All posts by Wintery Knight

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Biomimetics: scientists making discoveries using God’s designs in nature

Christianity and the progress of science
Christianity and the progress of science

Well, scientists are still gaining insights from God’s book of nature.

Evolution News reports on the latest:

Pure science seeks understanding of “the nature of nature” and its operations. Applied science takes the insights from pure research and makes it work for human interests. What if you had a single word that incorporates both? Here’s a contender for such a word: Biomimetics. The application side is clear, because engineers and inventors try to imitate nature’s designs. But the pure-research side becomes active in the process, because you have to understand something before you can imitate it. This is a win-win bonanza for 21st-century science, and intelligent design, if not by that name, is at the center of it.

They list the following areas where scientists borrowed from God’s designs in nature to make scientific progress:

  • drug discovery (Nature Communications)
  • artificial muscles (American Institute of Physics)
  • robotics (Engineering at Illinois News)
  • drones (Live Science and New Scientist)
  • crop pollination (New Scientist)
  • ceramics (Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science)
  • more ceramics (Nature Communications)
  • clothing (American Chemical Society)
  • more clothing (Phys.org)
  • more robotics (Public Library of Science)

Naturally, I chose the bird example for this blog post, because I love birds more than any creature – especially parrots.

This time it’s peacocks and peahens:

Peacock dye. The American Chemical Society is involved in the gold rush, too, excited to announce that “Peacock colors inspire [a] greener way to dye clothes.” The iridescent colors of birds and butterflies come not from pigments, but from geometric structures at the nanoscopic level that intensify certain wavelengths of light. Everyone from fashion designers to parents to the EPA will be happy to learn about better dyes inspired by peacock feathers. “Testing showed the method could produce the full spectrum of colors, which remained bright even after washing,” an ACS team said. “In addition, the team said that the technique did not produce contaminants that could pollute nearby water.”

Amazing that some people just go about their lives ignorant and oblivious to the design that’s all around them. Then again, if they thought about who made these designs, it might interfere with their pursuit of pleasure. Maybe they just shut out the evidence so they can keeping being the boss of their own lives, and never take responsibility for their moral choices?

Romans 1:18-21:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,

19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

See the related posts below for more posts on biomimetics.

Related posts

Cambridge University professor Simon Gathercole lectures on geography in the Bible

Investigation in progress
Investigation in progress

BeThinking posted a new lecture featuring Dr. Simon Gathercole.

Here’s the speaker bio:

Dr Simon Gathercole is Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, at the University of Cambridge. He is particularly fascinated by the connections between the New Testament and its contemporary literature.

Summary:

Simon Gathercole shows how the geographical information in the New Testament Gospels demonstrates their historical reliability and their basis in eyewitness sources. The illustrated lecture lasts about 60 minutes and is followed by about 20 minutes of Q&A.

BeThinking has a PDF containing all the slides used in the lecture.

The lecture is here:

Topics:

  • Detailed geography is difficult to fake, especially when it is far into the past
  • Bible authors would have to rely on eyewitness testimony if they wanted to get geographic details right
  • You can even cross-reference the geographic details mentioned in the New Testament with extra-Biblical sources of that time
  • Cities mentioned in the Bible are mentioned in other sources
  • Locations that are mentioned in Josephus, a Jewish historian
  • Locations that are mentioned in the Rabbis
  • 22 of 27 places mentioned in the gospels are attested
  • If you compare the gospels with Josephus they are as good

Example slide – he shows where these cities in orange are mentioned outside the Bible:

At the end of the lecture 22 out of 27 cities are attested in other sources
At the end of the lecture 22 out of 27 cities are attested in other sources

This lecture caught my eye because it was all about connecting the Bible to evidence outside the Bible. I like evidence. You should give it a listen.

New study: cohabitating parents twice as likely to split up as married parents

SurveyMonkey election poll cross tabs for unmarried women Nov 2016
SurveyMonkey election poll cross tabs for unmarried women Nov 2016

This was reported by the Daily Signal.

It says:

Children born to unmarried, cohabiting parents—both in the United States and across Europe—are nearly twice as likely to see their parents split up, compared to children born to married parents.

A new study from the Institute for Family Studies and Social Trends Institute examines family stability among cohabiting and married-parent families from numerous countries across the world. The findings provide evidence against some common myths about cohabitation and children’s family stability.

One of these myths claims that cohabitation is less stable than marriage simply because low-income individuals are more likely to choose to cohabit. However, researchers find that in the majority of countries studied, cohabitation is less stable even among the highly educated.

The authors note, “In the overwhelming majority of countries, the most educated cohabiting parents still have a far higher rate of break-up than the lowest educated married couples.”

For example, in the United States, 49 percent of children born to highly-educated cohabiting mothers experienced at least one union disruption by age 12, compared to just 26 percent of children born to lower-educated married mothers. In the United Kingdom, the percentages are 53 percent and 39 percent, respectively.

A second common argument is that cohabitation becomes more stable (begins to look more like marriage) as it becomes more common in a society.

However, the findings did not support this notion. As the share of children born to cohabiting couples increased in a country, family instability also increased.

Laurie DeRose, one of the authors of the study, explains:

We find no evidence in this report to support the idea that as births to cohabiting parents become more common, as they have in the United States, marriage and cohabitation resemble each other in terms of stability for children. On average, marriage is associated with more family stability for children across the globe—even in countries where it is in retreat.

[…]A 2011 report from the Institute for American Values calls “the rise of cohabiting households with children … the largest unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of children’s family lives.”

Research shows that children in cohabiting households are more likely to be physically, sexually, and emotionally abused, and to be aggressive or display delinquent behaviors (such as substance abuse or committing property crime). They are also more likely to experience poverty and have poorer health.

It should be noted that Democrats favor policies that punish people who want to marriage, e.g. – no-fault divorce, marriage tax penalty, single mother welfare, etc.

Dennis Prager explains why the Democrats oppose marriage:

It takes a particularly noble Democrat to promote marriage and family. The strengthening of these institutions is not in the Democratic Party’s self-interest. The more people marry, and especially the more they have children after they marry, the more likely they are to hold conservative values and vote Republican.

That is why it is inaccurate to speak of a “gender gap” in Americans’ voting. The gap is between married and unmarried women. Single women, especially single women with children, tend to vote Democratic, while married women, especially married women with children, tend to vote Republican.

Why is this?

There are two primary reasons.

One is that women’s nature yearns for male protection. This is a heretical idea among the well educated whose education is largely devoted to denying the facts of life. But it is a fact of life that can easily be proven: Extremely wealthy women almost always seek to marry men who are even wealthier than they are.

[…]Given women’s primal desire to be protected, if a woman has no man to provide it, she will seek security elsewhere — and elsewhere today can only mean the government. In effect, the state becomes her husband. This phenomenon has frequently been commented on with regard to the breakdown of many black families. The welfare state simply rendered many black men unnecessary and therefore undesirable as spouses: Why marry when you can get more benefits from the state while remaining single (and get even more money if you have children while remaining single)?

Once a woman does marry, however, her need for the state not only diminishes, she now begins to view the state as inimical to her interests. For the married woman, especially if she has children, two primal urges work against her having a pro-big government attitude. Her urge to be protected, which is now fulfilled by her husband, and her primal urge to protect her nest are now endangered by the government, which as it grows, takes away more and more of her family’s money.

Once a woman marries and has children, therefore, her deepest desires — to be protected and to protect her family — work as strongly on behalf of conservative values and voting Republican as they did on behalf of liberalism and the Democratic Party when she was single.

The other reason married women are less likely to be liberal and vote Democratic relates to maturity and wisdom.

Just about everyone — a man as much as a woman — is rendered more mature and wiser after marrying. This is not an insult to singles. It was as true of me as of anyone else. If you’re single, ask any married person — happily or unhappily married — whether or not marriage has matured them.

The single biggest change induced by marriage is that you can no longer think only about yourself. “I” becomes “we.” Narcissism becomes far less possible in marriage than in the single state. And just as marriage decreases narcissism, it increases wisdom. Having to relate to another human being (especially of the opposite sex) to whom you have made a lifelong commitment (even if it ends in divorce) vastly increases your wisdom. And if you have children, your wisdom increases exponentially. Again, ask any parent if they are wiser since becoming a parent.

If you take a look at the map above, you’ll see that unmarried women vote overwhelmingly Democrat, because they want to be able to follow their hearts without having to be responsible about finding a husband and raising children. They vote for big government to make their self-centeredness “work out”. Why have a husband when you can get his money by taxing him? Single women think it’s better to tax a man and not have to respect him. That’s why they vote Democrat. And as taxes go higher and higher, what you’ll find is that many single men who might like to marry can no longer afford to marry – because they are paying for the upkeep of millions of single women already.