Christianity is not true because a benevolent God would not design vicious parasites.
Category: Science
Thought Snack: Darwinism’s Failure
“In recent years, biologists have been discovering a new form of information critical to body formation called epigenetic information, which is not stored in DNA but in cell structures. Epigenetic information is that ‘imparted by the form and structure of embryonic cells, including information from both the unfertilized and fertilized egg.’ In other words, the physical structure of cells early in the process of making new life-forms charts a developmental path for the organism.
In chapter 14 of Darwin’s Doubt, Meyer describes several kinds of this epigenetic information that developmental biologists have identified. The details are beyond the scope of this book, but Meyer notes that building life requires:
- DNA to make proteins
- Proteins to be organized into cell structures and cell types
- Cell types to be organized into tissues
- Tissues to be organized into organs
- Organs and tissues to be organized into body plans
While DNA contributes to each of these five basic steps, epigenetic information is necessary to produce the higher-level biological structures of steps 2-5. DNA can’t do it alone… But can’t epigenetic information be mutated in some way to create new life-forms? Meyer says he gets that question repeatedly in his public talks. His answer is always ‘no’ for several reasons, the foremost being that any significant changes in cell or organ structure would kill the organism immediately. Of course, death would be the end of any evolutionary process.
This fact should also be the end of anyone claiming that Darwinism is true. Since DNA alone does not entirely control body-plan formation, mutating DNA alone will never generate a new body plan. Take infinite time—it will never happen.” – Excerpt from Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case by Frank Turek
From Convict to Christian, The Story of David Wood
Over the weekend I caught David Wood’s extraordinary story of how he became a Christian. This is a must-see video!
Thought Snack: The Fine-Tuning of Low Entropy
“One other fundamental type of fine-tuning should be mentioned, that of the initial conditions of the universe. This refers to the fact that the initial distribution of mass-energy - as measured by entropy - must fall within an exceedingly narrow range for life to occur. Some aspects of these initial conditions are expressed by various cosmic parameters, such as the mass density of the early universe, the strength of the explosion of the Big Bang, the strength of the density perturbations that led to star formation, the ratio of radiation density to the density of normal matter, and the like. Various arguments have been made that each of these must be fine-tuned for life to occur (see e.g. Rees 2000; Davies 1982, chap. 4). Instead of focusing on these individual cases of fine-tuning, I shall focus on what is arguably the most outstanding special initial condition of our universe: its low entropy. According to Roger Penrose, one of Britain’s leading theoretical physicists, ‘In order to produce a universe resembling the one in which we live, the Creator would have to aim for an absurdly tiny volume of the phase space of possible universes’ (Penrose 1989, p. 343). How tiny is this volume? According to Penrose, if we let x = 10123, the volume of phase space would be about 1/10x of the entire volume (1989, p. 343). This is vastly smaller than the ratio of the volume of a proton - which is about 10−45 m3 - to the entire volume of the visible universe, which is approximately 1084 m3. Thus, this precision is much, much greater than the precision that would be required to hit an individual proton if the entire visible universe were a dartboard! Others have calculated the volume to be zero (Kiessling 2001).” – Excerpt from “The Teleological Argument: An Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe” by Dr. Robin Collins in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.
What Was the Star of Bethlehem?
My wife and I discovered this video on the identity of the Star of Bethlehem by Rick Larson (www.bethlehemstar.net) a few years ago and were absolutely speechless by his presentation and evidence.
