Free Republic

Many historians call the Founding Fathers "Deists," and many of them were not true Christians -- after all, Thomas Jefferson tore all the miracles out of the Gospels! But judging by the Declaration of Independence, our Founders were more religious than many think: our founding document mentions God no less than four times.This is not to say America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation -- the federal government has never had an established religion. But the Jewish and Christian understandings of God deeply influenced the founding generation, and that influence radiates from the Declaration of Independence.Here are the four...

Public confidence in the "constants" of nature may be at an all-time low. Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the strength of the invisible glue that holds atomic nuclei together, may have been different in the past. "There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant," says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are." The observed differences are small — roughly a few parts in a...

Harvard Chick Profs vs. the “Ice Princess” March 23, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel Oops. Lawrence Summers isn’t from Hollywood, and he’s not a sexy starlet from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Sex and the City.” If only he underwent an “Extreme Makeover” to fit these characteristics, Summers might get away with his comments about lack of women in the sciences in academia. After all, the Harvard President--who continues to be under fire for attributing gender differences to a lack of women in the sciences--recently suffered a vote of no confidence by Harvard professors. Yet, this past weekend’s Disney movie, “Ice...