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1. Intelligent Input Required for Life. In a significant peer-reviewed article in the September 2009 journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics authors William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II use computer simulations and information theory to challenge the ability of Darwinian processes to create new functional genetic information. This paper is in many ways a validation of Dembski's core ideas in his 2001 book, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, which argued that some intelligent input is required to produce novel complex and specified information. 2. Signature in the Cell. Stephen Meyer...

What if Darwin's theory of natural selection is inaccurate? What if the way you live now affects the life expectancy of your descendants?

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God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good. There is no celestial headmaster who is going to give you six (or six billion, billion, billion) of the best if you are bad. Morality is flimflam. Does this mean that you can just go out and rape and pillage, behave like an ancient Roman grabbing Sabine women? Not at all. I said that there are no grounds for being good. It doesn't follow that you should be bad. Indeed, there are those – and I am one –...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is opening a new permanent exhibit exploring human evolution over 6 million years. The nearly $21 million Hall of Human Origins opens Wednesday. It will include more than 285 fossils and artifacts, including the only Neanderthal skeleton in the United States....

You have probably heard about the multiverse--the idea that the universe is really a large number of universes. The multiverse helps to explain why our particular universe seems so special. Our universe seems to be a finely tuned machine and the evolution of life would require low probability events. Is our universe special? The multiverse helps to deflect such thinking. If there is a large number of universes, then perhaps each has a different set of natural laws. And perhaps intelligent life can only be supported by a very particular set of laws. So the only life forms that would...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a discovery in understanding the origins of human vision. The finding is published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal of biology. Hydra are simple animals that, along with jellyfish, belong to the phylum cnidaria. Cnidarians first emerged 600 million years ago. "We determined which genetic 'gateway,' or ion channel, in the hydra is involved in light sensitivity," said senior author Todd H. Oakley,...

Evolution Echo Bethany Stotts, March 11, 2010 Creationism is often seen as a non-scientific theory in academia and among their liberal press counterparts, so it is not surprising that a recent Associated Press article takes aim at two homeschooling textbooks. But, for all the talk about home-schooled evangelicals and religious-themed textbooks, the reporter doesn’t let the audience into the true motivations of the academics he quotes. “I feel fairly strongly about this. These books are promulgating lies to kids,” said Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago “ecology and evolution professor,” reports Dylan Lovan for the AP. “[Jerry] Coyne and Virginia Tech...

Your apelike ancestors probably aren't top of mind when you enter the polling booth. But a new study suggests that human evolution may have a big influence on whether you're liberal or conservative—not to mention how smart you are, whether you believe in God, or whether you've got a cheatin' heart. It's all linked to the evolution of intelligence, says author Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

There are some new statistical papers floating around that conclude that the more intelligent among us tend to be atheists. An equivalent, but more enjoyable, way of stating this is that dumber people tend to be theists. It must be fun for degree-holding atheist journalists to report these matters, since it flatters their degree-bred sense of superiority. Which doesn’t follow. That “superiority”, I mean. It would if it were true that atheism is morally superior to theism. But morality is logically independent of intelligence (empirically, the evidence goes both ways; and since 1789, intellectuals have little to boast of, morally)....

For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life. "Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view...

Controversial State Board of Education member Don McLeroy trailed in his re-election bid Tuesday while longtime incumbent Geraldine “Tincy” Miller also appeared headed for an upset primary defeat. Republican Thomas Ratliff, son of former GOP Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, held a narrow lead over McLeroy, one of the leaders of the board's social conservative faction. Miller, R-Dallas, was trailing high school English teacher George Clayton in a Dallas-area contest. Miller is a former chairwoman and, at 26 years, the longest-serving member of the board. In another key board race, Republicans Brian Russell and Marsha Farney headed for a runoff to...

The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years." "Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Fossils of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur have been found in slabs of Utah sandstone that were so hard that explosives had to be used to free some of the remains, scientists said Tuesday. The bones found at Dinosaur National Monument belonged to a type of sauropod—long-necked plant-eaters that were said to be the largest animal ever to roam land. The discovery included two complete skulls from other types of sauropods—an extremely rare find, scientists said.

For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life. "Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view...

This is a quick response to a forum posting discussing my article a couple of days ago discussing how the global warming hysteria was foisted on the world population. I argued that it wasn't difficult to understand: global warming proponents merely needed to use the techniques that had already been shown to be effective in the promotion of evolutionary theory. This is a response and some clarification.

An image drawn in 1915 by naturalist William Beebe suggests a hypothetical view of what early birds may have looked like, gliding down from trees - and it bears a striking similarity to a fossil discovered in 2003 that is raising new doubts about whether birds descended from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs. Photo courtesy of Oregon State University (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides yet more evidence that birds did not descend from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs, experts say, and continues to challenge decades of accepted theories about the evolution of...

Though it probably won't be told to the great huddled masses for another few years, those who get their news through alternative media know that Global Warming is now one short step away from being completely debunked. It would be good to think about how things got here to prevent such a colossal fraud from occurring again.

The Foundation If we and our posterity...live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments...we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country.... But if we...neglect religious instruction and authority; violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity." Daniel Webster, Address to the New York Historical Society, 1852, http://www.earstohear.net/Separation/warnings.html Heedless to the warnings of wise men like Daniel Webster, since the...

Where, when, and how did life arise on earth? These questions have intrigued mankind for centuries. Evolutionary theorists have tried to answer them, but without definitive success. And now even their prized “primordial soup” recipe has failed them. Where can they turn next? In the 19th century, French chemist Louis Pasteur conducted repeatable experiments that demonstrated the impossibility of life arising spontaneously from non-life. (1) Although he is widely credited with disproving “spontaneous generation,” some theorists simply added imaginary long spans of time to that general idea and re-branded it “chemical evolution.” This holds that life on earth started in...