Free Republic

An astronomer is suing the University of Kentucky, claiming he was denied a job running its observatory because of his Christian faith. Martin Gaskell was once considered the leading candidate to be the founding director of the observatory, opened in 2008. The Courier-Journal reports that a trial has been set for Feb. 8 after a federal judge ruled Gaskell has the right to a jury trial. Gaskell argues that the school discriminated against him because he had given lectures in the past discussing astronomy and the Bible and his questions about the theory of evolution, even though he accepts it....

In 1961, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, and Professor Cyril Domb exchanged correspondence on the subject of Torah and Science. Professor Domb was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University from 1952 to 1954 and professor of theoretical physics at King's College, London, from 1954 to 1981. From 1981 to 1989, Domb was professor of physics at Bar-Ilan University, and remains professor emeritus there. He is also president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. He now lives in Israel.

A proposal to build a theme park that would feature a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark has set off a controversy in Kentucky that is worth watching. Within days, the controversy had spread to the pages of The New York Times and USA Today. So, who’s afraid of Noah’s Ark? Lots of folks, it seems, but the editors of the state’s two largest newspapers, in particular. The “Ark Encounter” is a major project to be undertaken by a partnership led by Answers in Genesis, the group that built the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky — an attraction that has now...

Via NLT, here’s an excerpt from a textbook at the center of the Scopes trial. Evolution of Man. – Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals. He was a nomad, wandering from place to place, feeding upon whatever living things he could kill with his hands. Gradually he must have learned to use weapons, and thus kill...

NASA-supported researchers have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in California's Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components. More...

Creation or Evolution? The very mention of the debate can make blood pressures rise, tempers flare, and strain the closest of relationships. Why is there such passion on both sides? When it comes right down to it, does it even matter what we believe on the subject? This may seem like just a point of differing perspectives on the origin of man; but if that were so, the battle wouldn’t rage as hotly as it does. It is about more than simple perspective. It is a life issue, for what a person believes about man’s origins forms the foundation of...

A state advisory panel Friday voted 8-4 to endorse a variety of high school science textbooks that have come under fire for how they describe evolution. The vote was followed more than three hours of discussion. Two of the “no” votes were cast by Senate Education Committee Chairman Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, and House Education Committee Vice-Chairman Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe. The decision likely paves the way for the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to approve the textbooks when it meets Dec. 7-9. The textbooks that t

When a federal court in 2005 rejected an attempt by the Dover, Pa., school board to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution to explain the development of life on Earth, it sparked a renaissance in involvement among scientists in K-12 science instruction.Now, some of those teaching programs, studies, and research centers are starting to bear fruit.The National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and other groups have increased research investment on identifying essential concepts for teaching evolution, including creating the Evolution Education Research Centre, a partnership of Harvard, McGill, and Chapman universities, and launching the first peer-reviewed...

As in cities today, the earliest towns helped expose their inhabitants to inordinate opportunities for infection -- and today their descendants are stronger for it, a new study says. "If cities increase the amount of disease people are exposed to, shouldn't they also, over time, make them natural places for disease resistance to evolve?" asked study co-author Mark Thomas, a biologist at University College London... study co-author Ian Barnes, a molecular paleobiologist at University College London, screened DNA samples from 17 groups long associated with particular regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa -- for example Anatolian Turks and the southern...

Caution! The experiment I’m about to explain might increase your belief in God. It should only be attempted by academics who are immune to such deleterious effects. Got a pair of dice? Before you throw them, guess what numbers will show. Obviously, what will happen is random, you have no control over the dice, and chances are you will guess wrongly. This is bad news. Because when you experience the dice’s randomness, you now are more likely to believe in God. Even worse, you might even toss your copy of The Descent of Man into the bin! The result of...

An Open Letter to My Physicist Friend RE: Darwinism and the Problem of Free Will By Jean F. Drew Dear A — Regarding the discussion of “free will” at www.naturalism.org, you wrote: “I am surprised to find a ‘scientific naturalism’ so similar to the utmost banality, shallowness and false superficiality of the ‘scientific materialism’ that I [had] to learn in … school [during] the communist regime.” I think this is a very striking statement; and I understand what you mean. I read in your Book of the Living Universe long ago that you were aware of the problem of “tampering”...

In an experiment, there are one of more hypotheses. When positive predictions are made, there necessarily exists what is called a null hypothesis. The null hypothesis should be stated formally, and constructed before the study is conducted. H0: Two simultaneous mutations are the upper limit for providing any functional advantage by evolutionary processes. H1: Evolutionary processes may result in three or more simultaneous mutations conferring a functional advantage to an organism. In the example above, H0 is the null hypothesis, and H1 is the experimental hypothesis. When an experiment is conducted, a finding of 3 or more simultaneous mutations resulting...

Were human beings created by God in an instant, or over millions of years through evolution? Glenn Beck addressed the question on his radio show today as he came to the defense of Christine O'Donnell, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Delaware under fire for challenging evolution. "Did evolution just stop?" Beck asked rhetorically. "I haven't seen the half-monkey/half-person yet. ... There's no other species that's developing into half-people." "I don't know how God creates. I don't know how we got here," he continued, wondering what God might tell him after he dies. "If God's like, 'Yup, you were a...

The media are in a full-scale hyperventilation following Tuesday's separation of church and state comments by Delaware Republican senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell. As an Investor's Business Daily editorial points out, O'Donnell was right when questioned about this issue during a debate with Democrat candidate Chris Coons, and all the nattering nabobs of negativism filling the airwaves are wrong: There is, of course, no such passage. Those scoffing law scholars might want to look at the Constitution's unadorned text instead of the judicial activist law review articles that take up so much of their day. What the Constitution does say, in...

"In the early years of the 20th century, a fixation on eugenics led several states to approve forced sterilization to keep thousands of Americans from producing "morally inferior" or "feeble-minded" offspring. Bruinius's greatest accomplishment in his retelling of this blot on our nation's history is forcing readers to recognize the humanity of the victims of these policies. He begins with Carrie Buck, a young Virginia woman used by state medical authorities as a test case to get the courts to legitimize their program. At times, Bruinius's account of the events leading up to her sterilization employs a novelistic level of...

In the blog over the past few days we have discussed the Genesis account, evolutionary theory and how these can be reconciled with Catholic thought and teaching. At one level, the genre for the Genesis accounts must be taken into consideration wherein figurative language is sometimes used to confer the sacred truths that God alone created everything out of nothing. Further, that God oversaw every aspect of creation with intelligence, and purpose, and that he created everything out of nothing, each according to its kind. However the genre, or literary form, of Genesis  does not purport to be of nature of a...

Audio file interview of Robert Felix who is the author of Not By Fire, But By Ice and founder of Ice Age Now, one of the biggest climate sites on the web. He discusses the findings that underscored Magnetic Reversals & Evolutionary Leaps, a study in the relationship between climate, pole shifts, and the evolution of species.

The ELCA’s official website tells us the denomination's position on the topics of creation/evolution/origin of life (it also reveals the ELCA's stance on Scripture.) Their website says, "What is the ELCA official position concerning the origin of life and evolution? The ELCA has not officially taken a position about evolution...

<p>The universe was in chaos after the Big Bang kick-started the cosmos, a new study suggests.</p> <p>While one might expect the explosion that began the universe to wreak some havoc, scientists mean something very specific when they refer to chaos. In a chaotic system, small changes can cause large-scale effects. A commonly cited example is the "butterfly effect" — the idea that a butterfly beating its wing in Brazil can bring about a tornado in Texas.</p>

Enlarge Image Buried gem. Researchers have uncovered "fossil virus" inside the zebra finch genome. Credit: Peripitus/Wikimedia The hepatitis B virus and its ilk have been around for a long, long time. A newly uncovered "viral fossil" buried deep in the genome of the zebra finch indicates that the hepatitis B family of viruses—known as hepadnaviruses—originated at least 19 million years ago. Together with recent findings on other viruses, the work suggests that all viruses may be much older than thought. No one knows exactly where or when viruses originated. They don't leave fossils, so scientists have begun scouring the...