Science

Does Science Refute God?

July 7, 2011July 9, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

God Creation Christian Belief against Evolution by Vasko Kohlmayer –
Many people think that religion is incompatible with science, because they have been told that science refutes God. Nothing could be further from the truth: The more science investigates the world, the more it points to God.

There are many examples of this. Let us here look at what is perhaps the most striking one. Until the 20th century, most scientists believed the universe was eternal and that it had always existed.

But in 1915 Albert Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity. When its equations were applied to cosmology, their implication were astonishing: The universe was not static, but it began from an ultra-dense dot at some point in the past. [Read more…]

The Cost of Adaptations Limits Evolution

June 18, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Bacteria Limited in Evolution by Brian Thomas, M.S. –
Living forms supposedly evolved by adapting to environmental challenges. It is generally assumed that they did this by gradually acquiring the needed genetic mutations until brand new features arose and whole creatures eventually morphed into totally different ones. But does real science support this story?

Experiments with bacteria continue to show that although adaptations do occur, they are bound by hard limits to how much change can take place.¹ And these limits also circumscribe evolution’s potential.

Two separate studies in the June 3, 2011, issue of Science arrived at the same conclusion. One tested the effects of multiple mutations on the “fitness” of mutant versions of a methanol-eating bacteria called Methylobacterium.² Researchers measured the relative fitness of a mutant by directly comparing its growth rate with non-mutants in the limited resource environment to which the mutants had adapted. [Read more…]

False Hope – The Truth About Embryonic Stem Cells

April 16, 2011April 18, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Chuck Colson –

Embryonic stem cell research destroys human lives. And it’s also destroying the credibility of scientific researchers, as well.

Many of us remember sadly when Ron Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Reagan said he was there to talk about research into “what may be the greatest medical breakthrough in our or in any lifetime: the use of embryonic stem cells…to cure a wide range of fatal and debilitating illnesses: Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes” and more.

Reagan then invited listeners to imagine being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and undergoing a procedure that involves the use of embryonic stem cells. These cells would — if injected in the brain — replace the “faulty cells whose failure to produce adequate dopamine led to the Parkinson’s disease in the first place.” Reagan explained. “In other words, you’re cured,” he announced. [Read more…]

Debunking the Galileo Myth

January 30, 2011January 31, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Dinesh D’Souza – (Townhall)
Many people have uncritically accepted the idea that there is a longstanding war between science and religion. We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda.

About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths, focusing especially on the Galileo case, since Galileo is routinely portrayed as a victim of religious persecution and a martyr to the cause of science. [Read more…]

Science-Based Morality?

November 12, 2010November 12, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

11/12/2010 – Regis Nicoll –

Each of us believes that certain things are wrong, not because we believe they are wrong, but because they really are wrong. And that applies to the moral relativist as well.

If you want to see a relativist sink into a sophistic seizure, ask him about the “virtues” of cruelty, rape, cheating, bigotry, or exploitation. Even the most liberally minded among us believe such things are wrong, even if they don’t know why.

Take the University of Maryland professor who recently engaged a member of the Genocide Awareness Project. In a ten-minute exchange on moral ethics, the professor exhibited great difficulty with the concept of morality, including the terms of the debate: human essence, value, and rights. Nevertheless, she had no difficulty calling her interlocutor’s reference to “mankind” offensive and “wrong.” [Read more…]

Can a Catholic Accept Evolutionary Theory Uncritically?

October 25, 2010October 25, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

10/24/2010 – Msgr. Charles Pope –
Sobriety about Evolutionary Theory – It is common to experience a rather simplistic notion among Catholics that the Theory of Evolution can be reconciled easily with the Biblical accounts and with our faith. Many will say something like this: “I have no problem with God setting things up so that we started as one-celled organisms and slowly evolved into being human beings. God could do this and perhaps the Genesis account is just simplifying evolution and telling us the same thing as what Evolution does.”

There are elements of the truth in this sort of a statement. Surely God could have set things up to evolve and directed the process so that human beings evolved and then, at some time he gave us souls. God could have done that.

The problem with the statement above is less theological than scientific because there is a word in that sentence that is “obnoxious” to evolutionary theory: “God.” The fact is that most Catholics who speak like this over-simplify evolutionary theory and hold a version of it that most Evolutionary Theorists do not hold. They accept the Theory of Evolution uncritically. [Read more…]

Penguins are not gay, they are just lonely

October 22, 2010October 23, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

Science has debunked another liberal distortion that observed penguin behavior proves that homosexuality is normal and natural. It turns out these penguins are simply lonely and once they find a female mate, all of them pair up, bond normally, and raise a chick.

10/21/2010 – Louise Gray –
The homosexual behaviour of male king penguins has already been noted in zoos.

Now in a new study, scientists have found the evidence of male pairs in the wild. The research found that more than a quarter of the colony in Antarctica were in same sex partners, mostly two males.

In the past, it was claimed that penguins could not discern between the sexes because they looked alike. Male pairs in zoos in the US and Germany have hatched and reared ‘adopted’ chicks.

However the new study by the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France found that the penguins are only pairing up with other males because they are “lonely”. [Read more…]

Hawking’s Irrational Arguments

October 21, 2010October 23, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

10/19/2010 – Bruce L. Gordon –
Stephen Hawking’s new book, “The Grand Design,” co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow, contends that God is not necessary to create the universe because the laws of physics can do it alone. The “new atheist” crowd will cheer this message, but their credulity is a matter more of fiery sentiment than of coolheaded logic.

Mr. Hawking asserts that “as recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” But “spontaneous creation” minus any cause illustrates the lack of an explanation rather than scientific comprehension. It also runs counter to a question Mr. Hawking voiced years ago: “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” [Read more…]

Atheism Mathematically Impossible

September 27, 2010March 20, 2015 by Orthodox Editors

9/27/2010 – Babu G. Ranganathan –

The scientific method is used every day in forensic science to determine whether an event in a crime scene was an accident or by design and intention. Mathematical probability is a scientific argument and is frequently used in determining many issues of scientific inquiry.

The scientific method cannot be used to prove events which occurred outside of human observation. No one observed the origin of the universe by either chance or design, but scientific evidence via mathematical probability can be used to support either a chance or design origins for the universe.

If you went to an uninhabited planet and discovered only one thing, a cliff carved with images of persons similar to what we find on Mt. Rushmore, you cannot use the scientific method to prove that these images came about by design or by chance processes of erosion.[Read more…]

Making the Creator in Our Image

September 23, 2010September 23, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

9/22/2010 – Chuck Colson –

The debate about the origins of the universe just got a lot weirder. I can safely say, “Now I’ve heard it all.”

Yesterday on BreakPoint, I told you that Stephen Hawking, the great scientist, believes that the universe and life itself can be explained without referring to God; that God is, in Hawking’s words, “unnecessary.”

But there are some scientists who do believe there was a creator. The problem is that some of their ideas about the “creator” and his “creation” are straight out of a comic-book convention.

According to a recent article written by a university astronomer in the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper, it’s possible that the “universe around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today.”[Read more…]