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October 1, 2007
I once saw a toy that served as a visual example of the saying "one in a million". It consisted of a clear plastic ball about 4 inches in diameter filled with literally a million little plastic cubes. All were painted silver but one, which was painted red. The object was to find the red cube! Needless to say, finding it was no mean task.
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Life on Other Planets
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Habitable Planets
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Extrasolar Planets
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Instrumentation
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October 1, 2007
This question is posed by small children, by college students, and by leaders of atheist societies. It is essentially an interrogative about the nature of causality. To answer this common query effectively requires both a philosophical and a theological response.
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Atheism
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Philosophy of Religion
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October 1, 2007
I received a cordless drill for Christmas last year. Many of its features make my around-the-home projects far easier to accomplish: two batteries (one recharges while I use the other), a keyless chuck for easy changing of bits, an LED work light, a built-in level, and a torque adjustment ring, to name a few. Having the proper tools makes a world of difference in the quality and efficiency with which projects get done.
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Scientific Evidence for an Old Earth
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July 2, 2007
What was the best movie of the past year? Who is the best-dressed celebrity? What is the best university in the country? Many people are fascinated by lists of “the best.” And apologetics is no exception.
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July 1, 2007
Not until Albert Einstein produced his theory of general relativity in 1916 did scientists even consider the possibility that the cosmos continually expands. And yet five ancient writers—Job, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah—all described this expansion more than two thousand years ago.1 For centuries the Bible stood alone as the only text making such a claim about the universe. So today, as the body of evidence for continual expansion grows, the case for the reliability and predictive power of the Bible and of the Christian worldview also grows. A breakthrough from a team of American radio astronomers just added to it.
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Universe Design
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TCM - Origin of the Universe
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Scientific Evidence for a Young Earth
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Origin of the Universe
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TCM - Cosmic Design
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Scientific Evidence for an Old Earth
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Big Bang
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Biblical Evidence for an Old Earth
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Astronomy and the Bible
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July 1, 2007
As kids we had great fun passing handwritten notes to each other across the classroom. The challenge was to avoid the teacher’s detection. The more "sophisticated" among us would convert them into secret messages by writing them in code. Unfortunately, the teacher was no dummy and easily figured out the code—each letter was a number, in sequence—and embarrassed us in front of the class by reading aloud our secret message.
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July 1, 2007
A member of my Sunday school class asked me a question after hearing my talk on the Trinity—the biblically derived doctrine of historic Christianity that the one God subsists as three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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Origin of the Universe
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Trinity
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Creation Passages
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July 1, 2007
You’re Standing on a Floating Plate This just in—ice floats in water! Unlike most materials, as liquid water cools to near its freezing point, its density decreases and then expands as it freezes. Thus, colder water and any ice float on the warmer liquid water below.
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April 1, 2007
My seventh-grade science teacher asked the class to list “the three most essential needs of human life.” The “correct” answer—water, food, and sleep—illustrates how easily people take for granted the air we breathe, specifically its oxygen content. Most humans can live a few days without water, food, and sleep, and yet we can’t go more than a few minutes without oxygen. I understood that much in junior high, but at the time I had no idea that Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere represents—and facilitates—a miracle.
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Creation Miracles
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Earth/Moon Design
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Life Design
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Geophysical Design
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TCM - Life Design
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Speciation Events
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Creation "Days"
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Cambrian Explosion
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April 1, 2007
Either a beachfront home or a secluded mountain ranch costs far more than a house in suburbia. A secluded mountain ranch with a beachfront on the other hand—now that would be valuable property. The real estate maxim applies in a similar way when considering the location of any potential life-supporting planet—but with far greater consequences than material wealth.
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Solar System Design
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Extrasolar Planets
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April 1, 2007
My family lives in one of the fastest-rising neighborhoods in the nation—not economically, but topographically. Our home rises by an average of 9 millimeters (1/3 inch) per year. Sometimes the elevation gain (via earthquake) seems a bit disturbing. Sometimes it's destructive. Nonetheless, I tell my wife and sons we should be thankful for all the uplift we get. Specifically, we can thank God for designing Earth for vigorous and virtually constant plate tectonic activity. Why? Because such movement is essential for life.
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Extrasolar Planets
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Plate Tectonics
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TCM - Faint Sun Paradox
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Faint Sun Paradox
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Life on Other Planets
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Earth/Moon Design
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Biodeposits
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January 1, 2007
Nobody likes an infection. Most illnesses caused by bacteria present little more than a nuisance easily treated with a few doses of antibiotics. But some infections can be life-threatening and require carefully controlled administration of drugs. In such cases, physicians sometimes make use of a small, portable medical device powered by a peristaltic pump (see sidebar) to deliver the right amount of drugs through an IV to the patient.
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January 1, 2007
Imagine yourself in a courtroom with RTB astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink playing the role of attorney.
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January 1, 2007
Spiral galaxies are like people: they fray as they age. As people gradually sag and wrinkle, so too a young galaxy's elegant spiral structure frays into myriad substructures-spurs, feathers, and filaments-branching off from the main spiral arms. These substructures interfere with the needs of advanced life.
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TCM - Cosmic Design
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Galaxy Design
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January 1, 2007
Everybody has one. A person may be educated or uneducated, liberal or conservative, rich or poor, nonbelieving or God-fearing, but all people act and live in certain ways because they are guided by particular worldviews. Given its importance, just what exactly is a worldview?
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January 1, 2007
In my undergraduate course in biology at Caltech in the late 1950s, a cell was understood simply as a variety of chemical reactions going on inside a tiny test tube.1 Now, 50 years later, scientists know that the structure inside a cell is far more complex and exhibits elegant organization suggestive of a Designer.
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November 1, 2006
A demolition expert surveys the building designated for destruction. With one swing of the wrecking ball, he must bring down the building without scattering the debris off the property. Such a precise operation requires the right size wrecking ball hitting at just the right speed. Hitting too high only removes the roof; too low and the ground absorbs all the wrecking force. The possibilities for a failed demolition far exceed the ways to succeed. After exacting calculations, the wrecking ball scores a direct hit, transforming the building into an easily cleaned-up pile of debris.
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October 1, 2006
Tradesmen get a lot of business from people who start projects that appear simple. ("How hard can it be to install a new shower?") What initially looks like a straightforward task ends up requiring much more skill, time, and financial resources than expected. After many hours of frustration, and often many dollars spent, the exasperated homeowner calls the expert. In those circumstances, the skill and resourcefulness of the craftsman is readily appreciated.
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Solar System Design
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Extrasolar Planets
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October 1, 2006
When asked what the study of nature told him about God, the legendary biologist J. B. S. Haldane quipped, "The Creator must have an inordinate fondness for beetles. He made so many of them."
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October 1, 2006
The universe is incredibly massive. Nevertheless, its mass must be spectacularly fine-tuned for life to be possible. Exactly how massive the universe is remained unknown until astronomers focused the Hubble Space Telescope on a patch of sky no bigger than a tenth the Moon's (angular) diameter, and held it there for some 278 hours. This Ultra Deep Field (see figure) successfully imaged all the galaxies (at least those bigger than dwarfs) that exist in that region.
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Universe Design
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TCM - Cosmic Design
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Origin of the Universe
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Big Bang
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Astronomy and the Bible
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