to the lowest common denominator. It’s in this light that Dawkins glib dismissal of Craig should be viewed: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE SHORT VIDEO OF DAWKIN's...

esearch has shown that humans like to help, even before they are old enough to have been taught how to do so. This innate characteristic distinguishes humans from their supposed closest evolutionary family member, the chimpanzee, which doesn’t demonstrate the same altruistic behavior. In studies on the subject, at only 18 months old, toddlers were observed to consistently aid unrelated adults in simple tasks such as opening a door or picking up a clothes pin. Researchers assumed then that altruism, or unselfish concern for the welfare of others, evolved early in humans. But does this conclusion necessarily follow from the...

This recent BBC News header[1] was typical of the news headlines worldwide on the story: Michelle Obama racist image sparks Google apology Apparently, the image referred to was a photograph of Mrs Obama that had been manipulated to give her the facial features of a monkey. I say “apparently”, because the mock-up photo no longer appears as the #1 ranking on Google’s list of image search results for “Michelle Obama”.[2] It is very clear however from the news reports of the “race row”[3] that in the last days that the picture was Google-accessible, it stirred many people. Such was the...

“The Totalities of Copenhagen” William Dembski Bret Stevens’ article today in the WSJ, “The Totalities of Copenhagen,” again shows the strong parallels between the global warming debate and the evolution debate, especially with the proclivity of AGW and evolution advocates to quash all dissent. Consider, from his piece, the following characteristics of the AGW advocates: ...

In his new book, The Deniable Darwin (Discovery Institute Press, 2009), published just before the ClimateGate scandal broke, mathematician David Berlinski explained that scientists should not be trusted to check themselves--no more than anyone else on the planet, and maybe less so, since grant money is involved. Now he writes on his blog, "I Told You So." From The Deniable Darwin: My own view, repeated in virtually all of my essays, is that the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences than toward anything else. It is not a view that...

The current treatment of young-age creationists in the scientific community and society at large is unfair and unwise. Scientists and philosophers of science, including old-age creationists and naturalists, should respect youngage creationists as legitimate contributors to science. Young-age creationists offer to the current origins science establishment a competing rational viewpoint that will augment fruitful scientific investigation through increased accountability for scientists, introduction of original hypotheses and general epistemic improvement...

Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that all lives have eternal value because they are the work of a Creator and not the product of chance. WORLD's 12th annual Daniel of the Year does not save lives abroad, as Britain's Caroline Cox and Sudan's Michael Yerko do. Nor does he regularly save lives of the unborn, as Florida's Wanda Cohn does through her pregnancy center work. No, Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that those lives have eternal value because...

The pro-global warming blog Climate Change Denial is spinning like a top. Devastated by the revelation of pervasive fraud in climate science, the warmists are clearly dazed and grasping at any tactics that might salvage their ideological hijacking of science, now laid bare. In their latest post, "Swiftboating the Climate Scientists", they ignore the transparent scientific misconduct and fraud revealed in the highest eschalons of climate science, and accuse the skeptics of attacking climate science for base ideological motives. The term "swiftboating" alone is risible and actually revealing; warmists are nearly all leftists, still simmering over the implosion of the...

Dr. Henry M. Morris founded the Institute for Creation Research in 1970 with a vision to uncover and present evidence for the accuracy and authority of the Bible. For almost 40 years, ICR has distinguished itself as the leader in creation science research and education, ably assisted by the many fine scientists whom God has led to work here. These men and women have dedicated their training and skills to raising the banner for the truth of our Creator God. We would like you to meet our current on-site scientists and hear their thoughts on the purpose, significance, and importance...

Museums and textbooks often use artistic renderings to estimate what a fossilized animal or plant may have looked like when it was alive. These images by “paleoartists” put flesh and faces on skeletal structures, and they can influence public perception of early human history more than the actual science—particularly in regards to human evolution.