Free Republic

Discovery of 4.4 Million-Year-Old Fossil Does Not Shake Creationists' Faith By RUSSELL GOLDMAN Oct. 7, 2009 Sometimes an ape is a 4.4 million-year-old fossil that sheds light on the evolutionary origins of human beings, and sometimes… an ape is just an ape. In the case of "Ardi," the ape-like fossil recently discovered in Ethiopia and already being celebrated as the oldest found relative of modern human beings, the final determination depends on who is doing the talking. In one camp are evolutionary scientists who last week published and hailed the discovery of an upright walking ape named Ardipithecus ramidus, or...

Just how many communists are there holed up in the Obama White House anyway? John Holdren, Obama's biggest radical and Science Czar, slammed the idea of American exceptionalism and explicitly said that we need to redistribute energy and material resources during the Bali Conference on global warming on July 12, 2007. John Holdren says the US should redistribute the wealth with green policies:

In my last post I commented on Nobel Prize winning physicist Eugene Wigner’s article “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” in which Wigner describes as “miraculous” (1) that “laws” of nature exist; and (2) that we should be able to discover those laws. In this post I will use an exchange in the comment section of that post between ID proponent “StephenB” and Darwinist “Delurker” to illustrate the utter vacuity of Darwinist argumentation...

As a member of the American Psychological Association for 36 years, I am filled with indignation at the recent statement of the APA that deems it “inappropriate” for therapists to treat homosexual clients. Such therapy is called reparative therapy and has as its goal the establishment of a heterosexual orientation in place of a homosexual one. This statement of the APA has been issued despite the fact that there are a number of outstanding members of that organization, including two past presidents, who have strongly supported reparative treatment.Issued in August, “Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation” advises treatments that “increase...

The United States Department of Education requires all state and local education institutions to collect data on ethnicity and race for students and staff. This information is used for state and federal accountability reporting as well as for reporting to the Office of Civil Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. School district staff and parents or guardians of students enrolling in school are requested to provide this information. If you decline to provide this information, please be aware that the USDE requires school districts to use observer identification as a last resort for collecting the data for federal reporting. Please...

August 29, 2009 — Today’s Evolutionary Just-So Story is brought to you by New Scientist: “Girls Are Primed to Fear Spiders.” Once upon a time, while cavemen were out hunting and gathering, the women back home had to learn to avoid dangerous animals. David Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University put this all into evolutionary terms for the rest of us:...

Warming oceans could cause Earth's axis to tilt in the coming century, a new study suggests. The effect was previously thought to be negligible, but researchers now say the shift will be large enough that it should be taken into account when interpreting how the Earth wobbles.

"Evolution, a religion? You must be nuts! I shall scoff at thee, mine theist!" I probably would get this type of remark from any evolutionist to whom I might suggest such a thing. Yes, evolution (or, at least, belief in it and Darwinist defense of it) is a religion and its believers are just as religious as their theistic counterparts. This fact can be a stumbling block to most atheists, but it is quite true. I should begin this essay by explaining what it is that constitutes a religion. I have expounded on this point elsewhere and I will do...

Scientists in Japan microscopically confirmed islam is the correct religion Please study and embrace islam to win Paradise. As you can see in this wonderful video from Egyptian national TV studio the seated scientist from Japan presented his findings of the effect of the holy Quran islam and the islamic prayer call (the athan) on water molecules under electron microscopy. The egyptian scientist B.sc.Ms.Ph.D explained the water molecules took beautifull shapes everytime they are exposed to air vibrations from reading the holy Quran or saying the word islam or the muslim call to prayer the athan. The scientist added because...

...according to Myers and at least one of my other sources that attended, aside from joking to each other about the ridiculous nonsense in the “museum”, no one misbehaved. But that didn’t seem to stop “museum” officials from harassing individuals and eventually kicking a few people out of the “museum” for imaginary infractions. Essentially, it seems the “museum” feels that merely disagreeing with its “science” and mocking it to one’s friends is grounds for having visitors removed from the property. This is absurd. Could you imagine if the American Museum of Natural History ejected visitors for being creationists? Or if...

For about a century, radioactive decay rates have been heralded as steady and stable processes that can be reliably used to help measure how old rocks are. They helped underpin belief in vast ages and had largely gone unchallenged. But certain decay rates apparently aren’t as stable as some would hope. Several decades ago, strange fluctuations were observed in several radioactive decay systems...

The House of Representatives has approved an addition to the healthcare reform package. It calls for the creation of a “Healthy Teen Initiative”, and allocates $50 million to so-called “comprehensive” sex education. “This was a vote to bring science back into government”, said James Wagoner, president of Advocates For Youth and a leader of the coalition that promoted the amendment. The committee, he continued, “has taken an important step toward ensuring young people get the critical sexual health information they need to make responsible decisions about their lives.” Mr. Wagoner’s statement is astonishing, because Advocates for Youth’s sexual education curricula...

Professor William Calvin Unhinged! Calls on scientists to use 'interventional activism' to combat global warming! 'Climate will change our ways of doing science' - Claims 'long term thinking can be dangerous' Monday, August 03, 2009- By Marc Morano – Climate Depot [Climate Depot Editorial Note: Dr. Calvin should consider heeding the wisdom of Dr. Richard Lindzen. See: MIT Climate Scientist Lindzen: 'Ordinary people see through man-made climate fears -- but educated people are very vulnerable' - July 6, 2009 ] By William Calvin, Neuroscientist at the University of Washington School of Medicine; Author of “A Brain for All Seasons: Human...

The fatal flaw with radioactive dating methods --snip-- This illustrates the problem with the radioactive dating of geological events. Those who promote the reliability of the method spend a lot of time impressing you with the technical details of radioactive decay, half-lives, mass-spectroscopes, etc. But they don’t discuss the basic flaw in the method: you cannot determine the age of a rock using radioactive dating because...

The staggered phase out of energy-wasting light bulbs begins on Sept. 1 in Germany. The unpopularity of the energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs that will replace them is leading consumers and retailers to start hoarding the traditional bulbs. As the Sept. 1 deadline for the implementation of the first phase of the EU's ban on incandescent light bulbs approaches, shoppers, retailers and even museums are hoarding the precious wares -- and helping the manufacturers make a bundle. The EU ban, adopted in March, calls for the gradual replacement of traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). The...

My friend Paul Nelson has the patience of Job. He writes that evolutionists, such as PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne, “need to think about [their theological arguments] more deeply.” In one moment evolutionists make religious arguments and in the next they claim their theory is “just science.” Their religious arguments, they explain, really aren’t religious arguments after all. Gee, that was easy. In light of such absurdity, I don’t have much confidence that evolutionists are going to think more deeply about this. But it would be nice if they would stop misrepresenting science. And it would be nice if they...

Researchers found that attractive women have more children than their less attractive counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Once those daughters become adult they tend to be good looking themselves and so the pattern is repeated as women over the generations become steadily more aesthetically pleasing. As attractive couples are less likely to have boy than a girl, men, in contrast, remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors, the scientists claim. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans. In a study...

Darwin historians not misrepresented More controversy erupts with renewed allegations against the makers of The Voyage—this time directly from three interviewees. “Historians misrepresented by creationists” shouted the headlines of the website of the National Center for Science Education...

It's now more than 50 years since the revolution began. Sexual "liberation" has been endlessly ballyhooed by the national media, promoted in the movies, embraced by Playboy guys and Cosmo girls as a freedom more delicious than Eden's apple. No American under 40 can honestly remember a time when sex on TV was taboo, when "living together" meant married, when "gay" meant happy, and when almost every child lived with both parents.   If truth be told, the revolution has been a disaster. Before the push to loosen America's sexual mores really got under way in the 1950s, the...

IN THE battle over how to teach evolution in public schools, Thomas Jefferson’s demand for a “separation between church and state’’ has been cited countless times. Many argue that the controversial alternative to Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, is an exclusively religious idea and therefore cannot be discussed under the Constitution. By invoking Jefferson’s principle of separation, many critics of intelligent design assume that this visionary Founding Father would agree with them. But would he? For too long, an aspect of Jefferson’s visionary thought has been ignored, hidden away as too uncomfortable for public discussion - his support for intelligent design....