Archive for August, 2011

This past week at a New Hampshire campaign event, Rick Perry was asked about his views of evolution by a boy, ushered up to the front by his mother, “do you believe in evolution?”

“It’s a theory hat’s out there,” Perry replied. “It’s got some gaps in it. In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution.” Perry went on to explain: “I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.”

The Washington Post wasted no time to launch a panel debate hosted by Sally Quinn entitled “On  evolution, can religion evolve?” The infamous atheist from the UK, Richard Dawkins, quickly joined the debate noting “There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office… Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters”. At stake is the challenge by non-evolutionist to of critical thinking in public schools. Continue Reading

Although the Planned Parenthood was not established as an organization until 1916 when Margaret Sanger opened the first clinic in the U.S. in Brooklyn, New York, even Charles Darwin would have expressed outrage over their birth control methods.

Amazingly, birth control was a hot topic during the elections of 1868 in England. Segments of Victorian liberalism lead by Charles Bradlaugh, one of the most famous atheists of the nineteenth century, drove his election campaign in Northhampton on the platform of electoral reform and birth control.

As founder of the National Secular Society established in 1866, Bradlaugh promoted birth control as a means to rescue English working people from poverty. The National Secular Society represented a radical segment liberalism. Poverty was considered the result of over-population based on Thomas Malthus principle of economics. Branded as vicious obscenity, methods for birth control were promoted in his sixpenny pamphlet entitled The Fruits of Philosophy. Continue Reading

In a letter to Hugh Falconer in October 1862, Charles Darwin wrote, “I look at it as absolutely certain that very much in the Origin will be proved to be rubbish.”

Since the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Species in November 1859, attempts over the past 150 years to avoid fulfilling Darwin’s own prediction have largely been a failure, according to an article in The New York Times —at least in the classroom.

In the Times article “On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan,” free-lance writer Nicholas Bakalar notes “that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology.”

While only 28 percent of the teachers consistently follow the recommendations, Bakalar was even more dismayed that researchers discovered that “13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.” Continue Reading

The Index played an integral role in establishing the modern evolution industry following the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. Even though Charles Darwin studied theology at Christ’s College, The Index was published by an emerging new rogue anti-Bible Unitarian movement.

During Darwin’s college years, however, Darwin was far removed from this movement. Upon entering Christ’s College at Cambridge University, in his autobiography Charles Darwin declared, “I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible.” A key word in Darwin’s declaration is ‘then.”

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