Intelligent Design and Biblical Scripture

The Son Of Man and the Son Of God are the same; the only difference is the view point; viewed from man or God of the above.

Matthew 7:9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

Matthew 8:20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

Matthew 9:2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.

Matthew 9:6 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

Matthew 11:19 The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.

Matthew 11:27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

Matthew 12:8 For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.
In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
Matthew 12:32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 13:37 He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;

Matthew 13:41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;

Matthew 16:13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

Matthew 16:27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

Matthew 16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Matthew 17:9 And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.

Matthew 17:12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

Matthew 17:22 And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men:

Matthew 18:11 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

Matthew 19:28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Matthew 20:18 Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death,

Matthew 20:28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Matthew 24:27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Matthew 24:37 But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

GOD IS MAN’S PURPOSE; ALPHA AND OMEGA.

*** Will Myers

July 14, 2014
By Dr. Fazale Rana

If aliens from another world were to visit Earth, their arrival would generate headlines and major buzz. In fact, if such a momentous event ever occurred, it would be hard to imagine anyone talking about anything else.

Perhaps it’s not all that surprising, then, that researchers from Scripps Institute in La Jolla, CA, garnered headlines in May of 2014 when they announced the creation of the first-ever organism to utilize “alien” DNA.1 This type of advance not only captures the public’s imagination but also raises a number of urgent concerns, including two related to the origin of life:

If humans can create artificial life in the lab, does that mean God is not necessary to explain the genesis of life?
Does this type of advance make evolutionary explanations for the origin of life more reasonable?
In light of these challenging questions, it is ironic that the accomplishments of the Scripps Institute scientists point to the necessary role of a Creator for bringing into existence the first life on Earth. This advance required significant effort by highly trained and highly skilled researchers. More importantly, it required ingenuity on the part of the investigators, who based their research strategy on decades of accrued knowledge and understanding of biochemistry.2

The bottom line: groundbreaking work in synthetic biology consistently demonstrates that without the direct intervention of intelligent agents, life cannot arise from “inanimate” matter.

For a more detailed discussion of this work, check out the article “Creation of the First Organism with Artificial DNA and the Case for Intelligent Design.”

Subjects: Artificial Life in the Lab

Dr. Fazale Rana

In 1999, I left my position in R&D at a Fortune 500 company to join Reasons to Believe because I felt the most important thing I could do as a scientist is to communicate to skeptics and believers alike the powerful scientific evidence—evidence that is being uncovered day after day—for God’s existence and the reliability of Scripture. Read more about Dr. Fazale Rana

References:
Ewen Callaway, “First Life with ‘Alien’ DNA,” Nature News, posted May 7, 2014, doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15179.
Denis A. Malyshev et al., “A Semi-Synthetic Organism with an Expanded Genetic Alphabet,” Nature (May 7, 2014): doi:10.1038/nature13314.

TEA PARTY OF AMERICA is actually placing a socioeconomic burden on the middle class out of ignorance. They proclaim freedom from big government; stop socialized healthcare; stop regulation of the environment which is for the protection of the people, and weaken the labor unions Who provide collective bargaining. All of above is an agenda of the large corporations, and doesn’t help the working class one iota. If anything, their movement is hurting the working class.

Funny thing, when big businesses ask for help from the government it is not called big government when they get big help, but the helping and protecting of the people is proclaimed to be big government. Who said that free healthcare is socialism? Working families who pay the high cost of healthcare just to preserve Americanism is being fooled. Are Canada and the United Kingdom socialist countries? They have universal healthcare which is free!

The so-called grassroots party, the Tea Party, is actually a construct financed by large corporations to promote their agenda for more profits and less money paid to the hourly workers. The grass is fake; it’s AstroTurf fabricated by hired guns working for the corporate interest, and not the working class. The Tea Party is a total deception. Their entire agenda is to entrench future profits of corporations, and move money up the pyramid into the hands of the mega-rich.

*** Will Myers

July 1, 2002
By Dr. Hugh Ross

As physicians use scanning devices to view the hidden structures and activities of the brain, astronomers can now use distant supernovae and high-resolution cosmic background radiation maps to scan the structures and properties of “branes.” This new capability allows them to examine the most remarkably fine-tuned feature of the universe: space energy density, or the self-stretching property of space.1

Branes are space surfaces having any number of dimensions. The most familiar brane is the 3-brane (three-dimensional surface) on which the galaxies, stars, and solar system reside. (This 3-brane is the surface of the four-dimensional, space-plus-time universe.) Since the 1998 discovery that the cosmic expansion transitioned, roughly 7 billion years ago, from slowing down to speeding up,2 theoreticians have attempted to explain the turnaround and acceleration by some means other than the currently accepted space energy density feature, or cosmological constant.
Some researchers have speculated that gravity operates on a higher brane than does the light from stars and galaxies. Among the brane models closest to matching established data for the universe are those in which the familiar 3-brane is embedded in a 5-brane, a five-dimensional surface—length, width, height, and time, plus one extra space dimension.3 According to this scenario, bodies having mass (galaxies, stars, planets, protons, and electrons) reside within the length, width, and height dimensions while gravity operates in these three plus two. With gravity thus “spread out” over five dimensions, its force would be sufficiently weakened by the expansion process to account for the turnaround and for the accelerating expansion rate without invoking a cosmological constant.

A recent Astrophysical Journal article, however, argues against this possibility. Astronomers from Portugal and England used new astronomical instruments to test the validity of the 5-brane model.4 Combining several improved measurements of the geometry of the universe, the acceleration rate of the universe’s expansion, and the date at which the deceleration turned to acceleration, these astronomers demonstrated that the mass density of the universe is at least 75% greater than that which the 5-brane model allows.5 In their words, 5-brane models are “strongly disfavored by existing cosmological data sets.”They go on to say that “currently available cosmological observations are already powerful enough to impose tight constraints on a wide range of possible models. . . . The era of precision cosmology has indeed started.”6

This arrival of “precision cosmology” means that ongoing research holds great hope for refining human understanding of the origin and development of the cosmos. Both Christians and skeptics will have more data with which to test biblical claims that God “stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Isaiah 40:22).7 Scientific confirmation becomes all the more significant when one recognizes that for 3,400 years Bible authors stood alone in describing this characteristic of the universe.
References:

Lawrence M. Krauss, “The End of the Age Problem and the Case for a Cosmological Constant Revisited,” Astrophysical Journal 501 (1998): 461; Hugh Ross, “Flat-Out Confirmed,” Facts for Faith 2 (Q2 2000), 26-31.
P. P. Avelino, J. P. M. DeCarvalho, and C. J. A. P. Martins, “Supernova Constraints on Spatial Variations of the Vacuum Energy Density,” Physical Review D 64 (2001): 063505; A. G. Reiss et al., astro-ph/0104455 preprint (2001); M. S. Turner and A. G. Reiss, astro-ph/0012011 preprint (2001).
G. Dvali, G. Gabadadze, and M. Porrati, “4D Gravity on a Brane in 5D Minkowski Space,” Physical Letters B 502 (2001): 199-208; C. Deffayet, G. Dvali, and G. Gabadadze, “Accelerated Universe from Gravity Linking to Extra Dimensions,” Physical Review D 65 (2002), 044023.
P. P. Avelino and C. J. A. P. Martins, “A Supernova Brane Scan,” Astrophysical Journal 565 (2002): 661-67.

Man investigates the world and himself alone with other life forms. Man learns and makes things more convenience and comfortable. He also increases his capability to survive. Recently in light of the secular humanist movement men of science has become known as creators rather than discoverers.

Isaiah 28:16; “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.”

Peter 2:6; “Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.” Zion means in the essence of things.

The two above scriptures lets us know that God has “set” a truth in the essence of things (Zion) in creation. This act by God provided science to exist and develop. Science is a manifestation of God’s Absoluteness.

God created science by creating principles. God put His Spirit Of Truth in the world for man to learn about His Character Who is represented by His Son, Jesus, in the fullness by God. God put His Spirit of Truth in the world. The Spirit of Truth speaks what He hears only and tells of things to come. Lets look at science in this manner: God has laid a stone in the essence of things in this world; lets call it the Spirit of Truth; a supernatural form (Uspace). Uspace is One Potentiality. There is countless manifestations of the ideal Uspace.

Within the supernatural Uspace is submerged our dynamic world (Vspace: potentiality of all the nexus in this world) in which man seeks to be able to predict behavior and patterns of this world; thereby, proving that man has learned the appropriate principle. The principle is part of the complete set of qua variances, things that vary the same over and over; things observed over and over; even a one time observation imply an appropriate principle; a manifestation of a principle (Science).

This is science in a nutshell. We can equate this form: UspaceVspace=(QV); this is our complete set of knowledge, giving its derivations. Firstly, the equation is a statement of existence. (QV)consist of codified knowledge and not yet codified knowledge, but the entire set exist and is in operation at all times. Science is a subset of knowledge.

This is all based on the stone that God laid in Zion, in the essence of things in the world. From this stone we experience God’s Spirit of Truth Who speaks only what He hears and tells us of things to come.

John 16:13
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Psalm 31:5 Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.

John 14:17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

John 15:26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,

Ephesians 5:9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

2 Thessalonians 2:13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

1 Peter 1:22 Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:

1 John 4:6 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.

God IS (Spirit Of Truth).

1 John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

*** Will Myers

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By Dr. Hugh Ross
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Q&A #1: Can We Remove a Star or Galaxy and Still Have a Fine-Tuned Universe?

From Liam in Bunbury, Western Australia:
Some skeptics say that it is a waste to create such a massive and complex universe only to place in it a little speck called Earth. But as knowledge has increased we’ve learned about fine-tuning and the importance of time and the structure of not only our solar system but also our galaxy and beyond. This huge structure makes our existence possible. So how finely tuned is it? Would removing a galaxy billions of light years away be akin to removing a small and seemingly insignificant gear cog from a watch? How about just one star in that galaxy? Where’s the tipping point? Or is there another consideration, i.e. time. When answering this question must we not only define what we take out of the universe but when?
****
Liam, you’re correct to conclude that when is an important consideration. Adding or subtracting a star or even a whole galaxy to or from the universe today––if that galaxy or star were far enough away––would do nothing to disturb the survivability of life on Earth. However, the mass, or to be technically correct, the mass density, of the universe needed to be exquisitely fine-tuned when the universe was very young for any possibility of life later.
The mass density fine-tuning shows up in two ways. First, between two and four minutes after the cosmic creation event the universe underwent an era of cosmic fusion. If the mass of the universe were even slightly greater than it is, too much helium would have been fused from hydrogen during those early minutes and future stars would fuse all ordinary matter too quickly into elements heavier than iron. If the mass of the universe were slightly less, future stars would never make elements heavier than helium. Either way, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen would be lacking and life would be impossible.
Second, too little mass in the universe would…
Point made.

Dr. Hugh Ross

Reasons to Believe emerged from my passion to research, develop, and proclaim the most powerful new reasons to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior and to use those new reasons to reach people for Christ.
Read more about Dr. Hugh Ross.

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We live in a world of flux; a world of continual changes, and the dynamics stops not. Things come into being and go out of being…a life cycle. Man is learning to influence these changes to his benefit. The first concept of science is to be able to define a thing to recognize it later and to predict the next event associated with the defined object or entity.

I define Vspace as the potentiality of the nexus; how God made things to work thereby predicting the next state of observed object, entity or person. Within Vspace man is being disciplined to the order of God’s creation; His design. Out of harmony with God’s design reaps mental and physical heaviness. In harmony with God’s Will gives God’s Glory with a taste of the coming Eternal Life.

1 Peter 1:6;p ” Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:”

Psalm 119:28; ” My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word.”

Proverbs 12:25: ” Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.”

Isaiah 61:3; ” To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”

Given that God loves each of us unconditional, if a soul have some good in it, than the soul is sent into another discipline or recycled into same discipline of heaviness; all being the choice of God. The souls to be destroyed in the Lake of Fire are those who have the pure spirit of satan who is the spirit of antiChrist, and is eternally opposed to the Son of God’s Spirit who is the Holy Spirit.

*** Will Myers

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Guest Writer
Dr. Hugh Ross

Have you heard about it? Everywhere I go these days, people are talking about the Great Departure. Young people raised in the church have been walking away from both the church and their Christian faith in alarming numbers, and only a few are coming back.
As much as Id like to say otherwise, the numbers dont lie. And yet they do seem ironic. For years churches have been adapting to the youth culture. Weve created attractive environments, exciting activities, and even some meaningful short-term service opportunities. These are all good, for sure. And yet this young generation is drifting away in greater numbers than ever, becoming spiritual nomads, prodigals, and exiles, to use researcher David Kinnamans terms.
The good news, here, is that Kinnaman has reached out to ask the drifters, themselves, why they left. The answer seems astounding, even heart-breaking, in its simplicity: We had questions, and no one was prepared to talk about them.
My colleague Jeff Zweerink recently gave an impactful and memorable presentation relevant to this woeful preparation gap, and Im eager to share it with you. Realizing how often young peoples questions focus on whether we can know what to believe, he identified four key components of effective communication. Jeffs example of how to connect science with the gospel is especially helpful.
Im convinced God has called Reasons to Believe to assist the church in addressing this crisis, specifically to equip our kids leaders and influencers for confident, honest engagement with questions about—and challenges to—biblical reliability. RTB resources, including live presentations (such as Jeffs), videos, books, online courses, and a resource-packed website, all are designed to demonstrate that Scripture is a timely and trustworthy revelation from God. Because you are the one who can personally engage the questioners in your sphere of influence, we want to continue providing you with practical resources for the task.
Attacks on biblical reliability, even on the concept of truth, come from virtually every direction today. What better response than preparation for these onslaughts? Insulation and isolation wont help. Readiness is essential (1 Peter 3:1516).
Earlier this week, when a group of Reasons Institute students watched the video of Jeffs talk, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The first C of the talk stands for confidence, and one student commented,
I am way more confident just from my short time being involved with science apologetics and RTB…New doors were opened and I could feel a huge weight being lifted off my soul. This lecture should be included in most of the courses offered. Great stuff.
Feedback like this amplified our enthusiasm for making Jeffs message as widely available as possible. So this month, as an expression of our thanks for your financial support, well be glad to send you RTB Live! vol. 16: 4 Cs of Science Apologetics. Find out what you can do to discuss your faith with others more confidently, clearly, credibly, and compellingly than ever. We want you to experience this same joyful freedom as you share the hope of our Creator and Savior.
Please keep Reasons to Believe moving forward with projects such as our Reasons Institute online education and other strategic initiatives to advance Christs kingdom. Together lets turn the Great Departure into the Great Return. Thank you for playing your own significant part in the action!

Featured Resource

Navigating Genesis Small Group Study DVD – In this 8-session series, astronomer Hugh Ross guides you through one of the most contested passages in Scripture (Genesis 1–2) and will equip you with powerful tools to share with family and friends. This study has been designed to help move Christians from feeling embarrassed and uncertain about their faith to confident and ready to share their beliefs with nonbelievers. This study includes a leaders and participants study guide as well as other useful tools.
RTB News for You:

RTB Live! vol. 13: Everyday Apologetics – Kenneth Samples fields a series of tough questions—the same kinds of difficult questions you might be asked by a nonbelieving friend or family member. Different from a debate, this is a friendly but challenging exchange that simulates a real-life interaction. It helps you prepare a ready answer for all who ask.
RTB Educational Programs –
Reasons to Believe offers innovative programs designed to prepare students to stand strong—building their personal growth and development. Reasons Institute is the premier content provider of science apologetics courses for Christian higher education. Reasons Academy offers a variety of resources to help parents and teachers introduce students to the harmony between science and the Bible.
Back-to-School: Science Apologetics for Students – Part of RTBs mission includes equipping believers to navigate the science-faith issues they encounter in their daily lives. So heres a roundup of articles, podcasts, videos, and other resources.

Support RTB

Will you help us keep doing so today? The need is great!
With an additional $300,000 in support this summer, we will be able to multiply our training efforts. By equipping new ministry space, such as our new classroom and auditorium, we can dramatically extend the reach of our training programs. We can teach more seminary courses and connect more students with Reasons Institute (RI), where they can benefit from content like Jeffs 4 Cs.
As a thank you for helping us meet our ministry expansion expenses this summer, you can receive the RTB Live! vol. 16: 4 Cs of Science Apologetics for a donation of any amount.

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July 7, 2014
By Dr. Hugh Ross

Could there be life on other planets? The ongoing search continues to yield data showing how rare, if not unique, our planet is. Scientists have identified multiple “habitable zones,” including the astrosphere habitable zone, that must be fine-tuned in order to support complex life.

Two separate studies conducted by astrobiology research teams have determined the number of potential habitable planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. One study said 45.5 billion planets exist;1 the other put the number at 40 billion.2 These large calculations presume that planetary systems throughout our galaxy are just as abundant as they are in our solar neighborhood. Also, both studies consider only the liquid water habitable zone—just one of eight habitable zones. For advanced life to possibly exist on a planet it must reside within all eight of the known habitable zones:

water habitable zone
ultraviolet habitable zone
photosynthetic habitable zone
ozone habitable zone
planetary rotation rate habitable zone
planetary obliquity habitable zone
tidal habitable zone
astrosphere habitable zone
Previous Today’s New Reason to Believe articles address habitable zones numbers 1, 2, and 7. In this article I discuss number 8, the astrosphere habitable zone.

Astrosphere habitable zones are the plasma “cocoons” carved out of the interstellar medium by a star’s wind, creating a space in which a planet could conceivably support life. These cocoons act as a buffer to screen planetary atmospheres and surfaces from the intensity of high-energy cosmic radiation, which would be deadly for a planet’s surface life.

The buffer of a star’s wind, however, must be just-right. A powerful stellar wind will generate a large plasma cocoon, but if too large, that life-supportable planet will be blasted with enough stellar radiation particles to seriously limit the life spans of advanced species. On the other hand, if stellar winds produce a plasma cocoon that is too small, planetary life may be exposed to deadly cosmic radiation.

The size of a star’s astrosphere depends on the star’s mass, age, and the density of the interstellar medium in which the star resides. Since stars are on orbital paths about the galactic center, the interstellar medium density in a given star’s vicinity will vary over the course of its orbit. The question for habitability is whether or not, at any time in a star’s burning history, the star’s astrosphere is small enough to limit stellar radiation damage to life and yet extends far enough to include the region where the liquid water, ultraviolet, photosynthetic, and tidal habitable zones overlap.

For any life to exist, other than the most primitive unicellular forms, the liquid water, ultraviolet, photosynthetic, ozone, and tidal habitable zones must overlap one another. This is possible only within a tiny region of stars that have an identical mass to the Sun. As two astronomers from the University of Arizona demonstrated, for a solar-mass star, only a close encounter with a dense molecular cloud will collapse that star’s astrosphere to a size smaller than the overlapping set of habitable zones.3 They determined that solar-mass stars will encounter these descreening events about 1–10 times per billion years. With Earth’s fossil record revealing that mass extinction events happened, on average, every 27 million years within the past 600 million years,4 astrosphere descreening events may account for a few of these episodes.

Humans have the “good fortune” of living on Earth at the ideal astrosphere moment in Earth’s history. We are also extremely fortunate to be living on this planet at a time in which all eight of the known habitable zones overlap. By contrast, not one of the 1,792 planets discovered and measured outside of our solar system5 shows all eight known habitable zones overlapping, which means none are possible habitats for life more advanced than primitive bacteria. Accumulating evidence increasingly points to not 40–46 billion “habitable” planets, but just one. Thus, instead of good fortune explaining our existence, a Designer who knows all about habitable zones (including ones yet to be discovered) and who knows about the changing physics of the solar system must have designed Earth and its long history of life so that humans can thrive during this brief epoch of time.

Subjects: Solar System Design

Dr. Hugh Ross

Reasons to Believe emerged from my passion to research, develop, and proclaim the most powerful new reasons to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior and to use those new reasons to reach people for Christ. Read more about Dr. Hugh Ross.

References:
Jianpo Guo et al., “Probability Distribution of Terrestrial Planets in Habitable Zones Around Host Stars,” Astrophysics and Space Science 323 (October 2009): 367–73.
Erik A. Petigura, Andrew W. Howard, and Geoffrey W. Marcy, “Prevalence of Earth-Size Planets Orbiting Sun-Like Stars,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 110 (November 2013): 19273–278; Dennis Overbye, “Far-Off Planets Like the Earth Dot the Galaxy,” Space and Cosmos, New York Times, November 4, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/cosmic-census-finds-billions-of-planets-that-could-be-like-earth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
David S. Smith and John M. Scalo, “Habitable Zones Exposed: Astrosphere Collapse Frequency as a Function of Stellar Mass,” Astrobiology 9 (September 2009): 673–81.
Adrian L. Melott and Richard K. Bambach, “Do Periodicities in Extinction—With Possible Astronomical Connections—Survive a Revision of the Geological Timescale?” Astrophysical Journal 773 (August 10, 2013): id. 6; Adrian L. Melott and Richard K. Bambach, “Nemesis Reconsidered,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 407 (September 2010): L99–L102.
Françoise Roques and Jean Schneider, The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia Catalog, June 2, 2014, http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/.

May 29, 2014
By Dr. Fazale Rana

From Hilmar: After reading an article in a local paper describing the British government’s present deliberations over introducing a new type of in vitro fertilization, I wondered what RTB’s position would be in terms of ethical considerations. This new IVF procedure would take the nucleus of a fertilized egg and introduce it into a donor’s egg that had its own nucleus previously removed—thus the new fertilized egg would contain a small amount of DNA from the egg donor (mitochondrial DNA?) as well as half the nuclear DNA from the mother and half the nuclear DNA from the father. The question is this: even assuming the nuclear DNA is removed from a single fertilized egg (i.e., no mitosis has occurred), wouldn’t this destroy an embryonic human? Even if the nuclear DNA is successfully injected into a donor egg, would not the new embryo generated produce a distinct human being (somewhat like an identical twin to the one previously destroyed)? From what I can tell this makes an already ethically questionable procedure even more dubious, but I’m very curious to know what you think.

Hilmar, I understand your concerns. We live in a “brave new world,” where advances in biotechnology take place at a breakneck pace, often with little opportunity for any kind of ethical deliberation before researchers attempt to matriculate the emerging technology to clinical settings. The new in vitro fertilization (IVF) method you reference is just one example. (The following article discusses this method and its potential promise: “Dad May Join Two Moms for Disease-Free Designer Babies.”)

As tempting as it might be to condemn summarily emerging biotechnologies—particularly ones that seem ethically questionable upon first glance—it is important to take the time to understand the science behind the technology. Often times this understanding alleviates some concerns and helps provide a realistic assessment in terms of the technology’s true impact on the dignity and sanctity of human life.

After working through the science that underpins this new IVF methodology, I’ve concluded that it is ethically acceptable from a Christian vantage point—with a few caveats. I’m excited because judicious application of this technology can go a long way toward reducing—maybe even eliminating—genetic disorders resulting from mutations to mitochondrial DNA.

For a detailed discussion of the science behind this IVF method and the reasons why I find it ethically permissible, listen to the February 26, 2014 episode of Science News Flash.

Subjects: Stem Cells/Cloning

Dr. Fazale Rana

In 1999, I left my position in R&D at a Fortune 500 company to join Reasons to Believe because I felt the most important thing I could do as a scientist is to communicate to skeptics and believers alike the powerful scientific evidence—evidence that is being uncovered day after day—for God’s existence and the reliability of Scripture. Read more about Dr. Fazale Rana

RELATED ARTICLES
Advance Holds Potential To Resolve Cloning’s Ethical Challenges
October 20th, 2009
Embryonic Stem Cell Research – An Interview with Dr. Fazale (“Fuz”) Rana
October 20th, 2009
Embryonic-Like Stem Cells from Adults Cells
July 19th, 2007

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