Category Archives: science
Aerospace engineer finds the Creator of space
His vaunted career in aerospace engineering led him to being featured in National Geographic for his research with NASA.
But the PhD from a German university couldn't save Dr. Dragos Bratasanu from personal heartbreak when his startup flopped, and he went back to his parents apartment depressed, in wretched pain and envying the dead in the local cemetery.
"The pain was so intense, I took my pillow and cried out to God from the bottom of my heart," he recalls on a CBN video. "God, if you're real, I need you."
Growing up in Romania, Dragos was turned off by religion because it involved "bowing down to bones," burning candles and the belief that you can only get to Heaven through your local priest.
Instead of seeking religious truth, he sought scientific truth. Excelling in his studies, he got the chance to study in Germany, where earned his PhD in space science. He worked with the Romanian Space Agency, got a chance to work with NASA and was commended in a National Geographic article.
At the top of his scientific career, he fell to the depths of inner despair. His business failing, he was humbled to the point of not being able to pay his bills and moved back with his parents. He cursed his fate.
When he considered embarking on a spiritual quest, Christianity was his last option. He studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and other major religions. He even traveled to the Himalayas to study under the most renowned Buddhist monks. All seemed to offer good tenets, but didn't resonate with his soul.
While he was on a sabbatical in Hawaii, a non-believing friend recommended he read Katheryn Kuhlman… Read the rest: Dr. Dragos Bratasanu Christian.
Posted in aerospace engineering,, Christ, Christiain entrepreneur, Christian, Christian entrepreneur, Christian living, Christian love, Christian news, Christian scientist, Christian testimony, Christianity, Christianity and science, real Christianity, real issues Christianity, science, space
Tagged Bible, dr dragos bratasanu, Faith, Germany, God, hawaii, inspiration, Jesus, katheryn kuhlman, life, questions of existence, questions of life, Romania
But how did the polymers come together before you could have evolution? Science comes up dry
Natural selection is fine, but the theory of evolution collapses long before natural selection can even get started, says biochemist Sy Garte, PhD, on Capturing Christianity. It collapses at the molecular level.
Simply put, there's no scientific basis for how complex, sophisticated molecules could have spontaneously generated to provide even the most primitive cells – polymers — the building blocks necessary to start the evolutionary process.
The field of study searching for an explanation of how these molecules first developed is called abiogenesis, and its failure to account for "chemical evolution" is something of a secret in science.
"People who say that we're almost there are just wrong," Garte maintains. "People who are not working in the field, many of them, will say, 'Oh, yeah, we're getting there. We've made a lot of progress.' But the people who are actually the leaders in the field and know the details say… not a lot of progress has been made – in fact very little progress. And the numbers of problems just keep expanding."
Born into a third generation of atheists, Sy Garte loved science because hard facts seemed dependable, a more solid basis for belief than faith in a God.
In graduate school, he was filled with wonder over the dizzying complexity of cells replicating with mind-boggling accuracy.
"I learned about the process by which proteins are made in cells and that's a very complex process that Involves a tremendous amount of biomolecules interacting with each other
and the complexity is just incredible," he notes. "I remember feeling like a chill going down my spine. It was like, 'This is amazing. How did this get here?' It was something that I couldn't answer."
But he was only in graduate school, so he shrugged it off. He would, or so he thought, get his answers later, as he progressed in the field.
Instead, the sense of wonder only grew.
"Nothing in the universe self-replicates accurately other than living cells," Garte says. "No chemical self-replicates, no machine self-replicates, crystals don't self-replicate, even DNA doesn't self-replicate.
Indeed, chemicals do not produce offspring!
"But a living cell can make copies of itself that are 99.9999% accurate," he adds. "That's astonishing. How does that happen? It involves a tremendous number of really complex things, including the genetic code, including ribosomes, and DNA replication, and protein synthesis – things that are just too complicated to describe without slides or without a semester of biology or chemistry or whatever."
His dad was a chemist, a hard science guy. He and Garte's mother also happened to be communists and militant atheists. So Garte's formational worldview… Read the rest: Chemical evolution? Science says no way.
Posted in Christ, Christian, Christian news, Christian scientist, Christianity and science, creation, evolution, science
Tagged abiogenesis, chemical evolution, sy garte
Eternal life on Earth? How can Christians participate with transhumanists?
Among the lofty goals of transhumanists is to guide human evolution so that we can live forever. Here on Earth.
If that notion alarms you, you are not alone. Russell Moore says the principles of transhumanism and Christianity are irreconcilably antithetical.
The idea of "Christian transhumanists is somewhat like having a carnivorous vegan society," says the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "They are completely contradictory. Scripture tells us how to transcend death, and it's not through our own technology or prowess."
But have Christians cried wolf too many times? How many times have we identified the number 666 with bar codes, chip implants or even vaccines? We must not ignore the pledge of worship and loyalty to the Beast which is part of Revelation 13.
Micah Redding of the Christian Transhumanist Society says believers need to join the conversation about these advances in science collectively known as transhumanism, not rail against it from the pulpit and assume an anti-scientific posture.
If you thought the current transgender craze is insane, just wait until transhumanism kicks into high gear.
It is from the realm of medical science that we are seeing the first advances in transhumanism. Researchers now are able to implant prosthetics that interface with the nervous system. Patients can "feel" and guide their hand (or foot) because of a sophisticated adaptation to the body's neurons (which transmit signals to the brain by mimicable chemical-electrical impulses).
From there, transhumanists say we can replace body parts, rejuvenate the brain, splice in genes to remove disease and re-craft the human body to extend natural longevity to ridiculous numbers of years. Some predict lifespans returning to the pre-Flood days of Methuselah.
All of that sounds incredible. But some of the modifications on the human body made possible by science are troubling, especially when it comes to gene-splicing.
In 2017, scientists replaced a mutation in the genetic code of a baby to eliminate a heart defect. The baby was born with a perfect, healthy heart.
That's cool.
Let's take it one step further. Can we create a superhuman? Can we splice in super-intelligence, good looks, musical talent?
Will rogue nations like China create an army of genetically modified super soldiers, with the stamina of a horse, the eyesight of an eagle, the muscular build of a baboon?
Will the threat that our rivals may be developing super soldiers constitute the next arms race and force our hand on a matter of dark, highly questionable ethics?
Already, the US's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) produces bullet proof material from spider webs produced in the milk of goats that have spider genes spliced in. What other technologies is the super-secretive DARPA doing?
If those questions aren't troubling enough, another one is this: Will the genetical-modified super soldiers join together, turn against us and take over? The movie the Matrix might prove less science fiction and more science fact sooner or later, though with some variation.
The concept of these "transhumans" is very much a part of the current scientific dialogue, which bases itself on the assumption of evolution. By mutation and natural selection, man and all species evolved, according to Darwin's theory.
Now, the transhumanists say, humans must take matters into our own hands to guide our own evolution. To not do so would be to risk extinction, they claim.
Most Christians would take exception to that language. It precludes God's hand in creation and His sovereignty. The brash atheism of the majority of transhumanists is enough to turn off most Christians.
"It is a terrifying development in our culture. It's part of the breakdown of our culture because it's a breakdown of distinctions" established by God, says devout Jew Barak Lurie, a real estate lawyer in Los Angeles. "With transhumanism it's very clear to me that it defies God's overall plan for us. Your friend could come in with big eagle's wings so that he can now fly. You don't know whether to call him an eagle or a man, or a combination of a frog and eagle and a man. There are many reasons why God gives us animals, but it's not to become one of them."
A man with eagle's wings? Such a notion is not merely in the realm of comic books. In 2016, scientists in Japan "grew" an ear on the back of a rat to be harvested and implanted into kids mauled by pitbulls. Reverse the process from animal to man and it wouldn't be far-fetched for a person to develop animal parts.
If the story of Frankenstein science doesn't unnerve you, how about "uploading" your brain to the computer, a goal of the AI transhumanists. Since the brain works by electrical impulse to warehouse memories, could scientists learn and copy its functions to the point that you could upload your consciousness to a computer and subsequently download it to another body in the future? Read the rest: What should Christians think of transhumanism?
Posted in Christ, Christian, Christian news, Christian transhumanists, Christianity, Christianity and science, christianity in technology, science, transhumanism, transhumanists
Tagged christian transhumanism society, christian transhumanist society, eternal life, eternal life on earth, evolution, micah redding
Ok, Biden.
Politicians in America sound off sanctimoniously about needing to "stick with science" in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, but Israeli scientists prove how difficult it is to find consensus in the best ways to limit the deadly pestilence.
After initial success handling the pandemic, in July Israel saw a resurgence of Covid-19. On September 13th, Israel's government approved a severe, three-week lockdown that will limit people's travel, shut down malls, restaurants, hotels, fitness clubs, and swimming pools. It will also limit indoor gatherings to 10 people.
Epidemiologist Dr. Hagai Levine of the Israeli Association of Public Health has stated that complete lockdowns are an extreme measure that should be reserved as "a last resort for very unusual situations of very contagious and deadly diseases. This is not the situation with Covid," he told The Jewish Voice.
He labeled the shutdown of work and social activities as "medieval" in its approach and not necessary for controlling Covid-19.
"At the beginning, we didn't know enough about how the virus spread and even then, public-health professionals thought the response should be more proportional to the specific risk," Levine said. "Now we know much more about the virus. The risk of transmission in open air is very low. It therefore does not make any sense, from efficiency or a public-health point of view, to force people to stay at home. What we need to do is proportional measures to reduce transmission so we will get slowly to a reduction of the disease."
Simple mask-wearing, hand washing and social distancing should be enough to keep the pandemic in check. Everyone has a role in limiting transmission, he says.
"You explain that gathering in closed spaces is risky and in open spaces much less risky," he said. "You give solutions for people to be educated in how they socialize, work and consume entertainment. We need to get people to understand how important it is to avoid any unnecessary contact. If we don't have this internal motivation, nothing will work."
Dr. Levine's views fell on deaf ears, however, considering the government's current course of action.
By contrast, Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute fully endorses lockdowns, in line with the current directives.
Baruch Barzel,
"If you fought a fire in your house and got it down to a small fire and then walked away, the fire will grow again," he told The Jewish Voice. For the past 15 years, Bar-Yam has used mathematical tools to help governments and organizations deal with epidemics like Ebola. He cites air travel for the rise of worldwide contagion.
His End Coronavirus coalition aims to aid community-based solutions for policymakers, businesses and individuals.
Israel imposed rigorous limitations near the outbreak of Covid and saw a dramatic decrease in spread, Bar-Yam observed. But when things got better and Israel loosened restrictions, the disease flared up again.
"This is not a natural disease that circulates in the population," he said. "It is driven by a simple dynamic. It grows exponentially in a normally behaving population until the population takes clear actions such as social distancing from people who might be sick and isolating people who are sick as determined by symptoms or testing."
He says authorities face three scenarios: "Either you relax restrictions and infections will continue to grow; keep the current situation [of limiting gatherings and mandating mask-wearing], where you'll have a constant but high number of nearly 2,000 new cases per day; or choose stronger actions and the number of cases per day will decline."
"The shortest amount of time requires the strongest action. Within four to six weeks, anyplace in the world can be at zero transmission. It will take longer the more lax you are," he says. "The way to do all the things everyone wants to do, and the way to save lives, prevent disease and make the economy recover, all result from getting transmission to zero."
For his part, Dov Shvarts, a professor at Ben-Gurion University, advocates partial lockdowns: nighttime curfews, weekend lockdowns and voluntary quarantine for people over 67 and people with underlying medical conditions that make them high-risk. People can still work and study, but on weekends they should stay home, he told The Jewish Voice. Read the rest: Scientists disagree on how to contain covid.
Posted in Jews, science
Tagged corona virus, covid, epidemic, hagai levine, lockdowns, pandemic, yaneer bar yam
Christian researcher seeks breakthrough in cancer fight with lasers
Hadiyah-Nicole Green lost her adoptive parents to cancer, so she threw herself into the study of physics to cope with her loss.
She became one of only 66 black women to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States between 1973 and 2012.
Hadiyah was born St. Louis, Missouri. She was orphaned at a very young age and raised by her aunt Oralee Smith and her uncle General Lee Smith, according to an NBC article.
She was always a strong student, studying at Alabama A&M University. After changing her major three times, she eventually decided on a degree in physics. She was the first in her family to obtain a bachelor's degree.
It was at this moment of elation and euphoria, when everybody was celebrating her academic success, that her aunt announced that she had cervical/ovarian cancer.
Hadiyah was crushed. Her aunt was essentially her mother. What good was the college degree if she couldn't harvest the benefits and enjoy them with her close family?
But the prognosis was even more grim: she had already lived with the cancer for eight years but refused treatment. Her aunt rejected treatments because of the painful side effects of chemotherapy and radiation.
"I didn't understand it at first," Hadiyah said.
Hadiyah took care of her for three months. Then Auntie died in 2005.
It was a huge blow.
Not too long afterward, her uncle was diagnosed with cancer as well. The difference was that her uncle received the treatment — and to confirm his wife's concerns — the treatment was a horrible experience.
"He really had it bad. The treatment disfigured him," Hadiyah said. "The man that raised me wasn't the same. He just wasn't the same person." Read the rest about Hadiyah-Nicole Green Christian researcher fighting cancer.
Posted in accomplished African Americans, African Americans, black, cancer and christianity, Christ, Christian, Christian attitude, Christian family, Christian health, Christian living, Christian love, Christian testimony, Christianity, Christianity in action, Jesus, physics, science
Tagged adoption, Alabama A&M University, black female with PhD in physics, Cancer, cancer treatments, Hadiyah Nicole Green, lasers
650 scientific articles, 120 patents, 7 companies, several academic degrees, 1 Jewish Messiah
Posted on August 31, 2018 | 1 comment
James Tour obtained his PhD in organic chemistry, did post doctorate work at Stanford, was voted one of the 50 most influential minds in world, is a visiting scholar at Harvard University, has 650 published scholarly articles, has 120 patents and seven companies with products from everything from medicine to material science, electronics and computer memory.
"But more than that, what means the most to me is that I am a Jew who believes that Jesus is the Messiah," Dr. Tour says on a One For Israel video.
He grew up outside New York City in a neighborhood so Jewish that he didn't know there was anything else.
He wasn't interested in religion. "Once I tried to talk to a rabbi. He just brushed me off. There was very little explanation for me."
In college he began to meet people who called themselves born-again Christians.
"That was a kind of an odd term," he remembers thinking. "What's 'born-again?' What do you mean 'born-again?'"
It began to make sense when, in a laundromat, a man asked to show him an illustration, something of a chasm separating man from God. He labeled the chasm "sin."
Dr. Tour recoiled somewhat. "I looked at him and said, 'I'm not a sinner. I've never killed anyone. I've never robbed a bank. How could I be a sinner?'"
The man encouraged him to read Romans 3:23: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Modern Judaism never talks about sin, Dr. Tour says. "I don't remember ever talking about sin in my home."
Then the man led Dr. Tour to the passage where Jesus warns that whoever lusts after a woman has already committed adultery in his heart.
"Pow!" Dr. Tour says. "I felt as if I'd been punched right in the chest."
Secretly, he'd been looking at pornography in magazines — enough to call himself an "addict."
"All of a sudden, something that's written in the Bible, somebody who lived 2,000 years ago was calling me out of it, and suddenly I felt convicted and I realized I was a sinner," he remembers. "When I read the Scriptures, I knew I was a sinner. How would I get to God?"
As he poured over the Bible, he realized that there is no forgiveness of sin without shedding blood. In the Old Testament, animal sacrifice was stipulated. In the New Testament, Jesus was humanity's Passover Lamb. Isaiah 53 described graphically how the Messiah would be punished for the sin of the world. He would bear it on the cross.
"The Perfect God comes and gives Himself for us. He is the one that gives Himself for us. I started to realize how Jewish the New Testament is."
On Nov. 7 1977, alone is his room, he realized Yeshua was the Messiah.
"I said, 'Lord, I am a sinner. Forgive me. Come into my life,'" he recalls. "Then all of a sudden, someone was in my room. I was on my knees. I opened my eyes. Who was in my room? That man, Jesus Christ, stood in my room. This amazing sense of God, Jesus was in my room. I wasn't scared. I was just weeping. The presence was so glorious because He was there in my room. I didn't want to get up. This amazing sense of forgiveness just started to come upon me. That was Him."
Eventually he stood up. He didn't know what to do, who to tell.
When he told his cousins, they were shocked. "'How could you do that? You're Jewish,'" they said. "Telling my mother how I had invited Jesus into my life, she didn't say much. She was weeping. She told my father. They weren't happy at all." So what happened to his family? Read the rest: Jewish scientist James Tour accepts Jesus as Messiah.
Posted in Christian news, Christian testimony, Christianity, God, James Tour, Jesus, Jews, life, messianic Jews, science, Yeshua
Tagged One For Israel
MIT prof finds no conflict between faith and science
Ultimately, Troy Van Voorhis, a theoretical chemist and professor at MIT, decided his pursuit of science presented no conflict with his "undeniable" experience with God.
Often, college professors counter pose God and science as if the two were irreconcilable. Faith in God damages unrestricted science, they say, and the pure scientist ought to withhold opinions on such doubtful subjects as the existence of God.
But Van Voorhis, who developed the first practical implementation of a Meta-GGA in Density Functional Theory, doesn't subscribe to the academia-sustained divorce of faith and science.
"I was raised in a Christian household, but like many raised in the Christian faith, there came a time when I had to wrestle with my faith and answer the question if it was really relevant, and I decided it was not," Van Voorhis says in a Veritas Forum video. "But when I was in graduate school I had an encounter with God that made me rethink my suppositions about how God operated in the world."
Van Voorhis was raised a Presbyterian in Indianapolis. He earned a BA from Rice University, where he worked under Gus Scuseria to advance the science of Density Functional Theory, a computational quantum mechanical modeling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure. He continued his work at MIT and discovered applications that have been useful for solar panels.
After attaining notoriety for his work, he went on to UC Berkeley to get his PhD in 2001 in the field of theoretical chemistry.
While he stopped attending church in college, he restarted at Berkeley after he experienced God in an undeniable way.
God "called me to make a new decision about whether I wanted to follow what He had to say or to do other things, and I decided to follow Him," Van Voorhis says. "I'm the unusual case that I didn't have any Christian friends at the time and I was not going to church. I was just getting ready one morning, and I felt like God spoke to me."
But it wasn't just a "mystical" conversation with the Big Man upstairs, Van Voorhis says. God challenged him to give away "the vast majority of my possessions."
And that's how he learned that faith is not just thinking, it's doing.
"Once you start doing things that reinforce the belief that you hold, that is actually quite important from an intellectual standpoint," he says. "Things like the Christian faith are intellectual. There is intellectual content to it. But they are not meant to be confined solely to an intellectual discourse." Read the rest of no conflict between science and faith.
Posted in bible, chemistry, Christianity, Density Functional Theory, faith, Jesus, life, life philosophy, Meta-GGA, Presbyterians, salvation, science, solar panels, spirituality, Troy van Voorhis
Conduct science in Grand Canyon? Not if you're a creationist, Park Service says but gets forced to reverse itself.
Posted on July 25, 2017 | 2 comments
Dr. Andrew Snelling, a geologist with a PhD from Sydney University, wanted to extract and examine some 60 fist-sized rocks from the Grand Canyon to research the possibility they were formed through a world-wide flood, not through millions of years of sediment layering, as evolutionists say.
His 2013 formal request to conduct scientific research was summarily denied by the Park Service last year. Dr. Peter Huntoon of the University of Wyoming said Snelling's proposal was "inappropriate," describing it as "dead end creationist material," the Christian News Network reported.
What are the Park Service administrators afraid he might discover? The arbitrary obstruction of a scientist because of his worldview seemed discriminatory.
Snelling sued in May and won a reversal this month, thanks in part to President Trump's executive order expanding religious freedom.
"It's one thing to debate the science, but to deny access to the data not based on the quality of a proposal or the nature of the inquiry, but on what you might do with it is an abuse of government power," said Gary McCaleb, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative Christian legal defense group that represented Dr. Snelling, according to the New York Times.
Snelling is an Australian who received his geology doctorate in 1982 from Sydney University in his native city. Initially, he worked with Koongarra uranium deposit in Australia's Northern Territory and contracted for mining industries that allowed him time to travel and study different geological strata.
In 1998, Snelling joined the Creation Science Foundation. Since 2007, he has worked for Kentucky-based Answers in Genesis, a group of scientists who adhere to the literal biblical account of creation instead of the evolutionary model, according to Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Snelling is the current director of research for Answers in Genesis.
Snelling has led people on more than 30 river trips in the Grand Canyon and was known to park personnel for undermining their narrative of the geological formation of the park. For years, geologists stated the Grand Canyon was 20 million years old, only to recently revise its age to 5 million. Snelling and other young earth scientists believe Earth's age to be around 20,000 years, and the Grand Canyon, around 10,000 years.
Dr Gilles Brocard, a fellow Sydney University geologist argues that nuclear analysis dates some rocks from the Grand Canyon to 2 billion years old. He said the Earth is shown by studies to date at 4.5 billion, according to the Guardian.
Snelling is sticking to his guns. Read more about discrimination against Christians in science.
Posted in Arizona, babies, dinosaurs, geology, Grand Canyon, science
Tagged Bible, creation, Dr. Snelling, earth's age, Faith, God, Jesus, science, Sydney Univesity, young earth
Gonzalez' tenure denial shows universities close ranks to exclude Christians regardless of their credentials
Guillermo Gonzalez's rise in astrophysics was meteoric, but when he openly espoused Intelligent Design, a scientific theory that allows for God's involvement in creation, his university dumped him.
Gonzalez had written 68 scholarly articles for peer-reviewed scientific journals, including important work on the Galactic Habitable Zone concept. The Chronicle of Higher Education noted that he had at the assistant professor level "amassed a better publication record than almost any other member of the astronomy faculty," according to Jeff Schloss on Counterbalance.
Nevertheless, when Gonzalez came up for tenure approval in 2007 at Iowa State University, he was denied.
Just prior to his tenure review, a petition disavowing Intelligent Design had garnered signatures from 130 Iowa State faculty members who feared "the negative impact of Intelligent Design on the integrity of science and on our university."
It used to be that "free-thinker" meant you weren't "constrained" to follow a biblical world view. But now, university professors are compelled within a rigid atheistic orthodoxy. Academic freedom is a slogan being emptied of meaning.
Some controversy ensued after Gonzalez was denied tenure. University officials superficially denied that his faith factored into his firing. They said his publishing had declined and he had not won funding for research. But the Des Moines Register obtained emails through a request for public records that indicated that the controversy over Intelligent Design was indeed a factor.
As early as 2005, there were emails discussing how Gonzalez' belief in Intelligent Design might adversely affect his candidacy for tenure. Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman even noted that the anti-Gonzalez sentiments were "starting to smack of a witch's hanging." Read the rest of Gonzales' tenure denial.
Posted in astronomy, Christianity, guillermo gonzalez, higher education, intelligent design, science
Tagged academic freedom, astrophysics, atheists, Ball State Univesity, Faith, free thinking, galactic habitable zone, God, Iowa State University, Jesus, privileged planet, secularism, universities
Bone regeneration in lab is breakthrough for Israeli scientist
Israeli scientists successfully inject bone grafts created from fat tissue
A bone graft is usually invasive, costly and risky, but now an Israeli biotech firm has invented a lab-grown bone injection that could make the procedure cheaper and more successful.
Bonus Bio Group announced in December that bone tissue cultivated in their labs was successfully injected into the jaws of 11 patients in preliminary studies. Further studies are being launched as $14 million has been raised for the start-up, Jewish News Service reported.
"For the first time worldwide, reconstruction of deficient or damaged bone tissue is achievable by growing viable human bone graft in a laboratory, and transplanting it back to the patient in a minimally invasive surgery via injection," said Bonus Biogroup CEO Shai Meretzki.
Bonus BioGroup harvested tissue from patients' fat cells, cultivated it in the laboratory and re-injected the semi-liquid bone graft back into the jaws of the patients. The substance successfully hardened and merged with existing bone to repair damage during the early stage of clinical trials, Bonus Biogroup reported.
If further studies are similarly successful, the procedure could replace existing methods to repair bone damage. One method harvests the patient's pelvic crest and is painful and expensive. Another method uses synthetic substances or cells from bone banks, which risk a rejection from the patient's body.
"I was looking for a way to do it cheaper and easier for the patient and the medical system," Meretzki said. "We are growing bone through small samples of fat tissue and isolating the different kinds of cells that we need to create the bone."
Finish reading the article, which was written by one of my students at the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica.
Posted in Financial Talk, Israel, science
Tagged bone regeneration, bonus biogroup, breakthrough, Faith, God, inspiration, Jesus, Jews, Meretzki
Professors from Harvard and MIT talk about their faith
A group of high-powered MIT and Harvard professors were featured recently at a forum to debunk the notion that there is a conflict between science and faith.
Rosalind Picard and Ian Hutchinson are professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Tyler VanderWeele and Nancy E. Hill are professors at Harvard University – and all four are firm believers in God and see no conflict between faith and science.
"People who think they can't deal with faith are really just deceiving themselves," said Picard, the founder of the branch of computing known as affective computing. "All people in science are accepting something on faith. The question is what are evidence for that, and do you accept the kinds of evidence that is not scientific?"
Ian Hutchinson of MIT
Recently featured on the Veritas Forum, the academes are debunking the notion that all scientists are atheists and that science opposes faith.
"The famous scientists of history, many of them were in fact Christian believers," said Hutchinson, who is developing magnetic "bottles" for nuclear fusion. "If you think about James Clerk Maxwell or Michael Faraday or (Arthur) Eddington or (Robert) Boyle or Newton and so on and so forth, these were people who were not atheists. They were deeply believing Christians. It's a fallacy, it's a myth that science and religious understanding of the world have always been at war."
Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard
Picard began as "proud atheist" who, in middle school, boasted to her mom that she would debate evolution and "whop those stupid creationists. I thought religion was something for people who were non-thinking or it was a crutch."
Her neighbors in Atlanta invited her to church, and she faked stomach aches to get off the hook for six weeks, until finally they suggested she just read the Bible.
"Then I remembered it was the best-selling book," Picard said. "I started reading the Bible, and I didn't want to tell anybody. But I started to change. It started to change me. I thought it would be full of fantastical crazy stuff. I started reading Proverbs and it immediately hit me that with all my intellectual arrogance, I had a lot to learn."
But it wasn't until her undergraduate studies in electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She got her PhD from MIT in 1991 and joined the faculty seven years later, winning a full professorship in 2005. She is the founder and director of MIT's Affective Computing Research Group.
Her research team is developing wearable technology that can detect stress in people who are poor at expressing their emotions, such as patients of autism.
Ian Hutchinson also grew up without God on his radar. When he studied as an undergraduate at Cambridge University, however, "I had some good friends whose lives seemed to be attractive and whose Christian faith seemed important to them and seemed coherent," he said.
He agreed to attend some lectures by Michael Green and essentially heard the gospel for the first time in his life.
"After a period of consideration, I realized that I kind of did believe," Hutchinson said. "Christianity made sense to me. It made intellectual sense to me. In order for me to be true to what I thought was reality, I needed to take a step of commitment to faith and become a follower of Jesus."
As he learned about the natural world in universities, he learned about Christ in church, and there never appeared to be any conflict between the two, he said.
Today, Hutchinson is a professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT and researches nuclear fusion as a cheap and powerful alternative to produce electricity. He has written 160 journal articles and was the chairman of the Division of Plasma Physics group of the American Physical Society in 2008. He has written about the limits of science and the power of faith in a book titled "Monopolizing Knowledge: A Scientist Refutes Religion-Denying, Reason-Destroying Scientism."
"Science has not disproved religion. That idea is wrong," he said. "People believe or disbelieve in religion for much more complicated reasons than just their intellectual ideas."
Tyler VanderWeele, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, rocked the secular world when he published in May of 2016 a study that showed churchgoers live longer than people who eschew the pew.
"For the most part, I see the relationship between science and the Christian faith as not one of antagonism but one of mutual contribution," VanderWeele said. "Science has given us tremendous insight into our world and how it works. It's made clear the incredible order that's manifest in Creation. It's given us a better understanding of God's work in the world." To read the rest of the article, click here.
Posted in Christianity, Financial Talk, science
Tagged affective computing, cambridge, Faith, God, harvard, ian hutchinson, Jesus, MIT, nancy hill, nuclear fusion, oxford, rosalind picard, Tyler VanderWeele, University of Pennsylvania
Hubble telescope corroborates Genesis account of creation, scientist says
Cedric Johnson, who worked on the Hubble Telescope, discusses how it has corroborated the Genesis account.
A former CEO of the firm which built a critical Hubble telescope electronic subsystem believes the latest in cosmology and quantum physics substantially confirms the Genesis account of creation.
"It is not at all surprising to read the works of modern cosmologists and to discover that the book of Genesis provided such comprehensive insights thousands of years ago," W. Cedric Johnson said. "Those first 27 verses in Genesis 1 [that talk about creation] are far, far more likely given contemporary scientific research and findings, than unlikely."
Hubble has produced stunning images of far away space, like this one. It has also listened into the cosmic noise of the universe, which has helped scientists peer at the origins of the universe.
Johnson, 64, an applied scientist, (mathematician) who is currently advancing the field of cryptography, has long been on the cutting edge of computer- and network-facilitated technology, having worked for Rockwell International as a high school student, a firm he joined full-time after completing undergraduate studies.
In addition to the Hubble work, Johnson's firm oversaw design and development of critical electronics for the Space Shuttle, worked on Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, as well as the Global Positioning Satellite system, and worldwide communications systems engineering for the Air Force Communications Command.
Johnson worked on electronics in the Space Shuttle.
Johnson grew up in a Bible-believing home and never doubted Jesus, he said. But at age 29 he says, "I came to the Lord by simply changing my mind. I said, 'God, I believe that completeness resides only in a life in You. I believe that purpose and truth comes from You.' From that moment forward, I renounced any competition."
He says the Hubble Telescope reveals the universe has a tempo evidenced by the cosmic background noise of the universe. Carried to its rational and scientific conclusion, this lends tremendous credibility to the presumed discrepancy between Genesis' six-day creation account and the apparently contradicting geological and anthropological conclusions, he said.
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking has famously doubted the existence of God. Johnson wonders what Hawking's missing.
Much like a song can be played at a faster or slower tempo (not recorded and sped up or slowed down) but still corresponds 100% to the relationships of harmony and rhythm, so too the first "day" of creation was not confined to the reference of a 24-hour period tied to the rotation of the planet. "This was given for man's perspective, as God, who is eternal, had no such use," Johnson said.
The tempo of the first "day" indicates it was actually millions of 24-hour periods, the second "day," 87 million 24-hour periods and so on. Even now, the cosmic background noise of the universes indicates "ongoingness," he said.
"Many previous inconsistencies with other scientific timelines have found scientific bases for reconciliation," Johnson said. "The loss of obvious aberrations between trying to make six 24-hour reference periods fit geological and the palentological timelines, is no longer so certain; they fit!"
With regard to the Big Bang as the origin of the universe, cosmologists substantially agree: The universe is the progeny of an intelligent beginner; the universe came into being from a first cause event, and everything came from great nothingness.
Even though these conclusions corroborate Genesis, many cosmologists do not agree that the intelligent beginner is or was transcendental, nor remains connected with the universe, a long answer for "we can't confirm a God," he said.
Cosmologists are not the only ones being forced to revisit the God question, Johnson said. "Quantum theorists are facing a new line of questions and potentialities," he said.
He spoke of the phenomena of "entanglement." Were two entangled photons entrapped separately and moved as far apart as New York is from Los Angeles, modifications in their states would be mirrored instantaneously, with no explanation and theoretically faster than the speed of light, he said.
"This is an awesome field of study, yet nevertheless startling stuff. For many, entanglement has 'Oh my goodness moments,'" Johnson said. Some quantum physicists are quietly saying, "You know that book that says, 'Let there be light?' I think we need to look at that book again." Read the rest of the article.
Posted in cedric johnson, cosmology, Genesis, quantum theory, science
Tagged Bible, creation, Faith, first cause event, Gen. 1, God, intelligent beginner, Jesus, origins of universe, Stephen Hawking
Anticipated decline in faith among scientists fails to materialize in 80 years
Posted on February 16, 2016 | 10 comments
A full 40 percent of scientists believe in a personal God and afterlife, according to a 1997 study.
"Although the suggestion 80 years ago that four in 10 scientists did not believe in God or an afterlife was astounding to contemporaries, the fact that so many scientists believe in God today is equally surprising," said study organizers Edward Larson and Larry Witham, of the University of Georgia, in the journal Nature.
The duo replicated a study from 80 years prior conducted by James Leuba that shocked America at a time when faith enjoyed wide acceptance. He found that four of 10 scientist didn't believe in God.
Stephen Hawking opted to not believe.
Leuba "predicted that more and more scientists would give up their belief in God, as scientific knowledge replaced what he considered to be superstition," writes the National Center for Science Education in an article "Do Scientists Really Reject God?"
Leuba would be disappointed. The 1997 iteration of his poll found the percentage of faith-holding scientists remained constant through 80 years of scientific and technological advance. Science has not dislodged belief in God, and the number of theistic scientists is "impressively high," according to the New York Times.
Francis Collins does believe.
"The results also indicate that, while science and religion often are depicted as irreconcilable antagonists, each a claimant to the throne of truth, many scientists see no contradiction between a quest to understand the laws of nature, and a belief in a higher deity," the New York Times wrote.
What's more, the narrowly-phrased questions designed by Leuba — and repeated by Larson and Witham — may have overstated disbelief, according to Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington in Seattle, as quoted in the New York Times. Stark's research indicates that scientists pretty much reflect the general American public when it comes to believing in God.
"To the extent that both surveys are accurate readings, traditional Western theism has not lost its place among U.S. scientists, despite their intellectual preoccupation with material reality," Larson and Witham wrote in their study. Read the rest of the article.
Posted in Christian news, Christianity, science
Tagged 40% scientists believe in God, afterlife, elite scientists, Faith, Francis Collins, God, inspiration, Jesus, scientists who believe in God, Stephen Hawking
'Impossible fossils' puncture evolution
The Alvis Delk Cretaceous Footprint
A handprint, a finger, a footprint and a hammer are part of a smattering of "impossible fossils" – so called because they upend the evolutionary timetable and puncture the theory of evolution.
A handprint in limestone from the Cretaceous Era – 110 million years ago – was found near Weatherford, Texas, in the 1970s. It is on display at the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas. Either human-like creatures were on earth much earlier than thought, or the dating methods are flawed and the earth is much younger than most scientists will admit.
From the Cretaceous Era by dating methods — long before man was believed to be alive.
A fossilized human finger also from the Cretaceous Era was found also in the 1970s in the Commanche Peak Limestone formation in Texas and is on display at the Creation Evidence Museum. The fact that flesh has been fossilized (normally only bones make it through millennia as fossils) could result from instant entombment in mud (from a huge flood, for example).
The London hammer
A footprint – known as the Burdick Track – was found again in Cretaceous limestone in the Cross Branch stratum, a tributary to the Paluxy River in Glen Rose, Texas.
Staunch evolutionists have worked vigorously to poke holes in the credibility of these discoveries – with good reason, because they poke holes in the theory of evolution. The extent to which they defend a pet theory in spite of discrediting discoveries reveals a lack of scientific integrity, many believe.
Ken Ham debates Bill Nye the Science Guy about evolution in 2014
"These amazing fossilized imprints/remains have left the scientific community scratching their heads," said Mihai Andrei on ZME Science, himself no creationist.
Another footprint – called the Alvis Delk Cretaceous Footprint – is even more intriguing because it is intersected by the footprint of an Acrocanthosaurus dinosaur print. This suggests that dinosaurs and man walked the Earth at the same time. The infrequency of such intersections in fossils makes sense: humans tried to stay away from the fearsome animals. Read the rest of the fascinating story.
Tagged Bill Nye, Commanche Peak limestone, Creation Evidence Museum, evidence, evolution, evolutionary timetable, Faith, Glen Rose fossils, handprint 110 million years ago, impossible fossils, inspiration, Jesus, Ken Ham, london hammer