Free Republic

Link Only: Poll shows belief in evolution, creationism

The man picked by the Creation Museum to play Adam leads quite a different life outside the Garden of Eden. Records show that Eric Linden owns a pornographic web site called [name voluntarily removed for Free Republic post]. He's been pictured there in a T-shirt brandishing the site's sexually suggestive logo. Linden grew up in Columbus. The 27-year-old appears as Adam in one of 55 videos featured on visitor tours at the Petersburg, Kentucky museum. The museum -- which opened last month -- tells the Bible's version of how Earth was created. Museum officials today stopped airing the 40-second video...

The current US presidential debates are almost certain to see the candidates asked to comment on spiritual issues, but some Americans are worried about the trend towards religiosity in public life. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will be challenged on their beliefs At my twins' annual school camp in West Virginia, you are meant to leave your troubles behind. It is an idyllic couple of days - a communing with nature which my wife gallantly insists is simply too enjoyable for her to take part in - it has to be a dad's experience. Actually it is not that...

Compared with the $27 million Creation Museum that just opened its doors in Kentucky, Canada's first museum dedicated to explaining geology, evolution and paleontology in biblical terms is a decidedly more modest affair. The Big Valley Creation Science Museum, which opens next week, was built for C$300,000 ($278,000) in the village Big Valley, Alberta, population 308, a two-hour drive northeast of Calgary. The Canadian museum features displays on how men once walked among dinosaurs, a giant model of Noah's Ark, a set of English scrolls tracing the family of King Henry VI back to the Garden of Eden, and an...

There have been many scholarly and unimpeachable arguments written in opposition to the theory of evolution. Still, people will believe what they want to believe. Evolution theory has been pounded into the heads of children for many decades and it is very difficult to dislodge wrong thinking when so many teach that it is right. In spite of this theory being promoted in almost every major theme of study (i.e. mathematics, social studies, history, psychology, etc.), the adoption of evolutionary beliefs by both science and academe has done nothing to better our society. No drunkard has repented; no harlot has...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Primitive fish already may have possessed the genetic wiring needed to grow hands and feet well before the appearance of the first animals with limbs roughly 365 million years ago, scientists said on Wednesday. University of Chicago researchers were seeking clues behind a momentous milestone in the evolution of life on Earth -- when four-legged amphibians that descended from fish first colonized dry land. These first amphibians paved the way for reptiles, birds and mammals, including people. "What we're interested in here is the transition from fin to limb -- a great evolutionary event," palaeontologist Neil Shubin,...

The National Association of State Boards of Education will elect officers in July, and for one office, president-elect, there is only one candidate: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts against the teaching of evolution. Scientists who have been active in the nation’s evolution debate say they want to thwart his candidacy, but it is not clear that they can. The candidate is Kenneth R. Willard, a Kansas Republican who voted with the conservative majority in 2005 when the school board changed the state’s science standards to allow inclusion of intelligent design, an ideological cousin of...

Today we reach an anniversary of sorts, unremarked, but remarkable nonetheless. It was 260 years ago this week that a young Scottish naval surgeon by the name of James Lind did something truly revolutionary. In those days of English naval supremacy Britannia ruled the waves, but the royal navy itself was ruled by scurvy. Only a few years earlier, Commodore George Anson had attempted the royal navy's first circumnavigation of the globe. He left the Portsmouth naval yards in command of seven ships and 2,000 men. He returned two years later in one ship with just 188 men remaining. Some...

The theory that dinosaurs gave rise to birds has been dealt a blow by palaeontologists who have examined critical evidence from a Chinese fossil. The discoverers of the turkey-sized dinosaur Sinosauropteryx say it would have had primitive feathers, supporting the bird-from-dinosaurs theory. But the latest research says these 'proto-feathers' are really frilly structures on the creature's back. Researchers led by South African academic Professor Theagarten Lingham-Soliar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal publish their study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The debate focuses on Sinosauropteryx, a fossil found in 1994 by a farmer in Liaoning province, northeastern China....

WASHINGTON -- In a nation where 91 percent of citizens profess to believe in God, it's a safe bet we won't see an atheist in the White House anytime soon. But what about a president who doesn't believe in Darwin? And are Darwin and God mutually exclusive? These are the questions that (still) trouble men's souls. And still cause trouble for presidential candidates forced unfairly to essentially choose between God and science. In the "gotcha" question of the first GOP debate, journalist Jim VandeHei, relaying a citizen's question, asked John McCain: "Do you believe in evolution?" A natural response might...

Y2Kyoto: Al Gore Strikes A Blow For Intelligent Design A global warming disciple was troubled by the Goracle's presentation in Regina; The slide I found particularly interesting/shocking/sad, was his new(?) slide containing a graph of human population growth over the past couple hundred-thousand years. It started off good. He pointed at the beginning of the graph, showing the population of humans on Earth from 200,000 years ago, and referred to the “rise of humans." Cool beans. So he believes that Homo sapiens evolved from other hominid ancestors, right? Nope. In the very same breath, he then continued to explain...

On Charles Darwin’s passing in 1882, influential friends intervened to thwart his wish to be buried in a humble coffin in his parish. Such an interment, they felt, would deprive England of the privilege of honouring one of its great men. So it was that the professed agnostic was buried with high ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Canon Frederic Farrar’s eulogy assured his countrymen that the views of the deceased did not menace the Crown with the boisterous materialism promoted in the free thought press. Darwin’s life-long service to his parish, and his occasional acknowledgement of the Creator, proved his loyalty...

His predecessor appeared, on balance, to favour the scientists. But the present Pope may have tipped the scales the other way in the argument over which is the truer account of the Creation: On the Origin of Species or the Book of Genesis. Pope Benedict XVI has stepped into the debate over Darwinism with remarks that will be seen as an endorsement of “intelligent design”. The Pope did not explicitly back intelligent design or creationism. He praised scientific progress but said that the Darwinian theory of evolution was “not finally provable” because: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.”...

A nearly-completed $27 million museum that will showcase the literal biblical account of creation has been drawing enough criticism to spur several opponents into slating protests against the museum on the day of its opening. Set to open on Memorial Day, the Creation Museum, built just outside Cincinnati, is trying to give an alternative to evolutionary models of science. Challengers are calling the museum “fantasy,” however, and have expressed fear that their children may be influenced by what the museum teaches. "Many educated humans realize this is a myth," said Edwin Kagin, a Union attorney and the national legal director...

Scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies believe discoveries about the genetic complexity of coral could rewrite theories about evolution. After identifying about 10,000 genes, they believe coral could contain more genes than humans who posses about 20,000. Coral is considered to be a simple animal. However, Professor David Miller says its genetic complexity challenges the notion that life started out simple then evolved to become more sophisticated. "There's this intrinsic tendency to think about a slow accumulation of complexity and a slow accumulation of genes which have allowed an increased morphological complexity in higher animals...

Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that "Lucy" - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the "Robust hominids." The jaw bone of Lucy and the jaw bone of Australopithecus afarensis.

An archeology professor at Britain's Cambridge University has a theory that eating in front of the television is a natural development of human evolution. The Telegraph reported on the theory, put forth by Professor Martin Jones, who likens families who dine in front of the television to our ancient ancestors -- who dined around a campfire to share food and stories. Martin has called television dinners "today's campfire." Martin told the London newspaper he believes it is natural for humans to gather and to eat while also consuming information and entertainment. Martin's theory has been called "unhelpful," particularly by groups...

For some a battle between science and religion is being fought for the soul of America. The Creationists argue God created the world in six days and want their beliefs given equal status to evolutionary science. Across the divide - evolutionist Scott with creationist Ham Petersburg, Kentucky, is in the middle of North America. It is supposedly within a day's drive of two-thirds of the US population. For the rest, it is just 10 minutes from Cincinnati International Airport. That is why it was picked as the site for a new museum, due to open in a couple of...

Evolution has not been “scientifically” proven and science has unnecessarily narrowed humanity’s view of creation, Pope Benedict has said in his first reflections on the origins of life. In comments to students, published yesterday in German, the Pope – who took office in April 2005 – stopped short of endorsing intelligent design and said “faith alone” could not “explain the whole picture”. But, he said: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.” He advised the students not to choose between creationism and evolutionary theory but to adopt “an interaction of various dimensions of reason”. He said: “I find it...

In 1898, according to legend, the Pennsylvania steel magnate Andrew Carnegie saw a newspaper story about great prehistoric monsters called dinosaurs. He scrawled a note: "Get one for Pittsburgh." That is why Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History has one of the world's leading collections of dinosaur fossils. The problem is that even though the newest of the dinosaurs are 65 million years old, scientists' understanding of them has been racing along, changing with each new find. So the Carnegie staff has decided to dismantle -- and rethink -- its entire collection. Our image of dinosaurs comes mostly from what...

A 40,000-YEAR-OLD skeleton found in China has raised questions about the "out of Africa" hypothesis on how early modern humans populated the planet. The fossil bones are the oldest from an adult "modern" human to be found in eastern Asia. They contain features that call into question the widely held view that our direct ancestors completed their evolution in Africa before spreading out into Europe and the Far East. The "out of Africa" hypothesis proposes that all humans alive today are descended from a small group of sub- Saharan Africans who made their way out of the continent about 60,000...

The latest NEWSWEEK poll shows that 91 percent of American adults surveyed believe in God—and nearly half reject the theory of evolution. Also, Americans on John Edwards and the Senate's goal for troop withdrawal A belief in God and an identification with an organized religion are widespread throughout the country, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll’s respondents...

Sorry .. it's true. Liberals love to paint conservatives as being ignorant, stupid, obtuse, mindless, irrational and, on occasion, retarded. For the most part leftists use this "stupid" tactic in order to avoid actually having to intellectually engage with someone who thinks differently than they. After all ... you really don't have to consider the opinions offered by someone who disagrees with you if you can successfully and falsely brand them as ignorant. Sadly ... many conservatives seem to have dedicated their lives to lending credence to the left's "conservatives are idiots" claim. You will remember several weeks ago I...

Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah's ark. Some dinosaurs managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That probably was a dinosaur. Exhibits showing all this and more will be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in Northern Kentucky. The museum, in Boone County near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, is being built by a non-profit group called Answers in Genesis. It is scheduled to...

Sisters High School biology teacher fired amid controversial curriculum Mar 23,2007 00:00 by Alisha Wilson Board member releases teacher’s powerpoint presentation; says it was a “calculated decision on his part to bend young minds” Kris Helphinstine, a part-time biology teacher at Sisters High School was fired by the school board Monday night for deviating from the curriculum on the theory of evolution after only eight days on the job, four of which were spent teaching his own theories of evolution through a PowerPoint presentation that referenced Nazi Germany and Planned Parenthood. When asked why Helphinstine was dismissed, school board...

From The Times February 26, 2007 Religion isn’t the sickness. It’s the cure Our correspondent on the moral failure of modernism Wlliam Rees-Mogg From the earliest days Christianity has been opposed to slavery. In his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul wrote: “As many of you that have been baptised in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. We were all one in Jesus Christ.” Undoubtedly Christians have compromised with slavery — as with other social evils — in the course of history, but...

The vaunted Smithsonian Institution, highly regarded for promoting knowledge and science, is embroiled in a scandal for censoring scientific inquiry. It would be amusing when the mouthpieces of political correctness abandoned their mantra of freedom and tolerance to squash a threat to their power, if so much were not at stake. Consider the case of the squashing of Dr. Richard Sternberg, a former research associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and a distinguished evolutionary biologist with two doctorates in biology. Dr. Sternberg’s sin was to allow a scientific article critical of neo-Darwinism to be published in...

WASHINGTON - More species develop in warm, tropical climates or cooler, temperate areas? It turns out the longtime answer - the tropics - may be wrong. True, more different types of animals exist there than in places farther from the equator. New research suggests that is because tropical species do not die out as readily. Cooler regions have a higher turnover rate, with more species developing but also more becoming extinct. "It's a surprising result," Jason T. Weir of the zoology department at the University of British Columbia said in a telephone interview. The findings by Weir and Dolph Schluter...

They might be gi­ants, but many di­no­saurs ap­par­ent­ly had ge­nomes no larg­er than that of a mod­ern hum­ming­bird. So say bio­lo­g­ists who’ve gauged the ge­nome sizes of 31 spe­cies of ex­tinct di­no­saurs and birds, their de­scen­dants. This sug­gests a stripped-down ge­nome may have been one fea­ture that helped birds take flight, by sav­ing them en­er­gy, ac­cord­ing to the re­search­ers. They estimated ge­nome sizes us­ing a pre­v­i­ous­ly not­ed re­la­tion­ship be­t­ween those, and the size of bone cells. “We see dis­tinct dif­fer­ences be­t­ween two ma­jor lin­e­ages of di­no­saurs,” said Chris Or­gan of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty in Cam­b­ridge, Mass., one of the sci­en­tists, who...

WASHINGTON - Man may have emerged on the south shore of the Mediterranean 35,000 years earlier than previously thought, said a study out Monday. That would push the appearance of Homo sapiens in northern Africa back to 160,000 years ago, according to scientists who studied the remains of a three-year-old found in Morocco in 1968. Using microscopic and X-ray examination of tooth growth, which stores information as tree rings do, scientists said the date Homo sapiens arrived in the north of Africa may have been earlier than previously believed. "The researchers found that the Moroccan juvenile displays many of the...

It could have all been so different Horizon: My pet dinosaur Tue 13 March, 2100 GMT, BBC2 Email the dinosaur experts at the Horizon website The extinction of the dinosaurs was most probably caused by an asteroid hitting the Earth - but what would have happened if the giant space rock had missed? For a long time it was thought that dinosaurs were a lumbering, cold-blooded extinction just waiting to happen. Even the word dinosaur has come to mean something that has outlived its time. The scientific argument was that as cold-blooded creatures, dinosaurs would not have stood a...

A recent law review article by self-described “liberal First Amendment theorist” Arnold H. Loewy argues that it is constitutional to teach intelligent design in public schools. Writing in First Amendment Law Review, Loewy points out that “[t]o allow all ideas about the origin of man that do not presuppose an intelligent designer, but forbid all theories that explore the possibilities of such a designer, expresses hostility, not neutrality, towards religion.” Similar to the position of Discovery Institute, Loewy does not believe that intelligent design should therefore be required in schools. But he does think that it should not be prohibited...

A state-of-the-art museum dedicated to the biblical account of creation will open this spring in northern Kentucky. The 50,000-square-foot Creation Museum, which is located in the Greater Cincinnati area, is scheduled to open its doors on Memorial Day. The Creation Museum is a project of Answers in Genesis (AiG), an apologetics ministry based in Kentucky. The new attraction will feature many educational displays, including life-size dinosaur models, fossil and mineral collections, and other live exhibits designed to teach and to proclaim the authority of biblical scripture. Dr. Ken Ham, president of AiG, says the $27-million project will be more than...

Evolutionist Synagogue We decide to do something this weekend, so we went to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). It was an interesting day, as we expected it to be, knowing that we were in the worship halls of the evolutionist.As we compensated for admission, the young lady told us that the main attraction is The Amazon. This should be an interesting exhibit I thought to myself. We entered through the gates and preceded down the hollowed hall towards the exhibit, with anticipation of what wonders we would see about the Amazon. To our amazement we came upon an...

In the next few months, two museum exhibits costing tens of millions of dollars will stand open on opposite sides of life's greatest debate.Both feature fossils, both explain the significance of an apelike creature named Lucy and both use sophisticated interactive displays to engage their audience.But that's about all that they have in common.The Hall of Human Origins, the nation's first comprehensive exhibit on human evolution, opened last weekend at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It teaches that we evolved from apelike ancestors about 6 million years ago, and that modern chimps have sophisticated ways of...

Senator John McCain will be in Seattle this Friday, where he’ll give an address, presented by the World Affairs Council and the CityClub of Seattle. [Updated for clarification:] The council’s release said Mr. McCain would talk about his “vision for the United States in the world.” It said he would answer questions such as: What is the role of the U.S. in the global community? How should the U.S. position itself over the next decade? What are the challenges, and how should they be addressed? What are the future global impacts on Washington State? [Update: 8 p.m. Danny Diaz, a...

In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design. Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a more useful tool...

The American Civil Liberties union is backing a Kearny High School student who objected when a teacher made religious statements in the classroom, including allegedly telling students that those who do not believe Jesus died for their sins belong in hell. The student's lawyers filed a notice of claim on Feb. 13 against the school district, claiming that instead of addressing the teacher's conduct, it penalized the student for secretly taping the teacher. After months of trying to solve the issue out of court, Matthew LaClair and his parents announced on Monday that they had filed legal paperwork allowing them...

ATLANTA - A Jewish organization is demanding an apology from a Georgia legislator after a memo using his name claims that evolution was a myth propagated by an ancient Jewish sect. The Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to state Rep. Ben Bridges Thursday chastising him for penning the "highly offensive" memo, which attributes the Big Bang theory to writings in the Kabbalah, a Jewish text. Bridges has denied writing the dispatch, although one of his closest political allies, Marshall Hall, said the legislator gave him the approval to draft the memo. The memo asks readers to challenge the "evolution monopoly...

The Kansas state Board of Education on Tuesday repealed science guidelines questioning evolution that had made the state an object of ridicule. The new guidelines reflect mainstream scientific views of evolution and represent a political defeat for advocates of "intelligent design," who had helped write the standards that are being jettisoned. The intelligent design concept holds that life is so complex that it must have been created by a higher authority. The board removed language suggesting that key evolutionary concepts are controversial and being challenged by new research, and approved a new definition of science that limits it to the...

KINGSTON, Rhode Island : There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page dissertation Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral degree in geosciences here at the University of Rhode Island. His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is "impeccable," said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of geosciences at the university who was Ross's dissertation adviser. "He was working within a strictly scientific framework, a conventional scientific framework." But Ross is hardly a...

The list truly is a "Who's Who" of prominent scientists in the world today, and now another 100 ranking leaders have added their signatures to a challenge to Darwin's theory of evolution. It's for those who have reached the epitome of their fields, but still are questioning the validity of the Darwinian philosophy and want to put their concerns in writing. The names include top scientists as MIT, UCLA, Ohio State, University of Washington, University of Pennsylvania, University of Georgia, Harvard, the College of Judea and Samaria, Johns Hopkins, Texas A&M, Duke, University of Peruglia in Italy, the British Museum...

A look at some of the changes proposed for Kansas' science standards. INTRODUCTION _ Existing Standards: "Evolution is accepted by many scientists but questioned by some. The board has heard credible scientific testimony that indeed there are significant debates about the evidence of key aspects of chemical and biological evolutionary theory. ... We also emphasize that these science curriculum standards do not include intelligent design ..." _ Proposed Change: This language would be deleted. _ Reasoning: The statements do not reflect mainstream science. The "credible evidence" was testimony from the leaders of the intelligent design movement, viewed as flawed by...

Deep in the dusty, unlit corridors of Kenya's national museum, locked away in a plain-looking cabinet, is one of mankind's oldest relics: Turkana Boy, as he is known, the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found. But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm -- one pitting scientists against Kenya's powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism -- once largely confined to the United States -- has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind. "I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or...

It's a mystery why the speed and complexity of evolution appear to increase with time. For example, the fossil record indicates that single-celled life first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, and it then took about 2.5 billion more years for multi-cellular life to evolve. That leaves just a billion years or so for the evolution of the diverse menagerie of plants, mammals, insects, birds and other species that populate the earth. New studies by Rice University scientists suggest a possible answer: the speed of evolution has increased over time because bacteria and viruses constantly exchange transposable chunks of DNA...

MOSCOW (MCT) — Imposing on schoolchildren the theory that humans descended from apes is unacceptable, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said Monday. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the church has campaigned for the right to teach the basics of the Orthodox faith in public schools as a challenge to Darwin's theory of evolution, which was official dogma in Soviet times. The issue has had particular resonance after schoolgirl Mariya Shraiber and her father filed a lawsuit demanding that Darwinism be stripped of its dominant position in the Russian school curriculum, calling its teaching to the exclusion...

Tens of thousands of French schools and universities have received copies of a Turkish book refuting Darwin's theory of evolution and describing it as "the true source of terrorism." The education ministry said Friday that it had warned school and university directors that the textbook is not in line with the recognized curriculum and that they should disregard it. Entitled "The Atlas of Creation," the 770-page book by Turkish author Harun Yahya quotes several passages from the Koran and asserts that "human beings did not evolve (from another species) but were indeed created." "We believe that there are lots of...

Darwin’s “Tree of Life” is a myth.  It’s based on circular reasoning.  It is a pattern imposed on the data, not a fact emerging from the evidence.  We should give up the search for a single tree of life (TOL) as a record of the history of life on earth, because it is a “quixotic pursuit” unlikely to succeed – and the evidence is against it.  Who said this?  Not creationists, but a new member of the National Academy of Sciences in his inaugural paper for the academy’s Proceedings.1 W. Ford Doolittle and Eric Bapteste decided to celebrate this inauguration...

Whenever there arises a discussion on the origins issue (as in intelligent design versus evolution), Darwinian materialists invariably go to great lengths to frame the discussion as science versus religion, despite the scientific validity of opposing arguments and scientific credentials of those who propone them. Any doubts raised about Darwinian evolution are automatically attributed to religious motivations that cannot possibly be rooted in fact. What is worse is that these doubts are dismissed without consideration and the scientist/teacher who raised them is blacklisted. You won’t see this on the nightly news, and the ACLU surely will turn a blind eye,...

New Mexico State Senator Steve Komadina has introduced a bill into the New Mexico Senate which would protect the academic freedom of teachers to discuss scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution. The bill requires that the New Mexico Department of Education adopt rules to “give teachers the right and freedom, when a theory of biological origins is taught, to objectively inform students of scientific information relevant to the strengths and weaknesses of that theory and protect teachers from reassignment, termination, discipline or other discrimination for doing so.” The bill would not only protect teachers, but also students: it requires the...