Free Republic

Ironically, this battle was touched off when Cobb County bought new textbooks that actually covered evolution, after years in which the subject was largely ignored. The same kinds of struggles are cropping up in towns in Wisconsin, Arkansas and elsewhere, as school boards try to implement state curriculum standards mandated by Congress. All sides are keeping a close eye on Ohio, which last year adopted standards including an incendiary phrase about "critically analyz[ing] aspects of evolutionary theory." Kansas, which in the November election handed the anti-evolution forces a 6-4 majority on the state school board, is due to review its...

Every species seems to come and go. Some last longer than others, but nothing lasts forever. Humans are a relatively recent phenomenon, jumping out of trees and striding across the land around 200 000 years ago. Will we persist for many millions of years to come, or are we headed for an evolutionary makeover, or even extinction? According to Reinhard Stindl, of the Institute of Medical Biology in Vienna, the answer to this question could lie at the tips of our chromosomes. In a controversial new theory he suggests that all eukaryotic species (everything except bacteria and algae) have an...

The Delusion of Darwinian Natural Law Marc D. GuerraIn a short, inconspicuous paragraph in the conclusion to the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin speculates that "in the distant future … psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." One hundred and forty years later, Darwin's eerie prediction about the revolutionary effect of his work on human beings' self-understanding seems all too prophetic. After a century of dissemination, the once-novel theory of evolution is widely accepted as established scientific fact. Given the quasi-religious hold...

<p>Domesticated animals look - and act - differently from than their wild counterparts. Why?</p> <p>The experiment was derived out of a discussion student Brian Hare had with his adviser, Michael Tomasello, an expert in primate behavior at Emory University. They were talking about how bad chimpanzees were at understanding human social cues. Despite being the heavyweights of animal intelligence, chimps were insensitive to what seemed to be obvious hints: They failed to pick up a cup hiding food even when the experimenter stared at it, pointed to it, and even tapped it. Tomasello wanted to talk about what this meant about the limits of nonhuman intelligence. Hare, a pet owner, had a down-to-Earth response: ''My dogs can do this.''</p>

THE FATHER OF MODERN EDUCATION John Dewey is recognized as the Father of modern education. The N.E.A. gave him high recognition for his works. All he did was made possible by the theory of evolution being so strongly accepted after the writings of Charles Darwin. John Dewey wrote a theory of education and democracy that was based on evolution. The education theories of Dewey would not have been so acceptable to people had it not been for the previous acceptance of Darwin's Theory of Evolution.That theory was widely received around the world. Evolution praises change and declares the highest good...

Every day I get letters, in capitals and obsessively underlined if not actually in green ink, from flat-earthers, young-earthers, perpetual-motion merchants, astrologers and other harmless fruitcakes. The only difference here is that Richard Milton managed to get his stuff published. The publisher - we don’t know how many decent publishers turned it down first - is called ‘Fourth Estate.’ Not a house that I had heard of, but apparently neither a vanity press nor a fundamentalist front. So, what are ‘Fourth Estate’ playing at? Would they publish - for this book is approximately as silly - a claim that the...