Tag Archives: Science

Mentoring

My favorite lectures from J.P. Moreland, Walter L. Bradley and Philip E. Johnson

7 Comments

These are the lectures that made me who I am today!

Dr. J.P. Moreland

B.S. in Chemistry, University of Missouri
M.A. in Philosophy, University of California Riverside
Th.M. in Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary
Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of Southern California

Dr. Walter L. Bradley

Ph.D. in Materials Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1968
B.S. in Engineering Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1965

Dr. Philip E. Johnson

A.B., Harvard University, 1961
J.D., University of Chicago, 1965

News

The Democrat war on science destroys our prosperity and our consciences

Leave a comment

Here are a couple of stories from IBD showing how the secular-left twists science in order to advance their socialist policy.

Obama’s cap-and-trade bill

The story is here. (H/T The Chilling Effect)

All Americans in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain regions will be most drastically affected because the climate change legislation will destroy the nation’s coal industry and the low-cost electricity it has provided to these regions for generations.

Wealth will be transferred away from almost every state to the West Coast and New England.

…Reliable estimates show that this bill will cost each American family at least $3,000 more in energy costs each year, notwithstanding the $2 trillion cost to the economy in just eight years.

…All these countries have stated that they will not place any restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions. China alone, which has surpassed the United States in carbon dioxide emissions, brings a new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant on line every week. They will have low-cost electricity, and America will massively export more jobs to them.

I blogged here about the costs of this energy tax in more detail.

Stem-cell research

The story is here.

Excerpt:

Inspectors general are apparently not the only ones to pay for annoying the White House by doing their job. The 18-member council existed to provide the president with advice on the moral and ethical implications of the rapid advances in science and medical research. It exists no more.

The council existed to ponder whether we should do something just because we can. Apparently President Obama wanted not advice but agreement on such matters, particularly with regard to one of the panel’s areas of interest, embryonic stem cell research. So he has fired them.

Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer, told the New York Times that Obama saw the panel as “a philosophically leaning advisory group” handpicked by the Bush administration, and that he wanted to appoint a new bioethics commission that instead offered “practical policy options.”

I blogged here about the advantages of adult stem cell research compared to embryonic stem-cell research.

Videos

Stephen Meyer explains the design of DNA at the Heritage Foundation

Leave a comment

THIS IS A MUST-SEE VIDEO!!!

The Heritage Foundation is by far my favorite think tank. If any of my readers have a blog, and you would like to get into policy a little bit, I highly recommend them. My Christian readers may be worried that think tanks are too focussed on fiscal conservatism and that they neglect foreign policy and social conservatism, including faith issues. You will not have that problem with the Heritage Foundation.

This time, they hosted one of my top 5 Christian scholars, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, so that he could give a lecture to the public about the evidence for an intelligent designer of DNA.

The video and audio of the lecture is posted here, at The Foundry. (H/T The Discovery Institute)

I have seen Meyer give this lecture live. He steals his children’s toys to explain DNA to people! I am begging you: do not be afraid of learning about scientific evidence. Watch the lecture!!! And then watch it again!!!

Information about Dr. Meyer from that page:

Stephen C. Meyer is Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.  Dr. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin of life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences.

And you can listen to a wonderful podcast with Stephen Meyer, too!

This episode of ID the Future tells the story of how philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer first began his quest for the origin of life. How did one of the architects of the intelligent design movement move from the oilfields of Texas to the study halls of Cambridge to pursue the mystery of where biological information originated? Listen in and find out. The new book, Signature in the Cell, tells the rest of the story, the culmination of over 20 years of study and research on the origins of life.

I wrote about the evidence for intelligent design in the cell here, using a paper published by Stephen Meyer. Watch the lecture, and read the paper.

Don’t forget to bookmark the Heritage Foundation’s blog!

Further study

One of my favorite resources on the origin of life is this interview from the University of California with former atheist and origin of life researcher Dean Kenyon. Kenyon, a professor of Biology at San Francisco State University, wrote the textbook on “chemical evolution”, which is the view that chemicals can arrange themselves in order to create the first living cell, without intervention.

This interview from the University of California with another origin of life researcher, Charles Thaxton, is also one of my favorites.

You’ll need Quicktime to see the videos, or buy the videos from ARN. (Kenyon, Thaxton) I have both of them – they rock!