Free Republic

CNN correspondent Max Foster’s short report about Richard Dawkins on Tuesday’s Situation Room played more like a commercial which promoted the militant atheist’s new book. Despite Dawkins’s past inflammatory statements about Christianity, Foster only labeled him “an outspoken critic of creationism....[whose] atheist views have put him at the center of controversy” [audio clip available here]. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux’s introduction for the correspondent’s report highlighted the 150th anniversary of the printing of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and how Dawkins was a “controversial successor [to Darwin] carrying the torch for evolution.” Foster gave a very basic description of Dawkins’s...

More details are now coming out from the lawsuit filed against the California Science Center by the American Freedom Alliance (AFA), filed in the Superior Court for the State of California for the County of Los Angeles (Central District). AFA's lawsuit contends that the California Science Center engaged in viewpoint discrimination when cancelling AFA's contract to screen the pro-intelligent design (ID) documentary Darwin’s Dilemma at the Center’s IMAX Theatre on October 25th. As discussed below, AFA's complaint contains e-mails from California Science Center staff revealing that the Center cared more about how it would be perceived by ID-critics in the...

A lawsuit has been filed against the California Science Center by the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) for cancelling the AFA’s contract to screen the Darwin’s Dilemma documentary on October 25th. According to AFA’s press release: American Freedom Alliance (AFA), a non-profit group, has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against a popular science museum for cancelling an event exploring the topic of intelligent design. The group says its free speech rights were violated when the California Science Center (CSC) abruptly reversed a decision to allow the showing of a pro-intelligent design documentary at the museum’s IMAX Theater. The program was...

Today, November 24, it is exactly 150 years since Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species. The world has been gearing up for this “second echelon” of celebrations for this international “Year of Darwin”, following on from the 200th anniversary of his birth this last February. Atheists and humanist groups in particular have seemed to be relishing the thought of giving further prominence to the ideas of their patron saint. Their adulation is heightened by their knowledge that...

Fungi are single or multi-celled organisms that break down organic materials, such as rotting wood, in order to absorb their nutrients. Neither plant nor animal, they range from mushrooms to single-celled yeast. Scientists were investigating organic chemicals trapped in an Italian sedimentary rock formation when they found evidence that an extinct fungus feasted on dead wood during a time when the world’s forests had been catastrophically eradicated.[1] What could have caused such a universal effect on forests, and why does organic material remain in rocks that are supposedly 251.4 million years old?...

ScienceDaily: “Slowing Evolution to Stop Drug Resistance” --snip-- For years, evolutionists have pointed to antibiotic resistance as proof of evolution in action. The argument often amounts to this (in simplified form): the fact that certain organisms grow resistant to certain antibiotics is evidence for the evolutionary idea that all animals must have descended from a single ancestor. Collapsing the argument does make it seem a bit silly, but that’s our point. We certainly don’t want to belittle the very real threat of dangerous organisms becoming immune to the best drugs we now have (though the vast majority of microbes are...

Scientists have watched as a new species is “born”—or is that “evolved”?—on one of the Galapagos Islands, home of Darwin’s famous finches...

Amateur fossil hunters Jamie and Jonathan Hiscocks were looking for dinosaur remains in East Sussex, UK, when they instead found tiny spider webs trapped inside a piece of ancient amber. Oxford University paleobiologist Martin Brasier inspected the amber, which was assigned an age of over 100 million years. He concluded that spiders back then were able to spin webs just like today’s garden spiders.The amber-encased webbing formed concentric circles like those that contemporary orb-weaver spiders manufacture. Also evident were “little sticky droplets along the web threads to trap prey,” Brasier told the Daily Mail. He added, “You can match the...

Not to mince words - the modern synthesis is gone --snip-- "The discovery of pervasive HGT and the overall dynamics of the genetic universe destroys not only the tree of life as we knew it but also another central tenet of the modern synthesis inherited from Darwin, namely gradualism. In a world dominated by HGT, gene duplication, gene loss and such momentous events as endosymbiosis, the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable." ...

Believers in Intelligent Design have often been scorned as being opposed to science, but science itself is showing that it is the evolutionists who are opposed to rational inquiry.Though The New American has no official position on evolution, we have published a number of articles over the years pointing to flaws in the theory and arguing for academic freedom on the subject. We did this most recently in "Allow Intelligence" (May 12, 2008 issue), our very favorable review of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled. In the following article, Selwyn Duke suggests that it's possible to believe in both an evolution of...

Affirming the reality of an intelligent design for the creation and development of the universe is not a scientific theory, but a statement of faith, said the preacher of the papal household. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, offering a Lenten meditation to Pope Benedict XVI and top Vatican officials March 13, said the controversy that has arisen between scientists supporting evolution and religious believers promoting creationism or intelligent design is due mainly to a confusion between scientific theory and the truths of faith. The intelligent-design theory asserts that the development and evolution of life is such a hugely complex process that...

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 2009, the eyes of the world will turn to commemorate the anniversaries of the births of the two most influential men of the last one thousand years — the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. No two men of the past millennium have done more to shape the thoughts of mankind or to affect the political and social destiny of nations than Calvin and Darwin — the former for the glory of God, and the latter for unimaginable evil. The following is a synopsis and excerpt...

First published:Creation 19(4):22–23September 1997by Carl WielandThe chilling revelations of a recent television documentary1 expose the disturbing consequences of evolutionary ways of thinking. Beginning in the 1920s, many thousands of people in the United States were sterilised against their will and without their consent, to prevent ‘undesirable breeding’. Over 8,000 of these procedures took place at a major centre to which such ‘undesirables’ were sent, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Video here. Classic line when she refers to the flag pin, an "accessory" Obama dislikes. Anyone who has pictures of Sarah Palin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Laura Ingraham, and other both principled and attractive conservative women, please post them all here. Who can post the most? Let the contest begin.

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales. Prof Hawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking. "I haven't read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales." Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look...

It’s our favorite libertarian-ish anti-idiotarian magicians, with a whole episode of Bullsh*t! devoted to ... yes ... creationism and its repackaged descendant, “intelligent design.” (Screams and pandemonium ensue.) Featuring footage from the Creation Museum, and interviews with some people whose names are often invoked during the LGF Evolution Wars, including Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research. The 3-part show carries a mild language warning; if you’ve ever seen Penn and Teller, you know what to expect.

Praised until recently as dogma, Darwin’s theory of evolution is now fading away, discredited by the same science that bore its poisoned fruit. Instead, the Christian vision of a supernatural design is being increasingly affirmed. “Evolution is now a datum proven beyond any reasonable doubt and no longer a theory, it’s not even worth taking the trouble to discuss it.” This is what a spokesman proclaimed at the Festival of Science held in Genoa in November 2005, thereby neglecting a very important aspect of modern science—the need to be open to new perspectives. Instead, the truth is quite the opposite....

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait. And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.

Expelled seems to me to be the right-wing analog of Fahrenheit 9/11...An effort to take a preexisting belief about the illegitimate use of power, find some facts to fit to it, and do the rest of the work with insinuation and innuendo... ...But the obvious question for ID proponents is never asked: OK, this great science is being suppressed, so please show me the data, lab notebooks, scientific work papers, unpublished manuscripts, and so on that contain all of these amazing discoveries that nobody will confront. But we never see it... ...One argument the movie makes, without any support that...