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Now, more than 80 years after the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Tennessee, creationism proponents are pushing for state legislation there that could make it easier for teachers to bring unscientific ideas back into the science classroom in public schools. To bolster their cause, the backers of the new bills are invoking none other than teacher John Scopes, the trial's pro-evolution defendant, as an icon of independent thinking. "…[T]oday's evolutionary scientists have become the modern-day equivalents of those who tried to silence Rhea County schoolteacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in 1925, by limiting even an objective discussion of the...

Theistic evolution is a serious threat to the Christian worldview. It is a harmful doctrine that compromises Christian theology (especially anthropology and man as image of God) for the sake of upholding Darwin's theory of common decent. While Scripture teaches that God directly made the first human persons, theistic evolution says man came from non-God and non-images. The creation account and its answering of some of the most important questions of human life, probably didn't happen; most the events and characters are generally symbolic. And somehow, we are supposed to believe that all of this is compatible with Christian orthodoxy...

The last person you might expect Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s best known atheists, to turn to for help would be an evangelical Christian. But a highly religious doctor might be the only individual who can help the author and journalist who is suffering from cancer. Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything...

First of all, let me state that neither of these films is destined to become a classic. Still, they have something to teach us − not about film making, regrettably, because both are filled with clichés, but about how differently liberals and conservatives view the world. “Paul” attempts to be a comedy. If you have a high tolerance for childish sitcoms and middle-school potty mouth, you might say it succeeds. “Battle: Los Angeles” attempts to be a sci-fi thriller. If you have a high tolerance for scenes borrowed from “War of the Worlds” and “Independence Day,” you might say it...

Phillip Johnson's major work seems to have been made available to the public as a free ebook in html format. My advice would be to save a copy in case anybody changes their mind... Johnson was a law professor at Cal Berkeley who got involved in the evolution debate and investigated the question of how close evolutionists could come to meeting the normal standards of evidence in an American courtroom. "Darwin on Trial" is his most major work.

A new Texas bill would make it illegal for colleges to fire or refuse jobs to professors based on their research on intelligent design or other theories on the origin of life that question evolution. The measure from Republican state Rep. Bill Zedler would prohibit public institutions of higher education from discriminating against or penalizing faculty members or students, in regard to employment or academic support, based on their "conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms." The bill, HB 2454, was received by the Higher Education...

Exerpts from What is Eugenics, chapter 14, 1932 3rd ed.Leonard DarwinALL of us are being greatly damaged by the presence of the unfit and the inferior in the ranks of the nation. If those included in these classes have large families, this injury to our country will be slowly increased as the generations succeed each other. And in all probability, from this cause, racial deterioration is now actually taking place very slowly but very steadily. All this we have seen, and the question is, What can be done to safe-guard the nation against this treacherous disease? In the first place,...

Nobel Prize winning Biochemist Christian de Duve, a professor emeritus at New York City’s Rockefeller University and 1974 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, warns that “natural selection has resulted in traits such as group selfishness being coded in our genes. These were useful to our ancestors under the conditions in which they lived, but have become noxious to us today.” Rape and killing the weak were also useful, and with no God, perfectly “moral.” ... It’s humorous to watch atheists try to build a case for a moral universe without God. The latest popular attempt is...

The first modern people evolved in southern Africa more than 60,000 years ago - and not in the east of the continent as most scientists believe, a study concludes. After analysing DNA samples from 27 populations in modern-day Africa, researchers say the most likely location for the 'cradle of humanity' is the Kalahari desert region of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. The modern-day click-speaking bushman from the desert show the greatest genetic diversity of any Africans - suggesting that their home was the birthplace of the first true Homo sapiens. Originators: The home of the modern day click-speaking bushman in...

Variations in skin color provide one of the best examples of evolution by natural selection acting on the human body and should be used to teach evolution in schools, according to a Penn State anthropologist. "There is an inherent level of interest in skin color and for teachers, that is a great bonus -- kids want to know," said Nina Jablonski, professor and head, Department of Anthropology, Penn State. "The mechanism of evolution can be completely understood from skin color." Scientists have understood for years that evolutionary selection of skin pigmentation was caused by the sun. As human ancestors gradually...

The seemingly ineradicable opinion divide on evolution calls to mind Mark Twain's quip that everyone talks about the weather, mostly to complain, but nobody does anything about it. Pro-Darwinian educators were frustrated this week to find that most public high school biology instructors in their teaching do not wholeheartedly endorse evolution. The teachers reflect a stubborn division across American culture. For the past three decades, Americans have been locked into a basically unchanging split of views on the subject, with only about 16 percent believing in Darwin's theory of unguided evolution. Charles Darwin would have turned 200 in 2009. Will...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers studying the origin of Earth's first breathable atmosphere have zeroed in on the major role played by some very unassuming creatures: plankton. In a paper to appear in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Ohio State University researcher Matthew Saltzman and his colleagues show how plankton provided a critical link between the atmosphere and chemical isotopes stored in rocks 500 million years ago. This work builds on the team's earlier discovery that upheavals in the earth's crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that...

The most popular model used by geneticists for the last 35 years to detect the footprints of human evolution may overlook more common subtle changes, a new international study finds. Classic selective sweeps, when a beneficial genetic mutation quickly spreads through the human population, are thought to have been the primary driver of human evolution. But a new computational analysis, published in the February 18, 2011 issue of Science, reveals that such events may have been rare, with little influence on the history of our species. By examining the sequences of nearly 200 human genomes, research led by Ryan Hernandez,...

THE GIST A Paleolithic elk antler, carved with zigzag lines and a human figure, has been unearthed in Poland. Analysis of the figure indicates an image on it depicts a woman with spread legs. Carved zigzags on the object may symbolize water and life.

Scientific experts from across the world are converging at a remote site near the Ngorongoro crater to witness the event amid controversy on how the 3.6 million-year old footprints should be best preserved. Mr Donatus Kamamba, the director of Antiquities in the ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism told The Citizen on the phone yesterday that the exercise would last for seven days. He said archaeological experts from within and outside the country would oversee the digging of the ash bed with the footprints to get a clue of its state. "After that the experts may decide on the best...

"Too simple" and "not so fast" suggest biological anthropologists from the George Washington University and New York University about the origins of human ancestry. In the upcoming issue of the journal Nature, the anthropologists question the claims that several prominent fossil discoveries made in the last decade are our human ancestors. Instead, the authors offer a more nuanced explanation of the fossils' place in the Tree of Life. They conclude that instead of being our ancestors the fossils more likely belong to extinct distant cousins. "Don't get me wrong, these are all important finds," said co-author Bernard Wood, University Professor...

Dr Martin Gaskell is a respected expert on supermassive black holes and a long-serving research fellow at the University of Texas. In 2007, Dr Martin Gaskell applied for the position of director at the new MacAdam student observatory at the University of Kentucky. He stood "breathtakingly above the other applicants in background and experience" according to the chairman of the selection panel, but he did not get the job. Unsurprisingly, he sued. It is not controversial to state that English-born Gaskell is a devout Christian. He has also said that he is sceptical about certain aspects of evolutionary theory and...

America needs a Plan B, in case God flakes. President Barack Obama agrees, stressing science’s pivotal role in securing America’s future, and so do the courts, which consistently find the teaching of Creationism in public schools unconstitutional. But a recent poll found that only 28 percent of public school biology teachers present the theory of evolution as scientific fact — the rest endorse Genesis or teach it alongside other “theories that frankly don’t hold up,” as the President once put it. If Obama cannot prevent Evangelicals and abetting Republican leaders like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin from tunneling under the...

There was trepidation on both sides when a squadron of biologists set out to celebrate Darwin Day in rural America during the weekend. The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C., which instigated the road trip in the name of scientific outreach, first held a workshop where seven of its Ph.D.’s staged role-playing games and practiced debunking misconceptions about evolution without sounding confrontational. The group’s small-town hosts took their own precautions. A high school principal in Ringgold, Va., sent out permission slips so parents could opt out of sending their children to the event (two did). A museum vice president...

That human evolution follows a progressive trajectory is one of the most deeply-entrenched assumptions about our species. This assumption is often expressed in popular media by showing cavemen speaking in grunts and monosyllables (the GEICO Cavemen being a notable exception). But is this assumption correct? Were the earliest humans significantly different from us? In a paper published in the latest issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologist John Shea (Stony Brook University) shows they were not. The problem, Shea argues, is that archaeologists have been focusing on the wrong measurement of early human behavior. Archaeologists have been searching for evidence of "behavioral...