Fantasy and Bad Science Fiction Creeping into Modern Science

Fantasy and Bad Science Fiction Creeping into Modern Scienceby Kirk Durston –
Science fiction, both good and bad, has crept into modern science, to the extent that for many people the distinction between doing science, and creative story telling, has become blurred.

An attribute of a good sci fi story is that it should open new vistas for the imagination while, at the same time, not require the reader to put up with the preposterous. Surprisingly, science fiction, both good and bad, has crept into modern science, to the extent that for many people the distinction between doing science, and creative story telling, has become blurred. In Part I, I discussed experimental science, which can be very trustworthy and is the source of every technological and medical benefit we enjoy today. Part II looked at inferential science, both good and not-so-good. Here we consider a third category of modern science, which I might call “fantasy science”, where science fiction is often confused with science. [Read more…]

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Is Academic Freedom Still Available to Science Teachers?

Intelligent Design Scientific Proof that Disproves Evolutionby Sarah Chaffee –
The idea that students are well served by creative, challenging instruction would seem uncontroversial. Except, that is, when the subject is evolution.

Imagine two science teachers. Mr. Smith teaches straight out of the textbook. He expects students simply to memorize and correctly regurgitate. The other, Ms. Jones, supplements her teaching with challenging mainstream material that casts the textbook’s position in a new, more critical light. She asks students to weigh some of the evidence for themselves, like real scientists do. [Read more…]

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If Evolution is Mindless, Why Does it Favor Survival?

Darwinism Evolution Blind Mindless Circular Reasoningby Scott Youngren –
Atheist biologists would have you believe that evolutionary processes are mindless, and purposeless. But the problem for such a claim is that survival is a goal or purpose. There is simply no way around this. If evolution is truly mindless and purposeless, why does it favor survival over non-survival?

Physicist Amit Goswami writes in his book Creative Evolution. A Physicist’s Resolution Between Darwinism and Intelligent Design: “The Darwinian theory of evolution is based on natural selection: Nature selects those organisms that are fittest to survive. In the materialist view, an organism is just a bundle of molecules that are completely specified by their physical and chemical properties.

Nowhere among these properties will you find a property called survivability.[Read more…]

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Let There Be Light: God, Not Random Forces, Created Our Universe

Let There Be Light: God, Not Random Forces, Created Our Universeby Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon –
The opening chapter of Genesis has long been a favorite of Christians, and ancient commentators discovered in its lines profound levels of meaning.

In more recent times, on the other hand, some readers of Genesis, distracted by apologetic concerns alien to the deeper interests of the Sacred Text, have failed to discover those depths. For example, even from boyhood I recall that some of my teachers were preoccupied with the length of the six “days” of Creation. Was it really necessary, they asked, to think of those “days” in the sense of having twenty-four hours? Might they not, instead, represent long periods of Natural History?

No, this is certainly not what the biblical author has in mind. The problem with such questions is that they distract the mind from the deeper message of the Sacred Text. [Read more…]

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Theistic Evolution Incompatible with the Bible and Christian Theology

Theistic Evolution Incompatible with the Bible and Christian Theology by Hank Hanegraaff –
Creation versus Evolution. As the debate rages, there remain those who contend that they can subscribe to modern evolutionary theory and, at the same time, believe in God’s Good News as revealed in the Bible. Is this belief in Theistic Evolution truly rational?

What Is Theistic Evolution?
Proponents of theistic evolution claim that God created man by evolutionary processes, that is man is said to have evolved from lower forms of life. If this were the case, then all life, including man and his presumed ancestors, would have been subject to death throughout history. This is because theistic evolution depends on death to weed out lesser fit organisms to make room for the development and refinement of surviving species.

However, the Bible tells us that death came about as a result of sin. If Adam had not eaten of the forbidden fruit, if he had not fallen into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what need is there for redemption? None! [Read more…]

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Why Atheists Don’t Really Exist

there are no such things as atheists by Joe Bissonnette –
In the deeper rumblings of their very selves, where nature speaks through instinct and God speaks through conscience, there are eternal truths that can be avoided for a time but not ultimately denied. The truth is that there are no such things as atheists.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to ascribe greater significance to information that supports our pre-existing theories and lesser significance to information that contradicts those theories. We often do this subconsciously.

For example you get a new car, and now you notice that same type of car on the road with a much greater frequency than you had noticed before. But though confirmation bias generally refers to the inclusion or exclusion of data, there are other ways we can shoehorn the obvious to make it fit within our world view. [Read more…]

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Animal Immortality: Do Animals Go to Heaven?

Animal Immortality: Do Animals Go to Heavenby Carol Apple –
Do our pets go to heaven? C.S. Lewis imaginatively addresses the question of animal immortality in his book The Problem of Pain.

When a beloved pet dies people can feel desperate to know if animals, at least some animals, have an eternal destiny. The Bible does not say one way or the other, but C.S. Lewis gives animal lovers reason to hope. Although he acknowledges that his ideas are only guesses, what compelling guesses they are, and how comforting to those of us who have loved an animal.

Lewis discusses animal immortality in Chapter 9 of his book The Problem of Pain, in which he discusses the theological issues involved in animal suffering. Lewis asks the question of how we can reconcile God’s justice with the pain of innocent creatures who can neither benefit from nor understand their suffering, and finds no answer in this world. Therefore, he ventures forth to consider the mystery of animal immortality and how it might work. [Read more…]

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Big Bang Evidence Points to God

Big Bang Evidence for Godby Frank Turek –
The scientific evidence all points to the fact that the universe began from literally nothing physical or temporal. Once there was no time, no space, and no matter and then it all banged into existence out of nothing with great precision.

The evidence led astronomer Dr. Robert Jastrow—who until his recent death was the director of the Mount Wilson observatory once led by Edwin Hubble—to author a book called God and the Astronomers. Despite revealing in the first line of chapter 1 that he was personally agnostic about ‘religious matters,” Jastrow reviewed some of the SURGE evidence and concluded,

“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”

[Read more…]

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Atheists are Wrong – Five Reasons Why God Exists

Atheists are Wrong - Five Reasons Why God Existsby William Lane Craig –
Most atheists, in my experience, have no good reasons for their disbelief. Rather they’ve learned to simply repeat the slogan, “There’s no good evidence for God’s existence!”

In the case of a Christian who has no good reasons for what he believes, this slogan serves as an effective conversation-stopper. But if we have good reasons for our beliefs, then this slogan serves rather as a conversation-starter.

The atheist who merely repeats this slogan after having been presented with arguments for God’s existence makes an empty assertion.

So what reasons might be given in defense of Christian theism? In my publications and oral debates with some of the world’s most notable atheists, I’ve defended the following five reasons why God exists: [Read more…]

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Second Code Discovered Inside DNA

Second Code Discovered Inside DNAby Stephanie Seiler –
Scientists have discovered a second code hiding within DNA. This second code contains information that changes how scientists read the instructions contained in DNA and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease.

A research team led by Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington associate professor of genome sciences and of medicine, made the discovery. The findings are reported in the Dec. 13 issue of Science.

Read the research paper.  Also see commentary in Science, “The Hidden Codes that Shape Protein Evolution.[Read more…]

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