Free Republic

Eugenics … death of the defenceless The legacy of Darwin’s cousin Galton By Russell Grigg Few ideas have done more harm to the human race in the last 120 years than those of Sir Francis Galton. He founded the evolutionary pseudo-science of eugenics. Today, ethnic cleansing, the use of abortion to eliminate ‘defective’ unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, and the harvesting of unborn babies for research purposes all have a common foundation in the survival-of-the-fittest theory of eugenics. So who was Galton, what is eugenics, and how has it harmed humanity?...

Religion-Free Group Says to 'Praise Darwin' by Christine Dao* How much sense does this make? An organization that bills itself as a promoter of “freedom from religion” posted billboards bearing the words “Praise Darwin: Evolve Beyond Belief” in several U.S. cities to coincide with the British naturalist’s 200th birthday. Cities where the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) placed the advertisements include Dayton, Tennessee, and Dover, Pennsylvania—homes of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial” and the highly politicized 2005 Dover Trial, respectively. The Wisconsin-based foundation, which put up a Grinch-like sign next to a nativity scene in the Washington State Capitol during...

In Defense of the Communists Excerpts from Argument in Defense of the Communists by Clarence Darrow (ACLU), published by Charles Kerr & Co., [1] 1920. Darrow was defending twenty Chicago communists who were charged in August 1920 under the 1919 Illinois anti-communist statute. The Communist Party in the USA had just been formed at Chicago in September 1919. The Scopes Trial came later, in 1925. Too bad they didn't mention this in the film Inherit the Wind. Clarence Darrow [2]I shall attempt to say it honestly; and I fancy not one of this jury, after I am done, can...

In 1925 a Tennessee teacher of biology named Thomas Scopes was tried for teaching the theory of evolution. An expert witness at the trial relates how evolution lost in court but won in the eyes of the nation

Professors routinely give advice to students but usually while their charges are still in school. Arthur Landy, a distinguished professor of molecular and cell biology and biochemistry at Brown University, recently decided, however, that he had to remind a former premed student of his that “without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn’t make sense.” The sentiment was not original with Landy, of course. Thirty-six years ago geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, a major contributor to the foundations of modern evolutionary theory, famously told the readers of The American Biology Teacher that “nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light...

Ed. Note: this is the first instalment of a detailed critique of a major New Scientist anti-creationist diatribe. This one deals with a substantial section in the article, which tries to downplay the Nazi reliance on Darwinian theories, and instead tries to smear Christianity as a cause of the Holocaust...

I saw something pretty shocking last night, and I don't really shock easily any more. This was David Menton's "Inherently Wind" which a number of people were watching over at the DC area McLean Bible Church last night. I must have seen a few bits and pieces of Inherit the Wind on televion here and there but always found it boring and changed the channels. I had no real idea that this thing was a complete and total propaganda piece, or that large numbers of school kids were seeing this thing in social studies and English classes. This play...

Salem Witch Trials (May–October 1692) American colonial persecutions for witchcraft. In the town of Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, several young girls, stimulated by supernatural tales told by a West Indian slave, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused three women of witchcraft. Under pressure, the accused women named others in false confessions. Encouraged by the clergy, a special civil court was convened with three judges, including Samuel Sewall, to conduct the trials. They resulted in the conviction and hanging of 19 "witches" and the imprisonment of nearly 150 others. As public zeal abated, the trials were stopped and...

Once upon a time, I suppose, the ACLU had a worthwhile purpose in defending our civil rights, but somewhere along the way, its mission has become destructive to the rights of the majority and dangerous to the survival of the America we know. They defend rights, all right: the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, the rights of child molesters to rape children in Massachusetts and to be Boy Scout Leaders in California, the right of Saddam to butcher his people and threaten our safety, the right of a high school girl in Rhode Island to wear a T-shirt...

Ironically, it is only now, in today's America – 80 years after the famed 1925 "monkey trial" – that the scary specter of censorship and persecution raised by "Inherit the Wind" is actually occurring. Just like in the movie, intolerant guardians of sacred orthodoxy are persecuting high school science teachers. Keepers of the faith – gravely offended at the slightest challenge – insist on unquestioning adherence to the accepted teachings, shunning and persecuting any who dare to buck the established order. Freedom of academic inquiry is unwelcome. But in a bizarre twist, in 2005 it is the evolutionists who are...

In the "Monkey Trial," 80 years ago, the issue was: Did John Scopes violate Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution? Indeed he had. Scopes was convicted and fined $100. But because a cheerleader press favored Clarence Darrow, the agnostic who defended Scopes, Christian fundamentalism -- and the reputation of William Jennings Bryan, who was put on the stand and made to defend the literal truth of every Bible story from Jonah and the whale to the six days of creation -- took a pounding.

The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet. But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade...

I do on occasion run out of ideas for my column writing. I do this after finishing a huge writing project like a book. I am just plain "written out" and am fresh out of things to say. When this happens, I turn to the news and am rarely disappointed. This morning, I read a story by Associated Press writer, Carl Hartman, entitled, Smithsonian Finds Scopes Trial Photos. This seemed innocuous. The story, as well as the photos, were... interesting. What got my "Snit-O-Meter" going was how this reporter, like probably everyone on the face of the earth would report,...

There are about 60 unpublished photos from the landmark 1925 Tennessee trial over teaching evolution in school. Washington, DC -- The Smithsonian says it has found a trove of photographs from the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. A historian at the Washington institution says the "stunning photographs are the discovery of a lifetime." There are about 60 unpublished photos from the landmark 1925 Tennessee trial over teaching evolution in school. One photo shows Clarence Darrow challenging William Jennings Bryan in the trial. Darrow represented biology teacher John Scopes, who was charged with teaching evolution. Bryan prosecuted the case, gaining a conviction....

“The general idea we have of the Scopes trial is that it was largely a kind of rural Southern phenomenon. That’s really caused trouble for people trying to understand the anti-evolution movement: From Scopes we got this idea that it was simply yahoos in overalls who didn’t like book-learnin’,” Moran said. “What’s happened in the last 40 years is creationism has become quite suburban, even quite well-educated and not purely a Southern phenomenon.” At the same time, he said, debate today may be stifled by civic leaders afraid of the fallout in Dayton. “What you hear now is cities are...

Jim Sullivan stood outside the Rhea County Courthouse and recalled the carnival-like atmosphere during the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, when the teaching of evolution was put on trial. "They had fights on all these corners and people all over the place," said Sullivan, 85, who remembers seeing Bible-toting preachers and monkeys on leashes. As the town prepares for its annual re-enactment of the trial here eight decades later, debate over teaching evolution lives on. Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, said it is increasingly difficult to teach American students the basics of evolution. "We have...

Evolution on trial again This week sees the 80th anniversary of the trial of John Scopes, teacher, for breaking the newly-passed Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state of Tennessee. Conceived as a PR stunt to put the town of Dayton, TN on the map, it succeeded in making a laughingstock of the state, which found Scopes guilty in a trial that garnered enormous publicity. 80 years later, scientists have identified DNA as the medium in which heredity is passed on, constructed a map of the entire human genome and can routinely manipulate genetic information in...

Terri Schiavo is dying. She is being killed. The culture of life lost this round to the gods of the cult of death entrenched in our courts, media, and other institutions. This was never, as liberals claimed, a constitutional crisis. It was, first, a question as to the definition of death. Up until now and throughout the Bible death was declared when autonomous respiration and heartbeat ceased and, as of late, when the brain-stem and brain were devoid of function. With the Schiavo case, popular culture has expanded death's contour and hastened its arrival by redefining death as the inability...

PARIS, FRANCE--Notre Dame sits proudly in the middle of the River Seine, which winds its way through this ancient city. It is an impressive Cathedral, with its towering gothic arches and vaults, its captivating chapels, and its rich history. Although the French still celebrate July 14, when a rowdy mob of radicals freed some non-political prisoners from the Bastille, they are still sober about the excesses of the French Revolution. For one, they seem to realize that it was silly for those Revolutionaries to expel the Church from France and turn Notre Dame into the "Temple of Reason." Still, they...

Once again, evolutionists strike when the iron is hot in an attempt to affirm the same bogus evolutionary dogma they have crammed down our throats for 150 years. Once again, they've got it wrong. The recent discovery of a dwarf skeleton on the remote Indonesian island of Flores has scientists anxious to create another sub-class of humans. This one is called Homo floresiensis, which implies that they belong to a different species of people than those living today, we Homo sapiens.