Free Republic

NORFOLKCommodore Uriah P. Levy He left home when he was 10, running away to become a cabin boy, and eventually became the first Jewish commodore in the Navy, the highest rank available at the time. On Sunday, the Jewish chapel at Naval Station Norfolk – the oldest land-based Jewish chapel in the Navy – was rededicated to Commodore Uriah P. Levy, 50 years to the day after it was first named after him. Born in Philadelphia in 1792, Levy had a career that spanned pirate-chasing to authorship – he wrote “A Manual of Internal Rules and Regulations for Men-of-War.” It...

Michal Barkai is a tour guide who specializes in guiding schoolchildren in the Jerusalem area. A month ago, she arrived with a group of 18-year-old students from Mazkeret Batya, who came - many for the first time - to visit the capital and the Jewish holy sites, including the Western Wall. "It all started well, full of good energy as we all sang songs about Jerusalem and felt our spirits rising. These were boys and girls just before starting military service, and seeing the only remnant left of the Temple was a very moving experience for all of us. But...

Take out the founder. Take out Jesus, would you still be able to "do" Christianity? Would you still have your "religion" left? Its "teachings" and creeds? Would you still have your rules, traditions, rituals, and works to fall back on? What makes Christianity different from every other world religion? What did Jesus really leave behind?

David Queller and Joan Strassmann, evolutionary biologists at Rice University, recently proposed a new way to describe what makes an organism a unified whole. They defined an organism as an entity made up of parts that cooperate well for an overall purpose, and do so with minimal conflict. But how do parts like these get together, and where does purposeful behavior come from?...

esearch has shown that humans like to help, even before they are old enough to have been taught how to do so. This innate characteristic distinguishes humans from their supposed closest evolutionary family member, the chimpanzee, which doesn’t demonstrate the same altruistic behavior. In studies on the subject, at only 18 months old, toddlers were observed to consistently aid unrelated adults in simple tasks such as opening a door or picking up a clothes pin. Researchers assumed then that altruism, or unselfish concern for the welfare of others, evolved early in humans. But does this conclusion necessarily follow from the...

The current treatment of young-age creationists in the scientific community and society at large is unfair and unwise. Scientists and philosophers of science, including old-age creationists and naturalists, should respect youngage creationists as legitimate contributors to science. Young-age creationists offer to the current origins science establishment a competing rational viewpoint that will augment fruitful scientific investigation through increased accountability for scientists, introduction of original hypotheses and general epistemic improvement...

"...If you love your G-d but fear your government, tell others about the destruction of the Second Temple by the Hitlerian Antiochus Epiphanes, and help your children internalize these lessons of Hanukkah. If you would be reminded of the importance of preserving second-amendment freedoms, recall this chapter in the long story of the disarmament of the Jews. Honor the memory of Hannah and her sons by kindling the lights of Hanukkah with firm resolve. If you should ever doubt that righteousness will always prevail so long as we love G-d and fight for his spiritual and physical territory, let your...

While Muslims are constantly trying to silence the critics of Islam, our numbers are clearly on the rise. We have them vastly outnumbered and we need to use that to our advantage. For those that are still waiting for “moderate” Islam to come to the rescue, don’t hold your breath. Denying a Koran verse is to apostate from Islam. ACTS THAT ENTAIL LEAVING ISLAM o8.7 (7) to deny any verse of the Koran or anything by which scholarly consensus (def: b7) belongs to it, or to add a verse that does not belong to it; o8.0 APOSTASY FROM ISLAM (O:...

Critics of Cynthia McKinney may dismiss her as a loose cannon and a rabble-rouser, but to her supporters, the former Georgia congresswoman is someone with the courage to challenge convention and speak the truth. McKinney, 54, represented an Atlanta-area district as a Democrat from 1993-2003 and 2005-07. A vigorous critic of President George W. Bush, she gave voice to a theory, widely circulated on the political fringes, that Bush knew in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks but allowed them to happen because they would prove profitable to the global investment firm his father was associated with. In her final...

In May 2009, a remarkably well-preserved extinct primate, nicknamed “Ida,” was hailed as one of the most important fossil finds ever. It had features that some interpreted as a link between two primate body forms. At the time, ICR News suggested that its evolutionary significance was far overblown, predicting that the scientific consensus would offer retractions. Those retractions came three months later, confirming that the fossil―called Darwinius―was really just an extinct lemur variety...

Natural selection and change, yes; Evolution, no --snip-- Summary 1.This episode talks much about change and natural selection, but fails to give any evidence that these produce evolution, other than for the various professors who assert that it does. 2.Darwin’s theory promoted the idea that man is “a beast with animal lusts and no morality”, and this has been gleefully accepted by much of modern society. 3.We might well ask: Why would any sane professor adopt and propagate a theory for which there is such paltry scientific evidence, which is an expression of hatred of God, and which demotes man...

Christians United for Israel (CUFI) seeks to support both Jews and the nation of Israel. One of the primary scriptures they stand upon is: "For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem's sake I will not remain quiet, til her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch." ~ ISAIAH 62:1 If you are unable to attend this event or you would like to do more to support Israel, CUFI requests you sign The Israel Pledge so your name will be joined with thousands of others from across the country and presented to our...

Dec 2, 2009 — Field geologists have revisited a site Darwin visited on the voyage of the Beagle, and found that he incorrectly interpreted what he found.  A large field of erratic boulders in Tierra del Fuego that have become known as “Darwin’s Boulders” were deposited by a completely different process than he thought.  The modern team, publishing in the Geological Society of America’s December issue of the GSA Today,1 noted that “Darwin’s thinking was profoundly influenced by Lyell’s obsession with large-scale, slow, vertical movements of the crust, especially as manifested in his theory of submergence and ice rafting to...

Although creation-based organizations have reported for over a decade on the technical scientific journal articles published about soft tissue found inside dinosaur remains, mainstream media outlets have largely been silent on the subject. But a recent segment that aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes finally broke the news to a broader audience. The soft tissue issue may be gaining more traction, and even “may be changing the whole dino ballgame,” according to correspondent Lesley Stahl.[1] The program is currently viewable online at the CBS website. In a field test demonstration to determine whether a dinosaur fossil was real bone, and not...

Need evidence for Darwinian evolution? Just make it up. That’s the lesson of Donald Prothero’s book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Prothero is a professor of geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles. On November 30, he teamed up with atheist Michael Shermer (founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine) to debate Stephen Meyer and Richard Sternberg of the Discovery Institute. Shermer wrote the foreword to Prothero’s book, calling it “the best book ever written on the subject.” In fact, “Don’s visual presentation of the fossil and genetic evidence for evolution is...

A new concept making its way through the scientific community holds that just a few key changes in the right genes will result in a whole new life form as different from its progenitor as a bird is from a lizard![1] This idea is being applied to a number of key problems in the evolutionary model, one of which is the lack of transitional forms in both the fossil record and the living (extant) record. The new concept supposedly adds support to the "punctuated equilibrium" model proposed by the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould. Dr. Gould derived his ideas...

A Call for Help by Ari Bussel The Reform Movement in Israel looks to its American counterpart for help. In America, Reform Judaism is acceptable and prevalent. For anyone vaguely familiar with American Jewry, diversity is not surprising, stemming from the core foundations of America, its tolerance and freedoms it affords. Being a religious Jew has different meanings to different people. Jews can generally be divided between three main streams: Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Even within a group, there are different shades. Things get further complicated since some Jews are not practicing, others inter-marry, yet others are removed by generational...

3 Trees Said to Prove Warming! --snip-- That's another thing, folks. People said, "I don't get why you believe in God, Rush. Your belief in God, how does that tell you that global warming is a hoax?" Well, belief in God is a very personal thing, but I happen to believe in a loving God of creation -- and I just intellectually cannot accept the fact that a loving God which has created all this beauty and has blessed this country -- I cannot believe that a God like that -- would punish the human being he created for progress,...

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...

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...

It has always amazed me how unconcerned evolutionists seem to be about entropy and the problems it poses both for a natural origin of life and for macroevolution. The argument from entropy is one of the most powerful arguments against the spontaneous formation of life from a random association of non-living chemicals...

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." ...

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...

The Great Rift Valley extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria north of Israel, through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Ethiopia, and all the way to Mozambique in southeast Africa. It harbors a giant fault, which has been under investigation as a model for sea floor spreading. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia, causing safety concerns for locals. These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley...

A British appeals court has ruled that a Jewish school unlawfully discriminated against an applicant who was not a Jew according to the British chief rabbi’s definition of Judaism. The applicant is the son of a Jewish father and a mother who converted at a Reformed synagogue; according to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a child of a mother who converted to Judaism is Jewish only if the mother converted at an Orthodox synagogue. Whether this definition of Judaism is “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist … the requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must...

New Scientist magazine is generally regarded by the secular community as one of the top-ranked science magazines in the world. However, a published opinion by a regular columnist demonstrated how “unscientific” and anti-God some of their articles have become—something we have documented before (see Refutation of New Scientist’s Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions). Amanda Gefter wrote an article discussing multiverse theory, or the idea that our universe may be only one of many that currently exist. Such speculations attempt to explain away the appearance of design in the universe, because of, as we shall see, the spiritual implications. In an...

Volcanic activity in 2005 accompanied the formation of a deep, wide rift in Ethiopia on part of the 4,000-mile-long north-to-south trending Great Rift Valley fault. Studies show that the injection of mantle material that “unzipped” the earth along the fault operated the same way as similar material does in less-accessible undersea rifts. Scientists knew that rifts were formed in this manner, but the suddenness of this one’s formation astonished them...

Darwinizing Everything --snip-- The Darwinians, who took over biology in the 19th century, are still busily engaged in mythmaking, comforting the feebleminded who accept their explanations as wisdom, denouncing the heretics who call their bluff. They wear S on their chests: Science, the equivalent of Superman in intellectual circles. They are phonies. Bring out the kryptonite of critical analysis. It scares them to death, even though they never had special powers to begin with...

According to Thomas Bouchard, a US psychologist famous for his research on twins raised apart,[1] even scientists with good reason to believe that the majority are wrong can be silenced. The reason is...

Signature in the Cell makes 2009 list of top ten bestselling science books Today Amazon.com announced their bestselling books of 2009 and Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer made the top ten in the science category. According to Amazon.com, books on its 2009 list of best sellers are “[r]anked according to customer orders through October. Only books published for the first time in 2009 are eligible.” The book's publisher, HarperOne, reports that the book is entering its fifth printing in as many months, and continues to sell strongly both...

Molecular biologist Michael Behe described a system made of several interacting parts, whereby the removal of one part would disrupt the functioning of the whole, as irreducibly complex. Both creation scientists and intelligent design proponents highlight examples of irreducible complexity in their studies. The very structure of these systems--with their interdependent parts working all together or not at all--demands design, not chance. Nevertheless, a team of evolutionary molecular biologists think they may have refuted irreducible complexity. They recently studied the parts of a particular cellular machine involved in protein transport, claiming that it was actually reducible to its component parts...

Nov 15, 2009 — Biomimetics is the new science of imitating nature – but why not save a step, and just copy the design directly?  That’s what Aussie and British researchers did.  They wanted a self-cleaning surface that could repel moisture and dust, so they made a template of an insect wing.  And why not?  “Insects are incredible nanotechnologists,” reported Science Daily.  Their wings are self-cleaning, frictionless and super-water-repellant. Insect wings have these properties due to their properties at the scale of billionths of a meter.  “For instance, some wings are superhydrophobic, due to a clever combination of natural chemistry...

Abstract: This paper questions criminal law's strong presumption of free will. Part I assesses the ways in which environment, nurture, and society influence human action. Part II briefly surveys studies from the fields of genetics and neuroscience which call into question strong assumptions of free will and suggest explanations for propensities toward criminal activity. Part III discusses other "causes" of criminal activity including addiction, economic deprivation, gender, and culture. In light of Parts I through III, Part IV assesses criminal responsibility and the legitimacy of punishment. Part V considers the the possibility of determining propensity from criminal activity based on...

Knockout strategies have demonstrated that the function of many genes cannot be studied by disrupting them in model organisms because the inactivation of these genes does not lead to a phenotypic effect. For living systems, this peculiar phenomenon of genetic redundancy seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Genetic redundancy is now defined as the situation in which the disruption of a gene is selectively neutral. Biology shows us that 1) two or more genes in an organism can often substitute for each other, 2) some genes are just there in a silent state. Inactivation of such redundant...

Should the “greatest good for the greatest number” be the guiding principle behind health care? As I have said before on Breakpoint, much of the hype and even hysteria surrounding the H1N1 flu strain is unwarranted. That’s not to say that the swine flu’s potential impact isn’t devastating—it is, but not in the way cable news would have us think. And now the Florida Department of Health has issued a set of guidelines that instructs hospitals on what to do “if the state is overwhelmed by [H1N1] cases.” The guidelines recommend that hospitals bar “patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple...

The Ice Age has been a longstanding problem for uniformitarian thinking, with many unsolved mysteries. No mere tweaking of today's climate conditions would cause such a catastrophe. A creationist model based on the revealed events of Scripture, however, offers a possible answer...

Nov 12, 2009 — What propelled Mao Zhedong to become the biggest mass murderer in world history?  Let a professor of Chinese history answer the question.  James Pusey (Bucknell U), writing in Nature this week for a series on “Global Darwin,”1 was explaining the vacuum left by the collapse of the reform movement in the early 20th century.  A “group of intellectuals” found Marxism attractive.  It was the fittest ideology: Many tried to fill it: Sun, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek) and, finally, the small group of intellectuals who, in indignation at the betrayal at Versailles, found in Marxism what seemed...

While Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species has been described as “a grand narrative—a story of origins that would change the world”,1 ironically his book very pointedly avoided the question of the origin of life itself. This ought not be surprising. Darwin’s theory of the origin of species “by means of natural selection”2 presupposes self-reproduction, so can’t explain the origin of self-reproduction. Unfortunately, many proponents of evolution seem unaware of that. They don’t acknowledge that natural selection requires pre-existing life. As leading 20th century evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky lamented: ...

Nov 10, 2009 — There’s a move on to get Darwin’s ideas taught to tots. Britain is giving a “birthday present to Darwin,” wrote Andrew Copson for The Guardian, in the form of national curriculum for primary schools that will mention evolution for the first time – and prohibit teaching of creationism or intelligent design in science lessons. The addition of evolution to elementary school curriculum was in response to a letter promoted by the British Humanist Association and signed by “scientists and experts.” Copson was obviously delighted with what he perceived as a long-overdue smackdown against intelligent design –...

When history imitates game show . . . Those old enough to remember TV in the late 1950s through the 60s will recall a delightful game show, “To Tell the Truth.� As a kid I fondly recall trying to figure out along with the celebrity panelists which of the three contestants was the “real� person to be identified. It was a challenging game; the three contestants would all introduce themselves as “I am Mr./Miss /Mrs. [the generic Ms. hadn't come along yet] X� and, after the announcer read a brief description of the featured guest, the panelists would begin...

A salamander allegedly “18 million years old” is the latest fossil to produce astonishingly well preserved soft tissue. This time, it’s muscle tissue, and it is supposedly the most pristine example yet. Background—the “dinosaur connection”...

Nov 10, 2009 — When the Berlin wall fell 20 years ago, Dorothee Hubner first dared to think, “Are we allowed to leave and finally be free?” Her story and that of her parents Gerhard and Gertraude, scientists trapped in East Germany, was told by Andrew Curry, a freelance writer, in Science.[1] Dorothee was 23 years old in 1989. Her parents, also biochemists, “had spent decades struggling to do research in East Germany without compromising their personal ideals with allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.” By not pledging allegiance to the ruling Communist Party, the Hubners faced a life of...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Penguins that died 44,000 years ago in Antarctica have provided extraordinary frozen DNA samples that challenge the accuracy of traditional genetic aging measurements, and suggest those approaches have been routinely underestimating the age of many specimens by 200 to 600 percent. In other words, a biological specimen determined by traditional DNA testing to be 100,000 years old may actually be 200,000 to 600,000 years old, researchers suggest in a new report in Trends in Genetics, a professional journal. The findings raise doubts about the accuracy of many evolutionary rates based on conventional types of genetic analysis. “Some...

Former Nature editor Philip Ball once commented that ‘there is no assembly plant so delicate, versatile and adaptive as the cell” (1). Emeritus Professor Theodore Brown chose to wax metaphorical by likening the cell to a fully-fledged factory, with its own complex functional relationships and interactions akin to what we observe in our own manufacturing facilities (2). In recent years the seemingly intractable problem of explaining how the first cell came into existence through chance events, otherwise known as the ‘Chance Hypothesis’, has become more acute than ever as scientists have begun to realize that a minimum suite of functional...

Sir Ambrose Fleming: Father of Modern Electronics --snip-- Sir John Ambrose Fleming was a leader in the electronics revolution that changed the world. As a professor at a major university, he carefully researched the evidence for Darwinism, concluding that the theory is not supported by science. He also influenced hundreds of students to evaluate the evidence in science for Darwinism. An outstanding scientist and creationist, he played a significant role in the development and maturation of the early creation movement. As Travers and Muhr wrote, he "had an unusually long and active life," and his life changed the world as...

Good neighborhoods provide families a lot of protection, but even the best of communities remain vulnerable to the threat of criminals invading their homes. Our human bodies are also vulnerable to foreign invaders such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. But when these infection-causing microbes break in where they don't belong, they face a serious defense force, eventually to be caught and destroyed by a highly trained, cell-sized army equipped with a sophisticated array of weaponry. That security force is called the human immune system. Designed with amazingly dynamic communication networks that pass information back and forth between hundreds of...

Why Evolutionary-Based Science Is A Menace To Scientific Research, Discovery, and Progress Evolutionary-based research always begins with the inaccurate and unscientific presupposition that the Theory of Evolution, i.e. the Big Bang, the spontaneous generation of life, and common descent, is true. Due to this systemic problem, scientific discovery and progress is severely hampered, not to mention the hundreds of millions of research dollars that are squandered every year. In a time in which almost ANY alternative thought is given a platform, the evolution industry is silencing dissenting scientific evidence, even when it’s from fellow evolutionists! See the growing list of...

The ideal of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconceived theories, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate, unbiased conclusions that constitute truth, is nowadays regarded by serious philosophers of science (and, indeed, most scientists) as a simplistic myth...