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How can distant starlight reach us in just 6,000 years?...

An Amazon of words flowed from Charles Darwin's pen. His books covered the gamut from barnacles to orchids, from geology to domestication. At the same time, he filled notebooks with his ruminations and scribbled thousands of letters packed with observations and speculations on nature. Yet Darwin dedicated only a few words of his great verbal flood to one of the biggest questions in all of biology: how life began.

Clemens’s overview of the latest findings on the origin of granite demonstrates that the geological evidence is leading to models that are consistent with the biblical record...

Jan 15, 2009 — A common attitude among scientists is that they are not responsible for what people do with their discoveries. Facts are facts, after all, and nuclear energy can be used to power a city as well as destroy it. Is this a truism or a half-truth? Are there cases where a scientist is responsible for what he or she proclaims as a fact about the world? In its continuing celebration of Darwin, Science magazine printed an article about “Darwin’s Originality” by Peter J. Bowler.1 This philosopher from Queen’s University of Belfast described how Darwin’s theory of evolution...

Evolutionary leaps: Darwin had claimed that natural selection could never make a great leap, but must always proceed by slow but sure steps. Maybe if the leaps are stretched out over millions of years they are not really leaps. Science Daily last month claimed that “Life On Earth Got Bigger In 2-million-fold Leaps"...

Through history, as natural selection played its part in the development of modern man, many of the useful functions and parts of the human body become unnecessary. What is most fascinating is that many of these parts of the body still remain in some form so we can see the progress of evolution. This list covers the ten most significant evolutionary changes that have taken place - leaving signs behind them.

The traditional understanding of DNA has recently been transformed beyond recognition. DNA does not, as we thought, carry a linear, one-dimensional, one-way, sequential code—like the lines of letters and words on this page. And the 97% in humans that does not carry protein-coding genes is not, as many people thought, fossilized ‘junk’ left over from our evolutionary ancestors. DNA information is overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it reads both backwards and forwards; and the ‘junk’ is far more functional than the protein code, so there is no fossilized history of evolution. No human engineer has ever even imagined, let alone designed an...

I ran across "The Language of God" at the library a couple of weeks ago, and snatched it up. I had read brief interviews with the author, Dr. Francis S. Collins of the Human Genome Project, and I was curious. He is a world-renowned geneticist who is unabashedly Christian, so I figured Collins would have an interesting perspective on pretty much everything. I was right. "The Language of God" is a very engaging book, well written and thoughtful. It's a couple of years old, but it weighs in on some topics mentioned in this column and in the resulting online...

DEBATE THREADThis INFORMAL debate will focus on Part 1 and 2 of Alex Williams' paper "Life's irreducible structure." Williams' paper will serve as the affirmative, namely: (A) All aspects of life (not just bacterial flagellums and blood clotting cascades) lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations, and (B) only intelligent design meets the criterion of an acceptable historical inference according to the Law of Cause and Effect. Part 1 of Alex Williams' paper follows. A link to Part 2 can be found in reply #1. It is strongly suggested that both papers be read before participating in the discussion/debate. One...

Slaughter of the Dissidents (SOD) picks up where the movie "Expelled" leaves off. If you thought Expelled was mind-blowing, then this book will educate you even further on many of the stories about expelled scientists and educators introduced in the movie. "Expelled" has taken many Americans by surprise. Suddenly, a growing number of people are wondering: what is this discrimination against Darwin skeptics all about? What do you mean we kick people out of academia just for asking questions about evolution! Is this really true? Yup - you better believe it is. Of course, there are many who try...

15 EVOLUTIONARY GEMS Henry Gee, Rory Howlett and Philip Campbell* A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection. Gems from the fossil record 1 Land-living ancestors of whales 2 From water to land 3 The origin of feathers 4 The evolutionary history of teeth 5 The origin of the vertebrate skeleton Gems from habitats 6 Natural selection in speciation 7 Natural selection in lizards 8 A case of co-evolution 9 Differential dispersal in wild birds 10 Selective survival in wild guppies 11 Evolutionary history matters Gems from molecular processes 12 Darwin’s...

Jan 9, 2009 — Imagine giraffe-sized animals that could fly. They lived. National Geographic News has an illustration of an extinct pterosaur, tall as a giraffe, that was able to leap into the air and flap its wings for sustained powered flight...

Virus Motors Impossible for Evolution by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Bacteriophages are non-living yet specialized viruses that hijack cells to clone more viruses. In this way, they help to maintain balanced bacterial populations. When a new “phage” is assembled within a host cell, it is faced with a difficulty—how to package its DNA, which is 1,000 times longer than the diameter of its capsid, the tiny vessel that holds it. Research in 2007 revealed that this is accomplished by a molecular motor.1 The amount of force this motor exerts is 6 x 10-11 Newtons, making it the most powerful of all...

Jan 8, 2009 — Astronomy is looking up this year; in fact, it’s looking heavenly. The United Nations and the International Astronomical Union have designated 2009 the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009). The IYA2009 website explains, "The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) will be a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture, highlighted by the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei. The aim of the Year is to stimulate worldwide interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science under the central theme 'The Universe, Yours to Discover'. IYA2009...

Why Did God Make Viruses? by Dr. Jean K. Lightner January 7, 2009 If God created everything good and with a purpose, why are there disease-causing bacteria and viruses in the world? It is true that we first learned about bacteria and viruses because of the problems they cause. Bacteria have been studied in considerable detail and are now recognized to be mainly helpful and absolutely essential for life on earth; bacteria that cause disease (which occurred as a result of the Fall) are the exceptions, not the rule. But what about viruses: what purpose could they possibly have?...

Nature Struts Darwin Gems Jan 2, 2009 —- Like a showcase of pearl-handled revolvers, an armory of evidences Nature calls “Darwin’s Gems” have been exhibited to warn creationists that Darwin Day will be defended next month with a show of force. The authors, Henry Gee (former editor of Nature), Rory Howlett and Philip Campbell have made their 15 Evolutionary Gems freely available “and encourage its free dissemination.” Why? “Given that the concepts and realities of Darwinian evolution are still challenged, albeit rarely by biologists, a succinct briefing on why evolution by natural selection is an empirically validated principle is useful...

> Green et al. 2008 Wrote: Analysis of the assembled sequence unequivocally establishes that the Neandertal mtDNA falls outside the variation of extant human mtDNAs, and allows an estimate of the divergence date between the two mtDNA lineages of 660,000 ± 140,000 years. >

Should Darwinists Play Games with Government?January 7, 2009 — For years now, evolutionary biologists have been employing “game theory” to try to understand human social behavior.  Presumably, game theory applies just as well to robots and ants as it does to humans – any population in which the whole benefits from collective behavior of individuals.     The latest example of evolutionary game theory was published in Nature last week.1  Two Japanese scientists with Martin Nowak of Harvard tried to prove that “costly punishment” is inefficient: Indirect reciprocity is a key mechanism for the evolution of human cooperation.  Our behaviour...

...Sin is redefined, in short, to suit today’s hyperenvironmentalistic religion. Reeves even comes across as a younger, slimmer, version of Al Gore—right down to the dark suits and the wooden demeanour.