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An old stone quarry on the Greek island of Crete which has a network of underground tunnels could be the original site of the ancient Labyrinth, the maze that housed the Minotaur of Greek legend, scholars believe. An Anglo-Greek team believes that the site, near the town of Gortyn, has just as much claim to be the place of the Labyrinth as the Minoan palace at Knossos 20 miles away, which has been synonymous with the Minotaur myth since its excavation a century ago. The 600,000 people a year who visit the ruins at Knossos are told the site was...

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils.If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome. And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story...

Hideous monsters devouring ships? Old map symbols, correctly showing storm fronts & dangerous currents I’ve always been fond of maps, from those antique ones showing sea serpents and hideous monsters devouring ships in the vast expanses of the ocean, to those showing what the world looked like in the distant, and not so distant, past. Maps have, of course, been with us in one form or another, for a long time. Jerusalem is in the center - from "Itinerarium Sacrae Scipturae", by Heinrich Bunting, 1545-1606 Here’s a world map according to Posidonius, from around 150-130 B.C. - Ptolemy's version of...

Mermaid fever sweeps Israel beach town of Krivat Yam as many report sightings of fabled creature BY Issie Lapowsky DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Wednesday, August 12th 2009 Are mermaids real? Dozens of people in Israel have reported sightings of the mythical half-woman, half-fish. Take our Poll Mermaid sightings? What do you think people are really seeing in the ocean in Israel? A dolphin or some kind of fish A woman dressed up as a mermaid Nothing, their eyes are playing tricks on them. A mermaid. If all those people say they've seen one, it must be true! Related News Articles...

At age 11, the keen student of mythology suggested naming the newly discovered planet after the Roman god of the underworld.Venetia Phair, who was 11 years old when she suggested Pluto as the name of the newly discovered planet, has died in England. She was 90. She died at home in Epsom, south of London, on April 30, her family said. The cause of death was not disclosed. Phair suggested the name to her grandfather at breakfast in 1930. "My grandfather, as usual, opened the paper, The Times, and in it he read that a new planet had been discovered....

‘But the New Testament does not make a big deal out of the Age of the Earth…’ by Peter Milford ... The issue of the age of the earth parallels circumcision. In my experience, the first response from Christians who do not accept the age of the earth that the Scriptures indicate, is to say something like “The New Testament does not make a big deal out of the age of the earth” or “It is not the purpose of the Bible to give the age of the earth”. Their point is that (1) the issue of the age of...

March 9, 2009 — The Permian extinction – one of the most dramatic events in the history of life on Earth, in which some 90% of species went extinct...is now being interpreted as a “nonevent” by four geologists. ... Robert Gastaldo and two geology colleagues from Colby College in Maine, and geologist Johann Neveling from Pretoria, studied the Permian-Triassic boundary in the Karoo Basin of South Africa and published a paper in Geology this month,1 titled, “The terrestrial Permian-Triassic boundary event bed is a nonevent.” ... Well, isn’t this an upset.  How much lag time will it take to change...

Terrible lizards trapped by terrible Flood Tas Walker A trail of fossilized claw marks found in northern Spain reveals the desperation of animals struggling to escape drowning in the Genesis Flood. ... That the footprints were preserved at all indicates the dinosaurs were engulfed by abnormal conditions. Today footprints are quickly obliterated, especially on a beach or in a strong current. But in the sandstone in Spain even the delicate features of the scratches were preserved, which means that sediment covered the tracks (and the ripple marks) soon after the dinosaur struggled past...

In his first full-length American radio interview, Adnan Oktar, pen name Harun Yahya, a Muslim, Turkish intellectual posit the theory that the source of terrorism, including Islamic terrorism, is Darwinism.

CBNNews.com - CROSSROADS BIBLE COLLEGE, Ind. - Darwin's book on human evolution, The Descent of Man, revealed him as what John West calls "a virulent racist." "He did write extensively about how evolution by natural selection creates unequal races, and that in the evolutionary scheme of things, blacks are the closest to apes," he explained. West is the author of Darwin Day in America. "It's not just residual racism," he added. "He's using his scientific theory as a justification for racism and countless scientists after Darwin latched on to that." Hosea Baxter directs reconciliation ministries at Crossroads Bible College. He...

... The tree-of-life concept was absolutely central to Darwin's thinking, equal in importance to natural selection...Without it the theory of evolution would never have happened. The tree also helped carry the day for evolution. ... For much of the past 150 years, biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree. "For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life," says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today...

The Greek god of thunder and lightning had Earthly beginnings, and scientists think they finally know where. Ancient Greeks first worshipped the omnipotent Zeus at a remote altar on Mount Lykaion, a team of Greek and American archaeologists now think. During a recent dig at the site, the researchers found ceremonial goods commonly used in cult activity and dated at over three millennia old, making them the earliest known "appearance" of Zeus in Greece. The discovery challenges the idea that Zeus worship began on the Greek island of Crete, which at least one classical historian names as the god's mythic...

Fifteen young managers with a top Indian retail company met in their office basement recently to sip coffee and listen to a talk about their specialty: brand building. The speaker, renowned mythology expert Devdutt Pattanaik, is also the company's "chief belief officer." Cupping his chin in his hand, Pattanaik launched into a story: "Once upon a time, there was a conference of the gods to discuss the affairs of human beings." The ancient Hindu tales that Pattanaik, 38, tells his corporate audiences are full of fallible kings, stoically suffering queens, demons enticing the gods into lawless jungles, gods with rivers...

There is no science to validate the thesis that follows, no academy to adjudicate it, and little hope of convincing the Obama faithful even to consider it, let alone concede its validity.  That much said, the evidence is self-evident, accessible to all, and overwhelming.  The thesis is simple enough:  Bill Ayers served as Barack Obama's muse in the creation of Obama's 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.  Ayers breathed creative life into this ungifted amateur, who had written nothing of note before, and reconceived him as a literary prodigy.  "I was astonished by his ability to write, to think, to...

In 1943 during WW2, an army Sgt., Ed Davis, was working in Iran near the Turkish border, in charge of locals hired by our army to build a road through Iran to the Soviet border, which would carry supplies to the Soviets instead of flying them in. In short, Ed did a tremendous favor for a little Kurdish village near Ararat. His workers were mostly Kurds and the chief of the village came to Ed and asked if he would like to see Noah's Ark. He said the summer on the mountain had been hottest in many years and the...

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has signed a stealth creationist bill into law, and American educational standards take a huge step backward: Science law could set tone for Jindal. The creationist front group called the Discovery Institute is quietly crowing, and maintaining the fiction that the bill is not religiously-based.

Anchorage continues to dig out from a snowfall that set a record for the day and the month.The National Weather Service says 17.2 inches fell at its office just south of Anchorage's international airport and 22 inches fell in northeast Anchorage on Friday and Saturday. The heaviest snow fell between 3 and 6 p.m. Friday at a rate of almost two inches per hour. The monthly total at the weather service office is now 29.7 inches, breaking a record from 1963 when 27.6 inches fell during April.

It seems that a prof that sees value in intelligent design theory has been barred from tenure. http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2007/jun/statement.shtml

Some Scientists Worry That Sophisticated Center Will Distort Children's Views of Science According to an ABC News poll, 60 percent of Americans believe God created the world in six days. In Petersburg, Ky., this weekend, a creation museum is opening that depicts a story far from what you may have learned in science class. Exhibits at almost every natural history museum teach that dinosaurs are millions of years old, and that they died out long before human beings existed. But at the Creation Museum, they say God created dinosaurs and humans at the same time. The Creation Museum, designed by...

(CNSNews.com) - Billboards that show a man turning into a monkey and an online game entitled "Let's See How Evolution Works" are two elements of a new national campaign launched by a Christian group to call attention to the "lack of proof" for the theory of evolution. Billboards at six locations in Oregon and Georgia ask "Are They Making a Monkey Out of You?" and additional signs are planned for Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, according to Julie Haberle, founder of the Who Is Your Creator non-profit organization. The billboards direct viewers to the group's website, which presents a...