Creation and Science Chronicle

Atheist Ad Campaign Strikes Grand Junction, Colorado

February 14, 2009 Comments Off

United States atheists are following their foreign atheist compatriots’ bus ads ( in England, Spain, Italy, and Canada) with a billboard ad campaign in Colorodo tauting life without God. Grand Junction is one of two major east-west routes (via highway 70) in the U.S.A. and borders Utah, home to some of the most beautiful and geological interesting land in our western National Parks: Bryce, Zion, Capital Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, and driving access to Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

Grand Junction is also the home to the creationist organization Alpha and Omega Institute, which is celebrating it’s 25th anniversary this year!

Finding joy with and without God
By Jonathan Buck
The Peterborough Examiner, p. C3.
February 14, 2009

2009 has certainly started off with a bang. We’ve got a new American president being hailed as a saviour, an Airbus ditching in the Hudson River hailed as a miracle, while atheists in several countries, including Canada, are mounting ad campaigns on the sides of transit buses claiming God doesn’t exist.

I got to thinking, then, putting all three of these events together, what would go through your mind if, by chance, you are on Flight 1549 on Jan. 15 as it takes off from LaGuardia Airport, rises to 3,000 feet and then, wham, the plane shudders and both engines go silent and there you are gliding without any power over the skyscrapers of New York?

But not to worry, because you look up and there on the plane’s TV screen is a news report on the atheist bus ad campaign in London, England, showing a red doubledecker bus with a large poster on its side declaring “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

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Creation Research Society Makes the News

February 14, 2009 Comments Off

Eugene Chaffin (Bob Jones University) is quoted in the Anniston Star article along with his board of director’s position in the Creation Research Society!

If you can’t read the original print article, use this link to see the web version. (Clicking on the newspaper headline or “read more…” will load a digital version of the newspaper as it appears in print — courtesy of PressDisplay.)

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A brief history of creationism and its opposition to evolutionary theory
by Brett Buckner
The Anniston Star, p. 1B & 6B
February 14, 2009

Dayton, Tenn., was a quiet, rural community and perhaps the least likely place in America for a revolution.

But in the summer 1925, when high school biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution, Dayton became ground zero for a cultural upheaval, the impact of which continues to reverberate in courtrooms and classrooms across the country.

The Scopes “Monkey Trial,” as it became known was a media circus — complete with dancing chimpanzees on the courthouse lawn — that focused America’s attention on a dramatic, often absurd showdown between two legal titans.

Clarence Darrow, defending the biology teacher, and William Jennings Bryan, heading the prosecution, waged an epic debate over the rightful place of religion and science in public schools.

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Darwin Celebration on the Island of Malta

February 13, 2009 Comments Off

It seems that Darwin is being recognized even in the smallest parts of the world. The following Associated Press article appeared in Malta’s newspaper, the Malta Independent. Malta is an island located south of Sicily (also an island) which in turn is located south of Italy!

Kudos to Answers in Genesis’ United Kingdom office director, Paul Taylor, for getting interviewed in this story. Besides Malta, this story appeared in many other newspapers from around the world: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, India, China, and the United Arab Emirates. This seems to cover quite a bit of the world population! (Not included are websites, the above are printed papers.)

On Darwin’s 200th, a theory still in controversy
by Gregory Katz (AP)
Malta Independent
February 12, 2009 p. 13

It’s well known that Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking theory of evolution made many people furious because it contradicted the Biblical view of creation. But few know that it also created problems for Darwin at home with his deeply religious wife, Emma.

Darwin held back the book to avoid offending his wife, said Ruth Padel, the naturalist’s great-great-granddaughter. “She said he seemed to be putting God further and further off,” Padel said in her north London home. “But they talked it through, and she said, “Don’t change any of your ideas for fear of hurting me.'”

The 1859 publication of “On the Origin of Species” changed scientific thought forever — and generated opposition that continues to this day. It is this elegant explanation of how species evolve through natural selection that makes Darwin’s 200th birthday on Feb. 12 such a major event.

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Jonathan Wells Commentary in Washington Times

February 12, 2009 Comments Off

Happy Darwin Day?
by Jonathan Wells
Washington Times Daily
February 12, 2009, p. A18 (Commentary)

Today marks the bicentennial of two notable birthdays, Abraham Lincoln’s and Charles Darwin’s. Lincoln is a hero to many Americans, but an international campaign is now under way to declare Feb. 12 Darwin Day.

According to many of his modern followers, Darwin is the world’s greatest scientist, and his theory is the cornerstone of modern biology — if not the whole of modern science.

What, exactly, is Darwin’s theory? It is not just “evolution.” Evolution can mean “change over time,” which no sane person denies. Or it can mean life on Earth has a long history, documented by the fossil record. Yet the general outlines of the fossil record were established before “The Origin of Species” appeared in 1859. And biblical chronology did not play a major role in the 19th-century Darwinian controversies, because by 1859 most educated Christians had accepted geological evidence for an old Earth.

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Vatican Official Endorses Evolution

February 11, 2009 Comments Off

Vatican view of Darwinism evolves into a compatible theory
by Richard Owen
The Australian (Australia), p. 11.
February 12, 2009

The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that man descended from apes.

A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.

‘‘ In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,’’ said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation the Pope might be prepared to endorse the theory of intelligent design, whose advocates credit a ‘‘ higher power’’ for the complexities of life.

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Another United Kingdom Survey Shows Support for Creation

February 2, 2009 Comments Off

british-survery-2009 Half of UK population ‘believe in creationism’
by Jonathan Wynne-Jones
The Sunday Telegraph (United Kingdom), p. 15.
February 1, 2009

BELIEF in creationism is widespread in Britain, a survey has found.

More than half of the public believe the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and that a “designer” must have lent a hand, the findings suggest.

And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years.

The survey, by respected polling firm ComRes, will fuel the debate around evolution and creationism ahead of next week’s 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Professor Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, said the findings revealed a worrying level of scientific ignorance among Britons.

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Charles Darwin Declared Anti-Slavery

February 2, 2009 Comments Off

darwinslavery Darwin evolves into anti-slavery advocate
by Philip Ball
The New Zealand Herald (New Zealand), p. A21.
January 28, 2009

It sounds glib to say every age moulds Charles Darwin to its own preoccupations but the temptation is hard to resist.

To the Victorians he was an atheistic agitator undermining humankind’s privileged moral status.

In the early 20th century he became a prophet of social engineering and the free market.

With sociobiology in the 1970s Darwinism became a behavioural theory, while neoDarwinist genetics prompted a bleak view of humanity as gene machines driven by the selfish imperatives of our DNA.

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Sir David Attenborough Blames Christianity for Environmental Damage

February 2, 2009 Comments Off

genesis-attenborough Genesis? It can go forth and multiply
by Steve Connor
The Independent (UK), p. 3.
January 31, 2009

Bible to blame for devastation of the planet, says Attenborough

HE HAS romped with gorillas, turned his back on grizzly bears and found himself knee-deep in suffocating bat dung. After decades of getting to know the furthest-flung corners of the world – and its inhabitants – Sir David Attenborough has vented his ire on the Bible for promoting the belief that man has complete dominion over the Earth.

Sir David, probably the best-loved broadcaster and certainly the most distinguished television naturalist, has blamed the Book of Genesis for many environmental problems, from the burning down of tropical rainforests to the extinction of species.

On the eve of a BBC1 documentary on the life of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, Sir David has criticised the centuries-old idea running through the Judaeo-Christian tradition which assumes God gave the Earth to man to exploit and use in whatever way he saw fit in order to populate the world.

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