science Archives

December 20, 2023December 19, 2023

Questions Science Can’t Answer

There are some things science can’t explain – some questions science can’t answer. Furthermore, science will probably never explain them because science cannot answer these questions by natural explanations. The unanswerable questions include:

1-“Why does the universe exist?”
You could also say, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”

2-“How did something come from nothing?”
The first question leads us to ask this second one. If there was nothing before everything came into existence, “How can everything come from nothing?” In fact, “How can anything come from nothing?” Science proposes that the “Big Bang” was when time, space, matter, and energy all came into existence. If nothing existed before, how can something come from nothing with no cause?

These are questions science can’t answer. Therefore, scientists look for ways to redefine “nothing” to mean something other than absolutely nothing. But how can it be nothing if it is something, and what was the something? The problem science has with these questions is that they don’t have natural explanations. Modern science has limited itself to natural explanations, placing the supernatural outside of the scope of science. To say that anything is outside of nature’s realm goes against the scientific dogma.

Many of today’s scientists insist that nothing exists beyond the natural things they can measure. Astronomer Carl Sagan famously said, “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” Since the supernatural is beyond science’s limited boundaries, science can never answer these two questions. But those are not the only questions science can’t answer. We will look at two more tomorrow.

December 19, 2023December 18, 2023

The Design of Dirt

Most of us take dirt for granted and perhaps even have a negative attitude toward what lies beneath our lawns and gardens. We may not realize that soil is a complex structure designed for life and that many life forms live in it. We should take a moment to consider the design of dirt.

There are many kinds of soil, and the amount varies widely in different environments. In deserts or polar areas, we find very little soil. For example, in Alaska, the soil is very thin, but life there is supported by the yearly migration of salmon. In desert areas, we may have only sand and no soil. Also, volcanic regions may have no soil since soil takes time to develop. Volcanic rock coming out of the lava flow is usually very sterile.

Because of the design of dirt, it is home to 59% of Earth’s species. Scientists have identified twelve families of living organisms that survive in the soil. Some of these are more familiar, such as mollusks, arthropods, fungi, protozoans, bacteria, viruses, plants, and even mammals. Less well-known are nematodes, oligochaets, enchytraeids, and archaes.

Humans depend on all of these life forms for food, fiber, and the survival of the animals humans use for food. Life on land could not exist without the organisms living in the soil beneath our feet. Using chemicals on soil threatens its ability to provide what we need to survive. Agriculture is moving toward more efficient and effective methods of growing our food. Efforts to duplicate the design built into Earth’s soil are proving to be a challenge.

In the Garden of Eden, everything humans needed to eat was already growing. God had designed soil that produced the plants; all the first humans had to do was gather it. When God expelled them from the garden, they were forced to deal with an Earth that was out of balance. They had to control the soil and what grew in it. We can try to copy God’s design of soil, but we are only beginning to understand how complex it is and what it takes to maintain a working environment. God’s wisdom is seen everywhere we look, even down to the design of dirt.

Reference: “The Soil Contains Multitudes” in the January/February issue of American Scientist, page 8.

December 15, 2023December 12, 2023

The Magnitude of the Creator and His Love

Dr. James C. Peterson, writing in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, gave some astounding numbers to help us comprehend the magnitude of the Creator. These facts should cause amazement that God could care about us as individuals.

Peterson writes, “There are 12 times as many stars in our galaxy as there are people on our planet.” It is hard to comprehend that God knows about me at all when you realize that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and there are two trillion galaxies that we know of. Peterson points out we are on a dot (planet Earth) compared to the size of the Sun, which is a dot compared to the size of our galaxy.

Despite those facts, God knows my name and how many hairs are on my head (Luke 12:6-7). The Creator of the cosmos “knows within me my thirty trillion cells, and the three billion base pairs of my personal DNA copied in a complete set, inside each of my nucleated cells.” It has been said that the more we know about the creation, the more we comprehend the magnitude of the Creator.

The psalmist David seemed to comprehend the magnitude of the Creator as he looked at the stars without telescopes and marveled at their creation. In Psalms 19:1, David wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” In Psalms 139:13-15 David writes, “…you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret…”

Today, as we look outward with our telescopes and inward with our microscopes, we have more reason to be amazed than David ever did. David wrote in Psalms 8:3-4, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”

There is more to fill us with awe than just the magnitude of the Creator. We also marvel at the magnitude of His love. Jesus spoke of the “agape” form of love, which considers every human to be of incredible worth no matter who they are or their station in life. Earth would be at peace if all humans could grasp that concept. Perhaps someday, enough of us will realize that our concept of the Creator is too small and the value we place on the creation and on our fellow humans is too limited to allow war to continue.

Reference: Dr James C. Peterson writing in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, December 2023 issue, page 153.

December 12, 2023December 11, 2023

You Can’t Sneak Up on a Sleeping Bird

Have you ever tried quietly approaching a bird that appeared to be sleeping? If you have, you were probably unsuccessful, especially if the bird was nesting. Researchers have discovered a design feature called “microsleeps” that may help explain why you can’t sneak up on a sleeping bird.

Researchers discovered this feature in chinstrap penguins in Antarctica. The Max Planck Institute in Germany, the Korean Polar Research Institute, and the Neuroscience Research Center in France conducted this research. They found that the chinstrap penguins nod off thousands of times daily but sleep for only four seconds each time.

The researchers attached brain wave sensors, so there is no question that the birds were sleeping. The short microsleep naps add up to roughly eleven hours a day. The birds are essentially awake all the time, protecting their eggs, their young, and their nests. To get accurate data, researchers chose Antarctica, where the Sun does not set during the breeding season. You can’t sneak up on a sleeping bird, but researchers haven’t determined if all birds practice microsleep or whether they do it when they are not nesting.

The more we learn about the creation, the more we appreciate the Creator who made all living things, giving them the necessary equipment to survive. Human technology is opening more and more doors of understanding to “the things God has made” (Romans 1:20). The complexity of systems that allow survival and safety for various animal species is another argument for rejecting the notion that life is the product of blind chance.

References: Smithsonian Magazine and National Geographic

December 7, 2023December 5, 2023

Earth Is Designed to Sustain Humans

Nearly every day brings an announcement of discoveries by various space agencies showing that our unique planet Earth is designed to sustain humans.

The Webb space telescope found a planet as large as Jupiter but much less dense, and researchers have dubbed it the “cotton candy planet.” It has winds up to 10,000 mph and large amounts of sulfur dioxide in an atmosphere of sand that acts like rain. Another discovery from the Webb space telescope is that there are free-floating planet-sized objects similar in size to Jupiter but not in orbit around any star. No model of planet and star formation explains these strange objects.

Discoveries of the Webb telescope show the complexity of the cosmos, complicating travel in space. Additionally, NASA has released data showing that humans suffer significant body changes in weightlessness for an extended time. Astronaut Scott Kelly was in space for roughly a year, and his heart diminished in size by nearly a third and became rounder. Astronauts have had bone density changes of up to 2% a month, and radiation significantly affects their DNA. Reported psychological issues called “detachment phenomena” make astronauts unreceptive to instructions from mission control.

Humans were created to live on planet Earth, and Earth is designed to sustain humans. Simply transporting humans to a space environment doesn’t work easily. Creating an environment similar to what God gave us will require massive scientific work and may be impossible. The idea that people can survive on other planets going around other stars in the near future makes good science fiction but is not practical. We must learn to get along and solve our problems here on Earth. The belief that we are here by chance becomes harder and harder to accept as we learn more about both space and ourselves.

Reference: The Week for December 8, 2023, pages 11 and 22, and October 20, 2023, page 22.

December 6, 2023December 5, 2023

Neon Tetras Avoid Bottlenecks

Sometimes, we can overlook design features in living things even though they are all around us. Most of us who have had tropical fish aquariums are familiar with the fish known as neon tetras. These fish are great for aquariums because they are tiny – usually about an inch long. They have a brilliant blue stripe running laterally and a red strip underneath toward the tail. These fish are native to the Amazon Basin and live in freshwater.

Researchers have discovered that neon tetras have a quality lacking among many humans. They have the ability to wait their turn. Researchers took a school of tetras and put them in a tank that had a narrow opening to get to a food source. The tetras could get through the narrow opening without clogging and impeding passage. The small fish didn’t collide with one another as they swam through the opening to get to the other side of the tank. Researchers say ants are the only other form of life to demonstrate agility in avoiding bottlenecks.

One has to wonder why these fish have this ability since humans have not solved the problem of getting large numbers of people through narrow openings. Neon tetras live in streams that pass through many rocks, and being able to wait their turn gives them a better chance of survival than if they ended up with a bottleneck.

All living things have characteristics carefully fitted to their needs and environment. As we study life forms, we see this repeatedly, and it screams out the message of Romans 1:20: “we can know there is a God through the things He has made.”

Reference: National Geographic for December 23, page 22

December 4, 2023December 3, 2023

The Treasury of the Snow

“Have you entered the treasury of the snow…?” (Job 38:22”. “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater…” (Isaiah 55:10). “He gives snow like wool …” Psalms 147:16).

That is just a sampling of the Old Testament understanding of the importance of snow. Many of us don’t view snow as a treasure, not realizing how snow does things that rain cannot do. The fact is that snow is essential to humans as well as many forms of animal and plant life. We couldn’t live without the treasury of the snow.

Snow on the mountains locks up water during winter and releases it gradually during the summer. Rain comes all at once and is quickly gone, as many of us have experienced flooding in the past year. If that moisture came as snow, there would be no flooding, and melting snow would gradually provide water for plants and animals. Falling snow also has a cleaning effect, as Job 9:20 suggests.

In the winter, snow allows small animals like vols, moles, chipmunks, and field mice to feed on plants and insects they would not have access to in summer. They can even raise their young under the protection of snow. When the snow melts, larger animals can feed on these smaller ones, preserving the balance of the food chain. Even in winter, the larger animals can catch some of them because the snow does not block the sound of their scurrying. The whole food chain is affected by the treasury of the snow.

Snow formation is due to the water molecule’s design and not some accident. The polarity of the water molecule means it has positive and negative ends. That creates the beautiful snowflake shapes. As water freezes, the molecules latch onto each other, and the volume of the water expands. This allows lakes to freeze on the surface since the density of ice is lower than that of liquid water. Non-polar materials do not expand as they freeze.

Romans 1:20 tells us we can know there is a God through the things He has made. The treasury of the snow is an essential part of God’s design to allow life to survive.

December 1, 2023November 29, 2023

The Journey to Safety

We have often talked about the design of animals. Various animals act on what we often call “instinct.” Programmed into sea turtles is a journey to safety. When baby sea turtles hatch on the beach, they instinctively and quickly head to the ocean to escape the predators on land. Their mothers didn’t teach them to do that. It is programmed into them. When a kangaroo is born, it will instinctively journey to safety by climbing into its mother’s pouch. She does nothing to assist the tiny creature. Programming a specific action is very efficient, so we program computers to do specific tasks.

In contrast to programmed actions, there is free will. When we tell our children what to do, they may do something entirely different. The child can understand our instructions but still refuse to follow them. The reason is that the child finds other things he wants to do are more appealing.

The bottom line is that commanding actions is less efficient than programming those actions. A baby sea turtle, kangaroo, or robot will act in the way it is programmed. If you are a parent, you have realized that your child will not always do what you command. The question, then, is why didn’t God program humans to do what He wanted? Why did He give us free will? Programming us to act as He desired would have been much more efficient.

God commands us rather than programming us to do His will because He wants to have a relationship with us. Robots can be very efficient because they have specific functions programmed into them and will do what their designer intended. That is not true of humans. However, you can never have a real relationship with a robot. God wants to have a relationship with us. He knew what would happen when He created the first humans, but He did it anyway. We have rebelled and made a mess of our lives and our world. Hatred, war, and mayhem have been the results.

Why, then, did God choose to create us? To Him, having a relationship with us was worth the price. Jesus Christ came to Earth to restore the broken relationship. He was the perfect man, but at the same time, He was God in the flesh. He showed us how to have a loving relationship with God and each other. Then, He bore the punishment for our disobedience to restore the broken relationships.

We are not robots. We are God’s creation, in His image, with free will. We can choose the journey to safety or ignore God and choose our own path. God has made the journey to safety and peace available to us. Why choose the path to destruction?

November 30, 2023November 29, 2023

Seaweed as a Food Source

God has given us a food source that so far humans have been unwilling to tap – seaweed. It is super fast growing, with some species like giant kelp growing 50 centimeters a day. Seaweed doesn’t need land or pesticides and doesn’t have to be watered. Furthermore, it is packed with protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. With over 800 million people starving worldwide, one answer might be seaweed as a food source.

Oceans cover roughly two-thirds of our planet, yet they contribute less than three percent of humans’ total food calories. Asian recipes have used seaweed for centuries, and its cultivation is limited mainly to Asia — large areas of the sea could be seaweed farms. There are 12,000 different types of seaweed, and humans have only learned how to cultivate fewer than 30.

Dried seaweed retains its nutrients and has a long shelf life, so it doesn’t have to be refrigerated or frozen. The reluctance to use seaweed as a food source has primarily come from misconceptions about it. Many of us have only seen water plants growing in a freshwater pond and have no idea what ocean-grown seaweed is like. In addition to food and the replacement of environmentally polluting agents, seaweed can be a significant carbon sink, absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide.

Seaweed can also be used as a natural fertilizer for land plants and as feed for animals. It can even be a cotton alternative in textiles and, in some cases, as a biodegradable replacement for plastics. Like most human problems, the solution is there, but we aren’t using all of the wealth of resources God has given us. One solution God has provided may be seaweed as a food source and more.

Reference: Opinion article by Vincent Doumeizel on cnn.com

November 24, 2023November 21, 2023

The Feel-Good Hormones

Hormones are chemical messengers that travel through our bloodstream. You can describe them as signaling molecules that work to set things in motion. The name comes from a Greek word meaning “setting in motion.” Hormones are produced in various areas of our bodies and are sent through the bloodstream to signal some action or response. Good health requires a balance of hormones, and proper diet, exercise, and rest help to keep them in balance. The feel-good hormones are four classes of hormones that, as you might guess, do things that make us feel good.

ENDORPHINS- Endorphins are the body’s natural painkillers. The pituitary gland, located at the base of the brain, synthesizes and stores them. Endorphins help to mask pain, reduce stress, and improve mood. When we push through a painful task or strenuous exercise, endorphins are there to help us.

DOPAMINE- Two areas of the brain produce dopamine, and you can think of this hormone as the brain’s reward system. Exercise, eating a food we like, or accomplishing a task can cause the brain to release dopamine, giving us a pleasurable feeling. The use of some drugs and alcohol can release a flood of dopamine, giving us a sense of euphoria, a “high.” But coming down from that high can lead to depression and a desire for more of the drugs. Normal activities or exercise stimulate dopamine more slowly, and the effect of the hormone remains longer. Good stewardship of our bodies and health calls for avoiding harmful drugs and alcohol.

OXYTOCIN- Some people call this feel-good hormone the love hormone. Touching, hugging, or sexual activity can trigger the release of oxytocin. The brain’s hypothalamus produces it, and the pituitary gland releases it into the bloodstream. Oxytocin can help improve social interactions and give us a desire to develop stronger connections with others.

SEROTONIN- Serotonin is a natural mood booster, and depression can result from a low level of this hormone. Serotonin performs many functions and is produced by the central nervous system in various areas of the body. Serotonin improves memory and learning and promotes relaxation. Exercise, as well as exposure to sunshine and the outdoors, can increase the production of serotonin. Meditation and quietness in prayer can also reward us with this mood-boosting hormone.

The feel-good hormones are part of good health, and a healthy lifestyle boosts them. However, too much of a good thing too quickly is not healthy. Alcohol and drugs can give us a high but only lead to a letdown. A healthy lifestyle involves proper diet, exercise, rest, prayer, meditation, thankfulness, and balanced relationships with others. Incorporating those things into our lives is the best way to enjoy the blessings God has for us.