Free Republic

SCOTLAND. It’s a long way from anywhere to this particular spot on the steep flank of the Hill of Bohuntine, gazing east across the great green heathery abyss of Glen Roy to where it admits the mouth of the more gently scooped-out Glen Glaster. Certainly if you’re coming from the States—from Petersburg, Kentucky, say, or Dayton, Tennessee, or any other of the thousand places where you would be safer lighting a Marlboro off a burning American flag than being caught with a copy of On the Origin of Species—you’re going to find it quite a hike. But you’ll be glad...

LONDON – An auction house says it is selling a rare first edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" found in a family's guest lavatory in southern England. Christie's auction house said Sunday the book — one of around 1,250 copies first printed in 1859 — had been on a toilet bookshelf at a family's home in Oxford. The book will be auctioned on Tuesday, the 150th anniversary of the publication of the famous work. Christie's said the book is likely to sell for 60,000 pounds ($99,000).

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." ...

(See all these news nuggets and more by clicking the excerpt link below): 1. BBC News: “Darwin Teaching ‘Divides Opinion’” Darwinism is a controversial topic, and many believe creation should be taught in the classroom. But why is that news? 2. ScienceDaily: “Junk DNA Mechanism that Prevents Two Species from Reproducing Discovered” Has the U.S. government finally supported creationist research? Alas, no, but the results of a National Institutes of Health study fit squarely within the young-earth creation framework. 3. PhysOrg: “Charles Darwin Really Did Have Advanced Ideas about the Origin of Life” Charles Darwin was convinced that life’s origin...

New atheist summer camp launched An atheist summer camp for children set up in Somerset is to offer a "godless alternative" to religious camps. The 24 places on Camp Quest UK, which will be held next month near Bath, have already been booked up. Organisers said the purpose of the camp was to encourage critical thinking and provide children with a summer camp "free of religious dogma". The camp, supported by scientist Richard Dawkins, plans to expand after receiving hundreds of inquiries. The event has been set up by Samantha Stein, a postgraduate psychology student from London. She said: "It...

“Charles Darwin and his followers have shown how all life on the planet evolved from a single source. The mechanism they call evolution by natural selection means competition, extinction and the emergence of new life forms without the need for a director or conductor. The Creator shimmers and vanishes like a mirage.” So says political pundit Andrew Marr, one of the BBC’s most senior journalists, in the first of his three BBC2 programmes celebrating evolution and its legacy during the last century and a half. While there was much to agree with in this thought-provoking series, Marr is careful to...

Star Children for DarwinFeb 28, 2009 — Why should we be looking for alien intelligence around other stars when it is right behind your eyeballs?  You may not have known that you are a star child, but that’s what a leading astronomer called you.  As a good star child, you need to pay tribute to Charles Darwin.     In New Scientist, Lawrence Krauss called on children of spaceship Earth to “Celebrate evolution as only star children can.”  In this, he tied together the International Year of Astronomy 2009, the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope on...

For example, Dr Eugenie Scott of the staunchly anticreationist National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed their agenda when she said: “ … I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day! … What we [such clergy and atheists] have in common is that we want to see evolution taught in the public schools … .”4

In 2009, the eyes of the world will turn to commemorate the anniversaries of the births of the two most influential men of the last one thousand years — the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. No two men of the past millennium have done more to shape the thoughts of mankind or to affect the political and social destiny of nations than Calvin and Darwin — the former for the glory of God, and the latter for unimaginable evil. The following is a synopsis and excerpt...

In January 2009, ICR received a copy of a recent ministry letter published by television personality Dr. John Ankerberg. For many years, Dr. Ankerberg has skillfully tackled tough issues related to the church, society, the Middle East, and other topics of interest to believers. Christians everywhere need to be informed, challenged, and also taught sound doctrine—there is no substitute for the Bible. However, the January letter from Dr. Ankerberg’s television ministry reveals a dangerous trend toward subjugating the accuracy, understandability, and authority of the Bible to the foolish musings of men—namely, scientists who deny that God’s revelation in the book...

...Two arresting new books, timed to co­incide with Darwin’s 200th birthday, make the case that his epochal achievement in Victorian England can best be under­stood in relation to events — involving neither tortoises nor finches — on the other side of the Atlantic. Both books confront the touchy subject of Darwin and race head on; both conclude that Darwin, despite the pernicious spread of “social Darwinism” (the notion, popularized by Herbert Spencer, that human society progresses through the “survival of the fittest”), was no racist...

This publication marks the 150th anniversary of the joint presentation of Darwin and Wallace of their thinking about evolution by natural selection to the Linnean Society. The book is a blockbuster because it claims that "Darwin perpetuated one of the greatest crimes in the history of science". It concludes that Darwin plagiarised Alfred Russel Wallace, deceived the world about the maturity of his own ideas before 1858, and, to satisfy his personal need for glory, failed to give credit to scholars who influenced his thinking...

Since writing my book "Irreligion" and some of my recent Who's Counting columns, I've received a large number of e-mails from subscribers to creation science (who have recently christened themselves intelligent design theorists). Some of the notes have been polite, some vituperative, but almost all question "how order and complexity can arise out of nothing." Since they can imagine no way for this to happen, they conclude there must be an intelligent designer, a God. (They leave aside the prior question of how He arose.) My canned answer to them about biological order talks a bit about evolution, but they...

Darwin’s House: A Religious Shrine? 06/28/2007 Britain withdrew Darwin’s home, Downe House (outside London), from consideration as a UN World Heritage Site, and Nature seemed downright disappointed.1 An article quoted Darwin scholar James Moore saying, “Muslims go to Mecca, Christians go to Jerusalem, Darwinians go to Downe.” This seems to equate Darwinians with believers in a religion, but Nature quoted this proudly. What would be the statement of faith of a Darwinian religion? The article quoted Randal Keynes, great-great-grandson of Darwin and the one who originally submitted the nomination of Downe House to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee for consideration. Keynes...

Could adhering to Darwinism help the conservative cause? Yes, according to Larry Arnhart, who spoke on the topic this week during a heated panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute. He calls this new way of thinking, “Darwinian Conservatism”. “Conservatives need Darwinsim,” explained Larry Arnhart, political science professor at Northern Illinois University and author of Darwinian Conservatism. “I say that because George Bush’s compassionate conservatism has been an intellectual and political disaster for conservatism. The only escape from that disaster is to revive conservatism as the fusion of libertarianism and traditionalism.” Arnhart does admit that the Darwinian Theory is not...

Vatican's Evolutionists By Rafael Brom Catholics should wonder why Vatican constanly issuing a stout defence of Charles Darwin's Fraudulent Communist Religion "Theory of Evolution". Now we have Vatican's high ranked Cardinal claiming that the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly. Looks like that 150 million martyrs who were tortured and killed by communists since 1917 in the name of "Theory of Evolution" did not read their Bible correctly. I am sure that Vatican's Evolutionists will one day declare St. Peter as the First Communist...

Neanderthals At It Again H.L. Mencken’s final report from the famous Scopes trial in Dayton Tennessee comes roaring down to us after 80 years as sharply edged as ever: "Let no one mistake [the trial] for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details.  It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.  Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a mock...

Marxism/Leninism depends on the theory of evolution. Karl Marx made it very clear that Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species contained the scientific basis for his views on the class struggle. Some even defined Marxism as "Darwinism applied to human society." Just as the theory of evolution explained how man arrived on the scene from a molecule, so the theory also explained how society evolves. The major trouble with Darwin, from the Marxist perspective, is Darwin’s slow, gradual process of natural selection. Marxist dialectical materialism called for something more than just gradual progression. The dialectic needs a theory with clashes (thesis...

“The social implications of Darwinism have been disastrous,” said Richard Thompson, the president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. “Nazi Germany used Darwin to justify a master race based on the idea that it’s survival of the strongest.” Thompson’s perception that teaching evolution is socially destructive is just one of the reasons why he volunteered to defend the Dover Area School District’s school board and administration against a lawsuit brought against them last December, he said. Eleven parents sued the district, saying a statement issued by the district to ninth-grade biology students that...

Timothy G. Standish, biology First published in In Six Days Science and origins testimony #9 Edited by John F. Ashton Dr. Standish is associate professor of biology at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. He holds a B.S. in zoology from Andrews University, an M.S. in biology from Andrews University, and a Ph.D. in biology and public policy from George Mason University (University of Virginia), Charlottesville, Virginia. He teaches genetics at Andrews University and is currently researching the genetics of cricket (Achita domesticus) behavior. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reading The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins was a pivotal experience for me. I had...