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A church-published magazine called The Trumpet blows the horn (so to speak) on Roman Catholic leadership's lack of a clear position on the creation/ID/evolution controversy. I've haven't looked into John Paul's or Benedict's words much myself, but the Trumpet article takes the position that the RC Church isn't taking a position--that it's straddling the fence and ending up in the theistic evolutionist camp. Interesting article, and comes to good conclusion: We must base our beliefs firmly on the Word of God, or get wishy-washy, whether we're the pope or not.

 It's an unusual little book to see featured in a news release, but The Book of Masahel claims to prove the existence of God by showing how biblical prophesy was fulfilled. It's published by a Judeo-Christian organization called The Bene Yeshua, or "The Students of Jesus," founded in 2007, with a mission to "create works that demonstrate the historical and scientific validity of the Bible." Unique. Might be worth checking out.

 There's a spoof video of the GEICO cavemen commercials that's worth watching called "Creation: So Easy A Caveman Can Get It." Ken Ham participated in it, although it's not an AIG film.

That's right, the Chicago Tribune reports Darwinian paleontologists are angry that the "Lucy" skeleton, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and hailed as an upright walking hominid, has begun a six-year tour of American Museums. Lucy's first stop is at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (exhibit opens Friday). Here's what Richard Leakey, a prominent evolutionary paleontologist who specializes in African hominid fossils, had to say about Lucy's travels:

It's a form of prostitution, it's gross exploitation of the ancestors of humanity and it should not be permitted.

Ouch. However, the discoverer of Lucy, Donald Johanson, is OK with the traveling skeleton plan. "Seeing the original Lucy will surely heighten public awareness of human-origins studies particularly at a time when the validity of evolution has come under fire in our schools," he said. "A broader exposure of Lucy to the public does have great educational value."

Yes, and why be angry, anyway? Critics say the travels are too dangerous for the fragile fossil, or that it's wrong to not have the specimen available for scientific study. But as the Houston Museum pointed out to the Tribune, those objections are really groundless. Maybe Leakey actually does say it best: exploitation. To some paleontologists, Lucy's bones are not just fossils, they're sacred relics. Lucy's femur and tibia are practically the pillars of the holy faith of the Descent of Man. To pass the skeleton around to museum after museum is something akin to drawing cartoons of Muhammad. It offends the devout.

Meanwhile, 10 out of 15 Texan state school board members told the media they don't support ID being taught in schools. Interestingly the board chairman, who claims to be a creationist of sorts, thinks not only intelligent design but "anything" that doesn't have a scientific consensus should be rejected from public school curriculum. Good, that rules out Darwinism too. Wonder if the board knows. At any rate, 1 out of 3 isn't bad. Just wait 10 years. It'll be an exciting day when Kitzmiller vs. Dover is challenged in another court.

Maybe we won't have to wait ten years. This film by Ben Stein is going to speed things along.  

(Also: Gregory Koukl has some good thoughts on the creation of "Artificial Life", and Patrik Hagman on creationism in Turkey.)

Last week a couple friends and I had the magnificent opportunity of hiking over the jagged peaks you see above--the Tetons in northwest Wyoming. Rising up from the Jackson Hole valley like teeth from a bear's mouth, the Teton Range looks stark from a distance but is in fact rich with life, almost to the peak (there were honeybees browsing flowers at 10,000 ft). Our 1 and 1/2 day hike through Paintbrush and Cascade Canyons brought us to 10,700 feet--and 10,900 feet if you include the ridge we scrambled to at the top. Since the parking lot we started from was about 6,900 feet, we climbed a total of around 4,000. The hike was about 20 miles.

I was very close to taking my digital SLR (a Canon Rebel XT) up the trails with me, but decided against the extra weight at the last minute. This was the first overnight backpacking trip any of us had done, and since us Hoosiers don't exactly go mountain climbing a lot, we weren't sure what to expect. We already had weight in our backpacks from sleeping bags, a tent, food, sternos, etc. At first, while the elevation was still moderate, I wanted to kick myself for not bringing it. But by about 9,000 feet (where I was huffing and puffing), I decided I had made a wise decision. Later in this post I'll have a lineup of Yellowstone photos for you.

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It's sad when people give a good cause like creationism a bad name, which is what the Muslim creationist Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya) has been doing. When this man sent out his 800-page Atlas of Creation to U.S. and European professors, scientists, and elected leaders, it was a bit graceless. What he's doing now is mean-spirited and self-destructive. The wealthy Oktar has leveraged a Turkish court to block the entire WordPress.com domain from being accessed in the nation of Turkey. His lawyers claim WordPress did not respond to their request that certain sites allegedly libeling Oktar be removed.

Ali Eteraz, a human rights lawyer writing for The Guardian's Comment Is Free blog, has an exceptionally good overview of this story, and says the censorship is the result of the Turkish government taking sides in a squabble among two Muslim groups.

 AKP Watch, The Van Der Galien Gazette, and Tiny Frog all talk about this story--though I must take issue with the latter blogger's claim that creationists love censorship. Whether or not Muslim creationists love censorship, Christian creationists certainly do not. On the contrary, it is the Darwinists who censor--making threats, denying tenure, and rejecting scientific articles from being published if they implicate design. ID theorists and creationists speak out, but don't try to silence their critics. Unlike our opponents, we play fair.

Which reminds me . . . PZ Myers is being sued for libel. And not by a creationist, be assured. The lawsuit comes from the author of Lifecode, Stuart Pivar, whose book was strongly criticized on Pharyngula, Myers' blog. Myers isn't exactly known for gentle rebukes, but even he'll have a hard time being found guilty on this one. When you write a book--especially one promoting new, unsubstantiated ideas, like Lifecode does--you should be ready to take the hits that come.

This is strange: Miniature implanted devices designed to treat epilepsy. The article says that epilepsy affects one percent of the global population. Didn't realize that.

I probably won't be posting anything for a week or so, since I'm off to Grand Teton National Park for hiking and camping. I'll take plenty of pics and post the best when I return. Assuming I get back alive, of course. . .

ScienceDaily has published a news release from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology "speaking out" against the Creation Museum. They accuse the museum of "a vast number of scientific errors, large and small," including the promotion of a global flood and the view that dinosaurs and man lived together. From the release:

The fossil exhibits at the Creation Museum discount the last 150 years of paleontological and geological discovery. Not only are transitional fossils, including snakes with limbs and dinosaurs with feathers, abundant in the fossil record, but radiometric dating allows paleontologists to pinpoint the timing of major events in the ancient history of the earth.

For example, Tyrannosaurus rex existed over 65 million years ago, whereas modern humans didn’t show up on the scene until 200 thousand years ago. They never walked side by side.

Amazingly, the Creation Museum's fossil exhibits are displays of real fossils! They don't discount 150 years of discoveries, they simply challenge the interpretation of those discoveries, such as whether a global flood might be responsible for the fossil record. Any scientist knows that a challenge to interpretation is a healthy aspect of his trade.

As to scientific accuracy, this news release fails to divulge a couple important facts of its own: (1) Not all paleontologists believe fossils show dinosaurs had feathers (including Alan Feduccia, one of America's most respected bird evolution experts), and (2) radiometric dating is too scattered to "pinpoint" anything. If the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is really worried about people being scientifically misled, they'd better set an example first.

In other news: Scientists have now shown that the giant bugs of the fossil record grew large because of a once higher concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere, as creationists have long suspected.

Two stories about coelacanths break in an unfortunate juxtaposition for Darwinists: One claims a coelacanth fossil shows how limb evolution proceeded; another reports on a live coelacanth. The fact that coelacanths have allegedly thrived for 400 million years (and turned up as a "living fossil" after being labeled extinct) would seem to indicate that the fish's fins were always intended for water, not walking.

A group of fossilized trees is not fossilized. If you're puzzled, so are these scientists. 

Finally, whoever heard of a brain pacemaker? That's a reality now, and a successful test has allowed a man in a vegetative state to talk with his family and chew his food again.