science Archives

July 25, 2023July 24, 2023

Acceleration of Time in the Cosmos

The Webb space telescope has shown an acceleration of time in the cosmos. Dr. Geraint Lewis and Dr. Brendon Brewer at the University of Sydney’s School of Physics and Astronomy authored a study of quasars that provides a way to measure time.

Quasars are highly luminous objects in space powered by supermassive black holes. The Webb telescope has observed a quasar that is so luminous it outshines the Milky Way galaxy by 100 times. As a quasar, its variations in brightness act as a cosmic clock. The researchers have determined that time flowed five times slower in the past than in our galaxy today.

This makes no sense to most of us until we remember that God created time. Time had a beginning, and the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 makes that clear. The Bible also talks about things that happened before time began and describes God as being outside of time. (See Proverbs 8:23. Revelation 1:8, 1:11, 21:6, and 22:13/) The discoveries of the Webb telescope and quantum mechanics clearly show that time is not an ethereal substance but a created thing that flows through the physical world.

The measurements of time by the Webb telescope and in laboratories on Earth show an acceleration of time in the cosmos. The Bible refers to God stretching out the cosmos (Isaiah 40:22, 44:24, 45:12, and 51:13). That fits well with the evidence that the creation began with a singularity that was not merely a physical process but also the creation of space and time by the God who exists outside of space and time.

Ancient people looked to the sky and were amazed at the creation they observed. Now that we have better tools and a fuller understanding of the processes, the wonder of creation is even greater than it was in Moses’ day.

Reference: The journal Nature Astronomy for July 3, 2023

July 24, 2023July 23, 2023

Loneliness Contributes to Bad Health

Medical science has now shown that loneliness contributes to bad health. One of the benefits of being a Christian is what the Bible calls “koinonia.” That Greek word can be translated “fellowship” or “communion.” In Acts 2:42, the first-century Church met in constant fellowship, and Hebrews 10:25 urged Christians not to forsake gathering together. We see in the scriptures that Christ’s disciples were together constantly. Today, fellowship with people who share your values and beliefs is a significant contributor to good health.

A study of 18,000 diabetic adults in the United Kingdom showed that “loneliness may be a bigger risk for heart disease in diabetes patients than a bad diet, smoking or a lack of exercise or depression.” Researchers found that over ten years, the chance of developing cardiovascular disease was up to 26% higher in patients with high loneliness scores. Dr. Lu Qi, a professor at Tulane University, said, “We should not downplay the importance of loneliness on physical and emotional health. I encourage my patients with diabetes who feel lonely to join a group or class and try to make friends with people who have shared interests.”

God’s statement that “it is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18) should not be restricted to the marriage relationship. Loneliness contributes to bad health, and God knows what humans need for good health. I have observed that men who lose their wives and live alone have a reduced life expectancy, but the Church provides a remedy for that loneliness. On a personal note, I remember vividly the negative effect my wife’s death had on my health. My relationship with other Christians in the months following her death has contributed to my living to see my 85th birthday.

Reference: “Insider Report” from Yahoo News for June 2023.

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 18, 2023July 17, 2023

The Salvinia Effect and Biomimicry

Scientists have made many helpful discoveries by observing things in nature. Everything from airplane wings to Velcro originated by imitating something observed in the natural world. The name of this process is biomimicry, and an example is the salvinia effect.

Salvinia is a genus of ferns that float on the water. This plant has a layer of microscopic hairs that grow from a single shaft. The four hairs from the single shaft are connected at the tips, giving them a shape that resembles an eggbeater. The hairs and the leaf surface repel water (hydrophobic), but the tips of the hairs attract water (hydrophilic). This traps a layer of air on the leaf’s surface, eliminating any drag or pull the water might have on the leaves. This stabilized air layer on a surface submerged in water is known as the salvinia effect.

The salvinia effect opens new opportunities for biomimicry. Aircoat Project, funded by the European Union, has developed a synthetic coating that mimics this effect. Imagine the money saved if a coating for a ship’s hull could reduce drag by 30-40%, saving fuel. This coating could also reduce ship noise, which is detrimental to aquatic species such as porpoises. In effect, the ship would be floating on a very thin layer of air.

In biomimicry, such as the salvinia effect, we learn from what God has already created and find ways to apply that knowledge to solve some of our problems. Because there are so many examples of specialized and highly sophisticated design in the world around us, the future looks bright if we preserve God’s gifts and learn from them.

Reference: Motortrend Magazine, August 2023, page 22, and Wikipedia

July 17, 2023July 16, 2023

An Astronaut Who Believes in the Bible and Science

“There are no atheists…on top of rockets” is the title of an article by B. T. Irwin, interviewing NASA astronaut Victor Glover. Glover has served on the International Space Station and will pilot NASA’s Artemis II Mission to the Moon next year. Glover is an astronaut who believes in the Bible and science. He talks about how the creation gives evidence for the existence of God.

What is especially interesting is that Glover’s interview was published in The Christian Chronicle, a Church of Christ periodical. The Christian Chronicle has been antagonistic to our ministry because we refuse to dogmatically say the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. The Chronicle has also supported dispensational efforts by promoting Ken Ham’s material and the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter amusement park. Ham’s program promotes the 6000-year age of the Earth to support his dispensational doctrinal views. Victor Glover is an astronaut who believes in the Bible and science, as he explained it in these words:

“The moon is a time capsule for the Earth, and we think it’s old – about 4.5 billion years. And my preacher used to say to me, ‘Yeah, but NASA is wrong because I know the Earth is about 10,000 years old.’ I said, ‘How do you know that?’ He walked me through the lineages in the Bible, and I said, ‘But that doesn’t mark any specific time period.’ And it doesn’t need to because the power of the Gospel is not in a timeline. It’s in that message, in that promise, and that promise being kept. So they don’t actually work against each other like some people like to claim that they do. I had to navigate that because of my faith and my belief in science. I believe in both, and I don’t find them to be in conflict. And I think it’s helped me to be an ambassador to both sides.”

For 55 years, the “Does God Exist?” ministry has shown that science is a friend of faith. We have seen much opposition from the religious establishment as we struggle to undo the collateral damage of the rejection of science. Physical evidence continues to reveal the truth of the Bible. Even when it conflicts with human religious tradition, science is in total agreement with what the Bible says. Let us all pray that some who will not listen to us will listen to an astronaut who believes in the Bible and science. Many young souls are at stake in this false conflict between science and faith.

Reference: The Christian Chronicle for July 2023, pages 22-23.

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

July 11, 2023July 9, 2023

The Process of Dying

Today’s advances in medicine have made the process of dying much more complicated. Proverbs 31:6-7 told the people of ancient times, “Give strong drink to the one who is perishing … let them drink and remember .. their misery no more.” Death is a natural part of life, and for most of us, it is the pain associated with dying that we fear, not so much death itself. Ten million adults age 75 and older visit emergency rooms yearly, and 50% of older adults will be there in the last month of their lives. Adults 65 and older have the highest ER utilization of any age group. The real issue for most of us is quality of life.

Many of us have had a loved one suffering with no hope of ever having a quality of life again and just wanting to go and be with Jesus and not have any more pain. Your author has had to deal with a child in that situation. My son Tim was a victim of COVID. Medical practice was to give him treatment that would keep him alive – including a respirator and a drug package. He survived COVID, but it left horrendous residual damage. Tim could not sit up, take care of his toilet needs, feed himself, walk, or even push a call button when he needed help. I could understand about half of what he said, but no one else could.

Because of Tim’s blindness and mental challenges, he lost the few things he could enjoy. He spent his last months in a nursing home that could meet his basic needs, and gradually his body weakened to the point that he finally passed away. What is wrong with this picture which is repeated over and over in America today? The nursing home Tim was in had some 50 people in similar situations, and the nurses told me I was the only family that visited regularly. People were left in the process of dying, abandoned by loved ones who couldn’t emotionally deal with the situation.

When Tim was admitted to the hospital with COVID, I asked the doctors to allow him to die pain-free and nothing more. They told me they were obligated to do as much as possible to keep him alive and reprimanded me for suggesting they should do nothing but make him comfortable. A national movement called “Assistance in Dying” is working to allow doctors to provide palliative care while allowing a person to die if they choose.

God designed the human body to end its existence without endless suffering, but those who reject faith in God want life to continue at all costs, financially and psychologically. We need to allow God’s will to determine the process of dying and how life ends.

Reference: CompassionAndChoices.org

July 6, 2023July 5, 2023

Sexual Identity and God’s Creation

Sexual identity has become a major issue in American society. Increasing numbers of young people are pushing to have their gender changed while guidance counselors attempt to use gender change to solve emotional problems. Meanwhile, doctors are encouraged to prescribe hormones and irreversible surgeries to facilitate changing a young person’s gender.

Like many issues today, many people attack Christians and use the gender issue to denigrate God. Genesis 1:27 indicates that God created male and female as separate entities. Genesis 3:16-20 spells out the roles of males and females, suggesting that their biology defines their roles in life. It is essential to understand that the scientific evidence supports this point.

Sexual identity goes beyond gametes and sexual organs. Numerous biological differences between males and females are not just arbitrary or psychological. Males have more hair on their faces than females. Females have larger breasts than males. Males generally have more upper body strength than females. Men are, on average, about six inches taller than women. The mean height for American women is 5 feet three inches, and for men, it is 5 feet nine inches.

Studies show that men tend to have greater ability in physical areas involving speed and spatial relations tasks, while women have greater ability in verbal matters and social cognition. Men score higher on tests involving assertiveness, which is seen in boy babies, not just adults. Women tend to be more extroverted, trusting, and nurturing. Biological factors give women greater flexibility in gymnastics and ability in small-bore rifle competitions, while men do better in most competitive sports.

There is solid factual scientific evidence that being male or female is not just a choice but a biological fact. We empathize with those who, for reasons still not understood, feel trapped in the wrong body, but forcing change on that body by chemicals and surgery is destructive in the long run. We must provide help and solutions for individuals dealing with sexual identity problems or other mental and emotional struggles. However, making major changes in God’s design will eventually produce more problems for the individuals and for society.

References: Skeptic Magazine Volume 28 # 1 2023, pages 69-73.

July 5, 2023July 4, 2023

Asteroid Strike from Space

As our view of space and our solar system improves, astronomers have realized that space is a dangerous place. Space travel requires considering the many ways astronauts can be harmed when they leave Earth’s protection. It isn’t just cold and radiation and the damaging effects of weightlessness, but our solar system is full of rock material left over from the creation process. NASA must keep in mind the possibility of an asteroid strike from space.

NASA has plotted 1000 known “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids” (PHAs). These are documented boulders of rock and ice over 140 meters across that will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth (about 20 times the distance to the Moon). Were a giant asteroid to strike Earth, the result would be catastrophic. There is evidence that this has happened in the past, probably causing mass extinctions on our planet.

NASA used the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission in 2022 to explore the possibility of redirecting an asteroid away from the Earth. We are talking about a large object, not the small pieces of rock and dust that strike the Earth every day, producing meteor displays and fireballs. NASA designed DART to find a way to prevent a catastrophic asteroid strike from space.

NASA has concluded that none of the asteroids known to astronomers will strike the Earth for at least the next 100 years. God created our planet in such a way that we are protected from destructive agents from outer space. The more we learn about space, the more we see the design and planning involved in creation.

The threat to humanity is what we do to ourselves, not any failure in the design of our planet. God has also given us a way to protect ourselves from each other, and we see that in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Read Matthew chapters 5-7, and you will see what Jesus told us. The selfishness and greed of humans threaten our existence individually and collectively. Human self-destruction is far more likely than a catastrophic asteroid strike from space.

Reference: NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for June 30, 2023