Roland Earnst Archives

June 12, 2026June 10, 2026

Love Makes Us Vulnerable

Love makes us vulnerable. C.S. Lewis wrote many wonderful books filled with great wisdom. I think Mere Christianity is the greatest, but recently I reread one I hadn’t read in many years. Maturity and life circumstances, particularly losing my wife to cancer, gave me new insight as I read it again. It is The Four Loves, in which Lewis describes four Greek words for love. The Greek language in which the New Testament was written was much more precise about the various emotions that English describes with the word “love.”

Lewis says that the Greek “storge” is what we might call “affection.” “Friendship” is the Greek word “philia.” “Eros” is the Greek term for romantic love. But the greatest of the loves, as described in the New Testament, is “agape,” which Lewis describes as “charity.” It is godly love that endures no matter the circumstances. We have written about agape before, so I will not repeat what we have already said. However, in the section on agape, Lewis makes a statement that is worth taking to heart and even memorizing. Here is what he said:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

The wisdom of C.S. Lewis reminds us that love makes us vulnerable, but failing to love makes our lives “irredeemable.” Take a chance and love as God loved, even those who do not return that love. In doing so, we follow the example of Jesus, and our lives will be richer for it.

June 11, 2026June 10, 2026

The Magnetic Mystery of Bird Migration

Scientists have known for decades that birds use Earth’s magnetic field to guide their migrations, but how they detect it has been a mystery. A recent German study published in the journal Science offers insight into this magnetic mystery of bird navigation.

Birds, as well as other animals, have immune cells called macrophages in their livers. Among other duties, these macrophages eliminate old red blood cells. As they digest these no-longer-needed red blood cells, they accumulate iron nanoparticles, making the macrophages superparamagnetic. In other words, they can detect Earth’s magnetic field as the bird passes through it.

To test whether these magnetic macrophages help birds navigate, the researchers used homing pigeons trained to fly 12.4 miles to their aviary. Pigeons without macrophages reached the aviary when the Sun was unobscured, but they got lost when the weather was overcast. This suggests that the birds use Earth’s magnetic field as well as the Sun to guide their flight. Using electron microscopy, the researchers observed that the macrophages were in contact with nerve cells, which could transmit magnetic information directly to the bird’s brain.

Solving the magnetic mystery of bird navigation can explain how birds that migrate at night find their way when the sky is overcast. It may also explain how sharks navigate and how bats migrate in the dark. Birds and other migrators use vision, magnetism, and other methods to find their way. God has designed into living things the features they need to survive.

Reference: popsci.com

May 29, 2026May 27, 2026

Intelligent or Unintelligent?

Causes can be of two types: intelligent or unintelligent. As we look for what caused the universe to come into existence or what caused life to appear on this planet, we should ask whether it was an intelligent cause or an unintelligent one, meaning chance. When you see the Grand Canyon, you can conclude that it was the result of natural forces and therefore not a direct intelligent cause. When you see Mount Rushmore, the mountain itself can be attributed to natural causes, but the faces of four presidents carved into that mountain testify to an intelligent cause.

Darwinists agree that the living things we see around us appear to be designed. But those who reject intelligent causation for living things have to keep reminding themselves that what they’re seeing was not designed by an Intelligence, but rather merely happened by chance. Is that attitude intelligent or unintelligent?

The complexity of DNA is certainly a challenge to those who believe that life happened by chance. However, they also have to contend with the fact that DNA relies on proteins for its structure, while proteins require DNA to provide the instructions for how they are to be constructed and folded. Since each requires the other, which comes first: proteins or DNA?

Spontaneous generation of life from non-life was advocated by Aristotle and accepted by science for 2,000 years until Louis Pasteur disproved it. However, those who believe that life came into being without guiding intelligence from purely natural chemicals must accept the concept of spontaneous generation, even though it is not supported by any empirical observation. Francis Crick, an atheist and co-discoverer of the DNA molecule’s structure, said, “Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I swear I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts.”

Other scientists, such as Fred Hoyle, recognizing the problem of life’s origin, have proposed panspermia (“seeds everywhere”). That idea suggests that life on Earth was seeded by aliens from another star system. Besides having zero evidence for such a thing, it doesn’t explain where the interstellar life came from, stretches the imagination, and requires a great deal of blind faith. When scientists and others stick to their belief in spontaneous generation or panspermia, is that intelligent or unintelligent?

Physicist and information scientist Hubert Yockey, realizing the difficulty of explaining intelligent life without an intelligent cause, wrote, “The belief that life on earth arose spontaneously from nonliving matter is simply a matter of faith in strict reductionism and is based entirely on ideology.” The faith of those who refuse to believe in intelligent design is not based on scientific evidence but on ideological bias. Do you think that believing in creation without a Creator is intelligent or unintelligent?

May 28, 2026May 27, 2026

Beetle Species Study Is Never-Ending

Beetles are essential to life on Earth, serving as food for many animals, but that isn’t all they do. Some beetles recycle carcasses, and others recycle dung. Some beetles help restore the environment after a forest fire. Others exhibit strange and interesting behaviors, such as spraying a noxious chemical at their enemies. One beetle species walks upside-down underwater. Many more beetles do interesting things and fulfill very important roles. Some beetles damage crops or are pests in other ways, especially when they are accidentally moved to new habitats. However, even those beetles that are a nuisance often fill very important roles in their natural environment.

Scientists estimate that there are between five and ten million insect species, which make up about 90% of the world’s animal species. However, only about 925,000 species have been studied enough to be formally described. Of all insect species, the largest number are classified as beetles. Smithsonian sources identify about 350,000 beetle species, but more are discovered each year.

Of the beetle species, about 70,000 are in the Staphylinidae family. One subgroup within that family is Platydracus. According to Wikipedia, there are more than 280 identified Platydracus species. However, recent research in China has identified and recorded 61 previously unknown species. Classifying all beetle species will be an enormous job that will probably never be completed.

We often fail to realize how much diversity exists in the natural world. God has created so many different species, and we haven’t yet been able to study most of them. Even if life has existed on Earth for four billion years, that is not enough time for Darwinian evolution to produce all the species and variety of animals that inhabit this planet.

The more we learn about God’s creation, including the beetle species, the more we are amazed by the complexity and diversity of the essential species that make advanced human life possible.

Reference: popsci.com

May 26, 2026May 24, 2026

A Neatly Arranged Tree of Life

According to the Darwinian concept, gradual changes over long periods lead to the development of new traits. The Darwinian tree of life displays branches leading to diverse life forms. Along each branch, we see new traits emerging and then being further developed in subsequent generations of creatures. That means similar traits indicate common ancestry. Over billions of years, the result should be a tree, with each branch showing an obvious progression of similar traits. A neatly arranged tree of life should be the result. However, that is not the case.

Convergent evolution throws the tree into disorder. Scientists use the term “convergent evolution” to explain similar characteristics appearing on different branches of the tree. Those similarities show up not only in obvious physical traits but even at the genetic level. According to the common understanding of the evolutionary tree, a trait should appear in a branch and then be carried forward, further developed, or even lost in the succeeding branches or twigs. For a neatly arranged tree of life, the same trait should not appear in other, unrelated branches.

According to Richard Dawkins, “It is vanishingly improbable that exactly the same evolutionary pathway should ever be traveled twice.” In other words, it is unlikely that evolution would cause the same trait to appear multiple times in different evolutionary lines. That is, two separate branches of the tree should not be marked by the appearance of the same evolved trait.

However, in many instances, the same trait shows up in animals or plants that are not closely related. In other words, the same evolutionary change occurred independently many times. According to a paper published April 30, 2026, by Yacine Ben Chehida and others in the journal PLOS Biology, “Convergent evolution, the repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, is widespread in nature.” (Phenotypes are the sets of observable characteristics or traits of an organism.)

Who is correct, Richard Dawkins or the paper in PLOS Biology? How can it be “vanishingly improbable” and yet “widespread in nature?” Furthermore, Simon Conway Morris, who has held the Chair of Evolutionary Paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge for more than 30 years, said, “Convergence is ubiquitous.” If by ubiquitous he means present anywhere and everywhere, how can unguided evolution explain that? How can something be “vanishingly improbable” and “ubiquitous” at the same time?

Since a neatly arranged tree of life does not seem to exist, perhaps the existence of a common creator God has more explanatory power than mere chance evolution. For more examples of convergent evolution, read our posts HERE and HERE.

References: scienceandculture.com and journals.plos.org

May 21, 2026May 21, 2026

The Story of Sloth Poop

What if you had to risk your life to go to the bathroom? Imagine what it would be like to know that you might not return home. For three-toed sloths (genus Bradypus), a once-a-week bowel movement can be life-threatening, yet they apparently are not aware of the risk they are taking or of the system they play a role in. The story of sloth poop involves a complex system with three species.

As everyone knows, and their name indicates, sloths are slow. Because of that, they are threatened by fast-moving predators. They have relative safety in the tree tops, but on the ground, they are sitting ducks, or sitting sloths. Being on or near the ground is the main cause of sloth deaths. Their slow climb down and back up is the most energy-intensive thing they do all week. Why don’t these sloths just do their business in the trees and let it fall to the ground? The answer involves another species.

Enter the sloth moths (Cryptoses choloepi) into our story. These moths live nowhere else but in the fur of the sloths. They spend their entire adult lives in sloth fur. The newly emerged moths find a slow-moving sloth, make a home in its fur, and permanently lose their ability to fly. After spending a short adult life in the sloth’s fur, one of two things will happen. The moth will probably die there. A second option for pregnant female moths is to hop off the sloth, land in the pile of poop, lay their eggs there, and die. The larvae that hatch from those eggs will feed on the sloth dung. As they eat and burrow their way into the pile, they create a chamber where they enter the pupal stage.

When the sloth moths complete their pupal stage, they emerge as adult moths. They fly for their first and only time upward into the tree canopy in search of a three-toed sloth. When they find their target, the moths are permanently grounded in the sloth’s fur. There they will live until they die, unless they are lucky enough to hop onto a pile of sloth poo during the animal’s weekly bathroom trip.

But that is not the end of the story of sloth poop. Another species enters the picture. The third participants in this system are the Trichophilus algae, which live only on sloth fur. As we said, many of the moths die in the sloth’s fur. As they decompose, they release nitrogen and phosphorus into the fur, and the algae use that in their photosynthesis. The chlorophyll in the algae turns the sloth’s fur green, giving it natural camouflage in the tree canopy. In addition to giving the sloth a way to hide among the leaves that it eats, researchers have found small amounts of the algae in the stomachs of sloths. Perhaps the lipid-rich algae also provide additional nutrition that the sloth does not get from the leaves.

Completing the circle of life, the following week, when the sloth makes that dangerous trip to the ground, more pregnant moths plop into the precious pile of poo, and the cycle repeats.

It seems challenging to describe a completely natural way for this system to get started. The sloth could just drop its dung from the tree canopy and be safe. The Cryptoses choloepi moths, which live only on sloths, would not be needed. The sloths could probably survive without the Trichophilus algae that live in sloth fur and nowhere else on Earth. Does the story of sloth poop suggest a designed system, or did it just accidentally evolve over time?

Reference: popsci.com

May 15, 2026May 14, 2026

The Creativity of Chance

I’m sitting by my window, looking out at the beautiful trees, green grass, flowers, birds, groundhog, and squirrels, and I’m thinking about Darwinism. According to Darwinism, all living things have evolved from a common ancestor, a single-celled creature about four billion years ago. I’m thinking that it takes a lot of faith to believe in the creativity of chance.

People often cite similarities among living things as evidence that all life originated from a single common ancestor. In their book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Norman Geisler and Frank Turek consider how much faith it takes to be a Darwinist. To believe in Darwinism, you must be able to explain the dissimilarity among living things. I think that may be more difficult than explaining the similarities.

Think about the variation among the millions of life forms. Geisler and Turek point out that if you believe in Darwinism, you must explain the dissimilarity between “the palm tree, the peacock, the octopus, the locust, the bat, the hippopotamus, the porcupine, the sea horse, the Venus flytrap, the human, and mildew.” The question is, how could those and all other species have descended from the first unicellular life by mere chance and without intelligent intervention?

As you ponder that, you must also realize that if you’re going to leave God out of the picture, how did nonliving chemicals organize into that original single-celled organism from which all life sprang into being? Furthermore, how can you explain the existence of the fine-tuned universe that makes life, and especially advanced life, possible? Could chance and time have created all of this, or does it require an intelligent Designer? Believing in the creativity of chance takes more faith than I have.

May 14, 2026May 13, 2026

Space Aliens and Disclosure Day

There has been an explosion of comments in the news media and on social media about space aliens and Disclosure Day, following President Trump’s order to release previously classified information on UAPs (UFOs). At the same time, a “blockbuster” movie by Steven Spielberg is set to be released on June 12, 2026. Its title is Disclosure Day, based on a story by Spielberg, a firm believer in extraterrestrials.

Social media contains comments that the government’s disclosure of information about UAPs will challenge traditional religious beliefs. The current print issue of Moviemaker magazine features an interview with David Koepp, the screenwriter of the Disclosure Day movie. When the interviewer asked him if he believed in aliens, he compared aliens to God or religion. He said, “My personal belief is the same as my personal belief in God, which is why I think religion is an important part of Disclosure Day.” He goes on to say that his favorite theory about aliens is, “Yes, other intelligent life forms exist. Yes, they’ve been here. They may even be here now. We can’t perceive them.”

Thus far, what the government has released from its secret files is not much more than grainy pictures of objects in the sky that seem to move erratically, filmed from a distance. There doesn’t seem to be anything different from what we have seen before. Concerning space aliens and Disclosure Day, Spielberg claims that the movie will contain “more truth than fiction” and will “upend all established order.” That sounds to me like overblown promotional hoopla designed to sell more tickets.

What if the government released materials that conclusively demonstrated that aliens are visiting our planet? Would it mean the end of Christian faith? Would it refute the Bible? The answer is no and no. The Bible deals with the creation of the universe (Genesis 1:1) and the creation of life upon the Earth (the rest of Genesis 1 and 2). It also tells us that God created spiritual beings. It does not tell us whether God created physical creatures elsewhere within the universe. Even if God created life on other planets within the universe, which is questionable, and even if we learned that aliens have visited Earth, that would not refute the existence of God. Those other creatures would have to have been created by God. Only an intelligent force outside of the universe could have created what is within the universe.

Fred Hoyle and other scientists have advanced the idea of “panspermia,” meaning that life on Earth was seeded by aliens from elsewhere in the universe. There is absolutely no evidence for that, but even if true, it would not explain where those intelligent beings came from. It has been scientifically established that the universe had a beginning. That was the beginning of time, space, matter, and energy, so whatever caused the universe’s origin was outside of time and space and not material. That is the way the Bible describes God. Don’t let space aliens and Disclosure Day interfere with your faith in the one who created all things. (See Colossians 1:15-16.)

Reference: moviemaker.com

May 13, 2026May 11, 2026

Yawning is Good for Your Health

A new scientific study defines yawning as “a stereotyped orofacial-respiratory behavior characterized by a prolonged jaw gape and coordinated oropharyngeal movements.” We know what yawning is, and we know it can be impolite to yawn while listening to someone speak or perhaps during a sermon. But maybe yawning is good for your health, according to this new study.

Yawning is not confined to humans—mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and other vertebrates also yawn. We think of yawning as accompanied by taking a deep breath, but even marine mammals, including beluga whales, bottlenose dolphins, and dugongs, display a similar action, gaping their mouths even when they’re underwater so they can’t breathe. Yawning must be good for something.

According to the scientific report, most yawns appear to consist of an initial deep inspiration, a pause, and then a rapid expiration. It was suggested that yawning may play a role in regulating blood oxygen levels, brain thermoregulation, or attention/arousal. According to the study, it may also have something to do with cerebral metabolic waste clearance. In other words, it helps clear your brain, so yawning is good for your health.

The movement of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) contributes to waste removal in the brain. So, if CSF movement is critical to remove metabolic waste from the brain, how does yawning help with that movement? That was what the group’s research sought to find. They said, “The movement of the jaw and the act of inhaling can impact circulation within the skull.”

Furthermore, yawns may be coordinated by a brainstem central pattern generator (CPG), similar to those that control breathing and locomotion. Swallowing is also organized by CPG circuitry, and the researchers found that swallowing is often tied to yawning, since swallowing frequently occurs within seconds after a yawn.

The bottom line, as far as I can understand, is that yawning is good for your health because it helps clear the brain of waste materials. I presume that means when your brain is busy thinking, a yawn becomes necessary to clear out the waste and give room for your brain to keep on thinking. Perhaps if you’re yawning while reading the posts we present on this web page, we are stimulating your brain rather than putting you to sleep. If that is true, I am encouraged because while writing this, I found myself yawning.

I never cease to be amazed at the complexity of life and the human body that God designed, and yawning is just one more thing that amazes me.

Reference: sciencedirect.com

May 12, 2026May 11, 2026

The Thymus Has an Essential Purpose

A mysterious organ of the human body lies behind the sternum (breastbone) and in front of the heart. It’s called the thymus. Almost 2000 years ago, the Greek physician and surgeon Galen of Pergamon called it the “seat of the soul.” However, as recently as 1961, Nobel Prize-winning British biologist Sir Peter Medawar called the thymus the graveyard for dying cells and “an evolutionary accident of no very great significance.” Today, scientists know that the thymus has an essential purpose in establishing the immune system during childhood and continues to be beneficial throughout life. Since the thymus has been known for thousands of years, why did it take so long for science to discover that it has a purpose?

Recent research at Massachusetts General Hospital has shown the role the thymus plays in a person’s health. It helps regulate aging and immune health. It appears to play a crucial role in a person’s longevity, protecting against cancer, autoimmune disease, and even cardiovascular risks. Medical scientists have found that people with healthier thymuses are less likely to develop lung cancer or die of heart disease or other causes.

The thymus has sometimes been removed because it can get in the way of heart or chest surgery, and the removal is called a thymectomy. In the past, thymectomy was not considered a problem because people seemed to get along very well without the thymus. The research team found that people receiving a thymectomy were more likely to die of any cause within five years than people with a healthy thymus. People without a thymus were twice as likely to develop cancer and were also more likely to develop autoimmune disease.

The thymus has an essential purpose and is not a vestigial organ, as some have thought in the past. It is not a mistake of evolution. A healthy thymus is a predictor of good health in many respects. People with healthy thymuses are less likely to develop lung cancer or die of heart disease. They are also more likely to respond positively to cancer drugs. The research has led to interest in finding ways to slow the thymus’s natural deterioration, which occurs in adulthood.

Too often, we have been led to believe that something is a vestigial organ, leftover from the process of evolution, when, in fact, it plays a role in our health. (For example, tonsils, appendix, and so-called “junk DNA.”) Looking at medical research from an evolutionary viewpoint can sometimes lead to neglect of important health issues. If we believe our bodies are intelligently designed rather than merely accidents of evolution, we have a reason to look for that design. The thymus has an essential purpose because God designed it that way, but science overlooked it for way too long.

References: washingtonpost.com, and New England Journal of Medicine HERE and HERE