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Bible and Theology

Humans As Guinea Pigs
April 27, 2011
Some scientists like to examine everything except themselves.  Human beings are natural objects, they think; why not apply the scientific method to the study of other human beings?  It’s a perfectly natural inclination; the question is whether the findings have scientific validity, or result in understanding of human nature better than the explanations offered by […]
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Amazing Facts

Animal Tricks Inspire
April 26, 2011
Here we are in the millennium of science, and we are still trying to figure out how animals do such nifty things.  Some of their nifty tricks we didn’t even know about till researchers took a look.  With high-tech monitoring tools, we might even learn the tricks for our own good. Owl fowl:  The flapping […]
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Cosmology

Was Einstein Wrong?
April 25, 2011
Relativity and quantum mechanics are among the weirdest ideas that educated people have taken seriously.  They required suspending belief in the most intuitive concepts we have of time, space, and matter.  But just because they appear to work does not necessarily mean they are true.  In fact, physicists continue to beat on one or the […]
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Cell Biology

Why Stuff Evolves: Not Having Stuff Would Be Terrible
April 23, 2011
The delicate yet effective choreography of DNA Damage Repair was described by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in terms of amazement: “Safeguarding genome integrity through extraordinary DNA repair.”  DNA repair is essential for health: “To prevent not only gene mutations but broken chromosomes and chromosomal abnormalities known to cause cancer, infertility, and other diseases in humans, […]
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Uncategorized

Science Jelly Beans
April 23, 2011
Time to clear the deck again.  Here’s a collection of sweet and sour news nuggets readers may wish to munch on. Fossils: big early spider:  An exquisitely preserved spider has been found in Chinese Jurassic strata; see picture on National Geographic News.  This pushes the origin of its genus back 130 million years, according to […]
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Bible and Theology

Are Earthquakes Increasing?
April 22, 2011
The recent rash of deadly earthquakes has many people asking: is this unusual?  Have the frequency and intensity of earthquakes been increasing in recent years?  Geologists secular and theistic have weighed in on the question.     Two reporters at Live Science (Live Science #1 and Live Science #2) took up the issue and quoted […]
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Bible and Theology

Scientists Invade Religion
April 21, 2011
Science and religion, those uneasy combatants in turf wars, do not get equal treatment in the media.  The referees in the science news media frequently overlook invasions by science into religious territory, but fail to heed calls of foul by the invaded. World religion:  Last month in New Scientist, Kate Douglas theorized about what an […]
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Uncategorized

Biomimetics: Who Is Imitating Whom?
April 19, 2011
Biomimetics is a cutting-edge branch of applied science that looks for ways to imitate nature to solve engineering problems.  Sometimes, though engineers invent things then find that nature had a similar solution all along.  Other times, there is overlap, with engineers inventing things that affect nature, or nature guiding engineering that is already in progress.  […]
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Astronomy

Upsets in Space
April 18, 2011
Three different astronomy teams have announced findings that upset long-held beliefs.  What does this portend about the confidence we can have in other theories? Galaxy growth: direct challenge:  “Galaxies are thought to develop by the gravitational attraction between and merger of smaller ‘sub-galaxies’, a process that standard cosmological ideas suggest should be ongoing,” announced the […]
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Bible and Theology

Secular Science Analyzes Jesus
April 17, 2011
In a classic religion-vs-science confrontation, Live Science took on the question, “Jesus Christ the Man: Does the Physical Evidence Hold Up?”  The answer may say more about science than about Jesus.     To begin with, reporter Natalie Wolchover drew distinctions between scientific evidence and belief – as if evidence requires no belief or assumption […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Evolutionary Language Lingo Contradictory
April 16, 2011
Human language is such a unique feature of our species, it would seem to defy evolutionary explanations.  Can evolutionists take this living phenomenon and fit it into a historical narrative?  A couple of papers in leading journals attempted to do so.  Are their conclusions the only ones that can be drawn from the evidence?   […]
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Bible and Theology

Who Should Teach Self-Control?
April 15, 2011
A symposium at Massey University in New Zealand has come up with a profound thought: self-control is a key to a happier life.  Academics have helped themselves to an ancient notion that teaching self-control to children leads to happier outcomes as adults.  Did the world need science to reach this conclusion?     Self-control is […]
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Cell Biology

Complexity Appears “Earlier than Thought”
April 14, 2011
Widely-separate branches of science seem to converge on a common puzzle: complexity goes farther back than scientists expected – evolutionary scientists, that is. Cosmology:  More evidence has come that galaxies formed very early.  A mature galaxy detected through gravitational lensing was announced by the Hubble Telescope team, with an estimated redshift of 6.027.  In the […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Science Sites Stretch Truth About “Transitional Form”
April 13, 2011
A tiny piece of cartilage-turned-bone has science news sites jumping for joy about an evolutionary transitional form.  But is it one?  A closer look shows a much more complex picture than the simple evolutionary victory being told in the media.     “Long-sought fossil mammal with transitional middle ear found,” trumpeted PhysOrg; in close harmony, […]
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Uncategorized

Dubious Darwinian Inferences Unquestioned
April 12, 2011
Science was invented to stop jumping to conclusions.  Leaps of faith from small clues to grand explanations were to be replaced by slow, careful, methodical investigations of raw data until rational inferences could be drawn.  Do the following research examples do justice to that ideal? Smelly dinobird air space:  The news media are chortling over […]
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