Free Republic

March 15, 2004 issueCopyright © 2004 The American ConservativeTrading Away Americaby Pat BuchananIf a third-party populist were to run in 2004 on Ross Perot’s signature issues of unfair trade and mammoth deficits, George W. Bush would suffer the fate of his father. He would be a one-term president, fortunate to get 40 percent of the vote. For the combined budget and trade deficits George W. has run up dwarf anything his father produced.Even before the cost of war is factored in, the fiscal deficit for 2004 is $521 billion. But the trade deficit, five times as large as any his...

A Mousetrap Defended:Response to Critics Michael J. BeheDiscovery InstituteJuly 31, 2000 Introduction In Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution I coined the term "irreducible complexity" in order to point out an apparent problem for the Darwinian evolution of some biochemical and cellular systems. In brief, an irreducibly complex system is one that needs several well-matched parts, all working together, to perform its function. The reason that such systems are headaches for Darwinism is that it is a gradualistic theory, wherein improvements can only be made step by tiny step,(1) with no thought for their future utility. I...

http://www.boundless.org/2000/features/a0000455.html The Meaning of Intelligent Design I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose. --Clarence Darrow, Toronto, 1930 There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. --Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1955 For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. --Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, 1995. Sound familiar? Not the quotations, but the underlying message: that Christians are weak-minded folks who ...

      Survival of the fittest? © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com                         Is the debate over evolution a political question? Surely it is, first of all, a scientific question. And yet, it is a sign of how far we have strayed from our common sense as citizens that the implications of evolutionary theory for our project of self-government are almost never seriously considered. The American nation and our way of life were founded on an articulated and explicit moral premise – one which the doctrine of evolution directly contradicts. We better start thinking about this. What is unique about the ...

We count on scientists to tell us what they know and do not know--not just what they want us to hear. But when it comes to the origin and evolution of life on earth, spokesmen for official science--and science education--have been far less forthcoming than we might wish. When writing in scientific journals, leading biologists candidly discuss many scientific difficulties facing contemporary versions of Darwin's theory. Yet when these same scientists take on the public defense of Darwinism--in educational policy statements and textbooks--that candor disappears behind a rhetorical curtain. "There's a feeling in biology that scientists should keep their ...

                Nat Hentoff The Senator and the AFL-CIO Sell Out Ignoble End to a Bright Career Workers, consumers, environmentalists, and human rights activists around the globe suffered a defeat as the U.S. Senate approved Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, in a vote that stands as yet another act of cowardice and collusion between big business and our elected officials. --Ralph Nader, September 20 I've long respected Daniel Patrick Moynihan for his record on our constitutional rights—and on human rights around the world. For example, as Charles Morris recalls in the September 22 Commonweal, Moynihan was once criticized ...

Hello my friends, I just saw another anti-Catholic article posted on FR. Since there are still many anti-Catholic articles and posts on FR (I hadn't lurked for a while, but since returning I see things haven't changed), I just thought I would refer everyone to a site that has a list of articles giving the Catholic defense of the Pope and the Catholic Church in regards to Hitler and the Nazis. There are two sides to the story whenever there is an accusation. Please familiarize yourself with both sides. NOT HITLER'S POPE Thanks

We're Not in Kansas Anymore Why secular scientists and media can't admit that Darwinism might be wrong Anna Harvey, a bright, straight-A sophomore in Lawrence, Kansas, raised her hand in biology class one day in early 1999. "Mr. Roth, when are we going to learn about creationism?" Stan Roth exploded. "When are you going to stop believing that crap your parents teach you?" Anna was stunned, and within five months Roth was removed from the classroom. . . To read the entire article, Click Here.

Who's Got the Magic? William A. Dembski Metaviews 42 2000-04-25 In criticizing Phillip Johnson's "intelligent design creationism," Robert Pennock raises a particularly worrisome legal consequence of Johnson's view. According to Pennock, Johnson insists "that science admit the reality of supernatural influences in the daily workings of the world." But what if the same reasoning that Johnson is trying to import into science were adopted in Johnson's own area of specialization--the law (Johnson is a law professor at UC Berkeley)? Here's the concern as Pennock lays it out in Tower of Babel (p. 295): "For the law to take [Johnson's ...

DNA and Other Designs Stephen C. Meyer Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 102 (April 2000): 30-38. For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists—from Plato to Aquinas to Newton—maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe reflected the purpose or design of a preexistent mind—a Creator—served to guarantee humanity’s own sense of purpose and meaning. Yet today in nearly every academic discipline from ...

Our hearts are restless, Oh Lord, until they rest in thee. -- St. Augustine What follows isn’t trying to be an argument for the existence of God based on the reality of the infinite capacity of our hearts, which could only have been created with such a capacity by One Who could fill them. No, it isn’t trying to be that, but it is. Every human being is born inwardly wounded by God’s love, born with a thirst: Like thirsting ground my soul yearns for You. -- Psalm 142 The Creator has given nature food and drink as material ...

Just the facts, please J. Budziszewski World 2000-02-26 Across the country, writers continue to lambaste the Kansas Board of Education for its last August decision--to do what? Some say to "strip evolution from the curriculum." Others say to "omit evolution from the state assessment test." Still others say to "eliminate all mention of evolution from all science texts used in the public schools." Guess what. None of that happened. Here's what did happen. The Board did adopt new statewide science testing standards. Curriculum was left where it had been, in the hands of local districts. Contrary to press reports, ...

Intelligent Design is not Optimal Design William Dembski MetaViews Feb 2, 2000 I was recently on an NPR program with skeptic Michael Shermer and paleontologist Donald Prothero to discuss intelligent design. As the discussion unfolded, it became clear that they were using the phrase "intelligent design" in a way quite different from how the emerging intelligent design community is using it. The confusion centered on what the adjective "intelligent" is doing in the phrase "intelligent design." "Intelligent," after all, can mean nothing more than being the result of an intelligent agent, even one who acts stupidly. On the other ...

The Evolution Wars: Good science encounters a bad philosophy. Tom Bethell The American Spectator Dec - Jan 1999 The conference "Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe," sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute, was held at the great hall of Cooper Union, in Manhattan. On the walls were photographs of presidents from Lincoln to Clinton in mid oration. The featured speakers on this occasion were less well known; Mike Behe, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer. All have been traveling from conference to conference, raising questions about evolution. As we know, there has been a great deal of agitation and propaganda ...

16-Mar-2000 -- ZENIT News Agency CONGRESS WANTS INVESTIGATION OF SUPPORT FOR FORCED STERILIZATIONS WASHINGTON, D.C., (ZENIT).- Republican lawmakers Tuesday called on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to investigate allegations that the Peruvian government is using U.S. aid money to fund forced sterilizations.The congressmen were responding to information provided by the Population Research Institute. Their investigators found that the Peruvian Ministry of Health's Family Planning Program (funded in large part by USAID) targets primarily poor minority women. Numerous examples were cited of native women who were abused, threatened, falsely diagnosed, or otherwize coerced into accepting sterilization."The spirit if ...

DNA: The Message in the Message Nancy R. Pearcey Copyright (c) 1996 First Things 64 (June/July 1996): 13-14. Christians who work in the natural sciences are dogged by a persistent bogeyman: a singular creature called the God of the gaps. Should a believer ever conclude that natural forces are inadequate to produce some phenomenon in the natural world, the bogeymen is poised to spring from the shadows. Its power to intimidate can be seen in an essay by philosopher Nancey Murphy in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith in which she backs away from any suggestion that Christians ought to ...

This is an excerpt. The entire article is Here The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism Stephen C. Meyer, Ph.D. Reprinted from The Intercollegiate Review 31, no. 2 (spring 1996) .... During the last forty years, molecular biology has revealed a complexity and intricacy of design that exceeds anything that was imaginable during the late-nineteenth century. We now know that organisms display any number of distinctive features of intelligently engineered high-tech systems: information storage and transfer capability; functioning codes; sorting and delivery systems; regulatory and feed-back loops; signal transduction circuitry; and everywhere, complex, mutually-interdependent networks of parts. Indeed, ...

The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism Phillip E. Johnson Copyright (c) 1997 First Things 77 (November 1997): 22-25. In a retrospective essay on Carl Sagan in the January 9, 1997 New York Review of Books, Harvard Genetics Professor Richard Lewontin tells how he first met Sagan at a public debate in Arkansas in 1964. The two young scientists had been coaxed by senior colleagues to go to Little Rock to debate the affirmative side of the question: "RESOLVED, that the theory of evolution is as proved as is the fact that the earth goes around the sun." Their main opponent was ...

Hello my friends, An assertion: The rise of capitalism raised with it the standard of living of more people than any other phenomenon in the history of the world. Is this assertion true at all? Is this assertion true for unbridled, unregulated capitalism? Is this assertion only true for regulated capitalism in a democracy? I am just wondering what kind of capitalism the average freeper believes has been most effective. Thanks in advance for your input.

The entire article was a little too big to fit. I posted what would fit. It is an excellent article. See the URL for the complete article. Thanks. DNA, Design, and the Origin of Life Charles B. Thaxton, Ph.D.   This paper was presented as part of the conference, Jesus Christ: God and Man, an international conference in Dallas, Texas, November 13-16, 1986. Dr. Thaxton was then Director of Research, The Julian Center, P.O. Box 400, Julian, CA 92036. © 1986 by Charles B. Thaxton The classical design argument looked at order in the world and concluded that God must have ...