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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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September 2, 2019
Time for both the universe and us as humans is linear. That is, for us, there exists only one dimension of time. In that one dimension, time moves inexorably forward. We can slow down the forward passage of time by adjusting our velocity, but we cannot reverse or stop it. Simply put, there is always a past, a present, and a future for the universe, and for us as its inhabitants.
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Good Questions
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Creation
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Augustine
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Trinity
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Philosophy
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Doctrine
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Cosmology
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Choice and Freewill
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Christian Issues
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August 26, 2019
One of the most popular articles I have written is “Big Bang—The Bible Taught It First!” I wrote it with the encouragement and assistance of theologian John Rea and we published it in Reasons to Believe’s Facts for Faith magazine in 2000.1 In the two decades since then, one of the most common objections I have received from skeptics is that the Bible teaches no such thing. Who is correct?
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RTB 101
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Creation & Genesis
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God's Existence
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Origin of the Universe
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Creation
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Cosmic Expansion
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Big Bang Theory
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August 19, 2019
Which model, naturalistic evolution or supernatural creation, best explains the pattern of life’s history on Earth? If a test produces “strikingly divergent results” for the expectations of a model, what does that tell us? A new study on speciation and extinction rates provides persuasive evidence.
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Creation vs. Evolution
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Extinction
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Genes & DNA
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Fossil Record
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Speciation
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Naturalism
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Genomics
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Common Design vs. Common Descent
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Challenges to Evolution
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Animals
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August 12, 2019
Skeptics of big bang creation cite a loophole in their attempts to avert a beginning for our universe and, hence, the implication of a causal agent. A new discovery on gamma-ray emissions from a supergiant galaxy stands to address the loophole from early in the universe’s history in an “era” (an extremely brief moment after the beginning) called quantum gravity.
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Laws of Physics
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Relativity
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Origin of the Universe
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Universe Design
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God
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Cosmology
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Big Bang Theory
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August 5, 2019
It may not occur to people living in a high-tech modern society, but an improbable confluence of natural events in Earth’s past has made our comfortable lives possible. Scientists have learned how four finely tuned snowball events led to just-right plate tectonic activity, along with the timing of the Sun’s brightness, in what appears to be a supernatural arrangement to prepare our planet for advanced life.
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Human Origins
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Earth Design
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Sun
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Life History
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Geology
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Creation vs. Evolution
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Atmosphere
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July 29, 2019
Which model, naturalistic evolution or biblical creation, best explains Earth’s mass extinctions followed by introductions of new species? A new discovery helps provide an answer as it sheds light on a coincidental supernova event and an asteroid impact.
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Extinction
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Life History
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Asteroids
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Natural Disasters
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Atmosphere
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Speciation
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Ocean life
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Creation vs. Evolution
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Animals
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July 22, 2019
A question that is frequently posted on my Facebook page is: Why, if there is an all-powerful, all-loving God, do good people die while they are still young? Here’s a recent example:
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Miracles
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Cancer
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Laws of Physics
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Sin
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Death
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Problem of Evil
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Pain and Suffering
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Bible
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July 19, 2019
Tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of the moment when men first stepped on the Moon’s surface. The Apollo 11 Moon landing remains indelibly etched in my mind’s eye. Shortly after lunch on July 20, 1969, ten of my fellow University of Toronto astronomy grad students and two astronomy professors headed upstairs with me to the department lounge to watch the only television available. We watched and listened intently to communications between Houston and the Lunar Command Module, Columbia, especially during the delicate separation of the Lunar Module, Eagle, from Columbia.
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Relativity
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Moon & Its Formation
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Science in the News
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Famous People
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July 15, 2019
Elusive detection of the universe’s firstborn stars has been a long-standing challenge toward developing a more detailed and better affirmed biblically predicted big bang creation model.1 Astronomers call them Population III stars, and a failure to observe them has led some people to conclude that the big bang creation model has been falsified. For example, past president of the Institute for Creation Research, Henry Morris II, wrote,
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Young-Earth Creationism
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Universe Design
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Stars
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Origin of the Universe
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Big Bang Theory
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July 8, 2019
Development of a biblical cosmic creation model ranks as one of the hallmarks of Reasons to Believe’s case for the Christian faith. In that model we maintain that thousands of years ago, the Bible explicitly predicted the following four features of the universe:
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Old Earth Creationism
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Universe Design
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Young-Earth Creationism
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God's Existence
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Big Bang Theory
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July 2, 2019
Today, July 1, 2019, Norman Geisler passed away peacefully, just 20 days short of his 87th birthday. No doubt he ranks as one of the greatest and most influential apologists of our time. He may be best known for his unswerving defense of biblical inerrancy and was a major participant in framing the Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy and Hermeneutics. He also cofounded two Christian seminaries, Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Veritas Evangelical Seminary in Santa Ana, California.
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Interviews
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Young-Earth Creationism
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Reasons to Believe
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Inerrancy
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July 1, 2019
I have visited the Dead Sea, 1,412 feet below sea level, and have climbed 14,000-foot-high mountains. In both instances I noticed a decrease in lung function. For advanced life, lungs provide the highest possible respiration efficiency.1 That efficiency, however, requires a narrow air pressure range.
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Exoplanets
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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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Life Design
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Atmosphere
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Anthropic Principle
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June 24, 2019
A little more than a month ago the internet and popular press were abuzz about a paper published by a team of astronomers led by Nobel laureate, Adam Riess. Riess and his team reported measurements that indicated that the universe might be a little more than a billion years younger than the date determined from analyzing a map of the cosmic background radiation—the radiation left over from the cosmic creation event.1 As one web article commented, the new measurements are “upending one of the few things scientists felt certain about”2 and consequently “the birth of the universe is shrouded in guesses and hypotheses.”3 Another web article stated that astronomers “lost track of time”4 and quoted Riess in saying that “we’re not passing this test [the age of the universe]—we’re failing the test!”5
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Inflation
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Dark Energy & Dark Matter
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Old Earth Creationism
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Young-Earth Creationism
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Universe Design
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Inerrancy
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Cosmology
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Cosmic Expansion
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Big Bang Theory
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June 17, 2019
Scientific advances continue to demonstrate our improbable planet’s fine-tuned features. In a recent issue of Science, a team of scientists led by Francis Macdonald described another extraordinary feature of Earth’s plate tectonic activity.1 This feature must be fine-tuned for life to persist on Earth for as long as it has and the required fine-tuning poses yet another challenge to naturalistic explanations for the history of Earth’s life.
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Life Design
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Naturalism
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Fine-Tuning
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Earth Design
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Atmosphere
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