Home About Us Supporters Interact Courses Materials Scibelpedia Blogs "New Evidence Jesus was a Carrot" Date: July 2007 Hopefully you realised this was a spoof heading, yet often the newspapers delight to carry some equally ludicrous headline “debunking” the truth of the Gospel accounts of Jesus or some other aspect of the Bible. Inevitably the kind of debunkings based eg on late second century or later Gnostic writings like the much fêted “Judas gospel”... "Iconic Tortoises and Genetic Detection" Date: May 2007 Lonely George is probably the most famous tortoise in the world! He is the last known surviving last known individual of the subspecies geochelone nigra abingdonii, a giant Tortoise from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos Islands. Found in 1971, perhaps 80 years of (and could live to be 200), George now lives in the Darwin Research Station... "Is DNA a load of Rubbish" Date: March 2007 When it was announced a few years ago that humans shared 98% (or was it 95%?) of our genes with our nearest primate relatives the chimpanzees, many claimed that this questioned the Christian view of the uniqeness of humanity. Strangely, it was also believed that the main purpose of DNA was to code the production of proteins, and perhaps under 2% of DNA... "The Freewill Issue" Date: January 2007 The issue of human “freewill” divides both scientists and theologians. For scientists there is the basic conflict of a generally deterministic approach to neurophysiology and a personal experience of choice. For theologians there is the tension between accepting that we are part of a “lawful” nature, and explaining human moral... "The Hurricane Year" Date: 7 November 2005 Of the six most powerful Atlantic hurricanes of the last 70 years, three (Katrina, Rita and Wilma) came in 2005, with a fourth category 5 (Emily) also developing. Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, and crossed southern Florida at Category 1 intensity before strengthening rapidly in the Gulf... "Making sense of the Tsunami" Date: 7 November 2005 As we come into a new year of 2005, the Boxing Day Tsusami will be in many of our minds. What are we to make of it all as Christians? Firstly, the science. Nineteenth century geologists (like as Adam Segdwick) were aware that mountains are in ranges with some kind of apparent pattern. They speculated about how these were formed (eg there was a theory by Ellie De Beaumont... "Genius In Transit" Date: 10 June 2004 This editorial has been delayed to take in an event on June 8th which no one now alive had previously seen, and which no one alive will see again from this island. I was privileged to see it from the exact place where it was first observed on November 24th 1639 by the 22 year old genius Jeremiah Horrocks. Horrocks came from Puritan stock, and was himself a devout man who... "Martian Water of Life" 31 March 2004 Martian life has always been a source of science fiction, and water central to ideas of Martian life. In 1858 Pierre Angelo Secchi made some observations, showing mottled green patches on a pink background. In his 1863 colour map of the planet he labelled certain vague streak-like features he observed as "canali". or "channels". The eminent Italian astronomer Giovanni... "Dark Energy, Scripture and Paradigm Change" 31 January 2004 The prevailing paradigm in astronomy (according to Astronomer-Royal Martin Rees) is that our universe has 5% ordinary matter, 25% dark matter and 70% dark energy. The evidence for this mysterious dark matter in spiral galaxies is from various sources. Spiral galaxies (like our own Milky Way) rotate, and the radial velocities of the various stars about... "Robots Revolution" 30 November 2003 What kind of image normally springs to mind when someone mentions "robots"? Probably for many it will be the new Governor of California proclaiming "I'll be back" in the Terminator series. In film series like the Terminator and the Matrix, robots and supercomputers take over Earth and threaten the freedom or even the very existence of humanity. For others... "Evolution and Direction" 30 September 2003 One of the longstanding debates is whether or not evolution has direction. For one thing, from the beginning there were those like Darwin’s American associate Asa Gray who claimed that God was using the mechanism of natural selection to create new species in the direction he chose just as he uses the mechanisms of geophysics to "create the winds". More recently... "It's All In The Stars" 27 July 2003 Working, as I do, in a university department of physics, astronomy and mathematics, I am bound to have some passing interest in astrophysics - albeit not at all an expert one. The history of the development of astrophysics is fascinating - many of the pioneers (Herschel, Huggins, Maunder etc) had sincere Christian beliefs, and certainly none of them though... "The SARS Outbreak" 27 May 2003 Recently the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) has been in the news as it brings illness and in some instances death around the world. In early March, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert about as it brings illness and in some instances death around the world. In early March, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert about SARS... "Not so close relatives" 31 January 2003 It has become almost a mantra amongst some biologists that we share a high percentage of genetic materials with our "closest relatives" the great apes. Figures of 98.5% or 99% genetic similarity have often been cited as "evidence" that we are really not all that different. Now, however, this cherished figure has been called into question by work by Roy Britten of the... "Science and Social Progress" 27 December 2002 Should belief in science go along with a belief that it will bring "social progress"? Does greater knowledge bring greater ethical commitment? With those questions we can end a year in which the world's only superpower is contemplating a technologically super war against a "rogue state". Sir Howard Newby is a sociologist and former vice-chancellor, who was President of... "Neutrinos and Nobel Prizes" 29 November 2002 There's weird, very weird, and then there's physics! Half the Nobel prize for physics for 2002 went jointly to Raymond Davies Jnr formerly of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and Masatoshi Koshiba of Tokyo University for work on Neutrinos. The history of theory and work on neutrinos is one of the most fascinating in physics. it reflects basic ways in which actual... "Great Britons - Darwin or Wesley" 25 October 2002 The British television channel BBC2 is currently running a series of ten programs on ?great Britons? with the invitation to viewers to vote for the one they believe the greatest. The ten include an engineer (Brunel) two scientists (Newton and Darwin), and Shakespeare, Nelson, Cromwell, Elizabeth 1, Diana Spencer, Churchill and John Lennon. The program for today was... "Cosmology and Mystery" 27 September 2002 The New Scientist this month carried two interesting articles by cosmologists. On 7th September, Cambridge scientist John Barrow began his article: "Why are we here? In one sense at least, it's just a cosmic accident. Our existence is possible only because a number of peculiar coincidences between the values of different constants of nature allow it. The speed of... "Pest Control and Moral Dilemmas" 30 August 2002 As a species we not only affect the environment but are aware of doing so. One way I which we have affected in particular island ecologies is through introducing alien species. Actually I quite enjoy having "alien" grey squirrels in my back garden – but also in seeing our native red ones in nearby Formby where they still live. A year or so ago it was estimated... "World Ends Feb 1st 2019" 26 July 2002 Scientists have detected a giant asteroid heading towards Earth which could wipe out humanity. This was the headline in one newspaper this week. With precision rivaling Ussher, the predicted impact time is 11.47 am that day, so make sure you take your morning coffee break early. This particular Armageddon rock is called 2002 NT7, and it is between 0.6 and... "Science, GM and Integrity" 28 June 2002 Should scientists socially publish disturbing theories with insufficient evidence? Who can make dispassionate judgments on such issues? On November 29th 2001, the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, published research which reported finding transgenic DNA in maize grown in Oaxaca, Mexico, the centre of origin and diversity for the staple crop. The paper... "Oil, Science and Politics" 31 May 2002 Will the last one to find any energy please turn out the lights... An interesting article earlier this month (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/) looked again at predictions on oil and energy use. The article notes the latest energy predictions [URL: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/images/figure_2.jpg] and also the way in which this is divided up... "Human Cloning - Again" 26 April 2002 America is on the brink of cloning legislation – how far would or should it go? This month there has been a flurry of reports concerning the intention of the American Congress to legislate on the issues of human cloning, with the President pressing for a complete ban. Various bills are on offer, all would make it a crime to clone a human baby... "John Polkinghorne Wins Major Prize" 22 March 2002 This month the John Templeton organization announced that John Polkinghorne was the winner of the latest Templeton prize. John Polkinghorne, now 71, resigned a prestigious position as Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge in 1979 to pursue theological studies, becoming an Episcopalian (C of E) minister in 1982. His theology... "Black Holes and Scientific Fallibility" 22 February 2002 Is theoretical physics infallible? If so why can't physicists agree more easily? Most of us have heard of black holes – and probably seen some fairly improbable science fiction about them. A black hole is an object so dense that even light cannot escape from it – so of course no one has ever "seen" one although most physicists believe they exist from... "Alone in the Universe?" 25 January 2002 Are there many inhabited planets throughout the universe, and is this a problem for theology? The last few months have seen some major new breakthroughs in the search for other inhabitable planets. The basic difficulty with looking for planets, as against stars, is that they are small and shine only by reflected light. Those in our own solar system... A member of the Gospel Communications Network. All rights reserved. Copyright 2001 - 2007 Scibel