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Ken Ham, a biologist and supporter of young Earth creationism, said evolution is a "belief," not a "theory" -- a "fairy tale" for people who "try to explain life without God" -- and he added that the secular State has established a church, the "Church of Evolution, with Darwin as the High Priest," and teachers and professors as "priests" who push the Darwin religion in the schools. In an interview on VCY America on Feb. 10, two days before the international Darwin Day, host Jim Schneider said to Ken Ham, "I was disturbed in my spirit to hear we have...

South Africa's Australopithecus sediba, discovered in 2008 at the archaeological site of Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, is again helping us to study and understand the origins of humans. Research published in 2012 garnered international attention by suggesting that a possible early human ancestor had lived on a diverse woodland diet including hard foods mixed in with tree bark, fruit, leaves and other plant products. But new research by an international team of researchers now shows that Australopithecus sediba didn't have the jaw and tooth structure necessary to exist on a steady diet of hard foods....

We are at the dawn of a new consciousness, a radically fresh approach to our life...Perhaps the best name for this new segment of historical experience is the Interspiritual Age." Wayne Teasdale, "The Mystic Heart" "At the outbreak of the modern era, the (gnostic) system of inverse biblical exegesis was once again activated." Ioan Couliano, "The Tree of Gnosis" The Gnostic system of inverse exegesis begins with evolution, which has persuaded people, "...to think of everything in nature as the fruit of a gradual growth rather than an original creation." Such inverse thinking means it is now impossible for educated...

Most people think little about their appendix, and that's only natural, because the function of the appendix has been considered unknown - until now. New research supports that our appendixes might actually be useful after all, and doctors may soon be changing their tune about this neglected organ. The appendix, which looks like a slim tube measuring between two and four inches long, sits in our lower right abdomen. It was originally thought to be vestigial - a part of the body that evolution forgot. Popular belief was that this leftover organ was originally part of a fermenting chamber in...

The "hobbit" had neighbors. Back in 2004, researchers announced the discovery of this tiny, ancient human, which apparently hunted dwarf elephants with stone tools on the Indonesian island of Flores 18,000 years ago. Its discoverers called the 1-meter-tall creature Homo floresiensis, but skeptics wondered whether it was just a stunted modern human. In the years since, researchers have debunked many of the "sick hobbit" hypotheses. Yet scientists have continued to wonder where the species came from. Now, an international team originally led by the hobbit discoverer reports stone tools, dated to 118,000 to 194,000 years ago, from another Indonesian island,...

Humans may evolve bizarre features such as webbed feet and eyes like cats in response to changing environments, a scientist claims today. Experts calculated how our physical appearance could change under a number of scenarios, including a 'water world' if melting ice caps cause rising sea levels. They also considered what would happen in a second ice age which could be triggered by an asteroid strike, and if humans colonised other planets. Dr Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent, examined the three scenarios and worked with artist Quentin Devine to help visualise how humans could look in...

The perils of climate change are well known, but rising sea levels could also alter human evolution, scientists have claimed. Rising sea levels could force communities to live in underwater or semi-aquatic towns which could change out physiology. Dr Matthew Skinner a paleoanthropologist from the University of Kent, claims that humans could evolve to have webbed hands and feet and less body hair so they could move quickly through the water. Our eyes would even become more like cats, so we could see in the murky gloom of seas and rivers and our lungs would shrink as we became used...

A very Merry Christmas to NewsBusters readers everywhere! Just out of curiosity, I took a look at the Google doodle for this Christmas Day. See below: it's bland, boring and above all, void of any reference at all to the holiday itself. I decided to have a look at the ways Google observed other days with its doodles. And sure enough, exactly one month to the day before Christmas Eve, Google celebrated "the 41st anniversary of the discovery of Lucy," she being the skeleton of a hominin found in Ethiopia. Google's animated gif doodle shows a monkey walking on all...

A 14,000-year-old thigh bone may upend human history. Unearthed in southwest China, this femur resembles those of an ancient species of humans thought to be long extinct by the Late Pleistocene, scientists say. The scientists compare the leg bone to ancient and modern human femurs in a paper published Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE, arguing that this specimen represents a population of ancient humans that lived surprisingly recently. If they're right, this could dramatically change the way we see human history. Today, our species, Homo sapiens, are the only humans to walk the Earth. But it hasn't always been...

New research led by the American Museum of Natural History reveals that the evolution of modern birds was greatly shaped by the history of our planet's geography and climate. The DNA-based work, published today in the journal Science Advances, finds that birds arose in what is now South America around 90 million years ago, and radiated extensively around the time of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs. The new research suggests that birds in South America survived this event and then started moving to other parts of the world via multiple land bridges while diversifying during...

'Truly amazing' scientific discovery on adaptation of Yakutian horses to cold By The Siberian Times reporter 28 November 2015 Fast track evolution as great Siberian symbol is surprisingly unmasked as an immigrant breed. Researchers say these horses, which seem so well attuned to the harsh cold with thick, dense winter coats, their armour against temperatures of minus 70C (minus 94F), are incomers that only arrived in these parts within the last 800 years. Picture: Maria Vasilyeva The resilient Yakutian horses are one of the great native sights of the Sakha Republic - or Yakutia. In their way as much a part of...

Periods of high extinction on Earth, rather than evolutionary adaptations, may have been a key driver in the diversification of amniotes (today's dominant land vertebrates, including reptiles, birds, and mammals), according to new research published in Scientific Reports. The new study reveals that mass extinctions among some groups of amniotes coincide with numerous and large diversifications in other closely related groups. Conducted by scientists from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany, and the University of Lincoln, UK, the research challenges commonly held views that support a relationship between the evolution of "key innovations" in a group and the rapid...

Earlier this week Google's logo mutated (if you will) from its usual form into a Google Doodle adorned with a series of images depicting an ape evolving into a human. Clicking the Doodle led to information about "AL 288-1," less esoterically known as "Lucy the Australopithecus," or simply "Lucy." Many scientists regard the fossil as an intermediary link between apes and humans.The same day, Googling "lucy australopithecus controversy" turned up a different interpretation of the fossil, including several from Answers in Genesis. The apologetics ministry, which focuses primarily on whether evolution or biblical creation provides the most accurate interpretation...

Where do we come from? There are many right answers to this question, and the one you get depends on who you ask. For example, an astrophysicist might say that the chemical components of our bodies were first forged in the nuclear fires of stars. On the other hand, an evolutionary biologist might look at the similarities between our DNA and that of other primates' and conclude we evolved from apes. Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, has a different, and novel answer, which she describes in her latest book, "Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs." Randall has written...

He continued, “Darwin said his whole theory depended on the fossil remains. He said we should be able to line up from a single-cell organism to man, several miles long and just walk right down the fossil trail and see how everything evolved.” “He [Darwin] said the only reason they didn’t have the fossils was because they were not geologically sophisticated enough, but that we would be in 50 to 100 years,” said Dr. Carson. Well, that was 150 years ago. We still haven’t found them. Where are they? Where are the fossil remains?” Carson continued, “When you ask the...

Can science prove Adam and Eve were real? Spirited Debate: Dr. Fazal Rana and Dr. Hugh Ross believe religion and science can prove how life began

What a piece of work is man! Everyone agrees on that much. But what exactly is it about Homo sapiens that makes us unique among animals, let alone apes, and when and how did our ancestors acquire that certain something? The past century has seen a profusion of theories. Some reveal as much about the time their proponents lived in as they do about human evolution. 1. We Make Tools: "It is in making tools that man is unique," anthropologist Kenneth Oakley wrote in a 1944 article. Apes use found objects as tools, he explained, "but the shaping of sticks...

Scientists discover the birds have developed two mutations in just 50 years Genes of White Plymouth Rock chickens mutated twice in 50 years Scientists previously thought rate of change in mitochondrial genomes was never faster than about two per cent per million years Mutations suggest rate of evolution in the chickens is 15 times faster Study goes against theory evolution can only be seen over long periods

NASA researchers say that future Earths are more likely to appear inside giant galaxy clusters and also in dwarf galaxies, which have yet to use up all their gas for building stars and accompanying planetary systems. By contrast, our Milky Way galaxy has used up much more of the gas available for future star formation. A big advantage to our civilization arising early in the evolution of the universe is our being able to use powerful telescopes like Hubble to trace our lineage from the big bang through the early evolution of galaxies. The observational evidence for the big bang...

UCLA geochemists have found evidence that life likely existed on Earth at least 4.1 billion years ago -- 300 million years earlier than previous research suggested. The discovery indicates that life may have begun shortly after the planet formed 4.54 billion years ago. The graphite is older than the zircon containing it, the researchers said. They know the zircon is 4.1 billion years old, based on its ratio of uranium to lead; they don't know how much older the graphite is.The carbon contained in the zircon has a characteristic signature -- a specific ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 -- that...