Free Republic

Remembering Dr. Duane T. Gish, Creation's 'Bulldog' A mixture of sorrow and thankfulness comes over the Institute for Creation Research family as we note the passing of Dr. Duane Gish on March 6, 2013. Dr. Gish has been a champion of creation at ICR for decades, and we will miss him. Born in Kansas and educated at University of California, Los Angeles, he later received his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. He joined the ICR faculty in 1970, after a fruitful career in biochemistry at the Upjohn Company in Michigan. Soon after the publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961,...

During an Advanced Placement biology course in Easton Area High School, Jennifer Estevez's teacher sped through the large chapter on evolution, focusing on one formula for the AP exam and the basics: survival of the fittest and natural selection. In those high school years in Northampton County, she also would attend a Baptist leadership retreat where a speaker denounced evolution as false, unproven science. Seemingly unimportant and even discredited, evolution fell off her radar. So the Easton student, who is a Baptist, arrived at Duquesne University last fall considering herself a creationist, a person who generally believes God created the...

Is Mankind Getting Dumber? by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Do today’s children have lower I.Q.’s than yesterday’s? Yes, according to measurements of intellectual and emotional strength gathered from different countries and contexts. The results show the same basic decline and resist the notion that public or other forms of education are to blame. Could the cause instead lie within? Stanford University professor Gerald Crabtree thinks so. He published a pair of essays in the journal Trends in Genetics, citing new discoveries that show why the human intellect is “surprisingly fragile.”1 This biblical creation-friendly notion didn’t sit well with the authors...

Coelacanths: Evolutionists Still Fishing in Shallow Water by Timothy L. Clarey, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * A recent report, published in Nature,1 on the genome sequence of the so-called living fish fossil, the African coelacanth, has some evolutionists scrambling to defend their story. This is because the coelacanth's DNA is similar to other types of fish and not land animals, thus forcing the evolutionists to postulate that the coelacanth evolved slowly.1 Although modern coelacanths are found in water about 500 feet deep, Axel Meyer, a member of the study team believes that ancient coelacanths may have lived in shallow...

This book describes Dr. Martin's personal journey from an evolution-trained scientist to a Bible-believing creationist. Dr. Martin examines many of the claims and theories of prominent evolutionists, comparing their often incredible, inconsistent, pseudo-scientific explanations of origins to the clear and simple description of the Creation as depicted in the Bible. The result is the realization that evolution, just like creation, is in fact a faith system - in other words, it takes just as much faith, perhaps more, to believe in the Darwinist theory of evolution as it does to take as simple, profound truth the Bible's clear explanation of...

Striking It Rich with 'Instant Gold' by Timothy L. Clarey, Ph.D. The lure of gold has caused many to drop everything and rush off in search of the "mother lode." But where exactly do these precious gold deposits come from? An explanation for the origin of gold deposits has long eluded and perplexed prospectors and even geoscientists. But one new study may have unlocked just the right clues. Two Australian scientists, whose work was published in Nature Geoscience1, found that gold deposits can form almost instantaneously during faulting events and their associated earthquakes. According to the authors' calculations, repeated faulting...

A California creationist is offering a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can prove in front of a judge that science contradicts the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Dr Joseph Mastropaolo, who says he has set up the contest, the Literal Genesis Trial ...

Intelligent design is just another form of creationism, creationism is profoundly unscientific, and such unscientific views do not belong in public classrooms. This, in a nutshell, is the argument of activist Zack Kopplin, a student at Rice University who began his battle against a Louisiana academic freedom law (the Louisiana Science Education Act) while in high school. He is the 2012 winner of the “Troublemaker of the Year Award.” “Well, this law allows supplemental materials into our school biology classrooms to ‘critique controversial theories like evolution and climate change,’” said Kopplin in a March interview on the Bill Moyers show....

For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he's making a difference.

A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomprehensible, a team of physicists at the University of Washington has come up with a potential test to see if the idea holds water. The concept that current humanity could possibly be living in a computer simulation comes from a 2003 paper published in Philosophical Quarterly by Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at the University of Oxford. In the paper, he argued that at least one of...

The new standard for teaching science in public schools should prohibit teaching religious beliefs like evolution as if they were the equivalent of scientific theories. Science should be defined as using experimentation and observation to discover information about physical reality. Explanations of what happened in the ancient past cannot be verified using experimentation and observation. ----------advertisement----------- Contrary to a popular myth pushed by those who want to make science a substitute for religion, science has yet to produce a new explanation for the development of life or the origin of the universe. The idea that the universe came out of...

[If dinos walked with man, there should be dino DNA, however, there is not.] Claims of extreme survival of DNA have emphasized the need for reliable models of DNA degradation through time. By analysing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 158 radiocarbon-dated bones of the extinct New Zealand moa, we confirm empirically a long-hypothesized exponential decay relationship. The average DNA half-life within this geographically constrained fossil assemblage was estimated to be 521 years for a 242 bp mtDNA sequence, corresponding to a per nucleotide fragmentation rate (k) of 5.50 × 10–6 per year. With an effective burial temperature of 13.1°C, the rate...

Marco Rubio gave an interview in GQ, and liberals are freaking out over his answer to "creationism." Which should prove, in a just world that they're not mentally equipped to address the problems the world faces right now if that would be their focus.Rubio gave a politicians answer, here's the real one...

Creationism or Evolution?by Sebastian R. Fama Is it possible to know that God exists even though we cannot see or touch Him? Well, we believe that radio waves exist and we can’t see or touch them. And we believe it because the evidence allows for no other conclusion. We turn on a television and we see and hear someone who is many miles away. Adjusting the antenna changes the quality of the picture. Disconnect the antenna, and there is no picture. Obviously the television is receiving the pictures and sound from the air. Thus we can know that radio...

When I write about some Tax Court decisions, the title “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” seems to be called for.  I don’t use it, because it would get old pretty quickly and I can’t have that.  Speaking of things getting old, that is a behind the scenes question in the recent case of Jo Delia Hovind.  She and her husband Kent E Hovind were interested in the age of the earth. ... Turns out there is money to made in promoting young earth creationism.  The Hovinds became tax paying job creators.  Only they had some trouble with the tax...

Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

"Looking Young"

More Fluctuations Found in Isotopic Clocks by Brian Thomas, M.S. | Aug. 17, 2012 Age-dating a rock using its radioactive isotopes only works by assuming that the rate at which that "clock" ticks was constant in the past and essentially identical to that in the present. Not long ago, scientists discovered excess helium in crystals1 and "orphaned" polonium radiohalos,2 both of which imply that the decay rates of isotopes commonly used to date earth rocks were dramatically accelerated in the past. Even today, researchers are finding small but significant changes in isotope decay rates, and these add credibility to the...

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...

As the nation celebrates American liberty on the Fourth of July each year, it would be appropriate for all Americans (including those who have come here from other nations in search of that same freedom), first of all, to reflect on the Christian foundations—including genuine creationism—on which our nation was built. In a previous article on this theme (see the July 1996 Back to Genesis article, “Sweet Land of Liberty�), it was noted that many of the founding fathers of our country were strict creationists and that this fact was reflected in the Declaration of Independence itself. In this article,...

Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states1. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science. A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has...

What the heck... it's been a while since we last opened up the flood gates on this topic and according to Gallup surveys, we're no closer to a consensus now than we ever were. The subject at hand is our old friend, evolution vs. creation. Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe...

PRINCETON, N.J., June 2 (UPI) -- The percentage of U.S. residents who believe God created human beings less than 10,000 years ago has changed little in the past 30 years, a Gallup poll says. In a report Friday, the Gallup organization said 46 percent held that view in the most recent poll. In 1982, when Gallup first asked the question, the percentage was 44 percent and the average over the years has been 45 percent. The poll was conducted for USA Today. Almost one-third, 32 percent, said humans have evolved over millions of years with divine guidance, down from an...

[dc]O[/dc]n May 14, noted philanthropist and neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson is scheduled to give the commencement address at Emory University and receive an honorary degree. But there is a problem. In recent weeks Emory faculty and students have asked the University to disinvite Dr. Carson because he is a critic of evolutionary theory and advocate of creationism. Faculty and staff have written that Dr. Carson’s “great achievements in medicine allow him to be viewed as someone who ‘understands science’” poses a direct threat to science that “rests squarely on the shoulders of evolution.” The anti-Carson letter describes how there is...

Tennessee was the center of the national debate when it prosecuted John Thomas Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution. Now, 87 years after the Scopes “monkey trial,” Tennessee is once again a battleground over the origins of man. This month, it enacted a controversial new law — dubbed the “monkey bill” — giving schoolteachers broad new rights to question the validity of evolution and to teach students creationism. The Tennessee legislature has been on a determined campaign to impose an ideological agenda on the state’s schools. Last week, the house education committee passed the so-called “Don’t say gay” bill,...

The Grand Canyon, and much of the rest of Earth's geological features, were formed in Noah's flood, and the underpinnings of modern science and textbooks are based on frauds that have been perpetrated in a war between secular culture and Christians. That was the message brought to Northern Arizona University's Cline Library Auditorium on Thursday night by Flagstaff resident Russ Miller, who travels around the country speaking at churches as part of his Creation, Evolution & Science Ministries. He also publishes books like "Noah's Ark and Dinosaurs," and he leads paid tours into the Grand Canyon teaching his beliefs. "You...

Here is evolution for you: http://upressonline.com/2012/03/fau-student-threatens-to-kill-professor-and-classmates/ This is very sad. And it seems crazy at first. BUT THINK ABOUT IT. It is obvious to me what is going on here. Yes, I am guessing / reading between the lines. But I think it is very clear. The class was being taught about EVOLUTION: A fellow classmate, Rachel Bustamante, was sitting behind Carr prior to her outburst and noticed she had been avoiding looking at the professor until 11:35 a.m. — that’s when she snapped. The classmate reported that Kajiura was discussing attraction between peacocks when Carr raised her hand to...

In recent years, several self-proclaimed evangelicals, or those associated with evangelical institutions, have called into question the historicity of Adam and Eve. It is said that because of genomic research we can no longer believe in a first man called Adam from whom the entire human race has descended. I'll point to some books at the end which deal with the science end of the question, but the most important question is what does the Bible teach. Without detailing a complete answer to that question, let me suggest ten reasons why we should believe that Adam was a true historical...

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” — The Declaration of Independence Thanks to Senator Dennis Kruse, Indiana educators may soon have the same freedom to express their beliefs about the origin of man as Thomas Jefferson did when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. This week the state Senate passed SB-89, which states, “The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life....

That's a Fact - Little Grand Canyon Nearly 5 million people from all over the world visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona every year. Many believe that this 277-mile long gorge had formed over millions of years, but another famous North American landmark shows that the Grand Canyon could have been created much faster and not long ago.

Have you ever been to a church that claimed that the earth is young? Have you ever felt pressured into believing in a young earth, even though you felt the scientific evidence was contrary to a young earth? Have you ever thought that in order to be a Christian, you had to deny science, and believe in young earth creation science? You are not alone. Many churches teach that the earth is young, and many require you to profess this belief through their statement of faith, which includes a world that was created in six 24-hour days. No, you are...

I am surprised the headline wasn't 'Darwin hate speech incites Muslim extremism. The idea that they reject that which conflicts with their belief system is consistent with everything we have suffered in this war on the West. They rewrote the history on Israel and the Middle East (not to mention taking credit for "scientific inventions" invented by others)  and the left swallowed it whole - let's see where this goes.Muslim medical students boycotting lectures on evolution... because it 'clashes with the Koran' By Daily Mail Reporter (hat tip Phillipa)   Conflict: An increasing number of Muslim biology students are boycotting...

I read that carbon dating method is only accurate for up to 30,000 yrs. So how are scientists coming up with millions yrs. old fossils? For all we know dinosaurs died off not millions but 100's of thousands of yrs ago.

'Creationism' is a confusing term.  In science, militant atheists will intentionally call all religious people 'creationists' and then complain creationists are anti-science, even about the religious people who are not anti-science at all.   'Young Earth' creationists think we were created in whole form 6,000 or so years ago and believe paleontology and biology are some test of faith but commingling the terms is intellectually dishonest.   Politics makes even otherwise smart scientists do bad things. It's the same scam progressive militants pulled regarding 'stem cell research'.   No Republican had objected to 40 years of 'stem cell research' but...

Forget about creationism and start worrying about the left's faith-based devotion to government. So every now and then, liberals are treated to a big self-righteous laugh at the expense of some backwoods Christian conservative candidate who "ignores science" by doubting evolution or global warming—or, gasp, both. Much, for instance, has been made of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent suggestion that evolution is a "theory that's out there" with "gaps in it." He even insinuated that evolution and creationism should both be taught in schools—because folks are "smart enough to figure out which one is right." Sanctimony to red alert! Now,...

A public high school teacher in California may not be sued for making hostile remarks about religion in his classroom, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by a student charging that the teacher's hostile remarks about creationism and religious faith violated a First Amendment mandate that the government remain neutral in matters of religion. A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the lawsuit against an advanced placement history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo must be thrown out of court because the...

The debate among evangelical Christians over Darwin's theory of evolution has returned to front stage this summer with the publication of two separate cover stories on the issue by leading Christian magazines. In its June cover story, Christianity Today reported on how Christian proponents of Darwin are challenging historic beliefs about Adam and Eve. Now Christian news magazine World has announced that it will name two books critiquing "theistic evolution" as its "Books of the Year" in its upcoming July 2 issue. World called the evolution debate in churches and religious colleges "the biggest current battle both among Christians and...

A 16-year-old high school student says she is facing online threats after calling into question Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann's knowledge of the Constitution. What started as a harmless -- if cheeky -- way of pointing out Bachmann's historical mistakes has turned darker for New Jersey high school sophomore Amy Meyers, the Courier Post Online reports. Last month, Meyers posted an open letter online challenging Bachmann to a constitutional debate. "I have found quite a few of your statements regarding the Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect,...

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 pair of professors from Penn State found out that most high school teachers do not teach evolution as a proven scientific fact and the duo don’t like it one bit. “Creationism has lost every major U. S. federal court case for the past 40 years, and state curricular standards have improved,” Michael D. Berkman and Eric Plutzer asserted in the January 28, 2011 issue of Science magazine. “But considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America’s classrooms.” Berkman and Plutzer based their conclusions on research drawn from the National Survey...

Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote an article for Scientific American that, in draft form, had the headline above. My editor nixed it, so we went with something less dramatic: "In the Beginning…: Scientists are having a hard time agreeing on when, where and—most important—how life first emerged on the earth." That editor is gone now, so I get to use my old headline, which is even more apt today. Dennis Overbye just wrote a status report for The New York Times on research into life's origin, based on a conference on the topic at Arizona State University. Geologists, chemists,...

Catholic Dogma and Teaching on Creationand the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission on Genesis Catholic Dogma and Teaching on Creation and the Fall And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them....And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth:...

America needs a Plan B, in case God flakes. President Barack Obama agrees, stressing science’s pivotal role in securing America’s future, and so do the courts, which consistently find the teaching of Creationism in public schools unconstitutional. But a recent poll found that only 28 percent of public school biology teachers present the theory of evolution as scientific fact — the rest endorse Genesis or teach it alongside other “theories that frankly don’t hold up,” as the President once put it. If Obama cannot prevent Evangelicals and abetting Republican leaders like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin from tunneling under the...

Does the sun revolve around the Earth? One in every three Russians thinks so, a spokeswoman for state pollster VsTIOM said on Friday. In a survey released this week, 32 percent of Russians believed the Earth was the center of the Solar system; 55 percent that all radioactivity is man-made; and 29 percent that the first humans lived when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.

Genetic research proves worm has evolved to be less sophisticated than its ancestorsEvolution is not a steady march towards ever more sophisticated beings and therefore the search for the living "missing links" is pointless, according to findings published by a team of researchers led by Dr. Hervé Philippe of the Université de Montréal's Department of Biochemistry. "Aristotle was the first to classify organisms – from the least to the most sophisticated. Darwin's theory of evolution continued this idea, with the concept of a hierarchy of evolution. This way of thinking has led researchers and skeptics alike to look for less...

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,...

If you're in a room of 100 people, odds are likely about 40 think God created humans about 10,000 years ago, part of a philosophy called creationism, according to a Gallup poll reported Friday (Dec. 17). That number is slightly lower than in years past and down from a high of 47 percent in both 1993 and 1999. And 38 percent of Americans, the poll estimates, believe God guided the process that brought humans from "cavemen" to today's incarnation over millions of years, while 16 percent think humans evolved over millions of years, without any divine intervention. This secular view,...

A proposal to build a theme park that would feature a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark has set off a controversy in Kentucky that is worth watching. Within days, the controversy had spread to the pages of The New York Times and USA Today. So, who’s afraid of Noah’s Ark? Lots of folks, it seems, but the editors of the state’s two largest newspapers, in particular. The “Ark Encounter” is a major project to be undertaken by a partnership led by Answers in Genesis, the group that built the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky — an attraction that has now...

The media are in a full-scale hyperventilation following Tuesday's separation of church and state comments by Delaware Republican senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell. As an Investor's Business Daily editorial points out, O'Donnell was right when questioned about this issue during a debate with Democrat candidate Chris Coons, and all the nattering nabobs of negativism filling the airwaves are wrong: There is, of course, no such passage. Those scoffing law scholars might want to look at the Constitution's unadorned text instead of the judicial activist law review articles that take up so much of their day. What the Constitution does say, in...

This is truly amazing! Cannot even imagine the work time and money that went into this venture. It's also amazing to see how large this is - and that the fact it is to scale of biblical times. Enjoy. *** The massive central door in the side of Noah's Ark was thrown open Saturday for the first crowd of curious Pilgrims and townsfolk to behold the wonder. Of course, it's only a replica of the biblical Ark, built by Dutch Creationist Johan Huibers as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible. The ark is 150...