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January 20, 2020
Getting heat to cold places, especially during winter, ranks as a great human concern and source of comfort. And though we may not ever think about Earth’s giant interior furnace, humans exist due to the benefits of its fine-tuned flow.
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Earth Design
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Earth's History
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Late Heavy Bombardment
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Life History
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Mars
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Moon & Its Formation
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Oceans
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Plate Tectonics
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Requirements for Life
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Solar System Design
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January 13, 2020
Have you ever had one of those mornings where you wonder where your get-up-and-go went? It takes a lot of energy to face the challenges of modern civilization. The difficulties facing humanity have differed over the millennia, but have always demanded a lot of energy expenditure.
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Solar System Design
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Life Complexity
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Stars
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Fine-Tuning
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Sun
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Life History
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Earth's History
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Earth Design
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January 6, 2020
Today marks the traditional date for the Epiphany and Christmas carols are still ringing in my head.
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Incarnation
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Stars
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Christmas
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December 30, 2019
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” So the song goes, but the processes that created these gems, namely earthquakes, have not generated such lyrics. Understandably, many people fear earthquakes and wish they would never happen.
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Earth's History
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Geophysics
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Plate Tectonics
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Sun
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Requirements for Life
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Life History
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Fine-Tuning
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Earth Design
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Early Earth
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December 23, 2019
Have you ever been embarrassed by burping in a public setting? I have. I remember a time I was speaking before an audience of a thousand-plus people and my message was also being live-streamed to the internet when I let out a loud burp into the microphone. My gaffe got the audience laughing and made them more comfortable listening to a science nerd talk about scientific evidences for the Christian faith.
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Fine-Tuning
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Geology
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Human Flourishing
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Sun
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Requirements for Life
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Plate Tectonics
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Oceans
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Life History
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Earth's History
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Earth Design
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Early Earth
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Atmosphere
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December 16, 2019
About 800,000 years ago Earth’s ice age cycle transitioned from being about 41,000 years long to about 100,000 years in duration. During a cycle, Earth’s ice coverage ranges from 10 percent of Earth’s surface to 20–23 percent. This transition, known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), may not seem important, but its highly improbable nature and especially what it means for human civilization has profound significance.
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Earth Design
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Fine-Tuning
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Earth's History
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Miracles
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Human Flourishing
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Geology
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Atmosphere
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December 9, 2019
At this time of year, Christmas carols and songs are in full swing. One song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” won an Academy Award in 1949 and we hear it often in December because it’s the month when we who live above the Tropic of Cancer all notice that it’s getting a lot colder.
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Requirements for Life
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Solar System Design
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Earth Design
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Life on Other Planets
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Fine-Tuning
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Sun
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Stars
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Earth's History
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Atmosphere
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December 2, 2019
Whenever a catastrophe strikes in the United States, political and public figures almost always offer “thoughts and prayers” and call the public to join them in their gestures for those negatively impacted by the catastrophe. However, until recently no one had conducted a scientific experiment to determine the value of these thoughts and prayers to the intended recipients.
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November 25, 2019
When humans experience or learn of an earthquake or volcano anywhere in the world, a natural response is to express concern and then mobilize to help the suffering. Because these disasters often result in tragedy, many people are surprised to learn that the processes involved in plate tectonics also play a crucial role in sustaining life on Earth. For example, who would have thought that the exchange of carbon between Earth’s layers must occur at just-right rates to ensure our survival? Thanks to ongoing research, scientists have discovered that 60 components of Earth’s deep carbon cycle must be fine-tuned for advanced life.
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Earth Science
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Earth Design
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Earth's History
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Ecosystems
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Sun
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Requirements for Life
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Plate Tectonics
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Oceans
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Ocean life
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Life History
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Life Design
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Life Complexity
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God's Existence
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Geophysics
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Geology
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Fossil Record
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Comets
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Cambrian Explosion
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Atmosphere
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November 18, 2019
The movement of carbon through Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, crust, and mantle may not immediately fascinate everybody, but we will appreciate those cycles as we understand how they help make our existence possible. Scientists have learned how Earth’s fine-tuned carbon cycles have compensated for the Sun’s increasing brightness to keep our planet from overheating or overcooling and, thus, making long-term life possible and comfortable.
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Fine-Tuning
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Requirements for Life
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Atmosphere
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Plate Tectonics
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Earth Science
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Sun
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Earth Design
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November 11, 2019
What counts as evidence that a scientific model is consistent with reality and therefore true? According to scientists, there is strong evidence for a model when advancing knowledge yields a progressively better-defined and more detailed description of the phenomenon the model explains. To that end, detailed spectral measurements of two stars from very early in the universe’s history have now yielded a more detailed and more precisely defined big bang creation model.
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Big Bang Theory
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Milky Way Galaxy
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Young-Earth Creationism
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Universe Design
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November 4, 2019
Everything scientists can observe and measure about the universe asserts that the universe had a beginning—a beginning that implies the creation of matter, energy, space, and time. A moment when all matter, energy, space, and time came into existence implies that a Causal Agent operating beyond (i.e., outside) them must have created the universe. Such a Causal Agent matches the description of the God of the Bible and contradicts the descriptions of the gods of the eastern religions.
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Origin of the Universe
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Cosmology
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Big Bang Theory
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Astronomy
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October 28, 2019
I grew up in British Columbia, a Canadian province that is 40% larger than Texas and almost entirely covered by forests. When I attended the University of British Columbia, the department of forestry was one of the larger educational departments on campus. In fact, the university was founded with a land grant of more than six square miles so that the department of forestry could have an on-campus forest on which they could conduct some of their research.
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October 21, 2019
In part 1 of this two-part series I explained how astronomers were able to discern the structures and extent of superclusters of galaxies and determine where we reside in the Laniakea Supercluster. Here in part 2 I will use a 26-image library I constructed (in part from a 176-megapixel image of the large-structure features of the universe) to describe how, at all cosmic size scales, we see that our position is remarkably fine-tuned to make possible our existence and civilization.
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Galaxy Design
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Universe Design
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Milky Way Galaxy
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Solar System Design
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Fine-Tuning
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Cosmic Expansion
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October 14, 2019
A well-designed home is a house where every room, wall closet, and cabinet of the interior has been configured to suit the specific needs and desires of the residents. For that to be possible, however, the house itself needs well-specified interior and exterior designs. What is true for our homes is also true for our galaxy, our galaxy cluster, and our supergalaxy cluster, and it seems that they all are well-designed indeed.
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Milky Way Galaxy
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Galaxy Design
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Fine-Tuning
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October 7, 2019
Physicians possess various tools for determining the health status of your heart. In addition to stethoscopes, physicians possess advanced instruments like electrocardiograms, echocardiograms, and angiograms to determine the health of human hearts. Likewise, astronomers now possess advanced telescope and imaging instruments to determine the health of our Milky Way Galaxy’s heart. These instruments reveal an unusual “health” that speaks of galaxy design.
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Old Earth Creationism
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Milky Way Galaxy
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Young-Earth Creationism
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Galaxy Design
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Fine-Tuning
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September 30, 2019
In many war movies that were released fifty to eighty years ago, an infantry lieutenant would challenge his platoon with the question, “Are we mice or are we men?” The platoon soldiers would shout back, “We are men! We are men!” The platoon would then charge into battle, suffering horrific casualties before ultimately winning a great victory. I do remember one spoof of such movies where the soldiers shouted, “We are mice! We are mice!” and then beat a hasty retreat.
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Human Uniqueness
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Animals
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Adaptation
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September 23, 2019
If you ever watched Tim Allen on Tool Time, the handyman show within the television show Home Improvement, you saw a man who always expressed joy in using some tool or set of tools to fix or solve a problem. Allen (as Tim “The Toolman” Taylor) portrayed what is inherent in us all. All human beings find satisfaction and fulfillment when we successfully use a tool—or better yet, several tools—to fix or solve something that has stumped or vexed us. Research affirms that this fulfillment in humans and some animals appears to result from a Creator’s endowment.
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Life Complexity
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God
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Animals
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Mental Health
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Human Uniqueness
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September 16, 2019
In last week’s post, I explained how a team of astronomers comprehensively verified general relativity by achieving unprecedented accuracy in their gravitational field tests, even for extremely strong gravitational fields. I also discussed how this verification strengthens the case for a cosmic beginning and for a causal Agent beyond space and time who created our universe. In this post, I’ll show how additional measurements on our galaxy’s supermassive black hole help resolve discrepancies and lead to further compelling philosophical implications.
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Big Bang Theory
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God's Existence
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Cosmic Expansion
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Dark Energy & Dark Matter
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Universe Design
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Relativity
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Origin of the Universe
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Milky Way Galaxy
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Galaxy Design
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September 9, 2019
It may be surprising to learn that a star orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy’s black hole has produced evidence for one of the most tested and implication-laden theories of science—general relativity—but that’s what’s happened. An international team of astronomers, equipped with sophisticated measuring instruments, has analyzed data they’ve captured from recent measurements of the star’s orbit and provided evidence buttressing the idea of a cosmic beginning and, hence, a causal agent. I’ll explain the findings in this post and will discuss the philosophical implications in next week’s entry.
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Relativity
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Milky Way Galaxy
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Origin of the Universe
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Einstein
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Universe Design
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Galaxy Design
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Cosmic Expansion
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Big Bang Theory
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