I noticed that there is a new Dallas, TX Science and Faith conference scheduled for February 17th, 2024. This one is offering online viewing, if you can’t make it to Dallas. Well, I thought it might be fun to review some lectures from the 2019 Dallas, TX Science and Faith conference, because they posted them online. It’s a nice way to get an easy, popular-level introduction to science apologetics.

Here are a few of the sessions I’m looking forward to:

• How Earth is Designed for Life
  Bijan Nemati
• How Earth is Designed for Scientific Discovery
  Jay Richards & Guillermo Gonzalez
• How Earth is Designed for Technological Advancement
  Brian Miller
• Intelligent Design as a Scientific Theory
  Stephen Meyer
• Can Evolution and Intelligent Design Be Combined? Why the Front-End Loaded Concepts of Design Fail
  Stephen Meyer

When it comes to scientific arguments, I have 6 that I usually use:

• origin of the universe
• fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe
• origin of the life
• sudden origin of body plans in the Cambrian explosion
• habitability and discoverability
• molecular machines

Well, they did one of these conferences 5 years ago in 2019, and they posted the videos. And they actually covered a few of these arguments. Here is the YouTube playlist.

The origin of the universe:

The origin of life:

Habitability and Discoverability:

Cambrian explosion:

If you’re wondering, “is this the lecture where James Tour got really, really excited with a church audience?” Yes, this is the one.

The 2024 edition seems to be superior to the 2019 edition, because they added two people I really like: Brian Miller and Guillermo Gonzalez. The one I’ve never heard of is Dr. Bijan Nemati, but he has impressive credentials:

Bijan Nemati is a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He received his Ph.D. in high energy physics from the University of Washington, based on his research on heavy quark decays detected at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. After post-doctoral work at the Cornell synchrotron, he left particle physics to work on advanced astronomical instruments at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I wonder if he will be a good speaker? He certainly has an impressive resume, that’s for sure. I wish we had a 100 scholars for everyone one who is speaking at the conference, but maybe if we can get Christian parents excited about the scholars we have, then we can make more of them.

People sometimes try to talk to me about charismatic pastors, and Big Eva politicians, famous Christian athletes, famous Christian artists, etc. And I just have no regard for people who talk about things that they haven’t investigated themselves. I’m even a little suspicious of analytic philosophers! The guys who I admire and look up to are the STEM guys. The mathematicians and the scientists. The guys who work in the labs. The guys who move the ball forwards by giving us evidence that we can talk about and use with people who don’t even know where to begin looking for evidence.