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Michael Denton Explore the Miracle of Air and Sun

air, biochemistry, biology, Children of Light, cosmos, Discovery Institute, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Michael Denton, planetary fine-tuning, sunlight
A classic episode of ID the Future shines a light on Discovery Institute biochemist Michael Denton’s book, Children of Light: The Astonishing Properties of Sunlight that Make Us Possible. Denton explores the properties of sun and air. Download the podcast or listen to it here. In Children of Light, Denton shows how sun and air are crucial parts of the larger story of our fine-tuned place in the cosmos. Or as he puts it in the book, “Whatever the cause and whatever the ultimate explanation, nature appears to be fine-tuned to an astonishing degree for beings of our biology.” Photo credit: Ingmar H on Unsplash. The post Michael Denton Explore the Miracle of Air and Sun appeared first on Evolution News.
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Sex Chromosomes Refuse to Fit One Origins Theory

angiosperms, biology, Evolution, flowers, Genome Biology and Evolution, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, Ophrys apifera, sex, sex chromosomes
Doesn’t everyone like sex? Of course they do — and the designer made the sexual organs of angiosperms, namely, flowers, to be the most spectacularly beautiful structures in biology, so he evidently likes sex too.  An invited review (open access) in Genome Biology and Evolution explores the “incredible diversity of sex chromosome systems,” but especially how their evolutionary origins refuse to fit any one theory. See, “Sex chromosome evolution: So many exceptions to the rules.” From the abstract: Despite many convergent genomic patterns exhibited by independently evolved sex chromosome systems, and many case studies supporting these theoretical predictions, emerging data provide numerous interesting exceptions to these long-standing theories, and suggest that the remarkable diversity of sex chromosomes is matched by a similar diversity in their evolution. Photo: Ophrys apifera, also known…
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Philosophy is more Certain than Science

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Podcast: Play in new window How can philosophy be more certain than science?  How can morality be more certain than science?  That goes against the common wisdom.  Join Frank as he uses COVID 19, as an illustration, to show we know philosophy and morality at least as well if not better than we know scientific truths.  Since science is built on philosophy in at least nine ways, science is only as good as our philosophy.  Frank also addresses questions on why God created us knowing we would sin, and how to deal with doubts. Subscribe on iTunes:  rate and review! Thanks!!! Subscribe on Google Play: Subscribe on Spotify: Subscribe on Stitcher: Free CrossExamined.org Resource Get the first chapter of "Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case" in…
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Push to Replace Earth Day with “Nature Rights”

anti-humanism, boat basin, Common Dreams, conservation, Culture & Ethics, Deep Ecology Movement, Earth Day, ecosystem, environmental harm, Environmentalism, human benefit, Lake Erie, litigation, nature rights, pollution, regulation, Science (journal)
Earth Day, celebrated this past Wednesday, launched the modern environmentalist movement in 1970. Since then, the movement has moved way beyond the principles of conservation, remediation of polluted areas, and protecting species to embrace an anti-humanism that seeks to throttle our thriving in the name of “saving the earth.” The Deep Ecology Movement is one example. Proving the old maxim that the revolution always consumes itself, two environmental activists have now urged abandoning Earth Day as a “failure” in favor of pushing the “rights of nature.” From “Abolish Earth Day,” published in Common Dreams: Embedded within Earth Day is the pursuit of comfort: the feeling that a benevolent authority exists to protect human and ecological life. People want to believe that laws — federal environmental regulations — protect them, and…
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An Astronomer Considers the Origin of Life, with Sobering Results

abiogenesis, astronomers, biologists, biology, calculation, Chemistry, Drake equation, Erlenmeyer flask, Evolution, Fischer Scientific, inflation, inflationary universe, metaphysics, meteorites, monomers, Nature (journal), nucleotides, origin of life, Physics, Earth & Space, reagents, RNA molecules, RNA world, silver atom, snowflakes, Tomonori Totani, tooth fairy, universe, University of Tokyo
Live Science reports: Is life a gamble? Scientist models universe to find out Scientists suspect that the complex life that slithers and crawls through every nook and cranny on Earth emerged from a random shuffling of non-living matter that ultimately spit out the building blocks of life. Even so, the details to support the idea are lacking. But researchers recently got creative in figuring out the probability of life actually emerging spontaneously from such inorganic matter — a process called abiogenesis. In the study, Tomonori Totani, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Tokyo, modeled the microscopic world of molecules across the epic scale of the entire universe to see if abiogenesis is a likely candidate for the origin of life. He was essentially looking at whether there were…
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Is Earth Just A Pale Blue Dot?

2. Does God Exist?, Apologetics, Atheism, atheist, beginning of the universe, Bible, Christianity, Creation, Does God Exists, earth, God, JesusIsNotAFakeNews, objections, Ryan Leasure, Skeptics, theology, universe
By Ryan Leasure  In his book Pale Blue Dot, the late astronomer Carl Sagan had this to say about the above photograph taken aboard Voyager I: Because of the reflection of sunlight… Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it’s just an accident of geometry and optics… Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Sagan reiterates what is commonly known as the Copernican Principle, or the Principle of…
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How to Restore Science’s Lost Luster

Agnes Grudniewicz, arXiv, bioRxiv, C.S. Lewis, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Christian Reflections, Christos A. Ouzounis, consciousness, Cornell University, De Futilitate, Economics, EMBO Report, Evolution, evolutionary anthropology, Francis Bacon, high school, history, information ecosystem, integrity, Intelligent Design, J.P. Moreland, Janet Browne, Jay Richards, Jennifer Allen, journals, laymen, March for Science, morality, Nature (journal), pandemic, peer-review, philosophy, PLOS Biology, Politicians, predatory journals, quantum chromodynamics, Science Advances, Science and Scientism, scientific conferences, scientific meetings, scientific method, scientism, scientists, Stephen Meyer, Tom Coburn, universe, Wastebook, Westworld, World War II, X Club
Scientists used to be among the most trusted individuals in society. The white lab coat marked an individual who was highly trained, very intelligent, and ultimately credible. Changes in the last century have cast severe doubt on that picture — and scientific organizations sometimes admit it themselves. Some are very worried about loss of public trust in their “expert” opinions. They should be worried. In his book Science and Scientism, J.P. Moreland helps put scientists in their place, as did C.S. Lewis before him. Moreland loves science. He trusts much of what scientists say. But he demonstrates that scientism is not credible, because it refutes itself. Many important fields of inquiry, he writes, are off-limits to science, and to the extent scientists invade areas outside their domain, their opinions have…
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Better than God?

Apologetics
On February 13, 1989, John Morris and Frank Zindler met together for a one-hour debate over the Flood of Noah. John Morris affirmed that there was a global flood as the Bible records; atheist Frank Zindler denied that such was the case. Dick Wolfsie hosted the debate for the NBC affiliate channel 13 in Indianapolis, Indiana. The debate was heated, to say the least, and bounced around to various topics including fossilization, DNA similarities between humans and animals, geological formations, and a host of other subjects. During the debate, Zindler made a very shocking and telling statement regarding God. In their discussion of DNA, John Morris accused Zindler of claiming to have the mind of God, or be as smart as God. In reply, Zindler said: “Well, I'm better than…
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Harvard Law Professor — Ban Homeschooling for “Question[ing] Science”

atheists, authoritarianism, Bible, Christians, creationism, Discovery Institute, Education, Erin O’Donnell, Evolution, evolutionary theory, Harvard Law School, Harvard Magazine, Harvard University, Home School Legal Defense Association, homeschooling, Idaho, ideologies, Intelligent Design, Kids, mind control, Newspeak, North Carolina, Parents, presumptive ban, Princeton University, prison, ProPublica, public schools, stereotyping, students, survivalists
Ban it for other reasons as well, says Professor Elizabeth Bartholet in a stunning article for Harvard Magazine. That’s right, the only form of education in the country that hasn’t been upended by the coronavirus. Well, that is a poorly timed proposal. Bartholet warns that homeschoolers are subject to child abuse, and are poorly prepared to participate in a democracy, having been oppressed by “essentially authoritarian control” by parents who are potential illiterates themselves. As depicted by Bartholet, homeschooling sounds little better than being in fundamentalist Christian prison. In fact, the illustration that goes with the article shows a girl behind bars in a house fashioned from books, on Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and the Bible. The article, by Erin O’Donnell, attacks a homeschooling group, while (as Rod Dreher points out)…
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God Uses Our Dreams and Disasters to Accomplish the Impossible

Apologetics, Apologetics for Parents, ApologeticsForParents, Bible, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, evil, God Sovereignty, Natasha Crain, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Natasha Crain  If you’ve read my books or followed my blog for a while, you know that the focus of my writing is to equip parents with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend the truth of Christianity so they can pass that knowledge on to their kids. This is my passion and focus, but it certainly doesn’t represent ALL that kids need to know and experience in their faith. It’s not enough to KNOW what’s true if that truth doesn’t transform us. For years now, I’ve followed blogger and author Kristen Welch at her blog; We Are THAT Family. She is someone I hugely admire for living a life transformed by truth through her work to serve others around the world, and today I…
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