The surface of Mars, as photographed by the Pathfinder lander (Image courtesy of NASA)
Dr. Stephen Hawking, one of today’s greatest minds in theoretical physics, stated:
I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.
While the last sentence is obviously offered tongue-in-cheek, the first sentence is a popular view among atheists. Because they believe that life must have come into being solely as a result of natural processes, they are forced to conclude that it must be prevalent throughout the universe. After all, if it happened here, it must have happened on a lot of other planets.
…utterly change this world. Everybody would think differently about everything.
As I wrote in the post linked above, I can’t imagine that’s true. The people who commented on the article seem to agree. Nevertheless, in many atheists’ minds, it’s a big deal. After all, if life is found on other planets, it becomes easier to believe that there is “nothing special” about life. It’s common throughout the universe, so there is no need to invoke anything other than natural processes to explain its existence.
The problem, of course, is that the scientific evidence speaks strongly against such a notion.
The cover of Exploring Creation with Marine Biology, Second EditionAbout 12 years ago, Sherri Seligson published a course entitled, Exploring Creation with Marine Biology. It quickly garnered rave reviews among homeschooling families. Over those 12 years, I have spoken to many, many high school students who have called it their favorite course, and I can remember at least four of them who said that they planned to study marine biology at university specifically because the course had given them a love for the subject. Such reviews have never come as a surprise to me, because Seligson has the “perfect storm” of characteristics for writing an excellent marine biology course for homeschoolers.
First and foremost, she knows her subject. She has a degree in marine biology and was the aquarist of the Living Seas aquarium at Epcot Center for four years. Based on her work there, she was able to publish original research on shark behavior in captivity. Second, she has a real passion for the subject. Just ask her a question about marine science. Her eyes will light up, she will smile, and she will enthusiastically answer your question, along with a dozen other related questions that you hadn’t thought to ask. She is also an excellent communicator, being able to adjust the way she discusses a subject so as to meet the needs of the listener. Finally, she is a homeschooling mother, having educated four amazing children who are now adults. Is it any wonder that she could write a course on marine biology that would become so beloved in the homeschooling community?
However, 12 years is a long time for a biology course to be around. Our understanding of the natural world changes, and sometimes, those changes are substantial. As a result, science courses need to be updated from time to time. So far, the publisher of Exploring Creation with Marine Biology has been “hit and miss” with its updates. A few years ago, the publisher updated its Human Anatomy and Physiology course, making it significantly better than the previous version. The publisher then updated its chemistry course, with disastrous results.
I am happy to report that the publisher is now “two for three,” having produced an excellent update to this already fantastic course.
Dr. Richard Dawkins in 2010
(click for credit)I am not a fan of Dr. Richard Dawkins. I have read most of his books, because I think it is important to know what one of atheism’s leading evangelists has to say. However, I obviously disagree with a lot of his beliefs. As a result, when I first read about one of his events being cancelled, I have to admit that I thought, “Well, it serves him right. He regularly attempts to shut down creationists, so it’s about time he got a taste of his own medicine!” After allowing time for my brain to override my emotions, however, I realized that this cancellation is not a good thing.
If you haven’t heard the news yet, Dr. Dawkins was scheduled to read from his new book, Science in the Soul, at a church (ironic, isn’t it?) in Berkeley, California. The event was sponsored by a local radio station, KPFA. However, the radio station got cold feet and cancelled the event. Why? According to the statement they sent to ticket holders:
We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people. KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier.
I am not sure why the people at the radio station think words that “offended and hurt” constitute “abusive speech.” It seems to me that a lot of statements can offend and hurt people but not be abusive. If I say, “Pedophilia is wrong and should be punished severely,” I am sure to offend some pedophiles out there. However, that statement can hardly be considered abusive. In the same way, Dr. Dawkins has said some terrible things about Islam, but I can’t remember reading anything of his that I thought was even remotely abusive to the people who follow Islam.
In 1586, a Portuguese missionary named João dos Santos began ministering to the people of Mozambique. While his focus was evangelism, he also studied the people and observed the colonization process. His detailed observations were reported in a monograph entitled Ethiopia Oriental, which was published in 1891. One of the interesting things documented in his monograph was the relationship between the people of Mozambique and a native species of bird, now known as the Greater Honeyguide (Indicator indicator). He claims to have seen these people call out to the bird, which then led them to bees’ nests so that they could collect honey.
Why would the birds help people find bees’ nests? Because they eat beeswax. João dos Santos figured this out because he saw some of them nibbling on the beeswax candles he had in his chapel. Since their ability to fly allows them to scout a large area in a short amount of time, they know where the bees’ nests are. However, they have a hard time getting to the wax that they want to eat, because the bees defend their nests. Thus, they need help to get to the wax. That’s where the people come in.
I first noted that there might be a problem with their conclusion over two years ago, when other researchers tried to duplicate their results using a more precise technique. They found small changes (significantly smaller than the Purdue group) and no indication that those changes were correlated with the distance between the earth and the sun. Since then, two more papers have been published that pretty much seal the case that the Purdue results were wrong.
The first paper comes from NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since NIST is responsible for all sorts of standards, several of their groups monitor radioactive isotopes for extended periods of time. They are also concerned with precision, so their procedures are focused on making sure there are no outside influences acting on their experiments.
Their paper reports on the results of experiments carried out in 14 laboratories across the world. A total of 24 different radioactive isotopes were studied, including those that decay by alpha emission, beta emission, electron capture, and positron emission. Some experiments covered “only” 200 days, but others covered four decades! Eleven different experimental techniques were used. All of the experiments saw very small variations (less than one-hundredth of one percent), and none of them saw any correlation between those tiny variations and the distance between the earth and the sun. In addition, the variations were different from experiment to experiment, so the most likely explanation for them is variation in the instruments that were used.
While the NIST paper obviously makes a strong case that the Purdue results are not real, I think a more recent paper gives us the final word. The authors used the same detection technique as the Purdue researchers, but they performed the experiment in a sealed chamber that had constant pressure, humidity, and temperature. They studied five radioactive isotopes for over a year, and like the NIST teams, they saw only small variations that were not correlated with the distance between the earth and the sun. This indicates that whatever the Purdue researchers saw was related to changing weather conditions, not changing radioactive half-lives.
While it would have been exciting for radioactive half-lives to be dependent on the distance between the earth and the sun, it almost certainly isn’t the case.
To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a matter of metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.
Almost thirty years have passed since he made this statement, and the scientific evidence continues to support it.
I recently learned about a new study that adds even more evidence to the ever-growing pile which indicates that babies are fully human while they are inside the womb.
The film Is Genesis History is unique in many ways. As far as I know, for example, it is the first creationist film that was released as a Fathom Event, meaning it was scheduled to be in theaters for a single showing on a single day (February 23rd). Unfortunately, I was speaking at a conference during that showing, so I was unable to go. It was apparently a very popular Fathom Event, because it was then scheduled for two “encore performances” (March 2nd and March 7th). Unfortunately, I was busy on both of those days as well! As a result, I had to wait for the film to come out on DVD. It was released May 2nd, so I ordered it, and then I watched it.
My overall review is mixed. There are some wonderful moments in the film, and there are some moments that are not so wonderful. Before I get into the details, however, it is best to describe the film in general. The star and narrator of the film is Dr. Del Tackett, who originally studied computer science and taught it for the Air Force. He also served President George H. W. Bush as director of technical planning for the National Security Council. His highest earned degree is a Doctorate of Management from Colorado Technical University. He interviews thirteen different PhDs, most of whom are scientists. All of the interviews are designed to investigate the question that makes up the title of the film: Is Genesis History?
The idea of interviewing only people who hold PhDs (another unique feature of the film) was a good one. They were all clearly knowledgeable in their fields, and they all seemed comfortable in front of the camera. Rather than interviewing them in their offices, Tackett went “into the field” with each of them. When he interviewed geologist Dr. Steve Austin, for example, he did so at the Grand Canyon, where Austin has done a lot of his research. When he interviewed microbiologist Dr. Kevin Anderson, he went to Anderson’s laboratory. This made the interviews more interesting and provided some great visuals to go along with the information being presented.
Despite the hard work of the Inquisition, Armitage is still investigating his amazing discovery. A couple of years ago, for example, a sample of the fossil was analyzed for carbon-14 content. If it really is 65 million years old, there should be no carbon-14 in the fossil. Nevertheless, carbon-14 was found. Of course, there is always the chance that the carbon-14 is the result of contamination, but combined with the presence of soft bone cells, it seems obvious to me that the fossil is significantly younger than 65 million years!
Somehow, I missed the latest update on Armitage’s incredible work. In the January, 2016 issue of Microscopy Today, he published more results from his painstaking analysis, and they are truly amazing.
Let’s start with where this discovery was made. There is a geological formation in Quebec, Canada known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt. It contains rocks formed from lava as well as those formed from sediments. These rocks, however, have been subjected to a lot of heat and pressure and are therefore called metamorphic rock, because the heat and pressure have transformed (metamorphosed) them from their original state. That’s important. I will come back to it later.
Extensive geological studies have concluded that this formation was once on the ocean floor and contained hydrothermal vents. There is controversy when it comes to the conventional dating of the formation, however. Radioactive dating based on the abundance of specific uranium and lead isotopes indicates that the formation is about 3.8 billion years old. However, radioactive dating based on samarium and neodymium isotopes indicate that it is 4.3 billion years old. As a nuclear chemist, I don’t think either dating method gives accurate results, so those dates mean very little to me. However, they are important to those who are committed to believing in an ancient earth. So whether or not these are the oldest microfossils isn’t really known. If one of those two conflicting ages happens to be correct (I seriously doubt it), then yes, they are the oldest.
The cover of the book (click for Amazon entry)What is the nature of science? Many think this is a fairly easy question to answer. Science is about making observations and then forming the most reasonable conclusions based on those observations, right? Well…that depends. There are many (myself included) who think that the scientific community as a whole artificially censors certain conclusions, because those conclusions don’t fit a criterion that has been imposed on science: that science can refer only to material causes. Because of this view, which is often called naturalism, many claim that science cannot deal with issues like purpose, will, the soul, or God. Of course, this flies in the face of science history, which shows us that the science we have today was formed by those who continually incorporated God into their scientific research.
The purpose of Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies is to explore how naturalism overtook science and how that error can be corrected. The book is actually a compilation of the proceedings of the 2016 Conference on Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism. As such, it is really a collection of essays written by multiple authors. Some of the authors deal with the problem of naturalism’s infection of science, others discuss how scientists can build alternatives to naturalism, and others make suggestions for how non-naturalistic causes can be used to guide research in certain fields.
But wait a minute. Science is about studying the natural world – doing repeatable experiments and coming up with conclusions that apply uniformly throughout nature. Doesn’t anything supernatural work against that? After all, if miracles can occur, doesn’t that mean I can’t trust my experiments? Couldn’t any result I get in the lab be the work of a capricious demon? Of course not, and the author of the second contribution to this book (Tom Gilson), gives us the obvious reason why.
