Free Republic

eborah Haarsma, the Director of BioLogos, is professor of Astronomy, and her husband, Loren Haarsma, teaches Physics at Calvin College in Michigan. The biology department of Calvin College issued this statement on May 7, 2010: "We teach evolutionary theory as the best scientific explanation for the dynamic diversity of life on Earth. . . . We teach biology from an evolutionary paradigm." Neither Deborah nor Loren are biologists, though biologists serve on the BioLogos team. Neither are anthropologists, and as far as I can discover, no anthropologists serve on the BioLogos team. That is unfortunate since anthropology has much to...

Albert Drexel, in Ein Neuer Prophet? (Stein am Rhein: Christiana, 1971) explains that: "The modernism or neo-modernism within Christianity, and especially within the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, is above all characterized by a turning away from the supernatural and an exclusive predilection for this world, the Aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII interpreted one-sidedly and hence misapplied. Teilhard's ideology was was a definitive precondition for this. Inasmuch as he turned his back to the past, fused God and the supernatural with the process of a universal evolutionism, and proclaimed religion to be an active participation in a...

Has science now proven that God exists? Douglas Ell, author of the new book Counting To God, will speak about this and other “big questions” related to science and faith in two lectures at Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach. Times: Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 6:00 pm Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 6:00 pm Location: Trinity Episcopal Church 2365 Pine Avenue Vero Beach, FL 32960 Both talks are open to the general public and there is no charge. In Counting To God, Ell applies the lens of mathematical analysis to a series of scientific discoveries, drawing startling conclusions about the relation...

In a dozen polls taken from 1982 to 2014, Gallup has asked Americans to choose among three views of evolution. One view is that humans “developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.” Another view is that humans “developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.” The third option is that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” In that three-decade span, the young-Earth creationist option has always...

“The sanctification of the rights of individuals and their liberties today by libertarians and Tea Party conservatives is contrary to our evolved human nature as social animals. . . . The thought that it is both rational and natural for each of us to care only for ourselves, our own preservation, and our own achievements is a treacherous fabrication.” The above quotation is taken from an article written by John Edward Terrell for the opinion section of The New York Times. The author knows very little about the conservative movement. He is mostly describing Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Philosophy where the...

Pure myth! That is today’s typical view of a literal Adam and Eve. Yet, contrary to current skepticism, a real Adam and Eve remain credible—both in terms of Catholic doctrine and sound natural science.By calling the Genesis story a “myth,” people avoid saying it is mere “fantasy,” that is, with no foundation in reality at all. While rejecting a literal first pair of human parents for all mankind, they hope to retain some “deeper” truth about an original “sinful human condition,” a “mythic” meaning. They think that the latest findings in paleoanthropology and genetics render a literal pair of...

Throughout the de-Christianized West and America neo-pagan and mystical pantheist evolutionary reasoning is taken for granted throughout the college curriculum, just as it is in all aspects of modern thought and experience. It not only undergirds biological and earth sciences, but also Freudian and Jungian psychology, anthropology, law, sociology, politics, economics, the media, arts, medicine, and all other academic---and increasingly seminarian---disciplines as well. The West's amoral transnational elite Gnostics, the "chosen" ones, are particularly enamored of evolutionary reasoning: "Western cultural elites have disregarded God for more than two centuries, but for a while the effects were mostly confined to their...

Charles Darwin worried about a possible hole in his theory of evolution, but some American scientists may just have plugged it. For about a billion years after the dawn of life on Earth, organisms didn't evolve all that much. Then about 600 million years ago came the "Cambrian explosion." Everything changed relatively quickly, with all kinds of plants and animals emerging—which doesn't quite seem to fit with Darwin's theory of slow change, hence "Darwin's dilemma." Now, within a few days of each other, two new studies have appeared that could explain the shift, ABC News reports. One, by scientists at...

Using science is wise - blindly patronizing science is presumption and idolatry - Anon. In a blazing headline One News Now published an article entitled "Pope backs evolution, Vatican calls creation 'blasphemous,'" in it, author Michael F. Haverluck says "In a speech given at a Pontifical Academy of Sciences ceremony unveiling a bust of his predecessor, Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI, Pope Francis declared his full-fledged support of evolution as the scientifically correct explanation of the origin of man - and the universe." Unwilling to go full-fledged "everything from nothing' the Pope has scratched out an explanation from the playbook of 'theistic-evolution'...

An evolutionary insect family tree created by a team of 100 researchers revealed that insects were the first creatures to fly around 400 million years ago. The comprehensive insect family tree covering insects from all around the globe was created as part of a project called 1K Insect Transcriptome Evolution (1KITE). According to researchers involved in the 1KITE project, insects came into existence around 500 million years ago, around the same time when plants started to emerge on Earth's surface. And, it was roughly 406 million years ago, in the early part of Devonian era, when insects got wings and...

Researchers report that they've found the missing link between an ancient aquatic predator and its ancestors on land. Ichthyosaurs, the dolphin-like reptiles that lived in the sea during the time of the dinosaurs, evolved from terrestrial creatures that made their way back into the water over time. But the fossil record for the lineage has been spotty, without a clear link between land-based reptiles and the aquatic ichthyosaurs scientists know came after. Now, researchers report in Nature that they've found that link — an amphibious ancestor of the swimming ichthyosaurs named Cartorhynchus lenticarpus. "Many creationists have tried to portray ichthyosaurs...

Why did complex life evolve precisely when it did? According to a new study, simpler life forms may have been waiting on a proper oxygen supply -- for as long as a billion years.

More reasons to doubt Darwin A review of: Darwin‘s Doubt, the explosive origin of animal life and the case for intelligent design by Stephen C. Meyer HarperOne, Nashville TN, USA 2013 Reviewed by Philip Bell Published: 6 November 2014 (GMT+10) Stephen Meyer has an impressive pedigree in the philosophy of science and geophysics but is better known as a prominent spokesperson for the ID movement in the USA. Darwin’s Doubt3 is, in many ways, a sequel to his Signature in the Cell (2009)4, both of them impressive in length, scope and incisive analysis. In both, he explicitly distances ID from...

The genetic ancestry of the earliest Europeans survived the ferocious Ice Age that took hold after the continent was initially settled by modern people. That is the suggestion of a study of DNA from a male hunter who lived in western Russia 36,000 years ago. His genome is not exactly like those of people who lived in Europe just after the ice sheets melted 10,000 years ago. But the study suggests the earliest Europeans did contribute their genes to later populations.

By analysing DNA extracted from the petrous bones of skulls of ancient Europeans, scientists have identified that these peoples remained intolerant to lactose (natural sugar in the milk of mammals) for 5,000 years after they adopted agricultural practices and 4,000 years after the onset of cheese-making among Central European Neolithic farmers. The findings published in the scientific journal Nature Communications (21 Oct) also suggest that major technological transitions in Central Europe between the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age were also associated with major changes in the genetics of these populations. For the study, the international team of scientists examined...

Have you heard about Pope Francis’ recent comments about God, evolution, and Creation? If so, chances are you’ve heard wrong. Here are four things you should know:

The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared. Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”. “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with...

The 'Pope Francis supports evolution' story is just the latest example of the press getting the Catholic church completely wrong It is official: the media has gone bananas in its coverage of Pope Francis.The OMG-Pope-Francis-Supports-Evolution story of the past two days is just the latest example. Almost every news outlet, major and minor, has plastered Pope Francis’ name across the interwebs and proclaimed he has finally planted the Catholic Church in the evolution camp of the creation-evolution debate. The only problem? Almost every outlet has got the story wrong, proving once again that the mainstream media has nearly no understanding...

Nate Anderson at ars Technica science site reported on Pope Francis' words on creation, the Big Bang, and evolution theory. Though only a few paragraphs long (and currently available only in Italian; the translation below is unofficial), Francis's remarks focused largely on evolution—still a controversial doctrine in parts of the worldwide Christian church. "When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we are in danger of imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand capable of doing anything," Francis said. "But he was not. He created beings and let them develop in accordance with the internal...

.“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.