Free Republic

Pope Francis, Wayward Shepherd In the first year or two of Pope Francis’s pontificate, conservative-minded Catholics made heroic efforts to place the perplexing ways of the new pope in continuity with the thought and deeds of his immediate predecessors. It was said that he had been a forceful critic of liberation theology, at least in its Marxist expressions, that he was a man of traditional piety, that he spoke about the machinations of the Evil One with surprising regularity, and that his style — brash, critical of established ways, anxious for dialogue with the modern world — was a refreshing...

LA PAZ, Bolivia — The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from Russia was rerouted to Austria on Tuesday after France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, the country’s foreign minister said. Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca denied that Snowden was on the plane, which landed in Vienna, and said France and Portugal would have to explain why they canceled authorization for the plane. “We don’t know who invented this lie. We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President...

June 18, 2013 – Natura Pet Products of Fremont, Nebraska, has today announced it is voluntarily recalling specific lots of dry pet food because they may be contaminated with Salmonella. The recall includes specific lots of these brands… Innova EVO California Natural Healthwise Karma Mother Nature No canned food is affected by this announcement.

Eighteen-year-old Jamie Jordan, nicknamed the Fossil Kid, made the exciting discovery in a hunt around the disused quarries in Yaxley. And Jamie, of Canwell, Werrington, Peterborough, was amazed to also find the bones of a younger creature just 25 feet below the ground. After months of studying with a palaeontologist, the bigger bones have been confirmed as those of a Plesiosaur -- one of the first kinds of extinct animal known to science... Jamie said: "It was a very rare discovery to find so many different skeletons right next to each other. "After more research, we are hoping to donate...

Can You Believe Both the Bible and Evolution? A number of the world's mainstream religions have come to accept Darwinian evolution as the explanation for our existence. But does Darwinism really square with the Scriptures? Beyond Today TV Who Invented Life?   by John Ross Schroeder Are we the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve or did God guide our journey into existence by the forces of evolution? The wisdom of this world, particularly in Europe, is increasingly embracing the idea that we can accept both the teachings of the Bible and the theory of evolution. But are they...

CURAHUARA DE CARANGAS, Bolivia (AP) - ... Being Aymara Indians like Evo Morales, South America's first truly indigenous leader, they might be expected to line up squarely behind him. Yet they, like many Bolivians, have their doubts, fearing they are being led into a dangerous alliance with Cuba and Venezuela. They worry about Morales' effort to make his ``people's revolution'' permanent, beginning with elections Sunday for a national assembly to rewrite Bolivia's constitution. Jaime Perez, a powerful Aymara leader, takes issue with Morales' alignment with ``the socialist politics of Cuba'' and with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who strengthened his own...

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Students attending a conflict resolution course in this politically tumultuous Andean nation got some unexpected extracurricular experience when Bolivia's leftist government accused the program's sponsor of being a front for U.S. spies.

Okay, seeing as how a lot of people debate - and, quite often I'm sad to say, with a bit of anger and malice - in the Creation/Evolution threads, I think it's finally time to just bring it to the table. What do you believe in? Creation? Evolution? Intelligent Design? Be specific; what aspects of each do you believe (such as a Christian who believes in evolution, etcetera...)? Remember, be nice.

Age of the Universeby Dr. Gerald Schroeder According to a possible reading of ancient commentators' description of God and nature, the world may be simultaneously young and old. One of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Torah and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5700-plus years. Whereas, data from the Hubbell telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the age at about 15 billion years.Let...

PRETORIA, South Africa - Bolivia's leftist President-elect Evo Morales extended a conciliatory hand to the United States on Wednesday, saying he forgives past humiliations and welcomes dialogue even as he believes U.S. officials may be plotting against him. Bolivia's first elected Indian leader criticized Mexican President Vicente Fox, telling The Associated Press in an interview that Fox was hostile toward him and all indigenous peoples in the Americas, including those of Mexico. Morales said he believes claims by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that the United States is plotting to overthrow Morales, but welcomes reports that U.S. officials are interested in...

Most paleontologists look into the mouth of an allosaurus and see a prehistoric eating machine with a jaw full of flesh-tearing teeth. Peter DeRosa peers into that mouth and sees the hand of God. Working from a business park about 80 miles north of Tampa, Fla., DeRosa and his family are hammering away at two bedrock principles of modern science: evolution and the notion that Earth is about 4 billion years old. The DeRosas are part of a small but growing band of creationists using dinosaurs - the icons of an ancient Earth - to argue that the world is...

Latin America: It's reasonable to cringe about the election of Bolivia's new president, anti-U.S. leftist Evo Morales. But amid fears of another Castro-ite in the hemisphere, this may not be as bad as it looks. Morales has been the troublemaker responsible for most of the turmoil in Bolivia that has rattled the hemisphere since 2003. The country has had four presidents in three years, and Morales is about to become No. 5. He ran for office on an anti-U.S. platform, vowing to be Washington's "worst nightmare." He openly consorted with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, who did their part to...

Durham, NC - Researchers have discovered the first brain regulatory gene that shows clear evidence of evolution from lower primates to humans. They said the evolution of humans might well have depended in part on hyperactivation of the gene, called prodynorphin (PDYN), that plays critical roles in regulating perception, behavior and memory. They reported that, compared to lower primates, humans possess a distinctive variant in a regulatory segment of the prodynorphin gene, which is a precursor molecule for a range of regulatory proteins called "neuropeptides." This variant increases the amount of prodynorphin produced in the brain. While the researchers do...

CARACOLLO, Bolivia - As a little boy in Bolivia's bleak highlands, Evo Morales used to run behind buses to pick up the orange skins and banana peels passengers threw out the windows. Sometimes, he says, it was all he had to eat. Now, holding the lead ahead of Sunday's presidential election, he's threatening to be "a nightmare for the government of the United States." ADVERTISEMENT It's not hard to see why. The 46-year-old candidate is a staunch leftist who counts Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez among his close friends. Moreover, he's a coca farmer, promising to reverse the...

A brilliant piece by Krauthammer, as usual. The punch line: "How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too."