Free Republic

During the May 3 Republican presidential debate, moderator Chris Matthews asked the candidates “How many of you don’t believe in evolution?” Sen. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo all raised their hands indicating that they did not believe in it. Rep. Barney Frank raised the same question in 2004 when he accused me, his opponent that year, of questioning the theory of evolution. Liberals are confident that those who question the theory of evolution will be held up for public ridicule and scorn. Many liberals pride themselves on questioning everything in life except when it comes to...

According to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32 percent of Protestants and 31 percent of Catholics. Politically, 60 percent of Republicans are creationists, whereas only 11 percent accept evolution, compared with 29 percent of Democrats who are creationists and 44 percent who accept evolution. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 63 percent of liberals but only 37 percent of conservatives believe that humans and apes have a common ancestry. What these figures confirm for us is that there are religious and...

Were the Theory of Evolution even remotely like the grotesque caricature presented by various creationist and intelligent design websites, there would be no debate. It is pernicious that one of the most elegant works of science should be so routinely misrepresented. Before one can evaluate a theory's merits, he is obliged to at least understand what it actually does -- and does not -- state. Failing to understand something before attempting debate against it is absolute folly. Therefore, we offer the following: Introduction to Evolution in five easy steps (It's far more complicated than this, but you must start somewhere.)Another...

The Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it. Complicit as well are any who buy into the scientific theory that modern man evolved from lower animal forms. That's the latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Coral Ridge espouses that America is not a free-religion nation, but a Christian one. It argues there should be no separation of church and state. Thus it's America's Taliban, America's Shiite theocracy. It certainly has a propensity for explaining or excusing Hitler. A few years ago it brought...

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students. The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. “There is no explanation for it being left off the list,” Ms. McLane said. “It has always been an eligible major.” Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing. If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless...

ADL Blasts Christian Supremacist TV Special & Book Blaming Darwin For Hitler New York, NY, August 22, 2006 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy." After being contacted by the ADL about...

Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter Coultergeist A Review by Jerry Coyne H. L. Mencken once responded to a question asked by many of his readers: "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?" His answer was, "Why do men go to zoos?" Sadly, Mencken is not here to ogle the newest creature in the American Zoo: the Bleached Flamingo, otherwise known as Ann Coulter. This beast draws crowds by its frequent, raucous calls, eerily resembling a human voice, and its unearthly appearance, scrawny and pallid....

Criticism Of Evolution Can't Be Silenced by Phyllis Schlafly, August 16, 2006 The liberal press is gloating that the seesaw battle for control of the Kansas Board of Education just teetered back to pro-evolutionists for the second time in five years. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the movement to allow criticism of evolution are grossly exaggerated. In its zeal to portray evolution critics in Kansas as dumb rural fundamentalists, a New York Times page-one story misquoted Dr. Steve Abrams (the school board president who had steered Kansas toward allowing criticism of evolution) on a...

A comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower. Among the factors contributing to America's low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say. “American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University. The researchers combined...

Behe Jumps the Shark By P Z Myers Nick Matzke has also commented on this, but the op-ed is so bad I can't resist piling on. From the very first sentence, Michael Behe's op-ed in today's NY Times is an exercise in unwarranted hubris. In the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design. And it's all downhill from there. Intelligent Design creationism is not a "rival theory." It is an ad hoc pile of mush, and once again we catch...