Imagine walking down the beach and coming across the words “Romeo loves Juliet” written in the sand. Most of us have experienced something like this and would not be surprised, but most people would be surprised to find the entire text of William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet written in sand. Why is this? The obvious reason is that sand is the wrong material for large writing projects. Sand grains…
Einstein’s general theory of relativity was published in 1915. It again made headlines in 2017 with two major reports about gravitational waves that further confirmed the theory’s last remaining major prediction. On October 3, the detection of gravitational waves from coalescing black holes was awarded a Nobel Prize. On October 16, the observation of correlated gravitational and electromagnetic (light)…
“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This verse from Genesis 3 captures very well the fate of beautifully designed organisms after the entrance of sin into the world. But how long does it take for the organic molecules we are made of to break down after death? In general, the longer the time from death, the larger the amount of decay that should be observed. This is particularly true for soft…
There is one small molecule that makes our world unique and special. What is it? Water! Sure, other planets and moons in our solar system may have (or had) water and even more than Earth, but it is rare to find liquid water on the surface of a planet.
Volcanic outcrops in the Galápagos Archipelago do not appear to provide the wealth of specimens found in other fossil-rich localities around the world. However, fossils are indeed present in the Galápagos Islands. This brief review addresses the where, what, when, and why of fossils in the Galápagos Islands and closes with a discussion of their potential contribution to the development of models on…
The rocks of the Earth are like pages of a history book containing information about the past. Geologists who enjoy reading this “book” have found that it consists of two “volumes:” the first, named Precambrian, is mostly devoid of macroscopic fossils. The second, named Phanerozoic, contains layers and sediments providing a rich archive of past forms of animal and vegetal life. The Phanerozoic “volume”…
This third part of a series on the Precambrian provides two perspectives suggested by creationists on how to interpret this portion of the rock record.
This first section of a 3 parts series on the Precambrian summarizes the standard model for formation of the Universe, Solar System and Earth, Moon, oceans, continents, and plate tectonics. Brief references to the Universe, Sun, and Moon are included because what happens beyond Earth sets the stage for what happens on Earth during the Precambrian and in the Genesis 1 account.
A collection of short commentaries on scientific papers published in 2015, covering topics such as phylogeny of moths, beak variations in species of Galapagos finches and scrub jays, functional synthetic chromosomes, horizontal gene transfer, Jurassic fossil snakes, stasis, trace fossils of swimming tetrapods, and habitat diversity in the fossil record. Published in Origins, n. 64.
Among those who reject the Biblical record of God’s action in creating everything, including all living things, the process of chemical evolution from atoms to the first cell is usually explained something like this: elements reacted with each other spontaneously forming simple molecules. These simple molecules continued to react forming larger and more complex molecules such as the nucleotide building…
Radiometric dating has its uncertainties, but often seems to work well. At this point we don’t know how to relate its resulting ages with the Bible record, for we only know in part (I Cor 13:8-12). However, God’s ways are not our ways (Isa 55:8) and with God all things are possible (Mt 19:26; Lk 18:27).
Can we detect design in nature? What kind of arguments have been used to make the design inference?
In spite of their proposed long ages of formation, the flat gaps show very little or no weathering or erosion weathering or erosion of the underlying layers. This clearly indicates a different mechanism is responsible for their formation and is what would be expected in the context of rapid deposition during the astonishing Genesis Flood described in the Bible.
The way in which God interacts with the world, or divine action, has long been a matter of discussion for theists in the philosophy of science, and continues to remain a complex and controversial topic. In recent decades, this question has taken on additional complexity with advances in contemporary physics, namely quantum physics, which posits a random or probabilistic world in contradistinction to the apparently completely deterministic natural world of Isaac Newton.
Truly, in our planet, life is everywhere. And without water, this profusion of life would not be possible. In the battle over origins, Darwinism cannot offer a convincing explanation when advocating for the random emergence of life and matter, including water.
As science develops more complete naturalistic explanations to describe the universe, it may appear that there is less room for God in the picture. And if science ever discovers a “complete” theory, it could be presumed that it would describe a universe without God. I am confident, however, that this conclusion is neither necessary nor valid. Drawing upon examples from physics, my purpose is to show that in developing a more complete picture of the universe, scientists are led to greater evidences for God and His design.
A collection of short commentaries on scientific papers published in 2008, covering topics such as human skeletons on Palau, the bacterial flagellum, antiobiotic resistance, abrupt appearance of fossil bats, Cretaceous feathers, dinosaur respiration. Published in Origins, n. 62.
Reactions comprising the nitrogen cycle are catalyzed by complex protein machines, some of which may be Irreducibly Complex (IC). Published in Origins n. 60.
A collection of short commentaries on scientific papers published in 2007, covering topics such as oceanic productivity, pseudogenes, sedimentary gaps, fossil birds, fossil bivalves, dinosaurs, stasis in lampreys and microbes, and hybrid sterility in fruit flies. Published in Origins n. 60.
Poor design in Rubisco can now be added to the growing list of failed Darwinian arguments from ignorance.
