Free Republic

When their son Zachary came home from science class with a cross burned on his forearm It was not the religion that bothered his parents, but the injury to their child. They sued, and brought science v. creationism back into the courts for another round. Teacher John Freshwater and the brand on the arm of his student It was a little over three years ago, on December 20, 2005, that Judge John E. Jones III issued his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover that intelligent design was not science, but merely repackaged creationism—and that it had no business in biology class.The...

Genesis: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle by Calvin Smith Published: 6 January 2009 Most church leaders would agree that the western world is becoming ‘less Christian’ every year. Worldviews Nations once built upon biblical foundations are watching the collapse of godly values in our culture and Christians seem powerless to stop it. Competing worldviews like atheism, humanism, communism, new age, and the occult are being vigorously promoted in education, the media and one-on-one to children and adults alike. But before we look at our own foundations, let’s look at those of the polar opposite of the Christian worldview—atheism. A-theism,...

Evolution Missing from Top Science of 2008 by Brian Thomas, M.S.* The acclaimed research journal Science has published its picks for the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2008.1 The number one breakthrough was the manipulation of body cells into an embryonic state, thereby producing induced pluripotent stem cells. Geneticists hope that these will supply stem cells to test and treat diseases without the needless destruction of human embryos. Also making the list are planets that have been directly detected for the first time outside of earth’s solar system, cancer-causing genes pinpointed through genome research, and the development of iron-based materials...

A team of Ecuadoran and Italian researchers have discovered a unique species of pink land iguanas living on the Galapagos Islands, the scientist who wrote the report told AFP. "It is surprising to have made a find of this magnitude in the 21st century," said Washington Tapia, head of research at the Galapagos National Park. Researchers at first thought that the iguanas, which are pink with black spots, simply had skin pigmentation problems, Tapia said. The first pink iguanas were discovered in 1986, and after years of research scientists concluded that it was a unique species. "We have not yet...

Even Parasite Genes Look Young by Brian Thomas, M.S.* The parasite Trichinella spiralis is commonly dated as being around 20 million years old. A recent DNA study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists, however, has yielded some surprising results. T. spiralis causes trichinosis in humans when they eat undercooked pork that has juvenile forms of the worm encysted within the pig muscle. The USDA scientists collected and analyzed samples of Trichinella DNA from 28 countries. If the parasite is indeed millions of years old, then the different geographical locations should yield distinct groups that retain ancient familial mutations. However,...

A stunning new book by a physics professor purports to show more firmly than ever how light from the most distant stars would have reached Earth in a very short time....

Obliteration of the Unfit Excerpts from The Passing of the Great Race, Fourth Edition, Scribner's, 1936. pg. 46--55. Note. This was a very popular book. It went through a lot of reprintings: 1916, 1918, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1926, 1932 and 1936. It is roughly the american equivalent of Mein Kampf. Two prefaces endorsing Grant's work are written by evolutionary scientist and Darwin Medalist Henry Fairfield Osborn (the horse-evolution guy.) Osborn was president of the American Museum of Natural History, and Grant was a trustee. Together they founded the New York Zoological Society. Osborn and Grant were members (co-founders) of...

Researchers have unravelled an ancient missing link between today’s spiders and their long-extinct ancestors, and that may help explain how spiders came to weave webs. The research by scientists at the University of Kansas (KU) and Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College focuses on fossil animals called Attercopus fimbriunguis. While modern spiders make silk threads with modified appendages called spinnerets, the fossil animals wove broad sheets of silk from spigots on plates attached to the underside of their bodies. Unlike spiders, they had long tails. The research was led by Paul Selden, professor of invertebrate paleontology in the department of geology at KU,...

150 years after Darwin proposed it, evolution by natural selection continues to be both a battleground and a hotbed of ideas.Scientists continue to respond to the latest attacks from creationists, and at the same time propose profound new ideas about evolution. This year has seen perceptions of the virus change from disease-causing villain to evolutionary hero, and the emergence of a new force of evolution - the absence of natural selection.Since its redesign in November, NewScientist.com is making the last 12 months' of articles free for everyone to read. Here, in case you missed them, are our top 10 in-depth...

ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2009) — New interpretations of fossils have revealed an ancient missing link between today’s spiders and their long-extinct ancestors. The research by scientists at the University of Kansas and Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College may help explain how spiders came to weave webs.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2009) — New evidence uncovered by oceanographers challenges one of the most long-standing theories about how species evolve in the oceans.

As 2008 drew to a close, the good news for the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was that their creationist propaganda movie was getting a bit of press again. The bad news is that it was in the lists of the worst movies of 2008. The Onion's A.V. Club (December 16, 2008), was quickest out of the gate, commenting, "There are terrible movies, and then there are terrible movies that cause harm to society by feeding into its ignorance. Nathan Frankowski's odious anti-evolution documentary belongs in the latter category. ... Few moments in cinema in 2008 were as shameless...

"15 Evolutionary Gems" [PDF, 350KB] is a new resource summarizing fifteen lines of evidence for evolution by natural selection, provided by the journal Nature. The editors explain, "About a year ago, an Editorial in these pages urged scientists and their institutions to 'spread the word' and highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact ... This week we are following our own prescription. In a year in which Darwin is being celebrated amid uncertainty and hostility about his ideas among citizens, being aware of the cumulatively incontrovertible evidence for those ideas is...

In 1925 a Tennessee teacher of biology named Thomas Scopes was tried for teaching the theory of evolution. An expert witness at the trial relates how evolution lost in court but won in the eyes of the nation

Those who are concerned about the materialistic indoctrination rammed down people's throats under the guise of science should pause to consider this article from 1911. As you can see, this ideology, which these days calls itself "science", actually has a name of its own: Monism. These are excerpts from Mechanistic Conception of Life, an address delivered at the First International Congress of Monists (Hamburg, 1911). Reprinted in Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological Essays, University of Chicago Press, 1912. The Mechanistic Conception of Life Jacques Loeb, M.D, Ph.D, Sc.D, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.It is the object of this paper to...

Don Batten and Jonathan Sarfati interview husband and wife Dr Stephen Grocott and Dr Dianne Grocott. Stephen is a leading international research scientist in industrial chemistry, currently with a major firm in Queensland, Australia. Dianne is a qualified medical practitioner and psychiatrist. They have spoken on several occasions for Creation Ministries International. Whether challenging secularists on creation or abortion, this dynamic duo packs a powerful punch...

Information scientist, author and evangelist, Dr Werner Gitt, a close friend of CMI, told us that on 23 October 2008 he was subjected to the most strident opposition he had ever encountered...

A nearly complete skull of a primitive cheetah that sprinted about in China more than 2 million years ago suggests the agile cats originated in the Old World rather than in the Americas.

JINAN, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- A dinosaur fossil field discovered this year in eastern China appears to be the largest in the world, a paleontologist told Xinhua on Monday.

Science Intrudes Into Morality Dec 23, 2008 — The Pope recently declared that we need to save humanity from self-destructive behaviors, like homosexuality. Can science intrude on questions of human behavior and morals? New Scientist thought so; a blog entry today says the Pope “misuses science to attack homosexuality.”One would think that moral behavior would lie outside the field for a scientific news source, but online news editor Rowan Hooper went on, mocking the Pope’s claim that the church has a role in saving “human ecology” like scientists have a role in protecting tropical forests. Hooper called this “a bizarre...