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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 […]
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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 […]
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Cosmology

How Well Do We Know What Stuff Is Made Of?
June 17, 2010
When we think of the “hard sciences,” physics usually tops the list.  A closer look at what physicists think the universe is made of, though, hardly makes the science look hard.  Look at this headline on PhysOrg, for instance: “Study finds there may be multiple ‘God particles’”.  The title refers, of course, to the famed […]
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Cosmology

Could Cosmology Be Based on Flawed Calibrations?
June 11, 2010
This is the era of “precision cosmology,” we have been told (09/20/2004 04/13/2007).  Especially since the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), measurements of faint deviations in the cosmic microwave background have reached exceptional detail (02/14/2003, allowing cosmologists to discriminate between cosmological models and, hopefully, provide insight into the nature and origins of the universe.  But […]
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Cosmology

Science Explains Why the Universe Exists
May 29, 2010
They’ve done it again – those clever scientists have figured out why the universe exists.  What would we ever do without them?  Michael Bolen at Yahoo News had to share the good news, “Scientists discover explanation for why the Universe exists.”  Space.com explained it as a victory in an ancient contest: “Why We Exist: Matter […]
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Astronomy

Are There Limits to Scientific Speculation?  A Royal Case
May 2, 2010
Question: When does science become like a priesthood?  Answer: When its practitioners engage in speculation on big questions impossible to verify with empirical observations.  Is this what the chief astronomer in Britain is doing?     Sir Martin Rees certainly would not have thought of himself as a priest as he wrote an article for […]
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Cosmology

Cosmologist Suffers Paranoid Delusions: Media Promotes His Views
April 26, 2010
“They’re coming to get us, and I’m sure of it, because I know everything.”  What would you think of someone who talked like that?  What if he were one of the most famous cosmologists alive today?  The man is Stephen Hawking – that wheelchair-bound math wizard who talks with a speech synthesizer and once fell […]
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Bible and Theology

Evolution as “Scientific Literacy” Dropped by NSB; Sets Off Firestorm
April 11, 2010
Can you be called scientifically literate if you deny that humans evolved from lower animals?  What if you deny the universe began with an explosion?  American students have typically scored low on those questions, leading to charges that they are scientifically illiterate compared to other countries in Europe and Asia.  But now, the National Science […]
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Cosmology

You Live in a Wormhole in a Black Hole
April 10, 2010
Is it publish or perish time?  A physicist at Indiana University thinks that “our universe could have itself formed from inside a black hole existing inside another universe.”  Let Nikodem Paplowski explain his idea: But he also notes that since observers can only see the outside of the black hole, the interior cannot be observed […]
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Cosmology

Explaining the Undetectable: Science or Faith?
March 28, 2010
Scientists routinely portray themselves superior to religious people who (in their estimation) accept things on faith.  This ignores the fact that many theories in science walk by faith, too.  Theories frequently posit entities that cannot be detected by any means – and may not exist at all, except as props for the consensus.  When a […]
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Cosmology

The Whole Universe Is Crazy
March 19, 2010
Suppose you engaged a mental patient about the origin of the universe.  He tells you that it banged and it whooshed and it crunched.  He elaborates and says that there’s lots of universes out there crashing into each other all the time.  “Yep, that’s how it happened, and that’s how we got here.  I’s sure […]
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Geology

The Copernican Geological Revolution
March 17, 2010
The Copernican Revolution did not just affect astronomy and physics: it revolutionized geology.
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Astronomy

Divining Violent gods as Natural Cosmic Creators
March 10, 2010
Ancient stargazers imagined the violent actions of gods in the heavens giving rise to the stars, earth and man.  Today’s secular astronomers engage in a similar kind of lore.  While not naming their gods after mythical heroes, they describe them as forces of nature whose violent clashes give rise to order and design.  Sometimes they […]
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Cosmology

Multiverse Explanations Are Fashionable, If Not Justifiable
February 22, 2010
How can scientists get away with speculating about unobservable universes, when science is supposed to concern itself with observation?  “In the end, there is no way to know for sure what other universes are out there, or what life they may hold,” an article in PhysOrg ended, “But that will likely not stop physicists from […]
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Cosmology

Universe Has a Run-Down Feeling
February 3, 2010
There’s 30 times more entropy in the universe than thought, according to Dr. Charley Lineweaver at the Australian National University.  PhysOrg said that Lineweaver and a PhD student Charles Egan measured the entropy of the universe.  It looks like it is feeling pretty run down.  “We considered all contributions to the entropy of the observable […]
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