Free Republic

Editor's Note: This article is the first in a special LiveScience series about the theory of evolution and a competing idea called intelligent design. TODAY: An overview of the increasingly heated exchange between scientists and the proponents of intelligent design. COMING FRIDAY : Proponents argue that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory, but a close look at their arguments shows that it doesn't pass scientific muster. Science can sometimes be a devil's bargain: a discovery is made, some new aspect of nature is revealed, but the knowledge gained can cause mental anguish if it contradicts a deeply cherished belief...

Intelligent design? Not on this campus Talk of evolutionary challenge absent from Penn courses; most want to keep it that way By Trang Do September 21, 2005 Penn offers over 30 courses focused on evolution, and countless others cover the theory in some respect. What Penn does not offer, however, is a course exclusively covering intelligent design. As the movement to incorporate the religion-based explanation of life into classrooms across the country has gained momentum, Penn professors have been largely resistant to teaching the concept. The absence of intelligent design -- which makes the assertion that certain features of an...

THE popular image of Tyrannosaurus rex and other killer dinosaurs may have to be changed as a scientific consensus emerges that many were covered with feathers. Most predatory dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurs and velociraptors have usually been depicted in museums, films and books as covered in a thick hide of dull brown or green skin. The impression was of a killer stripped of adornment in the name of hunting efficiency. This week, however, a leading expert on dinosaur evolution will tell the British Association, the principal conference of British scientists, that this image is wrong. Gareth Dyke, a palaeontologist of...

After so many years of Social Darwinism, Hurricane Katrina could reawaken the American people's appetite for compassion in government. It takes a lot to shake America to the core - 9/11 did it four years ago this weekend; the war in Iraq still has not. It's 70 years since the satirist Eric Linklater noted in his novel Don Juan that life in America was spread over so vast an area that any number of strange and sinister interludes could be enacted without upsetting the national equilibrium. Hurricane Katrina is one of those rare interludes which has upset the national equilibrium....