I wanted to announce to everyone that there is a Science and Faith conference in Dallas, Texas coming this weekend. And there’s live streaming. I have watched all the videos from the previous ones. It’s much better to watch and listen to them than to just listen to them, because of the slides. Anyway, one of the previous talks was about honeybees, and I blogged about it. BUT there is even more interesting design evidence in honeybees. Let’s investigate.

So, in my last post, I talked about the design of honeybees.

But here is the latest on the honeybees, from Science and Culture.

First, here is the topic – bee selection of flowers for efficient collection of nectar:

Animals are constantly faced with having to make behavioral decisions. An example is when they forage — searching for food. Bee behavior when questing for pollen and nectar has been a favorite subject for biologists to study. One reason is that rather than searching randomly for flowers, bees exhibit clear tendencies and preferences. Research has determined that bees use information about flower characteristics to make their foraging decisions.

Various aspects of bee foraging have been the subject of experiments. There are a number of factors that affect their decisions on where and when to forage. Bees typically have to choose between “Several dozen flower species which all differ in reward and signal, and they may encounter several flowers with different signals per second of flight.” Bees have been shown to be flexible, adjusting their decision-making behavior based on the conditions they encounter. One piece of information that bees use in foraging is the depth of the flower, which affects the time required to forage (called handling time). Flowers of shallow depth require less handling time, which can be viewed as a trade-off cost, and thus are more efficient. Other things being equal, bees generally prefer flowers of shallow depth with, therefore, reduced handling time. It has also been shown that bees prefer flowers that provide a greater reward (i.e., more nectar) if handling time is not a factor. Some experiments have shown that bees have a distinct preference for flowers with optimum concentrations of nectar. Bees also show a preference for continuing to forage on flowers of the same color, sometimes even when flowers of a different color offer superior rewards.

And here is the new study about this:

A recent paper from the University of Sheffield in the UK studied foraging by honeybees (Apis mellifera), analyzing their decision-making process, including an assessment of their accuracy and efficiency.

[…]In the experiment, honeybees were trained to associate different colors with either a reward or punishment, and with a range of probabilities.

[…]Key findings from the experiment include that for tests which were intended to provide easy discrimination between reward and punishment, the bees made the correct choice significantly more often than mere chance would lead us to expect.

[…]The authors indicate that the study, “Unveils the remarkable sophistication and subtlety of honeybee decision-making.” They also comment that the sophistication of honeybee decision-making has features in common with primates. That is all the more remarkable given the small size of their brains (less than 1 million neurons). These behaviors are largely controlled by a segment of the brain called mushroom bodies, which contain multisensory integration, learning and memory formation, and comprise about 40 percent of the brain neurons. In comparison, the brains of goldfish and hummingbirds are roughly 100 times larger. Despite the small size of the bee’s brain, expert Lars Chittka has documented the significant repertoire of honeybee behaviors, many that involve decision-making.

Very good article, and shows evidence of design in animals. I am a bird person myself, but bees have wings, so I guess I can like them, too. Certainly they are cute and offer a great case for intelligent design.

By the way, I recently bought a whole bunch of books for one of my co-workers who has 5 kids. I decided that it would be good for the kids to be exposed to apologetics evidence. One of the books was about the design of the human body. So, if you have kids that are aged 8-12 or so, you might want to check this book out. It’s never too early for kids to get serious about evidence that will help them choose and defend the truth.

And of course there is a new book for grown-ups that just came out written by a super-qualified engineer from the UK. I blogged about that one here.

I watched the State of the Union address to the nation by President Donald Trump on Tuesday night. I really enjoyed it, and thought it was an excellent showcase of Republican party priorities, as well as showing voters Trump’s vision for the future, heading towards the mid-term elections. I was shocked to hear that polls show that Trump is under 50% popularity. Honestly, Trump was not my guy in the 2024 primary, but he has seriously outperformed.

Let’s start with the video of the speech itself:

I have to say that I like a tight speech, and this speech could have been a double-episode of Knight and Rose Show. He didn’t deliver it “scripted” but there was no rambling. For the first time since Trump became a high-profile Republican, I actually thought “this is a person who does a good job advocating for many of the things I care about – not just with words, but with achievements”. So let’s see some of Trump’s demonstrated achievements.

This article from The Federalist by Brianna Lyman lists a few of the things that he highlighed in the speech:

• The Duty of American Government Is to Protect American Citizens
• Flow of Fentanyl Across Southern Border Plummets
• Decline in Murder Rate
• Inflation Coming Down
• Justice for Iryna Zarutska
• Washington D.C.’s Safer
• Protecting Children From Satanic Trans Cult

The speech was crafted in a way that it would appeal to 70-80 percent of voters, regardless of party. But even so, the Democrat legislators refused to stand up and applaud for all these good things.

Let’s look at one of the things in Brianna’s list:

The president… spoke out about the satanic, left-wing efforts to mutilate children suffering from gender dysphoria.

Trump spoke about Sage Blair, who was 14 years old in 2021 when “school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

Blair was placed into an all-boys state home following an order from an activist judge after Blair’s parents refused to affirm their daughter’s gender dysphoria, Trump said. Eventually, Blair was returned to her parents and is now comfortable in the body God gave her.

“We can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said. “We must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”

But Democrats refused to stand.

“Look, nobody stands up,” Trump said. “These people are crazy, I’m telling you. They’re crazy.”

They didn’t stand for any of the 7 achievements. So what do we get from this? Well, Trump can decide to prioritize lots of things as President. But what he prioritized was protecting innocent people from criminals and protecting innocent children from greedy child abusers. These things are popular with American voters. But Democrat legislators wouldn’t stand for them.

Let’s get out of the tactical weeds, and look at strategy. An article by Elle Purnell from The Federalist talked about the big differences between the two political parties.

The big difference is that Republicans think that American citizens are their bosses, and Democrats thin that illegal immigrant criminals are their bosses. Trump proved it with his speech:

[I]n Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump urged every member of Congress to “stand up and show your support” for the statement: “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Cameras panned to show nearly the entire left-hand side of the chamber awkwardly remaining in their seats. After two minutes of Republican cheering and Democrat scowling, Trump suggested that Democrats should “be ashamed of yourselves,” and the cameras showed Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Mogadishu, shouting angrily in response.

Another big difference between the parties is that Republicans think that people in the armed forces who take risks and pay a price to serve their country deserve to be honored. Democrats don’t think that people in the armed forces should be honored.

The article notes:

Throughout the address, Trump handed out medals to American heroes left and right: Medals of Honor to 100-year-old war hero Navy Captain Royce Williams and to Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, a pilot in the recent capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

I have to mention that Slover served with the US Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), a very prestigious unit that does all the flying for covert operations, including hostage rescues. I read an entire book about them called “The Night Stalkers”. I read this book because I wanted to be more informed about them so that I could be more thankful and respectful about their deeds. This particular pilot Slover had both of his legs shot up by foreign security forces during the mission to deliver Venezuela from the tyranny of communism. He was standing on crutches.

Yet the Democrats would not stand up and applaud – for a Medal of Honor recipient. I doubt that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib even know what a Medal of Honor is! I’ve read three books about Medal of Honor recipients. It should be required reading for immigrants. How can you live in this country and not know anything about the sort of people who make it safe for you to live here? When I am in a grocery store, I always go up to people who have Vietnam War or Korean War caps on, to talk to them. I want to praise them for their actions in our noble wars against communism. Republicans are people who know history and who respect heroes in the armed forces.

So, why post something about this speech? Well, this might sound crazy to people who think that Trump is a bad guy with bad character, but I think they should watch the speech. The corporate news media has been carefully indoctrinating voters with left-wing stories about the Trump administration. But the speech put the lie to all of that. I highly recommend sending the speech to people you know ahead of the mid-terms. Now is the time to get people in the middle to be aware of what the Republican party actually stands for. Don’t wait for the corporate news media to speak to your family and friends, they’re not going to do it fairly. You will have to do it.

My favorite Ratio Christi person of all is Eric Chabot. He works at Ohio State University. He is the best, because can teach on many topics, he gets the best speakers to lecture, and mentors the most promising Christian students. I could tell you so many stories about his achievements as a Christian. Anyway, he has a new substack, and I decided to check it out to see what he’s writing about. I was not disappointed.

Here is his latest article, where he talks about what works best in real conversations with Muslim students:

Over the last several years, I have had many opportunities to engage in spiritual discussions with Muslims in our campus ministry in Columbus, Ohio. On several occasions, I have told Muslims that I will never become a Muslim because of their position on the death of Jesus. For Christians, the death and resurrection of Jesus are central to the Gospel message. After all, the kerygma in the Book of Acts is that the Messiah was crucified according to the plan of God (Acts 2:23), that He was raised from the dead, and that He appeared to His disciples (Acts 2:24, 31–32; 3:15–26; 10:40–41; 17:31; 26:23).

Muslims, however, believe that Jesus did not die. Instead, they believe the early disciples were deceived and that Allah delivered Jesus. The Qur’an says in Sura 4:157:

“And [for] their saying, ‘Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.’ And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but another was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.”

From this passage, most Muslim scholars conclude the following:

• Jesus was not actually killed on the cross.
• Someone else may have been made to look like Him, or the event was made to appear that way.
• God rescued Jesus and raised Him to heaven.

Across both Sunni and Shia traditions, it is commonly believed that:

• Jesus was taken alive into heaven.

• He will return before the Day of Judgment.

• He will defeat Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (the false messiah).

• He will eventually die a normal human death.

Now, my podcast partner Rose is an expert in Islam, and she loves to use this argument with Muslims, along with the The Islamic Dilemma. Why is this argument so good? It’s so good because you have a clear case of two historical sources asserting two mutually contradictory points. Christianity teaches that Jesus did die on the cross. Islam teaches that Jesus did not die on the cross. Only one can be right. It’s the perfect point to bring up with Muslims, because it’s a clear disagreement, and one that can be settled by the ordinary methods of historical analysis. The right answer depends on which sources come first – who is in contact with the eyewitnesses at the time when history was recorded?

Eric writes:

[T]he Qur’an was written roughly six hundred years after the life of Jesus, making it a much later source of information than the New Testament. The evidence suggests that the core historical content of the Gospel—the death and resurrection of Jesus—was circulating very early within the Christian community. As mentioned earlier, historians look for records that are closest in time to the events they describe. Given the early date of 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, along with other sources, it is evident that this material is historically earlier than the Qur’an.

If you don’t know about the early creed from 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, you really should listen to episode 1 of the Knight and Rose Show. We quoted the writings of a famous atheist German New Testament scholar and atheist (formerly professor at the University of Göttingen). He dates the elements of the creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 (or more broadly 15:3-8) very early. You can find his own statement in his book “The Resurrection of Jesus” (1994), where he states:

“the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus…not later than three years… the formation of the appearance traditions mentioned in I Cor.15.3-8 falls into the time between 30 and 33 CE.”

So, this is very, very early evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus. And the crucifixion is of course echoed by other non-Biblical sources, e.g. – Tacitus, Flavius Josephus, The Babylonian Talmud and Lucian of Samosata.

Eric notes that it’s not just early sources that matter. The number of sources matters too. He has a list of dozens of sources going from the event itself right up to the late sixth century.

My podcast partner Rose talked about the implications of Allah allowing people to believe in mistakes for 6 centuries before Mohammed finally shows up to correct them in episode 11 of the Knight and Rose Show.

Eric makes the same point:

Consider the implication of the Islamic claim. According to Islam, Allah allowed the first-century disciples to be deceived into believing that Jesus literally died on a cross. Not only that, but this supposed deception continued for roughly six centuries until Muhammad received a revelation through the angel Gabriel.

His article is great. It’s something that everyone should know how to do. I think most Christians think of Christianity as “our tradition”. It’s what Westerners believe. It’s our family tradition, our community tradition. Then, when they encounter Islam, they think of it as just “Middle East Christianity”. That’s just their tradition, on the same historical footing as our tradition.

Certainly, it’s easy to think that all religions are the same, and many Christians do. And unfortunately, there’s not much apologetics being taught in church. Pastors don’t do much to teach their flocks how to test a religion for truth. Instead, pastors teach Christians to share their testimony. And when Muslims share their testimony, Christians aren’t equipped to have a truth-focused discussion where evidence is weighed.

Well, I think that what Eric has written there is about the best you can do as a lay Christian. So, read his article closely. Notice how he quotes non-Christian scholars to make his points. Don’t let yourself get tricked into discussions about which book is more holy. If you stick with the historical evidence, then the discussion doesn’t get heated. On the contrary, you will be shedding light on the subject, when you explain your views and how you arrived at them. My mom’s side of the family is all Muslim, and none of them ever got mad at me when I explained this argument to them. It just works.