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Excerpts from Creation by Evolution: A Consensus of Present-Day Knowledge as Set Forth by Leading Authorities in Non-Technical Language that All May Understand. Edited by Frances Mason, 1928, MacMillan Co. Embryology and Evolution Edwin Grant Conklin In early times and among primitive peoples all phenomena were regarded as supernatural. The rising and setting of the sun, the sweet influence of the Pleiades, the coming and going of the winds, storms, lightning, thunder -- all the phenomena of life, birth, and death -- were supposed to be directly controlled by gods or spirits. In the course of centuries many such...

IT IS 150 years since the publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which suggested that all living things are related and that everything is ultimately descended from a single common ancestor. This has troubled many, including Darwin himself, as it subverted ideas of divine intervention. It is not surprising that the countries least accepting of evolution today tend to be the most devout. In the most recent international survey available, only Turkey is less accepting of the theory than America. Iceland and Denmark are Darwin's most ardent adherents. Indeed America has become only slightly more accepting of Darwin's theory...

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Comedian Ben Stein has withdrawn as the University of Vermont's commencement speaker because of complaints about his critical views on evolution in favor of intelligent design. UVM President Daniel Fogel said he chose Stein based on the warm response to a lecture he gave on campus last spring. Fogel said, however, he was deluged with e-mail messages from people offended by Stein's views of science. When told about the criticism, Stein — who was to be paid $7,500 — backed out of the May 17 commencement, Fogel said. "I did not ask him not to come," he...

Evolution as Efficiency Expert Feb 06, 2009 — Who would have thought that a lowly bacterium is a “master of industrial efficiency”? That’s what a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science called it. E. coli, the best-studied microbe, “can be thought of as a factory with just one product: itself,” a press release said. “It exists to make copies of itself, and its business plan is to make them at the lowest possible cost, with the greatest possible efficiency.” Dr. Tsvi Tlusty at Weizmann marveled at the efficiency of the machinery in the factory: RNA polymerase, which transcribes DNA...

...The fossilized embryos shatter some ideas about evolution. Not only have certain cellular processes been pushed way back in time, but also there does not appear to be any evolution seen in these embryos, since many cellular processes, including some modern features, go clear back to the beginning of the fossil record. These embryos demonstrate that complex metazoans have been around since at least the Neoproterozoic and that from an evolutionary point of view their origins go back even further. Thus, the origin of animals is firmly based on nothing, and a huge evolutionary mystery: ‘The origin of animals is...

Clodd's Primer of Evolution Excerpt from the essay Evolution and Design, appearing in the collection Evolutionary Philosophy and Common Sense, Catholic Truth Society, 1904, pg. 89--95. Abridged.Fr. John Gerard S. J.It is not to be supposed that considerations such as these will have any weight with the more zealous propagators of evolutionary doctrines, for manifestly it is not on the side of reason or cogency of argument that it enlists their sympathies. As in their mind the one essential feature of the creed is denial of a personal and intelligent ruler of the world, so undoubtedly its great merit is...

According to Darwinian theory, in the past we had a common ancestor with baboons, further back with bananas and still further with bacteria. This dogma has spread like a ‘meme’, which is a contagious idea that propagates in a similar way as a virus by infecting brains, according to inventor of the word, Richard Dawkins.1 In 2002, Roy Britten dispelled the first monkey meme that human and chimpanzee DNA sequences are 98.5% identical.2 He showed that when indelmutations were also taken into account, the difference suddenly became about 5%. The fact that chimpanzee genomes are about 10% larger than that...

Books claiming that science disproves ‘young-earth’ creationism are very common, and books that claim the Bible itself does not mandate a literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis are not in short supply either. David Snoke’s book A Biblical Case for an Old Earth ostensibly falls in the latter group, though his main reason for rejecting biblical creation is really uniformitarian ‘science’. Books like these generally don’t pose a threat to informed creationists, and this one is no exception. In fact, Snoke could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had actually taken the time to...

Solar System Secrets Solved by Brian Thomas, M.S.* A recent issue of New Scientist contained a series of articles that explored “The Six Biggest Mysteries of Our Solar System.” One article posed the question, “How was the solar system built?”1 “Built” is a good word, considering the solar system contains an array of features that appear precisely orchestrated. For example, if all the planets, as well as the sun, came from the same dust cloud—as the Nebular Hypothesis claims—then why does each planet have an entirely unique composition? Why do the planets’ collective orbital velocities, trajectories, and distances combine to...

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...

Feb 03, 2009 — If a catastrophic world event wiped out the dinosaurs, why did birds survive? They’re smaller and more delicate, it seems. National Geographic published a new hypothesis: they out-thought the doomed dinosaurs...

After hundreds of Darwinists protested, the University of Vermont withdrew an invitation they had made for Ben Stein to speak at their commencement, proving once again that Darwinists want no part of a debate between religious Darwinism, as taught in most universities, and actual scientific inquiry, as represented by Intelligent Design.

Darwinism, Medical Progress, and Eugenics Excerpts from Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics: The Cavendish Lecture, 1912, An Address to the Medical Profession. [1] Originally published in the West London Medical Journal, vol. 17, pg. 165--193, 1912. Abridged.Karl Pearson [2]Mr. President, Gentlemen, -- I confess to strangely mixed feelings in venturing as a layman to stand up and address you -- a professional audience -- to-night. When I look through the long list of names borne by those who have, during more than a quarter of a century, given the Cavendish Lecture, I find all that is best in English...

3 February 2009 Judge Jones gets multiple honorary degrees, Ben Stein has his withdrawn William Dembski Judge Jones, whose distinction prior to the Dover case was running the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, now has multiple honorary doctorates for rendering his decision, which he cribbed from the ACLU’s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. Ben Stein, who is an acclaimed actor, author, and economist, on the other hand, has just been denied an honorary doctorate at the University of Vermont: “This is not, to my mind, an issue about academic freedom or the openness of the campus to all...

Poll reveals public doubts over Charles Darwin's theory of evolution Belief in creationism is widespread in Britain, according to a new survey. ... More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a "designer" must have lent a hand, the findings suggest. And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years. The survey, by respected polling firm ComRes, will fuel the debate around evolution and creationism ahead of next week's 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin...

Darwin's Evolutionary Tree 'Annihilated' by Brian Thomas, M.S.* In 1837, Charles Darwin drew his first “evolutionary tree” in his “B” notebook, with the words “I think” scrawled above it, to illustrate his idea that all of today’s species arose from a single common ancestor. But the poor fit of gene sequence data is forcing scientists to abandon the tree.1 “Biologists need to depart from the preconceived notion that all genomes are related by a single bifurcating tree,”2 making way for a new paradigm of origins. A non-Darwinian evolutionary view has been offered, but this proposition is actually just the old...

...We’ve been bringing up this problem for years. This latest paper shows that no solution has been forthcoming for over two decades; in fact, the problem has only gotten worse. The consensus Age of the Solar System (A.S.S.) is 4.6 billion years. 10 million years is 1/450th of that value, and that is the maximum that the empirical evidence permits. If planetary scientists truly followed the evidence where it leads, as scientists are supposed to do, they would have to conclude Titan is young. Evidence from Enceladus, Iapetus, Mercury, comets, Mars, the moon and many other bodies that showcase evidence...

Roll up, roll up! Yes folks, here we have the amazing spectacle of a ‘wolf in wolf’s clothing’ acting as ringmaster to a performing circus of clergy. Many readers may have heard of the grandiose ‘Clergy Letter Project’. Simply put, it involves self-avowed atheist and evolutionist, Michael Zimmerman, inviting churches to endorse evolution—thereby denying biblical creation...

Feb 01, 2009 — The celebrations in honor of Charles Robert Darwin for his 200th birthday (Feb. 12) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his influential book On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection (Nov. 29th) are well underway. It is hard to think of any other scientist who gets the kind of gushy adulation heaped on this one man. It borders on religious euphoria. Some examples:...

...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...