Blog – Page 338

VIEW HEADLINES ONLY

Evolution of Segmentation Leads to Playing God

July 28, 2010

Most animals come in segments – body plans that are divided into more-or-less similar parts. Arthropods, worms and vertebrates are examples (including humans, with their vertebral segments and rough division into head, thorax and abdomen). Where did the idea of segmentation come from? Some French evolutionists think it just appeared by chance and changed the […]

Bible and Theology

Is Our World Natural?

July 27, 2010

At first glance, the headline sounds absurd: is our world natural? Of course the world is natural. Nature is natural, isn’t it? Often, though, we picture what humans do as unnatural – oil spills, landfills, pollution, nuclear waste, crime, war. But if humans are a part of nature, then whatever they do is natural. Some […]

Darwin and Evolution

Recapitulation Theory Gets Recap

July 26, 2010

The long-discounted “recapitulation theory” of Ernst Haeckel, the idea that the development of an embryo replays its evolutionary history, pops up every once in awhile in evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary biologists (most notably the late Stephen Jay Gould) have long since disparaged the idea that evolutionary history would be preserved in embryos. In addition, photos of […]

Solar System

Dating of Impacts and Impacts of Dating

July 25, 2010

Earth and Neptune were both on stage this week with stories of impacts. How do scientists know when they occurred? Neptune: A comet struck Neptune 200 years ago. That’s what planetary scientists are claiming, according to National Geographic. The data only “suggests” this explanation, according to Space.com. Since nobody witnessed the impact in 1810 (Neptune […]

Uncategorized

When Evolutionary Theory Gets It Wrong

July 24, 2010

Evolutionary theory tends to make certain predictions about cells, tissues and organs. A long history of evolutionary errors, twists, turns and dead ends would lead to a build-up of junk. Recent examples show instances where nothing could be further from the truth. Other reports show complexity being pushed farther down the tree of life. Primary […]

Bible and Theology

The Evolution of Integrity

July 23, 2010

Scientists are having to deal with a crisis that overlaps with theology: integrity. What is integrity? Where did it come from? How could it evolve? How is it to be measured? Questions like these are usually not answered with ammeters and test tubes, but they must be faced. A crisis of integrity in scientific research […]

Amazing Facts

Tiny Life in Extraordinary Motion

July 22, 2010

Don’t despise small things. Miniature plants and animals can pack some amazing punch and technology, as shown in two recent findings. Plant explosion: Peat moss. That’s the filler in our indoor plant soil and Live Science reported that its pots shoot its spores out at 89 miles per hour, producing accelerations of 36,000 G’s. Some […]

SETI

Second-Guessing Aliens

July 21, 2010

If we haven’t yet communicated with aliens, can we know anything about their character? Astrophysicist Gregory Benford of UC Irvine thinks we can surmise one thing: they are frugal. Why? “Whatever the life form, evolution selects for economy of resources,” he said. Broadcasting is expensive, and transmitting signals across light-years would require considerable resources.” […]

Fossils

Scratching Heads With Imaginary Stars

July 21, 2010

It was lurking out there, astronomers said. Our sun’s evil companion, invisible, dark, like a stealthy general of an enemy force, wandered silently in hiding, waiting for the next opportunity to order its agents of death into combat. Its name was Nemesis. Every 27 million years, using its gravity, it sent comets from the Oort […]

Origin of Life

Wishing ET Upon a Star

July 19, 2010

What are the odds of finding extraterrestrials? That subject has been discussed ad infinitum, but David Shiga at New Scientist thinks the odds just went up. “Solitary suns like ours are not as rare as we once thought, boosting the likelihood that there are other life-friendly solar systems in the universe.” It should be noted […]

Bible and Theology

Exorcising Nazi Ghosts Continues

July 18, 2010

With so many books and documentaries on the Nazi era and World War II, one would think the subject has been worked over to death by historians, and nothing else needs to be said. Surprisingly, new documents keep coming to light. Some new ones reported by Science magazine are especially disturbing: they show a willing […]

Cosmology

Dark Energy: Can a Theoretical Entity Be Measured?

July 17, 2010

The redshift of galaxies has been measured for some 90 years, but the existence of “dark energy” was postulated only recently – in the late 1990s. It was needed to explain unexpected dimness of the most distant galaxies, as measured by Type Ia supernovae. Some cosmologists claim they are measuring dark energy – others say […]

Bible and Theology

Spinning Webs of Belief: Accounting for George Price

July 16, 2010

It’s instructive to take a story and compare how evolutionists and creationists report it. A recent example can be found in the story of George Price: an ex-atheist scientist who, as a creationist, contributed original ideas to evolutionary theory. How did reviewers from both sides of the origins aisle characterize his creationist beliefs? […]

Early Man

Tricks to Preserve Deep Time

July 15, 2010

It’s not always easy to prove that things are very, very old. After all, no one has ever experienced deep time (millions and billions of years). The key is to maintain a public “feeling” in the oldness of things. Once that feeling is in place, some pretty major tweaks can be made by the experts […]

Birds

Revising Dinosaurs

July 14, 2010

Reconstructing a lost world from fossils is an inexact science. The realization that two species of dinosaur were different growth stages of the same species is just one example of the difficulty of drawing conclusions about past ecological conditions. It raises additional questions about the mental visions we have of the world of dinosaurs. […]

Posts by Date

[archives type="yearly"]