Free Republic

Thirty-eight million years ago, tropical jungles thrived in what are now the cornfields of the American Midwest and furry marsupials wandered temperate forests in what is now the frozen Antarctic. The temperature differences of that era, known as the late Eocene, between the equator and Antarctica were half what they are today. A debate has been ongoing in the scientific community about what changes in our global climate system led to such a major shift from the more tropical, greenhouse climate of the Eocene to modern and much cooler climates. New research results published in this week's issue of the...

August 10, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Federal prosecutors are presenting their case in a trial against a Mennonite pastor who is accused of helping a single motherescape from the United States with her daughter to evade court-ordered visits with a lesbian whom the court declared to be the girl’s second “mother.” Ex-lesbian Lisa Miller fled the country after her efforts failed to keep former “civil union” partner Janet Jenkins from having access to her child, Isabella. Jenkins never adopted Isabella and has no biological relationship with the girl, who exhibited signs of emotional trauma following forced visits with Jenkins, according to...

A federal court is scheduled on Monday to sentence a Mennonite pastor who was convicted of helping a Lesbian-turned-Christian woman to flee the country with her daughter after her former partner was awarded custody of the girl. Kenneth L. Miller of Stuarts Draft, Va., will appear before Burlington, Vt., Judge William Sessions on Monday afternoon, and faces up to three years in prison, according to The Associated Press. Prosecutors want Miller to be sentenced to two-and-a-half or three years in prison – the maximum sentence for his conviction in abetting international parental kidnapping. "Because of his brazen intervention, a child...

(LifeSiteNews.com) - The Obama administration has indicted a second individual suspected of helping a nine-year-old girl escape a custody claim by an unrelated lesbian, who is seeking to take custody of her from her natural mother. According to the Associated Press, 46-year old Kenneth L. Miller of Stuarts Draft, Virginia, appeared in federal court on Tuesday to face charges of “international parental kidnapping” for helping Lisa Miller (42) and her daughter Isabella (9) to travel to Canada and ultimately Nicaragua. The Virginia resident reportedly contacted associates in Nicaragua and Canada to request their support for Lisa Miller as she fled...

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — A federal judge advised jurors Tuesday to remain objective as they hear evidence in a criminal case stemming from a Vermont child-custody dispute that touches on issues of religion and gay rights. Eleven women and three men were impaneled to hear the case against Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller, accused of helping a woman flee the United States with her daughter rather than share custody of the child with her former lesbian partner. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., is charged with aiding in international kidnapping. A conviction carries a maximum prison term of three years. The...

A Mennonite pastor who helped a girl and her birth mother escape the United States to evade her court-imposed lesbian “mother” has been freed after serving almost 24 months in a U.S. federal prison. Kenneth Miller, a pastor with the Beachy Amish Mennonites of Virginia, was convicted in 2013 of having helped Lisa Miller and her daughter Isabella (both unrelated to Kenneth Miller) to flee the United States. They left the country in late 2009 to evade court-imposed visits to Lisa’s former civil union partner, Janet Jenkins. According to a website created by Kenneth Miller’s supporters, the pastor was released...

For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a united front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost. –Stephen Jay Gould [Y]ou’ve heard me complain about scientific organizations that sell evolution by insisting that it’s perfectly consistent with religion. Evolution, they say, threatens many peoples’ religious views — not just the literalism of Genesis, but also the morality that supposedly emanates from scripture. Professional societies like the National Academy of Sciences — the most elite organization of American...

...Embarrassed Darwinists The next for consideration is Jonathan Wells and his Icons of Evolution. A stinging critique of ten familiar textbook evidences for evolution, Wells’ book provoked shrill cries of dismay from Darwinists, including Jerry Coyne and Eugenie Scott. Wells’ reply is highlighted as a rhetorically powerful rebuttal in which he catches his critics in scientific carelessness and in the debate tactic of ‘shifting the goalposts’. An example is the issue of embryonic homology—the Darwinian claim that embryos in various vertebrates look alike at various stages of development, and that this indicates common ancestry. Wells pointed out the extensive dissimilarities...