Free Republic

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...