Free Republic

Mortals are playing God when they move into changing climate and moving continents and sludging taxpayers and kissing up to unbelieving loudmouths and passing legislation that will gouge Americans and so forth. God is God. This particular planet, along with the entire universe, is God's. He is Maker and Owner. He is the one in charge of sun, moon, stars, seasonal changes and everything else related to creation. God has His hand upon it all. His claim is tagged to every part of it.

Earlier today scientists funded by NOAA and the National Science Foundation released video of an underwater volcano eruption. This eruption is the deepest erupting volcano ever discovered and recorded. The video of this eruption is more than awesome, it is spectacular. In an area near Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, the West Mata volcano was discovered in May. The volcano lies almost 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The scientists say they found a type of lava they have never seen erupting from an active volcano before. They also witnessed molten lava flowing across the deep-ocean seafloor for...

Evidence of what could be Australia's earliest human occupation has been found on the fringe of desert in the country's remote northwest, according to archaeologists. Peter Veth, of the Australian National University, said an artefact dated at between 45,000 and 50,000 years old found near the shores of Lake Gregory could be the start of a 25-year study into Australia's first humans. "This is the first evidence of human activity ... in the arid northwest of the continent which can be dated to a time before the last great Ice Age," he said in a statement. It was likely to...

...The plateau, with an average altitude above 4,000 meters and known as "the Roof of the World" in southwestern China, is one of the most challenging areas in the world for human settlement due to its environmental extremes, such as extreme cold and low oxygen levels. ...with the drastic drop of temperature on the Earth in the Last Glacial Maximum of the Late Paleolithic Age, about 23,000 years ago, many species could not adapt to the changes and died out... From the perspective of genetic continuity studies, geneticists had also attempted to find out when modern humans settled on the...

In a stone-age version of "Iron Chef," early humans were dividing their living spaces into kitchens and work areas much earlier than previously thought, a new study found. So rather than cooking and eating in the same area where they snoozed, early humans demarcated such living quarters. Archaeologists discovered evidence of this coordinated living at a hominid site at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel from about 800,000 years ago. Scientists aren't sure exactly who lived there, but it predates the appearance of modern humans, so it was likely a human ancestor such as Homo erectus. Yet this advanced organizational skill was...

PARIS (AFP) – Experts on prehistoric man are rethinking their dates after a find in a southern French valley suggested our ancestors may have reached Europe 1.57 million years ago: 200,000 years earlier than we thought. What provoked the recount was a pile of fossilised bones and teeth uncovered 15 years ago by local man Jean Rouvier in a basalt quarry at Lezignan la Cebe, in the Herault valley, Languedoc. In the summer of 2008, Rouvier mentioned his find to Jerome Ivorra, an archaeological researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). The subsequent dig uncovered a large variety...

Genetic changes that apparently allow humans to live longer than any other primate may be rooted in a more carnivorous diet. These changes may also promote brain development and make us less vulnerable to diseases of aging, such as cancer, heart disease and dementia. These key differences in lifespan may be due to genes that humans evolved to adjust better to meat-rich diets, biologist Caleb Finch at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles suggested. The oldest known stone tools manufactured by the ancestors of modern humans, which date back some 2.6 million years, apparently helped butcher animal bones....

Proof of God's Existence 1. I am an atheist who wants his difficulties answered without being accused of moral depravity. I believe, in the ultimate analysis, with Pascal, that there are two classes of men, those who are afraid to find God, and those who are afraid to lose God. But, to spare you, I will admit that your fear that there might be a God may be perhaps unconscious. Of those who say that they are atheists some are merely unintelligent and do not think; others do think, but merely reject false ideas of God, without knowing how to...

New Delhi: A genetic study has found that Indians are the ancestors of the Chinese and other East Asian populations. The study, a joint project of 10 Asian countries, found that India received a wave of migration from Africa 60,000-70,000 years ago and these early humans subsequently moved to East and Southeast Asia. The earlier belief was that humans from Africa reached India and East and Southeast Asia separately. The study has important implications, especially in the understanding of human migratory patterns and in the investigation of genetics and disease. The findings of the five-year study -- conducted by a...

Long, long ago, some of the first dinosaurs walked the Earth. But scientists have not known with any confidence where those initial dino prints were made. Much more recently, hikers stumbled across a few bits of bone at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, leading to the discovery of a game-changing dinosaur that reveals where it all began. The dinosaur, now called Tawa hallae, had a body that was only the size of a medium to large dog, but its remains have helped scientists shore up where dinosaurs came from. The research team used the extremely well-preserved and complete skeletal remains...

Monkey Alarm Calls Provide Clues To Origins Of Human Language Monkeys form very primitive sentences, scientists have discovered, in research that brings us closer to understanding the origins of language. Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent 11 Dec 2009 A team found the Campbell's monkey can add a simple sound to its alarm calls to create new ones and then combine them to convey even more information. Human language is incredibly complex, but one defining feature is the process of adding a prefix or suffix to a word to change its meaning. For example, adding "hood" to the word "brother" to form...

Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads from SDG site reflect primordial art and a kind of symbolic behavior of modern humans. Two different manufacturing pathways are usually used in the manufacture of OES beads in Upper Paleolithic. Pathway 1 is identified from these collections; blanks are drilled prior to being trimmed to rough discs. Based on stratigraphic data and OSL dating, these ostrich eggshell beads are probably in Early Holocene (? 10 ka BP)... According to previous observation and study systems of Western scholars and the specific characters of OES beads from SDG site, this study found that the two pathways of...

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...

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin. > But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so wasn't known. >

“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...

Bird influenza viruses have a variety of strategies to cross the species barrier and spreadThe 2009 H1N1 influenza virus used a new strategy to cross from birds into humans, a warning that it has more than one trick up its sleeve to jump the species barrier and become virulent. In a report in this week's early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, researchers show that the H1N1, or swine flu, virus adopted a new mutation in one of its genes distinct from the mutations found in previous flu viruses, including...

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...

Many archaeological finds are accidentally unearthed by construction crews, as was the discovery of a 1.8 million-year-old skull of a giant ground sloth in Southern California. Buried in the ground since the Ice Age, the skull was found by a construction crew and could be on its way to be displayed at the San Bernardino County Museum. Work on a new site for a Southern California Edison sub-station was immediately halted when the ancient bones were discovered while earthmovers were flattening out a hilly area west of Beaumont, which is a few miles from the low desert community of Palm...

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.

Dec 4, 2009 — The facility with which some evolutionary biologists appeal to almost magical powers of evolution to explain anything and everything is revealed in some recent science articles. Whatever needs explaining is due to evolution – evidence or not. These four examples can be considered representative of the genre...

New research out this week has resolved a long-standing, and important, quandary about the causes of global warming. While several models point to anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gases as the leading cause of global warming, the warming trends do not quite match the history of anthropogenic CO2. In fact, shrinking glaciers and other undeniable evidences of warming trace back to about the mid seventeenth century. But this predates the significant rise in anthropogenic CO2 that came later in later centuries. Now environmental researchers have solved the puzzle...

Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood, the leading organization advocating abortion in the United States today. Darwinism had a profound influence on her thinking, including her conversion to, and active support of, eugenics. She was specifically concerned with reducing the population of the ‘less fit’, including ‘inferior races’ such as ‘Negroes’. One major result of her lifelong work was to support the sexual revolution that has radically changed our society...

Read the following mini-stories and much more by clicking the excerpt link below: 1. The Times: “Evidence of Life on Mars Lurks Beneath Surface of Meteorite, Nasa Experts Claim 2. PhysOrg: “‘Super-River’ Formed the English Channel” 3. Wired: “There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Simple’ Organism” 4. ScienceDaily: “Study Pits Man Versus Machine in Piecing Together 425-Million-Year-Old Jigsaw” 5. PhysOrg: “Bacterial Gut Symbionts Are Tightly Linked with the Evolution of Herbivory in Ants” 6. And Don’t Miss . . .

Arguing with Idiots… Part Deaux (A full-frontal assault on the Temple of Darwin) (Link to PDF). (I know I’ve done rants like this before, but you guys are worth it!) Dear worshippers of Darwin and lovers of self, My personal (condensed) declaration of faith: I believe in the God of the Bible. I believe in the Bible. I believe what it says. I believe, unashamedly that God is the Creator of the Universe and that He created it just as described in the Genesis account. I believe the only way to receive salvation is to believe and receive Jesus Christ...

Bill reported earlier about a Global Warming/Hitler video which was released (10/3/2009) before the climategate scandal broke out: More Global Warming Fraud HumorA new improved video has been released to incorporate the climategate scandal. Version 2, is much better, imho.Hitler was behind global warming-climategateAlso, FoxNews reports:Comedy Central Scoops Network News on Climate-Gate Scandal Comedy Central Scoops Network News on Climate-Gate ScandalABC didn’t cover it. CBS didn’t either. And NBC apparently wouldn’t go near it.The network news broadcasts have ignored a growing scandal over evidence of a potential climate cover-up — and now they’ve even been scooped by the fake news...

Dec 3, 2009 — In the previous entry, Darwin inspired some geologists, even though he was wrong. Here are some news stories showing nature inspiring engineers with wonders right under their noses...

New Zealand Climate Scientists Faked Data, Too. From Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there. The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre. In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century [go to the link to see...

In May 2009, a remarkably well-preserved extinct primate, nicknamed “Ida,” was hailed as one of the most important fossil finds ever. It had features that some interpreted as a link between two primate body forms. At the time, ICR News suggested that its evolutionary significance was far overblown, predicting that the scientific consensus would offer retractions. Those retractions came three months later, confirming that the fossil―called Darwinius―was really just an extinct lemur variety...

Human geneticists have reached a private crisis of conscience, and it will become public knowledge in 2010. The crisis has depressing health implications and alarming political ones. In a nutshell: the new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races...

MUMBAI: A group of naturalists from Amravati districts has discovered a set of 17 unique cave paintings in the nature-rich Satpura range of Madhya Pradesh – which opens up new avenues of research as this art form are believed to be of Paleolithic period. The group call themselves, ‘Hope’, and has been working since the last six years on this project. The group include scientist Dr V T Ingole, wildlife writer PS Hirurkar, Padmakar Lad, Shirishkumar Patil, Dnyaneswar Damahe and Manohar Khode. They are a group of nature and bird lovers, and luckily chanced upon these unique paintings. Ingole said...

Over a thousand sensitive emails and documents from Britain’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia were published online in late November without CRU’s permission. Some of their content suggests that the data used to support the theory of human -caused global warming have not been accurately represented.[1] The leaked emails have surfaced in time for the United Nations summit on climate, set to commence in December. Most of the emails are mundane, but some contain dialogue between scientists about adjusting climate data to support the man-made global warming hypothesis. The university is currently investigating the information...

Natural selection and change, yes; Evolution, no --snip-- Summary 1.This episode talks much about change and natural selection, but fails to give any evidence that these produce evolution, other than for the various professors who assert that it does. 2.Darwin’s theory promoted the idea that man is “a beast with animal lusts and no morality”, and this has been gleefully accepted by much of modern society. 3.We might well ask: Why would any sane professor adopt and propagate a theory for which there is such paltry scientific evidence, which is an expression of hatred of God, and which demotes man...

Evolutionists retreating from the arena of science --snip-- Today, the Darwinian scientific consensus persists within almost every large university and governmental institution. But around the middle of the 20th century an interesting new trend emerged and has since become increasingly established. Evolutionary theorists have been forced, step by step, to steadily retreat from the evidence in the field. Some of the evidences mentioned earlier in this article were demonstrated to be frauds and hoaxes. Other discoveries have been a blow to the straightforward expectations and predictions of evolutionists. Increasingly, they have been forced to tack ad hoc mechanisms onto Darwin’s...

Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade. For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to...

William Patterson, from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and his colleagues have shown that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini 'ice age' in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would take tens of years. Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by a mini ice-age, known by scientists as the Younger Dryas, and nicknamed the 'Big Freeze', which lasted around 1300 years. Geological evidence shows that the Big Freeze was brought about by a sudden influx of freshwater, when the glacial Lake Agassiz in...

An Anglo-French study has revealed that long before the English Channel there was a giant river which ran south from an area of the North Sea. Previous research found that 500,000 years ago a range of low hills connected Britain to Europe between the Weald in South-East England and Artois in northern France. But during a series of ice ages beginning 450,000 years ago huge ice sheets covered much of northern Europe, trapping a portion of the North Sea the size of East Anglia. The great rivers of Europe poured into this lake at the southern end of the North...

Dec 2, 2009 — Field geologists have revisited a site Darwin visited on the voyage of the Beagle, and found that he incorrectly interpreted what he found.  A large field of erratic boulders in Tierra del Fuego that have become known as “Darwin’s Boulders” were deposited by a completely different process than he thought.  The modern team, publishing in the Geological Society of America’s December issue of the GSA Today,1 noted that “Darwin’s thinking was profoundly influenced by Lyell’s obsession with large-scale, slow, vertical movements of the crust, especially as manifested in his theory of submergence and ice rafting to...