Free Republic

Humans and mice share approximately 98% of genes, and have similar physiology and anatomy. This is because we share a relatively recent common ancestor, around 80 million-years-ago. In contrast, the ancestor of all animals lived over 500 million-years-ago. As genomic data becomes available for more animal species a detailed family tree can be created, allowing novel insight into the genomes of long extinct species. In the guest post below Jordi Paps summarises recent research that attempts to reconstruct the genome of the ‘first animal’ by using the genomic data available on living animals. The first animals emerged on Earth at...

Astronomers have found that the majority of meteorites that regularly fall into Earth's atmosphere today are the result of an asteroid collision that took place 466 million years ago. Using chemical analysis from rock samples around the world, the team discovered that before that colossal collision, Earth experienced impacts from many different types of meteorite, meaning that our planet's history with meteorites is far more complex than we thought. After examining the chemical makeup of these chrome-spinels, the team found that 34 percent of the pre-collision micrometeorites were primitive achondrites, a type of meteorite that only makes up 0.45 percent...

Thanks to a new study, evolutionists and their disciples are having to reexamine some of their most revered dogma. Particularly, evolutionists are now having to make sense of conclusions stating that almost all animal species, as well as humans, showed up on the stage of human history at the same time. One of the constants of science is that science is constantly revising as it is challenged by new data, new theories, and new ways of observing and measuring data, not to mention the changes in scientific ideology molded by larger worldview shifts. Thomas Kuhn's landmark book The Structure of...

Hillsong Church has, over the years, hardly avoided the limelight, often finding itself at the center of hotly-contested debates. Now one of its biggest leaders is running headlong into the creation debate. Joel Houston, eldest son of the Sydney-based church’s founders, lead musician in the worship band Hillsong United, and co-pastor of Hillsong Church in New York City, tweeted Monday that “evolution is undeniable.”

Landmark new research that involves analyzing millions of DNA barcodes has debunked much about what we know today about the evolution of species. In a massive genetic study, senior research associate at the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University Mark Stoeckle and University of Basel geneticist David Thaler discovered that virtually 90 percent of all animals on Earth appeared at right around the same time. More specifically, they found out that 9 out of 10 animal species on the planet came to being at the same time as humans did some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. "This conclusion...

Who would have suspected that a handheld genetic test used to unmask sushi bars pawning off tilapia for tuna could deliver deep insights into evolution, including how new species emerge? ------- The study's most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. "This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could," Thaler told AFP.

We have Charles Darwin to thank for opening our eyes to the forces of natural selection so useful today in medical research, healthcare, and technology. But Darwin also did us a great disservice, all too blithely extrapolating from observable "bounded" evolution to his Grand Theory of microbe-to-man "unbounded" evolution. In a nutshell, Darwin speculated that, since there is evolution within well-defined species, then all species must surely be the result of evolution. Logical enough, but simply wrong. Darwin's extrapolation is fraught with a host of problems, at least one of which—in three particulars—is fatal to his Grand Theory.That fatal flaw?...

I live along the Front Range of Colorado and I frequently hike in the foothills with my trusty dog. It is a common experience to look east onto the plains and on the horizon be able to clearly discern the curve of the earth. For those who have never had this experience, it can be quite an epiphany. Right there before your eyes you can actually see the curve of the globe of this wonderful place we call home.

"Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that ‘the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic...

Humans may be evolving an 'ultimate hangover' gene to protect against alcoholism. That's according to a new study that looked at a variant of a gene that makes booze intolerable to the body. Scientists claim this gene variant is being favoured by evolution - and, in time, could stop us from drinking alcohol in the future.

Religion is not hostile to learning; Christianity has been the greatest patron learning has ever had. But Christians know that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" now just as it has been in the past, and they therefore oppose the teaching of guesses that encourage godlessness among the students. Do bad doctrines corrupt the morals of students? We have a case, Mr. Darrow, one of the most distinguished criminal lawyers in our land, was engaged about a year ago in defending two rich men's sons who were on trial for as dastardly a murder as was...

The president and founder of Kentucky’s Creation Museum in Petersburg and the Ark Encounter in Williamstown has been dropped as a speaker at the University of Central Oklahoma after a LGBT group objected. Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, had been scheduled to speak March 5 at the public university in Edmond, Okla. Stockton Duvall, student body president at the university, took responsibility for the decision to rescind Ham’s invitation after learning of the opposition to his visit. Duvall told The Oklahoman newspaper that a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning group opposed Ham’s visit because of his view...

Creation vs Evolution: The Bombardier Beetle Challenge February 8, 2018 | David F. Coppedge Bombardier beetles made the news again this week. Creation scientists have long used them to challenge evolutionary theory. Can the Darwinians fight back? Watch a funny video on National Geographic of a barfing toad. The toad made the mistake of sneaking up on a bombardier beetle and snatching it with its tongue before the beetle could fire its weapons. It’s not hard to imagine what happened inside the toad’s stomach, because a few minutes later, the toad gags and vomits out the beetle, practically turning its...

Researchers have identified the remains of the earliest known modern humans to have left Africa. New dating of fossils from Israel indicates that our species (Homo sapiens) lived outside Africa around 185,000 years ago, some 80,000 years earlier than the previous evidence. Details appear in the journal Science. The co-lead researcher, Prof Israel Hershkovitz, told BBC News that the discovery would fundamentally alter ideas of recent human evolution. "We have to rewrite the whole story of human evolution, not just for our own species but all the other species that lived outside of Africa at the time," the researcher, from...

I have written three rather lengthy books about discrimination against scientists who dared to question the validity of Darwinism, more commonly known as Darwin Dissidents.[1] C.S. Lewis predicted that Darwinists would become totalitarians when he was alive, and history has proved him correct.[2] One recent case is that of the distinguished paleontologist, Dr. Günter Bechly, a world expert on fossil insects, who was forced to resign [a tactful way to say he was fired] as curator for the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. Then, as a result, he was censored from Wikipedia. The editors at Wikipedia attempted...

Of all the Western nations, Americans are the least likely to believe in evolution, according to a recent survey. Still, some applauded when even more recent statistics apparently showed that support for creationism had dropped below 40% in America. Still, at 38%, one has to wonder how precise those numbers are. America has had a history of fundamentalist Protestantism. The Puritans were not like the wavering Anglicans whom they fled. Nor would they take suggestions from the Pope. This streak has informed our country from its inception. And, contrary to present disdain, that influence was often for the good....

It has become axiomatic that life naturally evolved out of nonliving materials billions of years ago. Given enough time and the chemical opportunity, living cells self-assemble.However, the experts on the development of complex molecules from simpler ones, the synthetic chemists, do not know how this process actually occurs. There are no known pathways to create the components that make up a living cell from nonliving matter. They have no idea how amino acids (the building blocks of proteins and enzymes), nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA and RNA), saccharides (also called carbohydrates or sugars, the scaffolding for DNA and...

(Photo: Ken Ham Facebook video screencap)Six days of creation slide at Ken Ham's Cedarville University speech on September 15, 2016.Less than 10 percent of British people, and only 15 percent of Canadians believe in the Creationist view that God created humans in their present form, a survey has found.The Newman University/YouGov survey, released on Tuesday, noted that 71 percent of people in the U.K. and another 60 percent of respondents in Canada accept evolutionary or theistic evolutionary accounts of how species on Earth came to be.When it came to the Creationist position that "humans and other living things were created...

Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are not just incrementally superior to any other hominid or animal; we’re qualitatively different, both as the only known technologically-intelligent species and by virtue of dozens of unique abilities. It is not a claim but a demonstrable fact that anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are vastly superior to every other form of life and, for whatever reason, all the genetic mutations that make us unique and confer over 40 traits and behaviors that result in evolutionary advantages over every other animal, occurred within a short period of time, within just one genus, and nowhere...

* This may be the most intact primate fossil skull ever discovered. * The fossil comes from a little-known period of primate evolutionary history. Source: Fred Spoor This is Alesi, the skull of the new extinct ape species Nyanzapithecus alesi (KNM-NP 59050). ================================================================================================================================ A group of scientists have found what may be the most intact fossilized primate skull ever discovered, and the find could shed light on the common evolutionary heritage shared by apes and humans. The lemon-sized skull was discovered in Kenya by an international team of researchers, and was dated to the middle of the Miocene era, a...