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October 16, 2019
I knew my career as a baseball player would be short-lived when, as a thirteen-year-old, I made the transition from Little League to the Babe Ruth League, which uses official Major League Baseball rules. Suddenly there were a whole lot more rules for me to follow than I ever had to think about in Little League.
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Biochemistry
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Optimization
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Intelligent Design
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October 9, 2019
As a graduate student and a postdoc, I spent countless hours in the lab doing research. Part of my work involved performing biochemical assays—laboratory procedures designed to measure the activities of biomolecules and biochemical systems.
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Intelligent Design
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Optimization
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Biochemistry
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Anthropic Principle
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September 25, 2019
If you could visit a theme park that offered you a chance to view and even interact with real-life dinosaurs, would you go? I think I might. Who wants to swim with dolphins when you can hang out with dinosaurs? Maybe even ride one?
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Synthetic Biology
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Dinosaurs
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Evolution
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September 18, 2019
It was the first time someone I knew died. I was in seventh grade. My classmate’s younger brother and two younger sisters perished in a fire that burned his family’s home to the ground. We lived in a small rural town in West Virginia at the time. Everyone knew each other and the impact of that tragedy reverberated throughout the community.
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Neanderthals/Hominids
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Human Origins
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Image of God
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Human Uniqueness
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Animal Death
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September 4, 2019
To say that biological systems are complicated is an understatement.
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Ecosystems
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Argument from Beauty
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Anthropic Principle
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August 21, 2019
In high school, I spent most Sunday mornings with my family gathered around the TV watching weekly reruns of the old Abbott and Costello movies.
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Challenges to Evolution
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Intelligent Design
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Cells
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August 14, 2019
Imagine you’re flying over the desert, and you notice a pile of rocks down below. Most likely, you would think little of it. But suppose the rocks were arranged to spell out a message. I bet you would conclude that someone had arranged those rocks to communicate something to you and others who might happen to fly over the desert.
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Bioinformatics
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Intelligent Design
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Biochemistry
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August 7, 2019
I feel cold all the time. When I was younger, I was always hot. I needed to be in air conditioning everywhere I went. I could never get the temperature cold enough. But now that I am older, I feel like a frail person who is always chilled, needing to drape myself with a blanket to keep warm.
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Optimization
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Intelligent Design
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Biology
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July 24, 2019
When I was a little kid, my father was chair of the physics department at West Virginia Institute of Technology (WVIT). We lived in faculty housing on the outskirts of the WVIT campus and, as a result, the college grounds became my playground.
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Science
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Philosophy of Science
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Intelligent Design
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July 17, 2019
Most people who follow my work at Reasons to Believe know I question the grand claim of the evolutionary paradigm; namely, that evolutionary processes provide the exclusive explanation for the origin, design, and history of life. In light of my skepticism, friends and foes alike often ask me how I deal with (what many people perceive to be) the compelling evidence for the evolutionary history of life, such as vestigial structures and shared genetic features in genomes.
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Intelligent Design
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Evolution
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Creation vs. Evolution
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July 10, 2019
If you find yourself in need of directions when traveling through New England and you ask a local for help, he or she just might reply, “You can’t get there from here.” As you can imagine, these aren’t welcome words, particularly when all you want to do is make your way to your destination.
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Intelligent Design
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Evolution
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June 26, 2019
“What a mouse! . . . WHAT A MOUSE!” The narrator’s exclamation became the signature cry each time the superhero Mighty Mouse carried out the most impossible of feats.A parody of Superman, Mighty Mouse was the 1942 creation of Paul Terry of Terrytoons Studio for 20th Century Fox. Since then, Mighty Mouse has appeared in theatrical shorts and films, Saturday morning cartoons, and comic books.
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Age of the Earth
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Fossil Record
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June 19, 2019
There is a lot that evolutionary biologists can learn about the purpose of junk DNA from my wife. Let me explain. Recently, I wound up with a disassembled cabinet in the trunk of my car. Neither my wife Amy nor I could figure out where to put the cabinet in our home and we didn’t want to store it in the garage. The cabinet had all its pieces and was practically new. So, I offered it to a few people, but there were no takers. It seemed that nobody wanted to assemble the cabinet.
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Junk DNA & Bad Designs
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Biochemistry
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June 12, 2019
My last name, Rana, is Sanskrit in origin, referring to someone who descends from the Thar Ghar aristocracy. Living in Southern California means I don’t often meet Urdu-speaking people who would appreciate the regal heritage connected to my family name. But I do meet a lot of Spanish speakers. And when I introduce myself, I often see raised eyebrows and smiles.
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Argument from Beauty
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Biomimicry
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June 5, 2019
If God exists and if he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? This conundrum keeps many skeptics and seekers from the Christian faith and even troubles some Christians.
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Animal Death
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Problem of Evil
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Pain and Suffering
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May 29, 2019
As I get older, I find myself forgetting things—a lot. But, thanks to smartphone technology, I have learned how to manage my forgetfulness by using the “Notes” app on my iPhone.
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Anthropic Principle
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Bioinformatics
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Biochemistry
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Intelligent Design
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Design
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