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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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Darwin and Evolution

Teacher Protection Inflames Darwinist Outrage
April 11, 2011
Imagine a bill that protects teachers who wish to present facts – the facts about Darwinism.  Assume that it specifically forbids teaching creationism or intelligent design.  Imagine the bill seeking to increase critical thinking among students about controversial subjects.  Should it be a cause for alarm?     There’s actually a bill like that in […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Is This What Darwin Had in Mind?
April 10, 2011
Evolution is a word loosely used in science these days.  Reporters and scientists talk about “the evolution of” this or that sometimes carelessly, without regard to how the explanation fits old Darwinism or neo-Darwinism.  Has the word evolution become a kind of catch-all hypothesis, for which rigor is no longer necessary? Survival of the discreetist:  […]
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Solar System

More Youth on Titan
April 9, 2011
Hopes that Saturn’s giant moon Titan might have volcanoes just dropped.  A new paper in Icarus1 concludes Titan gets its geology from the outside, not the inside.  If confirmed, it implies all the surface features were created by wind, impacts and weather – not by active geology.  The hopeful cryovolcano announced last year (Sotra Facula, […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Researchers Violate Separation of Science and State
April 8, 2011
What are the limits of science?  Many of us envision men and women in white lab coats holding test tubes, studying readouts on instruments, or hacking rocks with picks.  A look at headlines from science news sites, though, shows some scientists inserting their opinions in areas traditionally led by scholars in the humanities – and […]
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