Recently in Science Category

Global warming disciples use arguments on a shaky logical foundation. Examine a few and you’ll quickly spot them.

We’ll examine a few logical errors of some global warming arguments. The scientific ones we’ll leave for another time, but many of those share an equally shaky foundation. In short, the global warming crowd frequently uses logical errors in an attempt to “prove” their point, but it demonstrates they can’t form an argument logically or use critical thinking.

Christians are warned in the Bible to do their own homework and check things out for themselves. Be a Berean, as in Acts 17. Many dangers exist for those failing to perform their own research, but one of the more common arises as the “argument from authority” error, frequently used in advertising as you see a doctor promoting a car or something else (Remember the Camel ads? “What cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?” More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette). Obviously, a doctor doesn’t necessarily have any more expertise in automotive matters than anyone else. Advertising sometimes seeks to make a subtle connection between the two, “trust me, I’m a doctor”.

Infinity represents one of the characteristics of God—a being with no beginning and no end, existing completely outside of time. Not always an easy concept to understand, but James gives us a surprising scientific and technical explanation in his letter.

We’ve written on evolution and beginnings for a while now, but the discussion doesn’t change much; debates over side issues continues to occur, while the foundations rarely receive much attention. For a sadly humorous read, find out what happens when evolutionary data is asked to be supplied, just about everything but scientific evidence for foundations pops up.

In part one on the Trinity we discussed problems arising in the Bible if you deny the Trinity as some groups do: stating Jesus as a created being, a brother of satan, or something else non-divine. In this second part, we’ll consider the scientific reasoning behind the trinity from a passage in 1 John.

θεός (God-theos) ἐστί (is-esti) φῶς (light-phos) (1 John 1:5)

Errors in logic must be avoided if you wish to have an open mind and use critical thinking. This of course means you must be open to all possibilities, forming opinions based on logic and analysis instead of preconceived ideas; confirmation bias can arise during analysis by making assumptions based on what you want to see, instead of evidence and logical deduction.

Carl Sagan provides many quotes loved by both atheists and evolutionists in an attempt to demonstrate the absurdity of God and religion in general. Here’s a popular Sagan quote:

You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief isn’t based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe. Carl Sagan

So-called Junk DNA obtains it’s name because it appears to serve no purpose. If God created the cosmos, the atheist claims, why put useless code in the DNA?

As we’ve talked about before, it’s the argument about vestigial organs all over again. Only problem, we’re finding out they’re not so useless after all. The problem stems from hubris — the idea if we don’t see a purpose, it must be worthless, or “junk”. Naturally, that pre-supposes evolution and a lack of a deity, but adherence to strict dogma instead of experimental evidence never bothered science before.

Many times you’ll hear both atheists and evolutionists point to something as a mistake by God as a reason for denying God’s existence and creation. Various so-called vestigial organs become used as evidence against God, for those organs don’t appear to perform any function — but perhaps vestigial organs aren’t so useless.

For example, recently we’ve found out the spleen isn’t so useless after all:

What’s this all about? About AD 1900 scientists thought everything had been figured out, that there was little else to do. Sure, some details had to be filled in, but for the most part, we understood the world around us. Then along comes this Einstein guy and messes up the whole thing! Einstein is famous for two basic things - Relativity and Quantum Physics - plunging scientists into a world of doubt and uncertainty. Let’s look at one of these two (Relativity) and see why it troubles people so. The other (Quantum Physics) is extremely interesting in it’s own right, but is a subject for another time (no pun intended!).

One of the basic questions of life is “How did I get here”? Either evolution is correct (from the goo to the zoo to you) and the universe came into being from nothing by itself, or some god or other being created the universe and life.

We’ve written about evolution before, yet continually encounter misunderstanding and misrepresentations of the theory — frequently hearing comments such as “overwhelming evidence exists” or the “evidence is all around us” without any supporting proof given. Most likely, many people writing letters lack understanding of the scientific method, and if they do, never apply it to the “science” of evolution. Is evolution scientific? We’ve seen lots of letters to the editor similar to the following:

Previously we briefly introduced the Drake Equation which attempted to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Unfortunately, the parameters going into the formula are wildly speculative, and thus so is the final result. Nevertheless, Drake himself estimates the number at 10,000, and this is the estimate we shall use.

But for all man’s effort, we’ve discovered nothing. Why not? The disparity between the huge numbers of expected contacts and the reality of finding nothing raises the Fermi Paradox — the contradiction between the high (claimed) probability of abundant life elsewhere and our complete failure to find any traces of its existence, current or in the past.

The Drake Equation originated in 1961 as an exercise to consider how many possible intelligent societies exist with the ability to communicate with us. It’s not so much an exact formula as a thought experiment — as we shall see many of the parameters are wild guesses, so just about any value is possible. Here’s Drake’s equation:

There are lies, dammed lies, and statistics. (Mark Twain)

I’m reminded of a story about newspaper reporting in the old Soviet Union (I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it illustrates a point well). A car race between the United States and the Soviets ended with the United States car in first, and the Soviet car second (you should also know only two cars were in this race). But the reporting in the Soviet Union stated the Soviet car came in second, while the United States car came in second to last. Perfectly true, and yet perfectly misleading.

Recent three-year and five-year reports from a NASA program (WMAP) indicate the universe is 13.7 billion years old. Many Christians dismiss those findings, claiming a “young earth” of about 6,000 years. Who is right?