science Archives

November 19, 2022November 15, 2022

Jesus Christ Challenges People to Think

People today often refuse to use evidence to make decisions on everything from personal relationships to politics. One of the unique things we find in the Bible is that Jesus Christ challenges people to think.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus uses the phrase “What do you think” five times (17:25, 18:12, 21:28, 22:17, 22:42). Jesus never called his listeners to blind acceptance or thoughtless adherence to authority. In biblical Christianity, faith is not an emotionally-based response. Despite that fact, modern Christian denominations have relied on blind acceptance and emotion instead of thoughtful reasoning.

A good part of this failure is just plain intellectual laziness. People emotionally follow the charismatic leadership of individuals because it is easier than thoughtfully examining the evidence. The result is that we have cults and abusive religious systems. Unlike other world religions, the Bible and Jesus challenge us to examine the evidence and act on it.

Jesus used miracles to convince people of His divine nature. The prophecies about Christ predicted that He would not attract followers by his physical appearance. Consider Isaiah 53:1-6 which is undeniably a messianic prophecy. That passage says, “He had no form or comeliness … there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief … we esteemed Him not.”

Jesus Christ challenges people to think, but as long as people refuse to use their minds and examine the evidence, skepticism and chaos will result. Throughout the Bible, we find encouragement to look at the evidence and know that God is real and that His Word should guide our lives. Read Psalms 19:1, Psalms 53, Psalms 139:14, Proverbs 8, Matthew 6:26-30, Acts 17:22-31, and Romans 1:18-20. Waiting for God to “zap” you with faith is an exercise in futility. Instead, God rewards those who seek to understand and never calls us to blind acceptance.

The “Does God Exist?” program never relies on the opinion or credentials of any human. Instead, we call on all people to come to faith by using their intelligence and what they can see in the world around them. Examine the evidence!

Our materials are free or at cost and provide a way to organize the evidence so that each person who is willing can “know there is a God through the things He has made” (Romans 1:20). That means looking at the physical world and the spiritual world and dealing with the evidence that is all around us. Still, in today’s world, Jesus Christ challenges people to think.

November 18, 2022November 15, 2022

COVID in Animals On the Rise

The COVID pandemic has taught us a lot. People need to be aware that COVID has been found in 32 different kinds of animals. A few domestic cases have had a strong effect on humans both economically and medically. Realize that this data is just the recorded cases, and the actual case numbers of COVID in animals may be far higher.

The most significant instances of COVID in animals have been in the American mink. The problem is that mink farms have large numbers of animals confined in small spaces, allowing the virus to spread quickly. The November 2022 issue of Scientific American reported 787 cases in minks. As a result, some mink farmers have had to destroy their entire stock to stop the disease from spreading. White-tailed deer are the second-highest wild animal group, with 467 reported cases of COVID.

Dogs and cats had the next highest numbers–353 cats and 225 dogs with reported COVID infections. There is great concern about these domestic animals since they are in constant contact with humans. Rounding out the domesticated animals that can carry and spread the virus are cows, hamsters, and ferrets.

The remaining cases in both the wild and in zoos include lions, tigers, gorillas, otters, beavers, lynxes, and hippopotamuses. These cases show that the virus is very active among mammals and will continue to spread unless animal vaccines are produced and used. Our domestication and use of wild animals means that new strains of COVID in animals will continue to arise. Humans can get the virus from animals as well as other humans, and we can also pass it back to animals.

Studying the origins of the disease and compiling a database of infected species will make it easier for scientists to learn how to protect against COVID and other virus infections. We humans are often our own worst enemies, but God has given us the wisdom and the tools we need to be good stewards of life on Earth.

Reference: “Covid Relay” in Scientific American magazine for November 2022, page 22 and ONLINE.

November 17, 2022November 15, 2022

Beavers Can Help Reduce a Climate Change Problem

People here in Michigan consider beavers a nuisance because they cut down trees and flood farmlands. Unfortunately, beavers cut down some beautiful shade trees on our property. However, beavers can help reduce a climate change problem.

A significant problem associated with the changing climate is the loss of water. Many reservoirs in the western United States are at extremely low levels, and some have completely dried up. Precipitation amounts have dropped while humans mismanage natural water storage.

Meanwhile, people have hunted and trapped beavers due to high prices for pelts and the flooding of farmland and private homes by the dams they built. The result is that water now floods downstream areas. Beavers reduce that problem by creating ponds that hold the water, so it runs off much more slowly. Besides reducing flooding, this also helps to minimize droughts. Studies funded by the National Science Foundation show that by live trapping and moving them upstream, beavers can help reduce a climate change problem.

God has provided ways to make climate change less damaging. For example, storing water in snow and glaciers helps mitigate the problem of water distribution. Additionally, beavers can reduce the problem by building dams that hold water back, providing relief from weather extremes.

God has given us the responsibility of managing what He has created. However, by creating pollution and mismanaging natural resources such as beavers, we have created problems we can no longer ignore. We can all participate in caring for the creation, and pleading ignorance won’t stop the damage.

November 15, 2022November 14, 2022

Designing a Planet to Support Life

An interesting electronic game is one where you have access to a reservoir of materials to design a life-sustaining planet. Once you choose your materials and processes, the game computes how long life could survive on your planet. All the choices end up sterile, but the player with the longest survival time is the winner. Unfortunately, the limited number of variables causes all the options to eventually result in a lifeless globe because designing a planet to support life is a complex process.

As scientists examine systems that support life on Earth, they find multiple complex systems with some surprising agents that allow life to exist over the long haul. For example, we have written before about how many bird and mammal species spread seeds. Also, ants spread the seeds of more than 11,000 plant species. Without ants, the existence and abundance of many plant species could be impossible. A recent study has shown that other insects also spread seeds, allowing the enormous number of plant species on Earth.

Most plants have a compound called “herbivore induced plant volatiles” (HIPVs for short). A plant releases these HIPVs when caterpillars start eating its leaves. The HIPVs attract hungry predators that eat caterpillars. A recent study showed that agarwood (Aquilaria sinensis ), which is native to China, depends on hornets to spread its seeds.

Agarwood fruit produces HIPVs even though it is not assaulted by caterpillars. The agarwood HIPVs attract hornets which rush to capture the plant’s seeds. The hornets carry the seeds to their nests, where they eat the fleshy nutrient-rich structures called elaiosomes attached to the seeds. The hornets discard the seeds on the ground near their shaded nests. The seeds would dry out and die in the sun, but they germinate to produce new agarwood plants in the shade.

The Chinese people use agarwood for various purposes. However, the plant is listed as “vulnerable” because of habitat loss and the fact that local people eat the hornet larvae. Designing a planet to support life is a complex and challenging goal only God can do. Unfortunately, humans lack the wisdom to protect the life-sustaining system God has created for us.

Reference: “Helpful Hornets” Scientific American, October 2022, page 18.

November 14, 2022November 12, 2022

The Design of Lobster Eyes

How do you design an optical system that enables an animal to see 2300 feet (700 m) below the ocean’s surface? That question is similar to the problem that astronomers face as they look into low light levels in areas of space around black holes. The answer came from a detailed study of the design of lobster eyes, and scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center have successfully copied it.

The human eye works by refraction, bending light by using rounded lenses. The lobster’s eyes work by reflection. Each eye of the lobster is packed with 10,000 square-shaped tubes lined with a flat, reflective surface that acts like a mirror. These mirrors direct incoming light to the retina, where tiny cells trap the light and focus it onto a layer of photoreceptors. This allows the lobster to have a full 180-degree view compared to the 120-degree view of human eyes. It also enables them to detect motion in low-light conditions.

In 1992, researchers from Columbia University built a device that mimics the design of lobster eyes, but the technology required 15 years to build a device for use in space missions. Studies using the lobster eye device have shown how the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. In addition, newer models are opening the door to detecting faint X-rays from distant galaxies.

The design of lobster eyes is another of many design features in animal life that scientists have copied, leading to new discoveries. A visual system this complex is not the product of blind accidents. We see the handiwork of God everywhere we look in the natural world. The same God who designed the lobster’s eyes has given us the design for how we should live, and it’s written in His Word, the Bible. We would be wise to follow it.

Reference: “Lobster Eyes Help Us See Into Space” in Discover magazine November/December 2022, page 18.

November 11, 2022November 12, 2022

Date Palms and Food

In our day of climate change, drought, and food shortages, it is essential to know God’s answer to these problems. The Bible talks about “a land of milk and honey.” Most of us probably think this refers to the product of bees and cows. In fact, the milk was mostly from goats, and the honey was entirely from date palms. This plant is so productive that each tree will provide 150 pounds of food a year.

Date palms can live for over 100 years and grow to the height of a five-story building. However, they grow best when the roots can find underground moisture while the tree is in arid and hot conditions above ground. That is the environment of the area where Jesus lived, and today groves of date palms grow on the edge of the Dead Sea.

Date palm seeds are so resilient that some from the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls 2000 years ago have germinated when planted and watered. In the United States, we merely call them “dates,” but there are many varieties for different uses, such as medjool, khalas, sukkary, barhi, rutab, ajwa, kimia, deglet noor, and halawi. In the Middle East, where dates have been used for over 4000 years, these varieties are well-known.

God has provided for human needs in a wide variety of ways. We can solve the problem of food shortages if we use what God has given us. Many of our staple foods in America are difficult to grow, especially in nutrient-poor soils or harsh climatic environments. Using God’s gifts wisely on a global level can reduce hunger, pain, and suffering enormously. God has given us what we need, but we must manage it intelligently.

Reference: “The Sweet and Sticky History of the Date” Smithsonian magazine for November/December 2022, pages 27 ff.

November 10, 2022November 8, 2022

The Concept of Infinity and God

When you read the biblical description of God, you find that it involves qualities that atheists reject. An omnipresent, omnipotent, and eternal God are biblical descriptions that skeptics refuse to accept as possible. The foundation of the atheist worldview rejects an infinite eternity in heaven. Likewise, mathematicians rejected the concept of infinity for many years until the end of the nineteenth century. However, infinity exists, and mathematics doesn’t make sense without it.

Euclid’s geometry deliberately excluded the idea of anything infinitely small or infinitely large. The Greeks believed they could describe the entire universe with positive rational numbers. However, there are cases where a calculation cannot be made with a whole number or one having non-repeating decimal places. For example, the value of pi requires an irrational number with infinite decimal representation. A circle with a radius of one turns out to be 22/7, which is 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 if carried out to 100 places. The value of pi is called an irrational number because even at 100 places, it does not end. The digits after the decimal point are infinite.

Legend says that Hippasus, the first to prove that irrational numbers exist, was executed when his proof was published. The scholarly group known as the Pythagorean brotherhood was vocal about naturalism which had to deny the existence of the infinite. Eventually, it became evident that their view of the cosmos was impossible. And yet here in the twenty-first century, we find that denial of the concept of infinity is still the thinking of those who reject the biblical concept of God.

You can’t understand your life as having an infinite purpose if you reject the concept of infinity. The concept of the infinite is contained in the statement of Jesus in Matthew 20:16, “So the last will be first, and the first last,” and Matthew 16:25, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God has set eternity in the hearts of humanity. On a fundamental level, that biblical concept of reality makes sense, and the history of mathematics is a strong support for the credibility of the biblical concept of eternity.

Reference: “Mathematical Theology” by Doug Phillippy in the Fall 2022 issue of God and Nature

November 9, 2022November 8, 2022

Plant Survival and How It Works

Have you ever thought about the fact that everything in the natural world directly or indirectly eats plants? Not just animal life but bacteria, viruses, and pathogens also attack plants. So how do plants keep from being wiped out? Recent Duke University research headed by Xinnian Dong shows that similar to animals, plant survival depends on an immune system.

The difference is that animals are protected by specialized immune cells that travel through the bloodstream to a place of infection. A plant doesn’t have that means of resisting an attack. Instead of traveling immune cells, each plant cell has a built-in resistance to infection. Each cell synthesizes new proteins to attack an infection while suppressing the normal functions of photosynthesis and growth.

A plant must perform a complex balancing act. The infection will destroy the plant if it doesn’t produce enough defense proteins. If the plant produces too much defense protein, its growth will be stunted. Plant biologists are still trying to understand how plants can resist infection while still growing and carrying on their normal functions. That ability seems to be built into the design of the plant’s DNA.

Understanding the plant survival defense system and how it works will address one of humanity’s significant problems. Fifteen percent of all crops are lost to bacterial and fungal diseases, translating into some 220 billion dollars. With the growing need for food, we must find new ways to increase the productivity of plants by reducing the losses to disease.

When you look at a plant, you might think it’s a simple thing whose functions we understand. However, every plant is a showcase for the wisdom and design of God.

Reference: The National Science Foundation in its Research News for September 20, 2022, and the journal Cell

November 7, 2022November 6, 2022

Blood Moon and Shooting Stars

On the morning of November 8, you will have a chance to see a total lunar eclipse, also known as a “blood moon.” At the same, you may also see a display of “shooting stars.”

A full moon occurs every 29.5 days as our planet comes between the Moon and the Sun. A couple of times per year, the alignment is precise enough that some part of Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon. If the outer area of the shadow crosses the Moon, we see a slight darkening of the Moon’s light. If the full shadow covers only a portion of the Moon, we see a partial eclipse looking as if someone has taken a bite out of the Moon. However, we will see the more dramatic total lunar eclipse this time.

When the eclipse reaches totality, the Moon will take on an orange or reddish glow. That is why people call it a “blood moon.” That color is because the small amount of sunlight reaching the Moon’s surface is the glow of sunrise and sunset all around the world. Our atmosphere bends and filters the light, blocking the blue light and focusing the lower-frequency reds and yellows on the Moon. We see that reflected back to us, this time for about 85 minutes.

You can enjoy a double treat if the sky is clear and the weather is not too cold. This is also the time for the annual Taurid meteor shower. The annual Taurid “shooting stars” are actually fragments of the comet Encke which burn up from the friction of Earth’s atmosphere. They are primarily tiny sand-grain-size pieces of rock that appear as streaks of light. However, some may be a little larger, looking like fireballs. The Taurids generally move more slowly and are often larger than the meteorites of other annual meteor showers. But, they may be fewer and farther between, with perhaps five to fifteen per hour visible in very dark skies.

The problem this year is that the peak of the Taurids is during the full Moon. The bright Moon always makes it difficult to see the much dimmer meteor showers. However, the 85 minutes of the total lunar eclipse creates an ideal window to look for the meteorites. So you can enjoy the “blood moon” and the “shooting stars” at the same time.

So, how and when can you see them? The total eclipse phase will begin on the morning of November 8 at 5:17 a.m. and end at 6:42 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The partial eclipse will start and end about half an hour before and after those times. The faint penumbral phase will begin and end about an hour before and after the partial eclipse times. To see the Taurids, plan on being where you can see a clear view of the whole sky during the total eclipse phase. If you miss this total lunar eclipse, the next one will not occur until March 14, 2025.

Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know there is a God by observing the things He has made. What do the lunar eclipse and the Taurid meteor shower tell us about God? They are not omens of world events. They tell us that the creation is not chaotic but predictable. We live in a solar “system” in which we can accurately predict the movement of planets and moons and calculate what is going to happen and when–even to the exact minute. God has given us an orderly universe that we can study to learn about His power and wisdom. He has also given us His written word, which we can study to learn about His love and find the instructions for how to enjoy the gifts He wants to give us.

References: TimeandDate.com on their website or YouTube channel and NASA HERE, HERE, and HERE

November 4, 2022November 1, 2022

Diving Bell Spiders Breathing Underwater

In freshwater lakes, ponds, and rivers in Europe and Asia, a spider spends virtually its entire life below water, catching prey, mating, laying eggs, resting, and overwintering. Called diving bell spiders or simply water spiders (Argyroneta aquatica), they are the only spiders that breathe air underwater.

Diving bell spiders have a very dense layer of hydrophobic (water-repelling) hairs on their abdomen and legs that they use to hold a bubble of air. They create a “diving bell” by spinning an underwater web to hold the air bubble. The web is made of silk and a specially-designed and unknown protein-based hydrogel. They spin these sheets between submerged water plants and inflate them with the air held by the spider’s hydrophobic hairs. The silk is waterproof but porous enough to allow gas exchange with the surrounding water. There is a net diffusion of oxygen into the bell and a net diffusion of carbon dioxide out.

Nitrogen escapes from the bell as this process continues, so the bubble size decreases, and the spider has to bring new air in periodically to retain the bubble’s size. However, this system is so efficient that they may not have to add air for more than a day. By being underwater their whole life, diving bell spiders have only frogs and fish as their predators. They play an ecological role in the water body by eating aquatic crustaceans and insects such as mosquito larvae.

God has designed many different systems to allow balance in nature. When humans upset the balance, we create problems. The more we study the less visited areas of planet Earth, the more examples we find of unique life forms. We also find ways of copying God’s designs to create new materials and new ways to improve our living conditions.

References: Science News, July 2, 2011, page 14, and wikipedia.