Tag: Roland Earnst

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Optimum Martian Viewing

Optimum Martian Viewing
Recently there has been much talk about Mars in the media. NASA and private firms such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX are working on plans to send people to Mars and eventually build a colony there. For the past month, a planet-wide dust storm has blocked sunlight from reaching the planet’ surface and caused NASA’s solar-powered Opportunity rover to shut down. In addition, Mars is now in “opposition” to Earth and at its closest point to us since 2003. The current position of Mars gives us optimum Martian viewing.

When astronomers say that Mars is in perihelic opposition to Earth, that means the Sun, Earth, and Mars are in a line with Earth in the middle. That makes the apparent luminosity of Mars the brightest that it is at any time. Also, it means that Mars rises each night as the Sun sets and Mars sets each morning as the Sun rises. So Mars is visible in the sky all night long, and it is two times brighter than Jupiter, which usually outshines it. In addition to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus are also visible at this time in an east-west arc across the sky after sunset. You can distinguish Mars by its red color, and it will continue to be bright through August for the optimum Martian viewing opportunity.

On July 26, NASA announced, “It’s the beginning of the end for the planet-encircling dust storm on Mars.” However, it may be weeks or even months before the Martian atmosphere clears enough for the Opportunity to have enough sunlight to recharge its batteries and return to life. NASA hopes that the batteries will recharge before Opportunity freezes to death. The average temperature on Mars is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 Celsius). That is not very hospitable to machinery, or humans.

In addition to the previous factors, Mars will be at its closest point to Earth today, July 31, 2018. It will be only 35.8 million miles (57.6 million km) away from us. Mars is at its closest point about every two years. When Mars is on the other side of the Sun, it is about 250 million miles (401 million km) away. For that reason, any mission to Mars will have to be precisely timed to reach our neighboring planet in the shortest time, but it will still take months to make the journey.

With all of the challenges of reaching and perhaps colonizing Mars, the work goes on to achieve that goal. Some, such as Elon Musk, are suggesting “terraforming” Mars. That is, modifying the climate to make it hospitable to earthlings. That would require raising the climate temperature, thickening the thin atmosphere, and having a stable supply of liquid water, among other things. Elon Musk suggested a method of doing that which involves bombing the polar ice caps with explosives. It sounds like science fiction, and a new report from two leading scientists, Bruce Jakosky of NASA and Christopher Edwards of Northern Arizona University suggest that it is. Their study published in Nature Astronomy concludes that “with current technology, we just don’t see that there are any viable options” for terraforming Mars.

What we need to remember as we consider all of this, is that God has given us a planet that has all of the right conditions for us to live on and enjoy. He has already “terraformed” it for us, and we need to protect that gift and use it wisely. In the meantime, we can enjoy the optimum Martian viewing opportunity He provided for us to see the “red planet” right now.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Know the Meaning of Life

Know the Meaning of Life
It was a study using scientific methods to determine what category of people are the most content with life. The research involved compiling the results of five different psychological studies of more than 50,000 individuals completed between 1981 and 2017. The journal Social Psychological and Personality Science published a report of the final result in June 2018. The happiest group are those who know the meaning of life.

A team of psychologists from the University of Southern California conducted the study. They concentrated on the political views of the test subjects, looking to see whether they were liberal or conservative. The conservatives consistently were the happiest, and they more often claimed to know the meaning of life. The media reported this as a “happiness gap” between liberals and conservative.

This study concentrated on political viewpoints, but when the researchers adjusted their model to remove “religious attendance” from the equation, the conservatives were still happier and found more purpose in life than liberals did. However, they found that the people who were pro-life and did not support same-sex marriage (which would include most conservative Christians) were more likely to believe that life has meaning and purpose. (After all, why would someone who believes there is a purpose in life not be pro-life?)

The author of the new study, David Newman, said, “Finding meaning in life is related to the sense or feeling that things are the way they should be and that there is a sense of order. If life feels chaotic, then that would likely dampen your sense that life is meaningful.”

Christians believe that there is order because God created an orderly universe. We believe that chaos is the result of sin. We also believe that God created us for a purpose and no matter what happens in this life, God loves us and has something better waiting for us. Our hope is in Christ, and nothing in this life can take away the “peace that passes understanding” (Philippians 4:7).

The scientists attempted to remove the God factor by taking “religious attendance” out of the equation. Perhaps they didn’t realize that attendance at some kind of religious gathering is not what makes a person a true Christian. The accurate measure of a Christian life is allowing Jesus Christ to be Lord. When Christ is at the center of our being, and we live by faith, we will have contentment, and we will know the meaning of life.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Longest Blood Moon

Longest Blood Moon
It will be the longest blood moon of the twenty-first century. There have been books and articles about “blood moons” in recent years relating them to prophecies of various kinds. However, this event will not be a miraculous sign of some impending doom or destruction. It will not be a sign of the second coming of Christ. This lunar eclipse is an entirely natural phenomenon.

A so-called “blood moon” is actually an eclipse of the Moon. Most of the time, we see the light of the Sun reflected from the Moon. When Earth, Moon, and Sun are perfectly aligned with our planet in the middle, the Moon becomes covered by Earth’s shadow. Since Earth is much larger than the Moon, it can throw a shadow across the entire Moon. That is what will happen at 4:21 p.m. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time on July 27. However, it will not be visible in the United States. A partial eclipse will be visible in most parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, and it will be total in Africa, the Middle East, and part of Asia.

Why does the Moon appear red or orange during a lunar eclipse giving it the name “blood moon?” That’s because as the Sun’s light passes through Earth’s atmosphere, it is filtered and bent so that a small amount of light reaches the Moon’s surface. We see the effect of our atmosphere on sunlight when we watch the red-orange colors of a sunrise or sunset. If you were on the surface of the Moon, you would see that sunset effect as a halo around the Earth. Looking at the Moon from Earth, we see the reflection of that sunrise/sunset glow reflected back to us. The Moon takes on an eerie, but faint blood-red glow.

This lunar eclipse will be the longest blood moon of the century because of a near-perfect alignment of Earth between the Sun and Moon. From beginning to end, this eclipse will last almost four hours. The period of totality will be an hour and 43 minutes. The next lunar eclipse visible in North America will be on January 21, 2019, and it will last only an hour and two minutes. How do we know these statistics? We can know when lunar (and solar) eclipses will occur because we know how they happen. We know that our solar system is very orderly and predictable because it is well designed.

In ancient times eclipses caused people to panic. People in ancient Mesopotamia thought an eclipse was an attack by demons. The Inca people in fifteenth-century South America would shake spears and make noise to scare away what they believed was a jaguar attacking the Moon. There is a story that Christopher Columbus and his men were stranded for six months on the island now known as Jamaica. The indigenous Arawak people became less than generous in sharing food. Columbus knew from an almanac that a total lunar eclipse was about to happen. He told the local people that his God was angry and would take away the Moon in three days. When Columbus’ prediction seemed to come true, the Arawaks were terrified. They gave Columbus’ crew whatever they wanted to bring the Moon back. Amazingly, the Moon returned to normal, and everyone was happy.

So as the longest blood moon of the century comes and goes, don’t let anyone try to tell you it is some kind of miraculous sign. After all, we can’t predict miracles. The only miracle that was clearly (and repeatedly) predicted in advance and which actually happened was the resurrection of Jesus.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
In 1960 radio astronomer Frank Drake began research to find alien civilizations in deep space by aiming an 85-foot radio telescope at some sun-like stars. He found nothing, but it was the beginning of a program known as SETI – Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The SETI program has continued through the years with many radio telescopes aimed at every area of space. In 1971 NASA funded a study that involved Frank Drake. They issued a report proposing Project Cyclops. That project would require the construction of 1,500 radio telescopes at the cost of ten-billion dollars. That project was never completed for obvious reasons. However, the concept of the report was used to continue the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to this day with funding from various sources. Thousands of hours and millions of dollars have been spent with a net result of zero. No radio signals containing any intelligence have been detected–only noise.

Now there is “active SETI” in which scientists are sending radio signals toward distant stars. Frank Drake admitted that in 1974 he transmitted an encoded message toward a star cluster 25,000 light-years away in the constellation Hercules. Naturally, that message will arrive at its target in 25,000 years. If any intelligent being gets the message and responds immediately, it will take 25,000 years for the return message. Drake will not be here to receive that message in 50,000 years, and neither will anyone reading this.

As the search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues, is it possible that there really is an intelligent Being out there who is listening and waiting to hear from us? Is it possible that this Being is not limited by time and space? Is it possible that this Being is our Creator who has already communicated with us by becoming one of us? Is it possible that we are not listening?
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Autonomic Nervous System at Work

Autonomic Nervous System at Work
I know you have many things to think about. However, there are many more critical things that you don’t have to think about because your autonomic nervous system is at work.

Just take a moment to think about all of the things you don’t have to think about. I mean you breathe without having to think about it—even in your sleep! Humans and animals have what is called an autonomic nervous system, and we could not live without it. It’s an amazing system in the hypothalamus of our brains that allows our bodies to perform functions without our having to think about them.

The autonomic system not only keeps us breathing while we sleep, but it also causes our heart to beat, our stomach to digest food, our pupils to adjust to changing light levels, our body to sweat when overheated, and many other things we don’t have to think about. Without the autonomic nervous system, anything we tried to swallow would get stuck in our throat because the esophagus would not push it down to the stomach. The stomach would not digest our food, and the intestines and colon would not send nutrition to our bloodstream and remove waste. Your liver and pancreas will do their jobs even if you don’t give them a thought. This amazing system allows our internal organs function without our having to think about it.

Essential functions of life just happen without our thinking about them, and sometimes without our knowing about them. But that presents some big questions. Did the autonomic nervous system just happen, or was it designed? How could this system just happen to start working at the right time with the correct program to control these complex machines which are our bodies? I suggest that this system requires a Designer who is also an excellent Engineer.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Ham-Nye Walking Debate

Ham-Nye Walking Debate
You are probably aware of Bill Nye and Ken Ham and their debate which took place in 2014. As if that debate wasn’t embarrassing enough (for both sides), Ham and Nye followed it in 2016 with a walking debate at Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter in Kentucky. The Ham-Nye walking debate was more of the two men talking past each other.

Bill Nye, you will recall, calls himself “the science guy.” Ken Ham, the producer of the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, is the CEO of Answers in Genesis. Nye takes a naturalist position on everything. While he avoids admitting to being an atheist, atheists hold him in high esteem, and he is heavily backed by atheist publications such as Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, and American Atheist. Ham takes an extreme young-earth position and promotes the ideas that dinosaurs lived with humans, that the flood explains all of geology, and that dispensationalism is the proper understanding of biblical history.

What happens in the “walking debate” is that Nye walks through the Ark Encounter exhibits challenging what Ham and AIG have put together as bad science. At the same time, Ham attempts to denigrate Nye’s scientific material with religious views of young-earth creationism. The Ham-Nye walking debate doesn’t resolve anything and only serves to bring the two sides farther apart.

The “Does God Exist? program maintains that science and faith are compatible and that science supports belief in God and the Bible as His word. Over the years we have pointed out that what the Bible actually says is not what either of these gentlemen is presenting. Nye is correct in showing some very bad science in Ham’s exhibits. Ham correctly points out Nye’s tendency to use unproven scientific guesses and assumptions to attack those who believe in God. It is evident that Ham knows little about science and Nye knows even less about the Bible.

Our courses, books, booklets, DVDs, and websites go into a more in-depth discussion of science and faith. If you want to hear two extremes that both oppose our position, you can watch the first debate or the second debate on YouTube.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2018

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Tools and Intelligence

Tools and Intelligence
We tend to equate the use of tools and intelligence, but do they necessarily go together? Many kinds of animals use twigs, stones, or other objects as tools to gather food, to groom or defend themselves, or sometimes just to play. We are very familiar with how dogs can be taught to play with a ball or stick. Intelligent animals such as primates, mammals, and birds use or even create tools from materials around them.

Sometimes animals learn tool-use by watching other animals or humans. At other times tool-use seems to be instinctive. An internet search for “animals using tools” brings up many interesting videos. Ever since animal researcher Jane Goodall discovered chimpanzees using leaves and twigs as tools to obtain food in 1960, some people have suggested that tool-use is proof that humans are not unique from other animals—we have just evolved greater intelligence.

But the question is, “Does it take intelligence to use tools?” The short answer is “No.” Decorator crabs camouflage themselves with objects and plants, and they may pick up a sea anemone and use it to sweep across the sea floor picking up food. The assassin bug takes material from a termite’s nest to camouflage itself while waiting to grab a termite emerging from the nest. It then kills the termite and uses it as bait to coax other termites out of the nest. The larva of the green lacewing camouflages itself with objects such as sand grains to hide from and capture aphids.

Crabs, assassin bugs, and insect larvae have no “thinking” brain. They are not capable of being taught or learning by observation. How can they use objects as tools? In some cases, if the first of their kind could not use these tools, the species would have become extinct. We suggest that the Creator has “programmed” these unintelligent animals with the instincts they need to survive.

So as we consider tools and intelligence, we see unintelligent creatures using tools by instinct, and more intelligent creatures learning to use tools. Obviously, no animals can create and use the highly sophisticated tools that humans have, including computers, robots, and cars. But it’s the spiritual nature of humans that makes us different, and not our tools. Only humans worship God because He created us in His image.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Retiring Early – Good Idea or Not

Retiring Early – Good Idea or Not
Some people dream of retiring early and spending the rest of their lives in pleasure-filled relaxation. That may not be a good idea.

Relaxing for a few days is a good thing, but studies show that when we stop doing anything constructive and challenging, both our mental and physical health decline. The Washington Post reported that studies “have shown a strong correlation between early retirement age and diminished cognitive function.”

Not only can too much leisure be bad for our physical and mental health, it even has an adverse effect on our happiness. Humans were designed to be productive and creative. Without physical stimulation, our bones and muscles become weak. Without mental stimulation, our brains lose their sharpness. The saying, “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it,” contains a lot of truth.

All this doesn’t mean that we have to keep working at an occupation for our entire lives. Retiring early can open the door to new opportunities of service. For those who retire from a paying job, volunteering for some service which is mentally, and even physically challenging can be rewarding in many ways. It can keep us physically stronger and more mentally alert. It can give us enjoyment and even help us to live longer. It can also be rewarding for those we are able to serve.

God created us to work. Even in the paradise of the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve work to do. (See Genesis 2:15.) If you want to live a long, healthy, and happy life, find a way to be productively stimulated while serving others. It’s what God designed us to do.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Why We Have Fingerprints

Why We Have Fingerprints
Fingerprints are often associated with identification because the police use them in criminal investigations. Nobody else has your fingerprints, so finger touch-pads are sometimes used instead of passwords to access computers or to allow entrance to secure sites. Fingerprints are used for those purposes, but have you ever wondered why we have fingerprints?

Long before anyone thought of those identification uses, fingerprints served a primary purpose in our sense of touch. The raised ridges are actually friction ridges that increase the sensitivity of our fingers to touch. Each fingertip has thousands of touch receptors, and with the aid of the friction ridges, we can feel a particle many times smaller than a human hair.

Run your fingertip lightly over a surface and notice how those fingerprint ridges detect even the smallest surface imperfection, right down to a speck of dust. Look closely, and you will see that those ridges are also present on the entire surface of the palm-side of your hand, and they are on your feet as well.

What about the case of identical twins? Do they have the same fingerprints? The answer is “No.” They are similar, but not the same. Your fingerprints are the product of genetics plus environment within the womb. Fingerprints form between six and thirteen weeks after conception. Factors that influence the formation of the prints may be blood pressure, nutrition, or the position of the hand in the womb. A finger pressing against the amniotic sac, another part of the body, or the body of a twin can cause the print to form with subtle differences. If only genetics determined the fingerprint pattern, the fingers on your left and right hands would be identical. They are not, and that’s why the police will take all ten of your fingerprints.

Your fingerprints formed as you developed in the womb long before you were born, and they will remain the same for your entire life. Fingerprints show that you are unique while at the same time helping you to explore and interact with the world around you. That’s why we have fingerprints. The psalmist David wrote, “…(God), you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:13, 14).
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Breathe Easy with Oxygen

Breathe Easy Oxygen Molecule
Life requires certain elements–one of which is oxygen. To live, we must have energy and our life-energy is produced by chemical reactions requiring oxygen. Because of the oxygen level of Earth, we can breathe easy.

When oxygen combines with other elements and compounds, we call the process oxidation or combustion. Oxidation results in the release of energy. Oxidation can be slow as when oxygen combines with iron to form rust. Oxidation can be fast, as when oxygen combines with chemicals in wood, producing fire.

The rapid combustion process releases energy in the form of heat and light. In our bodies, oxygen combines with other chemicals more slowly. As oxygen combines with sugar (glucose) in our cells, energy is released warming our bodies and powering our cells. The by-products of this oxidation are carbon-dioxide and water, which can be safely eliminated from the body.

The design of the oxygen molecule with its ability to pull off electrons from other elements makes combustion possible. Are there other chemicals which can produce combustion? Yes, chlorine, fluorine, and bromine can also produce combustion. However, the by-products of that combustion, such as hydrochloric acid, would be harmful or fatal to living cells. Oxygen has just the right properties to combine with carbon-based sugars in our cells to release energy and sustain life without producing compounds harmful to life.

The fact that one-fifth of our atmosphere is oxygen enables us to breathe efficiently. A lower level of oxygen would make breathing difficult. A higher oxygen level would lead to a greater danger of rapid-combustion fires. Replacing oxygen in the air with other combustive elements would be destructive to life. Oxygen has the right properties and is available in the right amount to allow us to breathe easy and live. We think a Master Engineer designed this system.
–Roland Earnst © 2018