Have you ever wondered what the night sky would look like around Vulcan, Tatooine, Alderan or Arakis?  Would it look like the Earth’s night sky?  Would you look up and see a dark sky with only a handful of very bright stars that stand out in a background of dim stars?  Would you be able to recognise patterns of constellations in the sky that the small number of bright stars appear to trace out? Would you look up and see discernible patterns such as a snake like Draco, or a line like Orion’s belt?  Also would the bright stars of the constellations themselves be concentrated in a belt like ring?  Is the Earth’s night sky just like the night sky of all of these imaginary planets or their real analogues?

 The answer to all of the above questions is a resounding NO.  Almost all the night skies of planets orbiting distant stars fall into one of three basic patterns.  Planets located in Galactic Nuclei (which constitute about 90% of stars) would see a very bright sky filled with millions of stars that all have just about the same brightness.  Planets located in high gas areas such as spiral arms would see only a small number of randomly distributed dull stars.  These constitute about about 8% of the remainder.  The last approximately 2% would see a sky similar to the Solar System’s but it would look more like a wall paper made up of a uniform field of mixed bright and dull stars with few if any creating a discernible pattern.

As it turns out the Solar System, we are fortunate enough to inhabit, has a very rare sky and occupies a very unusual almost spooky position in space.  Astronomers have discovered the Solar System sits in the middle of  a very low density star bubble.  This bubble is about 3000 light years across.  It contains about a million low mass stars but only a few thousand high mass stars.  Even stranger,  these high mass stars are primarily located in a band called Gould’s Belt.  Gould’s Belt is a ribbon of stars that make up the constellations of the night sky. This narrow band is tilted about 20 degrees to the plane of the Milky Way, our Galactic disk.  It is the combination of low star density with a band of ultra bright stars concentrated in a belt which runs through it that provides the beautiful night skies peppered with constellations that the Earth’s inhabitants are allowed to enjoy. 

These constellations have figured prominently in the history of the Earth.  They have been useful tool to navigate on sea and land.  They also have proven valuable to agriculturalists to mark out the farming labor cycles.  The constellations have also figured prominently in the imagination of people all over the planet who used  them as visual symbols of their mythology.

There is a second great mystery associated with the stars of Gould’s Belt.  These stars seem to have been formed separately from the rest of the stars in our Galaxy. Stars are normally formed in the gas rich spiral arms.  The stars in Gould’s Belt however seem to have been formed outside the spiral arms in “some local violent event.” This is truly a weird situation.  The Earth sits in the middle of a peculiar bubble that seems to have been swept clear of most of the stars that were originally formed in it.  The bubble was then surrounded by a unique ring of a few thousand bright stars that were formed in an unusual, possibly unique,  event separately from all the other 200 million stars in this galaxy. 

The title of this Blog was taken from the headline to the article which contained most of the information used in this Blog.  The article however attempts to explain this amazing situation through the invocation of Dark Matter.  At this time no one even knows if Dark Matter actually exists. Even if it is proven that Dark Matter exists and was the immediate cause of the wonderfully beautiful, glorious skies the Earth enjoys,  would it not seem likely that the ultimate cause behind this incredible series of coincidences was the Hand of God? 

Source: “Orion’s Dark Secret,” NewScientist, Nov. 21, 2009, pp 42-45.

The Bible mentions five colors in Hebrew: red (adom), Yellow (tzahov), green (yerakon), blue (tchelet) and magenta (argaman).  One curious observation is immediately apparent, in that this list not only includes the primary colors - red, yellow and blue but it also includes the only two other colors green and magenta that are necessary to produce the complete color palate for four color printing. As interesting as this observation is it pales in comparison to a discovery made by Haim Shore a professor of Statistics and Engineering at Ben-Gurion University. What Professor Shore discovered is that the numerical values of the Hebrew words for these colors is correlated with the spectral wave frequency for these colors. 

Hebrew is an alpha numeric language - in that every letter is also equal to a number.  So if you add the values of each letter you get a number for the total value of the word. This is commonly used in “gematria”, the Rabbinic Cabalistic system of Biblical interpretation and prophesy, but what Shore did is not gematria. After calculating a total value for each word, he then plotted them on a graph.  He plotted the numerical value of each word on the horizontal graph and the color’s wave frequency on the vertical axis .  To Shore’s amazement he discovered that the graph yielded a straight line.

“It’s a universal principle of engineering that if you have two sets of data, you put them in ascending order, plot one set on the horizontal axis and the other on a vertical axis and if they fall on a straight line, that means that both data sets are measuring the same thing, only on a different scale. “I was astonished.  The five points on the graph formed a straight line, which means that the names of the colors related directly to their wave frequencies.” It was purely a statistical analysis Shore said,”I didn’t manipulate a single number in doing the analysis.” “When I saw this result I was stunned.” “I was completely astonished. Then I went on to other words in the Hebrew Bible, plotting the value of the letters against known scientific data. The whole thing blew me away.” Shore went on to investigate similar cases in the Bible and so far has preformed over 20 different analyses with statistically verifiable findings, for example he has found a similar correlation between numerical word value a planetary diameters.

Shore began as a Bible skeptic and did not expect to make any of these findings.  He says that he does not want to tell anyone what his findings mean but their theological implications are unavoidable.

Sources:

“Mere Coincidence or divine truth?”, by Yocheved Russo, Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2009.

“Coincidence in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew”, by Haim Shore, 2008, iUniverse, New York.

Luke 23:45, Mathew 27:45 and Mark 15:33 recounts that “the sun stopped shining” in mid-day at Jesus Crucifixion. Mathew 27:51 also reports that “the Earth shook and the rocks split.” Many have doubted these claims, arguing that such shocking phenomena would have been recorded in sources beside the Bible. As it turns out, record of it did survive in the works of Thallus a First Century, non-Christian, Roman historian in one of his few surviving writing fragments. In his account Thallus also relates that the darkness was not limited to Judea but was seen “all over the world.” Thallus was writing in the middle of the First Century, consequently the people who it was written for would have been alive at the time of the “darkness”, meaning that they themselves would have actually witnessed the event, eliminating the possibility of it being a false report.

Tallus attributed the “darkness” to what he thought was a solar eclipse. However today it is known from Computer Generated Reverse Solar Eclipse Paths that no solar eclipse occurred during the Crucifixion. Therefore the “darkness seen all over the world” does not have a known natural explanation.

The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus are central to Christian Faith. These verifications of the Biblical account in Tallus are important to Christians and skeptics alike because they provide further support to the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as historical facts.

Source: F. Jacoby, “Fragments of Greek Historians” pp 1156-1158.

1. Setting the Record Straight - Islam Did not Save Western Science (Revisionist History)

Revisionist historians are working diligently at their task of creating an alternative history: one which suits their ideological and emotional fancies but does not always comport well with the record. For example, in recent years it has become a common place for revisionist historians and especially journalists to state that “Western science is deeply in debt to Islam.” They usually go on to claim that if it were not for the medieval Islamic scholars, the works of Aristotle, Plato and other great Greek Philosophers would have been lost to the modern world. Anthony Pagden’s new book “Worlds At War” is a good example of such claims.

The actual truth of the matter was much better explored by Nineteenth Century Historians such as the great Ernest Renan. Renan clearly showed that with the exception of Averrois all of the major “Islamic scholarly contributions” came from Last Remnant of Christian Persians who were either “converts” from Christianity or scholars raised in areas where there was a strong recent Christian history and a Christian ethos still persisted. (Who knows what a convert to Islam may actually be? It has often proved to simply be people at sword point who wanted to live.) And even in the case of Averrois working in Spain in the 1100’s, his works were later declared heretical by Islamists and ordered destroyed. They only survived because they had been translated into Latin and Hebrew by Jewish and Christian Scholars, actually reversing the direction of salvaging scholarly thought as claimed by modern revisionists.
Also the assertion that the works of the ancient Greeks only survived because of Arabic translations is an enormous distortion. It is true that some of the major works of Aristotle, such as the Organon had been translated into Latin but were lost in Western Roman lands during the “Dark Ages.” However, they were never lost in Greek translations in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). It was from these sources that the Arabs learned about Aristotle and Plato not the other way around. It is true that Western Scholars in some instances were first reintroduced to Plato and Aristotle by reading Arab translations of the Greek but the claim of revisionists that these works were “saved” by Islamic Scholars is simply not an accurate portrayal of what happened.

2. Shocking Contradictions Go Unrecognized by Darwinists (Darwinism Failure)

“Darwin Was Wrong: Cutting down the tree of life” read the cover of the January 24, 2009 issue of “The New Scientist.” Just one week later the cover of “National Geographic” read “What Darwin Didn’t Know.” While neither story is a repudiation of Darwinism they instead reveal the level of confusion and contradiction that Darwinists have learned to live with and pretend or some how manage not to notice.

For example the main thrust of the story in the “New Scientist” is that modern genetics has destroyed the Darwinist contention that all of the life forms on Earth are descended from one single original organism. “…the tree of life which Darwin used as an organizing principle and which has been a central tenant of biology ever since. Most biologists now accept that the tree is not a fact of nature - it is something we impose on nature…” However the “National Geographic” story is still pushing Darwin’s Tree of Life. It reports that, “When Darwin proposed his tree of life he was frankly guessing.” They however claim that modern genetic studies have proven Darwin’s descent from one common ancestor. “-modern Darwin’s don’t have to guess. They consult genetic scripture.”

The author of this article is correct about modern Biologists consulting genetics but unfortunately for this author that consultation of “genetic scripture” has shown that Darwin was wrong, not right. Perhaps what this author should have titled this “National Geographic” article “What I Don’t Know.”

3. The “Father” of anthropogenic Global Warming “Embarrassed NASA” (Misuse of Science)

James Hansen is widely regarded as the man who first sounded the “alarm on global warming.” Hansen is the Chief Climate Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies. Hansen has made some of the most outlandish claims about the consequences of his alleged “man caused global warming.” Besides being Al Gores main science consultant on this issue he has also led the fight to silence critics and stifle discussion of alternative interpretations of the data. Over time Hansen has also been found to have fudge data, use the wrong data, misuse climate models and generally ignore or actively tried to suppress counter data. However none of this has tarnished is reputation with the “objective”,”main stream” media.

Now in a January 27, 2009 post on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works website, Hansen’s former boss at NASA, Dr. John Theon, has openly broken with him, stating that Hansen had “Embarrassed NASA” with his claims about global warming. Theon was Chief of several NASA Headquarters Programs including Hansen’s and was responsible for all NASA weather and climate research. Theon now says that the claims of man caused global warming are not supported by the data and that the models being used to project climate catastrophe are flawed. “Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.”

Hansen also claimed that the “Bush Administration was trying to muzzle him.” Theon points out that this is absolutely not true. First of all NASA has a policy against making forecasts of mans effect on climate change because the science for it is not yet good enough to do this. However despite this policy and despite the fact that the current science is not up to the task Hansen still gave over 1400 interviews on the topic while he worked for NASA and was never sanctioned for this massive violation of agency policy.

If Indiana Jones discovered a 55 Chevy buried in the undisturbed tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh even he would be surprised. However Darwinists are unimpressed by an even more amazing discovery of something even further out of its place in time.

On May 29, 2008 scientists at the Victoria Museum in Melbourne, Australia reported finding the fossilized remains of the oldest vertebrate, placental animal ever discovered. The creature was a beautifully preserved placoderm (armored, jawed) fish found in a fossil bed in Northwestern Australia known as the Gogo Formation. What made this fossil so spectacular was that inside of this female fish was a tiny baby placoderm fish still attached to its mother by an umbilical chord. Until now the oldest known viviparous (animals that give birth to live young) vertebrate ever discovered was from the Jurassic period dating to about 180 million years ago. However this placoderm fish dates to at least the middle Devonian dating about 380 million years ago. Because the process appears to be in its fully developed form, it does not seem unreasonable to believe that viviparous birth in vertebrates probably dates back to at least the middle Silurian epoch to about 420 million years ago when placoderm fish first appear in the fossil record.

Viviparous insects are believed to exist from this period. However they are far more primitive than these fish, do not have umbilical cords and are clearly unrelated to them as any type of ancestral form. Scorpions for example hatch their eggs inside of the mothers and then release the live young. The placental birth process is extremely complicated. It requires many specialized organs and behavior. It also requires highly developed complex sexual organs, copulation, mating behavior and much more.

Here is what is so stunning about this find: the Cambrian period when true multi-cellular animals first appear in the fossil record only ends about 500 million years ago. These very advanced placoderms are in the fossil record only about 120 million years later and they appear suddenly, out of nowhere and fully developed. According to Darwinism they should have been developing gradually over long periods of time and should only appear much later in the fossil record. So there should have been lots of simpler intermediate forms in the fossil record not the fully developed form that was discovered at this stunningly early time.

Why This Is Important

The Darwinists while expressing surprise are just embracing this discovery as nothing truly stunning or creating a need to reexamine their assumptions about how evolution is supposed to work as an unguided, accidental process. Their conclusion will be that fully developed viviparous birth simply randomly developed earlier than expected. This is the equivalent of Indiana Jones concluding that there it was no big deal in finding a 55 Chevy in the tomb of a pharaoh. His conclusion being that the 55 Chevy was first built in 2500 BC instead of 1955 - no big deal - just revise the numbers and go on as before.

The real importance of this fossil is that it is another of a growing list of examples of highly advanced biological processes that appear far too early in the fossil record to be honestly explained as the result of an unguided random process.

Further Source: “The Oldest Pregnant Mum”, by Carina Dennis, Nature, 453, 575 (2008).

By: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.

Imagine the headlines if some group started tearing down the Great Pyramids at Giza or the Colusseum in Rome or the Great Wall of China! The world would be outraged. It would rightly be called a crime against humanity and a desecration of the world’s heritage. Indeed his type of reaction followed the Talibans destruction in 2001 of the 1700 year old Buddhas of Bamyan in Afghanistan. These monumental statues were dynamited by Islamic fundamentalists for violating Sharia law. The Taliban was condemned around the world for this outrage against an archaeological monument that belonged to the world not just to Afghanistan.

Yet a far worse archaeological outrage against the world’s heritage has been taking place and the world media has been predictably silent on this one. Since 1999 the Islamic authorities in charge of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem under the claim of “construction” has been destroying the archaeological remains on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount currently has the Al-Aqsa Mosque sitting at its summit. This mosque previously was a Christian Church and before that the Roman Temple of Jupiter. However it originally was the site of the First and Second Temples of Solomon, the home of the Ark of the Covenant, Boaz Thrashing Floor and the place were Abraham took Isaac to make his sacrifice. The archaeological remains here go back to at least 2500 BC. This was where King Solomon and all of the following Kings of Judea worshipped. It is the Temple where Jesus and Paul and the other Apostles stood. It was the site of more history then can be imagined.

All construction on the site is supposed to be supervised by the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), however in 1999 the Islamic religious trust known as the Waqf, which oversees the Al-Aqsa Mosque, began a construction project underneath the mosque. This has turned out to be a huge excavation covering 1600 square meters to a depth of 15 meters. The Waqf had over 200 dump truck loads of earth and archaeological remains removed and summarily dumped in a landfill. This was all done with no archaeological supervision. Later examination of this priceless material in the dump turned up a number of valuable finds. This massive excavation is also being carried out quite carelessly and consequently the eastern wall of the Temple mount is now bulging and in danger of collapse.

The thought of the information that has been lost to the world is staggering and saddening. Modern archaeological research on sites like the Temple Mount is performed with dental picks, half-inch fine haired brushes and microscopes. However once the dirt is moved, the data loss is almost complete. Also stories have been floating around for several years of major finds being made during this digging which were deliberately destroyed so that they would not fall into the hands of the Israelis. Such stories may or may not be true but sadly probably cannot be known for sure now.

The Israeli authorities permitted this atrocity to go on according to the Biblical Archaeological Review and other sources because they wanted to avoid the political consequences of intervening. If the IAA had attempted to stop the destruction there likely would have been riots accompanied by claims of religious persecution from the Muslims. The world’s media of course would have repeated this mantra thereby creating an international crisis for the Israelis at a particularly sensitive time. It was easier to just turn a blind eye to this because, “…the top priority of the State of Israel is quiet, not riots, even if the antiquities pay the price.”

Why This Is Important

This is a crime against science and against the world because it destroyed a unique archaeological resource, which would have added to knowledge of world prehistory and history. Christians and Jews are especially affected by this crime because it eliminated opportunities to find materials, which may have, provide independent verification for Biblical accounts or expanded the understanding on materials referenced in the Bible and other ancient texts. It also would undoubtedly have contributed to an understanding of this historical period.

Sadly, it is also a shining example of the continued failure of the “objective” medias’ coverage of world events. If you want to be informed, do not depend on the major news sources.

Source:

“Israeli Authorities Acquiescence in Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities”, Biblical Archaeological Review, May/June, Vol 34, No. 3, p.22.

By Lawrence Vescera, Ph. D.

You may be a “Thought Criminal” and not know it. So, if you have not yet seen “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, I strongly suggest that you see it. Ben Stein produced this movie to alert the public to some very disturbing trends. The movie exposes a widespread effort in academia and the media to suppress the fact that a growing number of mainline scientists are beginning to consider Intelligent Design as an explanatory factor in their work or world view.

Intelligent Design is probably most often defined as the argument that the origin of the Universe and the origin of life cannot be completely explained by purely natural, random or unguided processes alone. This leads to the argument that at some point supernatural intervention was required to either start the process or to intervene in it. This supernatural force is usually identified as God. The movie shows what happened to some scientists and teachers who dared to openly consider Intelligent Design. They very quickly found themselves purged from the field, loosing their positions, abilities to publish, reputations and more.

This movie attempts to tackle an enormously large set of subjects. Adequately addressing such a large body of information in two hours is nearly impossible. A twenty-four part series would be inadequate to cover issues that include: science definitions, science history, biology, evolution, Darwinism, Social Darwinism, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, academic freedom and much more. But Stein did a good job of providing an overview and introduction to this battle that is being waged against scientists and scholars who want to consider Intelligent Design.

The film recounts what happened to several researchers who dared to write about scientific research findings that support the Intelligent Design argument. These people have paid dearly career-wise for openly thinking about Intelligent Design.
Keep in mind that in most cases they were not advocating it, but only discussing it. Their crime can best be described as a “thought crime.” Such crimes in the 20th Century generally occurred in the Marxist countries where such crimes were covertly and occasionally openly punished. In Marxist regimes anyone who dared question the Neo-Marxian worldview usually found themselves without a job and home and in some cases imprisoned, like Alexander Soljenitzen, and occasionally as under Stalin or Mao execution was also a real possibility.

The film also discusses some of the problems with Social Darwinism and its consequences. It briefly reviews the undeniable link between Darwinism and the Eugenics Movement and their use by regimes such as the Nazi’s with their theories about survival of the fittest between competing races and how this was directly linked to the Holocaust.

Not surprisingly the film has infuriated the Darwinists. The film is being attacked on all sides. The factual accuracy of the film is usually not attacked directly because many of the facts are undeniable so they speak for themselves. Therefore the criticisms have mostly fallen into marginal areas such as claims that the film does not tell the other side of the argument completely enough or that there are copyright issues about the use of some animations (it is hard to imagine a more irrelevant criticism).

Arguably the films most important point is that the effort to squelch discussion of Intelligent Design is an infringement of freedom of speech and thought. Whether or not Intelligent Design is factually correct is not the main issue for many, the main issue is freedom of thought. The Darwinists, materialists and atheists want to straight-jacket us all, having us put on blinders to the evidence that points to God’s creative role in the Universe by saying that Intelligent Design is not science. However at the same time they contradict themselves by also claiming that the scientific evidence against Intelligent Design is “irrefutable.” If this is the case, why are they trying to suppress free discussion of the subject? The truth is only too
obvious; they know that their beliefs are based on extremely weak evidence and in all probability will collapse under future scrutiny. However Darwinism is the basis for moral relativism and moral relativism is the foundation of the political left. Therefore there is no length these people will not be willing to go to in order to enforce their ideological orthodoxy.

By: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.

“Meteorites Delivered The ‘Seeds’ Of Earth’s Left-handed Life, Experts Argue”, read the headline in this Science Daily story of April 7, 2008. This claim was quickly advertised around the world by the media as a major breakthrough in the effort to explain the origin of life on Earth by purely natural, unguided processes. However, what the headline claimed and what the story actually reported are two far different things. This story is a classic example of how the media mis-informs and dis-informs the public on issues of great import. It is also an example of the widespread misuse of science and scholarly research to promote the materialist/humanist agenda.

Here is how the media operates this abuse: first they make a bold claim such as that in the above story. They then report the details in the story, realizing that few will read beyond the headline and knowing that even if they do, very few will understand what is being written at a level necessary to evaluate the claim in the headline and accurately conclude that the headline’s claim is so weakly supported by the data that the story is not really worth reporting. Also when competent scientists criticize the story, if reported at all, will be printed on page 36 under a headline such as “Scientist Question Chirality Claim.” A title, which will guarantee that almost no one will read it.

Let us examine the above story to see this pattern at work. The opening paragraphs tell an imaginative tale of the early Earth:

“Flashback three or four billion years – Earth is a hot, dry and lifeless place. All is still. Without warning, a meteorite slams into the desert plains at over 10,000 miles per hour. With it this violent collision may have planted the seeds of life on Earth.” “Scientists have presented evidence that desert heat, a little water and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up the first prerequisites of life: The dominance of “left-handed” amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet.”

The story claims to answer one of the greatest mysteries in biology, known as the “chirality problem.” Chirality here refers to the molecular mirror image symmetry of proteins. This symmetry is labeled as either left or right-handedness depending on how amino acid molecules polarize light. This is a very complex problem, which cannot be discussed here in detail, but in summary is as follows: With a few exceptions almost all of the amino acids in living systems are left-handed. However, in the inorganic world, amino acids because of the physics of their formation process are always found in mixtures of equal parts of left and right-handed forms. These amino acids are the raw material from which proteins are constructed. If protein synthesis occurs in a mixture of left and right-handed amino acids, even if the right-handed molecules constitute only a tiny fraction of the whole, the molecules formed will be biologically useless because they will fold in a manner that causes them to be inactive. Consequently when life was first synthesized on Earth it was necessary to start in environment of pure left-handed only amino acids.

Getting and maintaining a solution of purely left amino acids even under laboratory conditions is extremely difficult. This means finding a natural route to the synthesis of purely left-handed amino acids in the very messy natural world, full of right-handed amino acids, contaminants and thermodynamic problems seems almost insurmountable. Consequently origin of life researchers have long despaired over finding a materialist explanation for this phenomenon.

The article in question claims to provide a solution to this problem. According to this article: researchers examining the amino acids on the surface of some meteorites from Australia and Tennessee found a 5% to 10% excess of left-handed molecules over right- handed molecules. They then postulate that if this is combined with a series of natural processes (not currently known to exist), which could purify and amplify left-handed molecules, this concentration level can be increased to higher levels and (add another mere 100,000 or so other critical steps) you “voila” get life.

The article does not mention several interesting facts. First researchers have been examing meteorites for years looking for evidence of this chiral excess. Up until now all have always found that meteorites contain equal amounts of left and right-handed molecules. Ancient rocks in the Earth’s crust also always show this same racemic mixture. Would anyone like to bet that this finding will not be replicated when preformed at different labs using different meteorites? The fact that the excess of left-handed amino acids comes from the surface and not the interior of the meteorites should raise a big red flag because the surface is where contaminants from Earth life are likely to be found. Also not mentioned is the fact that even if there is a slight abundance of left-handed amino acids in meteors and a natural process did amplify this concentration (of which there is currently absolutely no evidence) it would still not provide the purely left-handed solutions of amino acids which is necessary for life to start from. In a mind-boggling step of illogic, the process of amplification postulated in this article requires preexisting biological organisms to carry out the process of amplification. So the way life originates under this scenario is through the mediation of preexisting life.

Why This Is Important

This piece of extremely questionable research will now begin to work its way into the public forum. It will become used as evidence to support the claim that “life originated through strictly natural processes.” It will probably become common knowledge that “meteorites brought left-handed amino acids to Earth and these formed the basis of life.” The reality however is that this common knowledge will be based on a greatly overstated case standing on the shakiest of evidence. This is reminiscent of that fact that many people now believe that there is genetic evidence to support the claim that homosexuality is genetically based. Such claims are based on several pieces bogus research, which were touted with extravagant headlines in the media. This research was all later shown to be specious, yet it is not unusual today to be told, “Everybody knows that scientists have shown that homosexuality is genetic.”

Source: www.eurekalert.org “Meteorites Deliver The ‘Seeds’ Of Earth’s Left-hand Life”, AAAS, April 6, 2008.

By: Lawrence Vescera Ph.D. - Isaac Newton Institute

Exobiologists study life on other planets. As of today it is a science without a subject, as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life (SETI), despite more than fifty years of searching, has so far failed to find anything to study. Looking at Earth, however, exobiologists are in general agreement that it is difficult to see how life on Earth could be sustained for a long period of time without a moon like ours. They further agree that it is difficult to see how any multicellular life forms could have arisen or survived without such a moon. It is also reasoned that because the Earth was formed as the result of “random natural processes”, the Moon must have been formed by the same presumably ubiquitous natural processes.

Given this line of reasoning, they conclude there can be nothing special about the Earth – Moon System; therefore the Universe must be full of similar planet – moon systems harboring life. The Moon is considered critical to life, especially higher life forms for several reasons. Among these reasons is the fact that it plays a major role in plate tectonics, which in turn drives a number of geological cycles, such as the carbonate-silicate cycle, on which life is dependent. The Moon is also critical to climate stability, oceanic nutrient circulation and much, much more.

Even more important to these life-sustaining processes is the planet-forming role played by the Moon in the Earth’s history. It is now almost universally accepted by planetary scientists that the Earth took on its present form when it collided with a Mars-size body during the earliest phase of the planets formation. This collision did several things that are essential to making the Earth a habitable planet. Among the most important of these are the stripping away the Earth’s original extremely dense carbon dioxide atmosphere (such as that still retained by Venus) and the super-enriching of the planet’s core and crust with heavy metals. This collision also left behind the small low-density moon that now orbits the Earth.

Fortunately for astronomers new observational techniques and instruments allow observers to detect such collisions in other planetary systems and see if they are as common as is supposed. It is easy to imagine how much dust and debris must be left behind when an Earth-size planet collides with a Mars-size planet. This type of dust cloud is easily detectable from across the Galaxy.

To get a measure of the frequency of such collisions NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope examined 400 nearby stars that were believed to be good candidates for such a collision, based on the system’s age and other factors. It was originally assumed that about 5% to 10% of the systems would show evidence of such a collision. As it turned out only one system showed evidence of a collision event. This very low frequency indicates that life supporting planet - moon systems such as ours are probably very rare indeed.

Why This Is Important

The discovery of life on other planets is critical to the Materialist faith. The discovery of life on other planets is not central to Christian theology. Christian thinkers entertained such speculations as early as the Middle Ages. Finding extraterrestrial life would neither prove or disprove the existence of God, it would only show that God created life on planets other than just Earth. However, the discovery of extraterrestrial life is absolutely central to atheism/materialism. It is central because it would be taken as evidence for the claim that there is nothing special about the Earth or the origin of life. If life is found elsewhere, this would be taken as evidence that life is just the result of some natural process and consequently is a purposeless process devoid of meaning. As long as no evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found, the atheists/materialists realize they have no “proof” for their beliefs.

Source: “Uncommon Moon” Astronomy, March 2008, pp. 18.

Blogger: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D., Isaac Newton Institute

On November 9, 2007, this Blog reported on the discovery that the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) that permeates the Universe shows clear evidence of the Earth having been placed at a special location in the Universe. Scientists discovered that the major temperature lobes left over from the Big Bang appear to be centered on our Solar System. This discovery is strong evidence for the Anthropic Principle: the belief that the Universe was designed to allow the existence of life. It also lends support to many physicists who have begun questioning String Theory and its speculation that our Universe is just one of an infinite or near infinite number of other Universes.

Of course, this affirmation of the Anthropic Principle is anathema to the atheist’s belief that there is no God, that humans are not special, and that our location in the Universe is not favored in any unique way. Consequently, materialists dubbed this discovery, “The Axis of Evil” because it presents a huge problem for their belief system.

Subsequently, materialist scientists have begun a desperate search to find some way to explain the structure of the CMB without recognizing God’s hand in it. A number of theories have been put forward to this end, including some interpretations of the recent discovery of a 900-million light year void in the Universe.

The Standard Model of the Universe, the one most widely accepted by scientists, and String Theory call for galaxies to be arranged in bubble-like structures. The surface of the bubbles consists of sheets of galaxies while the interiors are largely near-empty voids. However, neither of these theories predicts that any of the voids would be as large as 900 million light years. There are a number of explanations for this larger than expected void within the Standard Model. Of these, the most widely discussed is the “Topological Defect” model, which predicted this type of anomaly. However, Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina has offered a new theory. She argues that the larger than expected void is evidence that our Universe is being squeezed in one direction by another Universe, and this squeezing effect is causing the “Axis of Evil” anomaly observed in the CMB.

Why This Is Important

Mersini-Houghton’s theory was recently discussed in an article published in The NewScientist entitled, “Into The Void.” What was amazing about this article was not its presentation of new scientific findings (which it did not contain) but rather its open admission that this new “highly speculative” theory might provide the materialists with a way to rescue their atheistic belief system. The author actually openly states of her theory, “And it would do away with the anthropic arguments that have plagued string theorists in recent years…” Mersini-Houghton admits that the philosophical/theological reasons for developing her theory were to resolve the dilemma recent discoveries had created for String Theorists. “String theorists, who had so hoped to avoid the anthropic principle, have now been forced to invoke it to explain why our vacuum was selected out from the 10 to the 500th other string vacuums.” The main advantage of her theory is that it might allow these String Theorists to once again abandon the Anthropic Principle and return to a purely materialistic worldview because “Anthropic arguments leave many physicists queasy.” “It’s a much more scientific and legitimate way of picking out a universe like ours than the anthropic principle.”

In other words, the belief that God created the Universe is illegitimate. The claim that the Universe just happened as the result of a cosmic accident is the only “legitimate” type of explanation.

Mersini-Houghton’s theory has yet to be put to the test. It is, of course, possible that experimental results will be found that can be interpreted as support for her theory. However, it is disheartening to see science driven by atheistic fundamentalism instead of by an objective search for the truth.

Source: “Into The Void” by Marcus Chown, The NewScientist, November 24, 2007, pp 34-37.

By:  Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.