Roland Earnst Archives - Page 5 of 45

August 24, 2023August 23, 2023

The Problem of Homochirality

Can life arise spontaneously from non-living chemicals? Scientists have spent many hours and vast amounts of research money attempting to prove it can. One of the many challenges they must solve is the problem of homochirality.

All the large molecules required to make a living cell are composed of building blocks that have mirror images. When you look in a mirror, you see a reversed image of yourself. The right hand appears to be on the left and vice versa. The right- and left-hand analogy is used when referring to the building blocks of life. Those building blocks come in either right or left-handed forms. We call that handedness “chirality” from the Greek word for hand. Homochirality means having the same handedness.

Life almost exclusively uses only one chirality. The amino acids that make up proteins are left-handed. Scientists are uncertain why, but they have to accept the fact that to build the proteins that RNA and DNA molecules require for life, you must have only left-handed amino acids.

In nature, amino acids are not homochiral. They come in a distribution of about 50/50 left and right, creating the problem of homochirality. For amino acids to form the building blocks of life, they would have to be homochiral. Scientists have yet to find a way to make that happen, even in the laboratory. They aren’t even sure why life requires it since the chemical properties of mirror-imaged compounds are the same for all practical purposes.

The problem of homochirality is one of the many obstacles that prevent non-living chemicals from coming together to form life without intervention by an intelligent force. Even the intelligence of our best scientists has not overcome those obstacles. I saved an Associated Press news release from 2007 titled, “Scientists Believe Artificial Life Will Be Possible in 3 to 10 Years.” We are well past that goal, and I suspect they are not much closer today.

August 21, 2023August 21, 2023

How Fast Are You Spinning?

You may think you are sitting still as you read this, but you are actually moving at tremendous speeds in various directions. You are on planet Earth which is rotating on its axis. The planet is also orbiting around the Sun. More than that, our solar system is spiraling around the Milky Way. Yes, the Milky Way is also moving in relation to other galaxies. It’s enough to make your head spin but let’s just look at Earth’s rotation. How fast are you spinning?

Earth’s circumference at the equator is about 24,900 miles, and a day, the time when Earth makes one rotation, is 24 hours. Therefore, if you are on the equator, you are moving at about 1040 miles per hour. Where I am, on the same latitude as Chicago, I am spinning around at 773 miles per hour. That’s because the circle at that latitude is much smaller. Those who live in Anchorage, Alaska, are moving at a leisurely 504 miles per hour. How fast are you spinning if you are standing on the North Pole? I doubt if any of our readers are doing that, but if so, you are just spinning in the same place like a top every 24 hours. Try not to get dizzy.

This spinning of Earth creates centrifugal force, which works against the pull of gravity. At Earth’s present rotational speed, if you moved to the equator from the North Pole, you would weigh about one pound less. Not a very efficient way to lose weight.

What would happen if Earth’s spin increased by one mile per hour? Centrifugal force would raise the ocean’s water level at the equator by a few inches and lower it in the Arctic Ocean. More noticeable would be that geosynchronous communications satellites would be out of their proper positions disrupting GPS services, satellite communications, television broadcasting, and military operations. A ten percent increase in Earth’s rotational speed would make the days only 22 hours long. And you thought you were having trouble getting everything done now. How fast are you spinning, and is the whole universe and our place in it just an accident?

What’s the point of all this? We have often discussed the many things that make this planet suitable for advanced life. Abundant water, a just-right tilt of the axis, the right spin, and a just-right Moon to stabilize the spin and speed. Those are only a few of Earth’s remarkable features. It almost seems that it was designed for a purpose by an intelligent Designer who knew we were coming.

August 10, 2023August 9, 2023

Tell the Clouds What to Do

Yesterday, we asked the puzzling question, “How can clouds float in the air?” Clouds are made of water, which is heavier than air, so how can clouds float on air? The short answer is they don’t. We have two things to learn: the clouds are falling, and only God can tell the clouds what to do.

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, I suggest you read it for background. But, for now, let’s return to where we left off in Job 38, where God speaks of clouds as He challenges Job and his friends. These are God’s words in verses 34-38:

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?
Can you send out lightnings, that they may go,
And say to you, ‘Here we are!’?
Who has put wisdom in the mind?
Or who has given understanding to the heart?
Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven,
When the dust hardens in clumps,
And the clods cling together?”

God asks Job if he can tell the clouds what to do, sending rain when the ground is dry. Of course, the answer is “No.” Human wisdom and understanding can’t do that, but God can. Before God spoke to him, Job seemed to believe that sometimes God used rain as a form of punishment (Job 37:13). God did withhold rain from Israel for years because of the evil leadership of Ahab and Jezebel, but Elijah’s prayer brought it back.

So does God make a practice of withholding rain as a punishment? Not according to Jesus. He told us to love our enemies, “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45).

We cannot tell the clouds what to do, whether we want it to rain or not rain. Only God can do that, but He is not a punishing old man in the sky ready to withhold rain or zap us with lightning if we misbehave. Many people have that confused idea, but the Bible does not support it. God sends sunshine and rain on the just and the unjust through the weather system He created. All weather conditions occur naturally according to God’s designed system, except in rare cases when He intervened with a timing miracle.

Let’s get back to our original question about clouds. They are water and sometimes ice, so how can they float in the air? The answer is that they don’t float. They are falling very gradually. Any unsupported object will fall to the ground because of Earth’s gravity. As it falls faster, the friction of the air molecules increases.

Any falling object will eventually reach terminal velocity when the friction force equals the pull of gravity. We can ignore the air friction for a bowling ball because it is minuscule compared to the ball’s weight. However, the weight of a water droplet in a cloud with a diameter measured in microns is minuscule, so the terminal velocity may be less than a hundred feet per hour. When you consider that clouds are thousands of feet in the air, that “falling” is too slow for us to notice. The water droplets may “dissolve” into the air before they fall very far. When they converge into larger droplets, they fall more quickly as rain.

The bottom line is, yes, the clouds are falling, but you will only notice it when they fall as rain. The more important point is that only God can tell the clouds what to do. The most important thing to remember is that God’s love sends sunshine and rain for everyone, even for those who refuse to recognize His existence.

August 9, 2023August 8, 2023

How Can Clouds Float in the Air?

The sky is falling! Well, not exactly. Actually, the clouds are falling, or are they? Clouds are made of water, and everyone knows water is heavier than air, so how can clouds float in the air? Have you ever wondered about that? Are clouds floating, or is it an optical illusion? I’m baffled. How about you?

Before we answer those questions, here is another one. What does the Bible say about clouds? Clouds are mentioned many times in the Bible. God gives us a creation story in the Book of Job that expands on the Genesis account. These are some of the words God used to challenge Job and his friends in Job 38:8-9:

“Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;
When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;
When I said,
‘This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!”

In this poetic account, when the early Earth was a water world, God shut up the ocean “with doors” and told it, “Here your proud waves must stop!” I love that word picture of the creation process! God speaks, and the seas listen! But we are talking about clouds, and how can clouds float in the air?

In this Job passage, God explains something we wonder about in Genesis 1:1, where it says, “darkness was on the face of the deep.” The garment of clouds explains the darkness covering the oceans. Otherwise, we have to wonder why the first part of Genesis 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The heavens would have to include the Sun, Moon, and stars, as well as all of the galaxies and everything in them. Why, then, was there darkness on the water-covered Earth? God answers that question by saying: “I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band.”

Genesis tells us that God divided the water covering the land from the water in the sky, meaning the clouds. (See Genesis 1:9-10.) We read further in Genesis 1:14-18 that God caused the clouds to clear up enough to allow the Sun and Moon to be fully visible “for signs and seasons, and for days and years” and to “give light on the earth.”

We see that God’s description of the creation process in Job clarifies some questions that the Genesis creation account leaves unanswered. But that isn’t all God said about clouds in Job 38. He challenges Job with this question in verse 34:

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?”

God verifies that clouds are made of water, and as Genesis tells us, God divided the water on the surface from the water in the air. So how did God make the water float in the air? Are the clouds defying gravity, or is this an optical illusion? Is God breaking His own laws of physics, or is He fooling us? The answer is – we are out of time for today. But tomorrow, we will answer the puzzling question, “How can clouds float in the air?”

July 20, 2023July 19, 2023

Non-Native Species Invasion

As we look at the flora and fauna of our world, we see a beautifully designed system. Plants and animals sustain each other in a balanced network of life, but problems arise when humans do things that upset that balance. One way we do that is by accidentally or intentionally causing a non-native species invasion with no natural predator or forager. The species then has no control factor to balance it, and plant growth or animal reproduction becomes out of control.

An example of a non-native species invasion is the kudzu plant. This vine can grow up to a foot per day and is known as “the vine that ate the south.” It has taken over parks, roadsides, and forests in some areas. Kudzu vines wrap themselves around the trunks of native trees, out-competing their host for sunlight and even nutrients by girdling its bark and strangling the tree.

Kudzu is native to Asia and some Pacific islands, but people brought it to North America as a decorative plant in the 1870s. As late as the 1940s, the U.S. government urged farmers to plant it to prevent soil erosion, and people promoted it as a fast-growing plant to shade porches. The consequences of human actions have become evident, costing millions of dollars.

One of the worst U.S. invaders is the inappropriately named tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima ), native to areas of China and Taiwan. It was brought to the United States in 1784 as a decorative tree. However, its habits of sending out shoots, known as suckers, colonizing areas, and suppressing competition by producing chemicals that inhibit the growth and reproduction of other plants. This non-native species invasion also creates an objectionable odor and hosts another invasive species, the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula). Eradicating this “tree of hell,” as some call it, is difficult because if you cut it down, it will quickly regrow from new shoots.

All of these invasive species serve a purpose in their native lands, where they fit into the balance of the natural world. The problem comes when humans upset God’s balanced system. In many ways, humans have not been good stewards of the job God assigned us to “rule over” the Earth (Genesis 1:26) and “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15).

References: Wikipedia- Kudzu in the U.S., Tree of Heaven, Spotted Lanternfly

July 19, 2023July 19, 2023

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

It’s known as the Sagan standard and abbreviated ECREE. Carl Sagan, an American scientist, and agnostic, hosted the PBS program Cosmos in the 1980s. He said in the series, “I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” He was talking about claims that aliens from space had visited Earth. But we can apply the principle to more than alien visitations.

The truth is that Sagan did not originate the ECREE concept. He just popularized it on television. The idea had been previously expressed many times by others. Even Thomas Jefferson described it in a letter he wrote in 1808 about the existence of meteorites, but he was much more wordy. (He used about three dozen words instead of Sagan’s five.)

What does the Sagan ECREE standard mean? It tells us that when we make an extraordinary claim, we must back it up with extraordinary evidence. How about the extraordinary secularist claim that everything we see came from nothing by means of nothing? If matter, energy, time, and space all originated at the “big bang,” and nothing existed before that, where is the extraordinary evidence to back up that claim? Could an eternal God existing outside of time and space be a better explanation for the universe?

If one claims that life originated from non-living chemicals without intelligent guidance, what is the extraordinary evidence for that? Even if science succeeds in creating life from non-living chemicals in the laboratory (and they are far from doing that), it would merely prove that intelligence can create life from non-life. That is what the Bible has said for thousands of years.

Once life got its start, what is the evidence that it evolved from species to species until it reached homo sapiens? We don’t see any extraordinary experimental or fossil record evidence of that either. To prove that natural selection acting on random mutations could accomplish a task that defies the second law of thermodynamics requires extraordinary evidence, which we don’t have.

We agree with the Sagan standard that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE). The question is, does all that we see in the universe and on our planet give extraordinary evidence of unguided random chance or design by an intelligent Creator?

Reference: Wikipedia

July 14, 2023July 12, 2023

Losing Hope in the Future

One serious problem facing our society today is a lack of hope. Polls show that most Americans think the country’s best days are behind us. When asked if the country is going in the right or wrong direction, the vast majority say it is going in the wrong direction. Losing hope creates a downward spiral that only gets worse.

Losing hope is a serious problem for society. Hope is what you have when you are looking forward to something better. It involves waiting in anticipation of a better day. When people lose hope, they fear what tomorrow might bring and become discouraged. They may even become angry and vent their frustration on others or themselves. We see that especially among young people, and most of all in girls.

When young people are being taught that they are mere accidents of evolution and their life has no ultimate meaning, it’s not surprising that they are losing hope. When they see no purpose in life and no hope for a better future, we should not be surprised to see them take out their anger on society.

What a difference it can make in the lives of young people if they have the reassurance that they are loved and their lives have purpose and meaning. However, adults can’t give hope to young people if they don’t have it themselves. That is something that Christianity can give. A Christian can look forward to a better day regardless of present circumstances. We know that God is in control and that He loves us, as Jesus taught and demonstrated.

The late Christopher Hitchens would say that “religion poisons everything.” In some ways, that is true. The religion of Darwinian materialistic evolution has been poisoning our young people and destroying their hope, but Jesus restores hope. He said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

The Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew chapters 5-7 is the most excellent discourse on how to live a life of love and hope. If you are losing hope, read those chapters and put the words of Jesus into practice. I guarantee that it will change your life for the better.

July 12, 2023July 11, 2023

Searching for Signs of Alien Life

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is searching for signs of alien life in the universe. NASA’s astrobiology program is renewing efforts to answer the question, “Does life exist elsewhere in the universe?” We find life all over this planet. Life is everywhere on Earth, from frigid climates to arid deserts and ocean depths to mountaintops. But does it exist anywhere else?

Currently, NASA is searching for microbial life on Mars with two robotic rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance. Those rovers are exploring rocks in fossilized waterways on the planet, seeking any indication that microbes once lived there. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are working to develop a Mars sample return mission to bring rocks back to Earth for closer examination.

In December of 2018, NASA spacecraft “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer” (OSIRIS-REx) arrived at the asteroid Bennu after traveling for two years. It orbited Bennu to map the surface and find a good landing spot to obtain samples. In October 2020, OSIRIS-REx touched down on the asteroid, procured a sample, and prepared it for delivery to Earth. In May 2021, the spacecraft departed from Bennu and is expected to arrive back home in September 2023. Scientists will then study this very expensive rock sample, searching for signs of alien life.

Astrobiologists are hopeful that Enceladus and Europa, moons of Saturn and Jupiter respectively, might support some form of life now or in the past. The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is also involved in the search for alien life. It can detect “biosignatures” around exoplanets, planets outside of our solar system. In all these ways, NASA is searching for signs of alien life in the universe.

Heather Graham, a NASA astrobiologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, says, “We don’t actually know yet how life on this planet began….” Of course, NASA is looking for some natural explanation of how life began. Graham further said that we must “roll back that clock to see how life began.” Why not roll back the clock all the way to the beginning? Science can’t explain how the universe began. Not very long ago, scientists thought the universe was eternal, and they made fun of the idea that the universe had a beginning. However, they reluctantly had to admit that the evidence shows there was a beginning, as Genesis has said for thousands of years.

Perhaps some are motivated to search for signs of alien life to show that God is unnecessary. Will science someday find that there is life, even microbial life, elsewhere in the universe? Perhaps, but if there is, God created it since He created the universe.

Reference: “Is There Life Beyond Earth?” on YouTube

June 20, 2023June 19, 2023

Matter Greatly Exceeds Antimatter

It’s “one of the Universe’s best-kept secrets” and a mystery that physicists are working to resolve. Every subatomic particle in the universe has an antimatter equivalent. Each atom consists of electrons, protons, and neutrons. The negative electrons have alternative positrons with a positive charge. If you could combine an electron and a positron, they would cancel each other. Protons and neutrons, which compose the nucleus of atoms, are made of smaller particles called quarks. There are also anti-quarks, and if you combined a quark and an anti-quark, they would explode and destroy each other. Our universe, and us, can only exist because matter greatly exceeds antimatter.

If matter and antimatter were in a state of symmetry with equal amounts, they would have destroyed each other, and nothing would exist. Scientists theorize that the creation event, or Big Bang, should have created an equal amount of matter and antimatter, so they wonder why the lack of symmetry. In other words, why does anything exist in the universe, our planet, and our bodies? The universe is made of matter, while antimatter is almost non-existent except in radioactive particle decay and particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland and France.

According to the Standard Model of particle physics, physicists theorize that a “charge-conjugation parity violation” (CP) caused the lack of symmetry – but how and why? Physicists working with the LHC say particles and antiparticles can spontaneously transform from one to the other. LHC spokesperson Chris Parkes said, “Through more precise measurement, large improvements have been made in our knowledge. These are key parameters that aid our search for unknown effects from beyond our current theory.”

We can be thankful that in today’s universe, the amount of matter greatly exceeds antimatter. Since physicists are looking for an explanation, they may eventually solve the mystery. It will be interesting to see the scientific explanation for the lack of symmetry. Whatever process scientists discover, we suggest that this is another example where intelligence and wisdom provide a more reasonable ultimate explanation than accidental chance offers.

References: CERN News and Space.com

June 15, 2023June 14, 2023

Beauty in the Natural World

Everywhere we look, we see beauty in the natural world. One example of that is Wilson’s bird-of-paradise (Cicinnurus respublica). This unique and exotic bird displays extravagant plumes and feathers that capture attention.

Males are more brightly colored than females. They have a black head with a turquoise crown and yellow feathers on the nape of the neck. Their iridescent tail feathers form the shape of a handlebar mustache. These birds flash and shimmer their colors in the gloom of the forest floor only on two islands in Indonesia.

The most fascinating behavior of Wilson’s bird-of-paradise is the vivid and complex dance males perform to entice females. Because his movements are so robust that he needs an open space free of clutter, he first crafts his “dance floor.” To prepare the dancing area, the bird clears the ground of leaves and other obstacles that could disrupt his performance. Scientists have tested this behavior by placing leaves in front of the bird. That obstruction provoked the bird, causing him to immediately clear the leaves from the area.

A female will find a perching spot on a branch to watch the show from above. As the male dances, she examines every detail of his routine to decide whether to choose him as a mate. Wilson’s bird of paradise females are very critical performance judges.

The dancing ability and intelligence of these birds are astonishing. Wilson’s bird-of-paradise is only one of God’s many beautiful and fascinating species. You can read about more of them at THIS LINK. Beauty in the natural world is difficult to explain by naturalistic evolution since, in many cases, the beauty has no survival value. However, a creative Designer who loves beauty would certainly create a beautiful world and give humans, created in His image, the ability to enjoy and be inspired by beauty in the natural world.