I'll ask some easy questions: Would you rather have your child play outside or play video games? Which will be more valuable for the child? Which will be more valuable for the world? Headline: National Forest visitors down, no one knows why. In the years after World War II, Americans packed up their young families …
Month: November 2008
Four Dances Natural Area, Montana
We spent the Thanksgiving weekend in Montana with my mother; it was the first time that I had been "home" for Thanksgiving in over twenty years. On Saturday, we found a new place to hike right on the edge of Billings: Four Dances Natural Area, administered by the BLM. It preserves 765 acres (310 ha) …
Glaciers on Mars, part 2
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day: Radar Indicates Buried Glaciers on Mars. Explanation: What created this unusual terrain on Mars? The floors of several mid-latitude craters in Hellas Basin on Mars appear unusually grooved, flat, and shallow. New radar images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter bolster an exciting hypothesis: huge glaciers of buried ice. Evidence …
For the Beauty of the Earth
Last year I ran a series of posts with quotes from For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care by Steven Bouma-Prediger. This book develops a Biblical view of creation care that is neither Earth-centered nor man-centered, but God-centered. Because I have new readers of The GeoChristian, I periodically recycle previous …
Meteor videos
Videos of a bolide (fireball) which appeared over Alberta and Saskatchewan last night. HT: Scyldings in the Mead-Hall Grace and Peace
Need vs. greed
The world has enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed. -- Mahatma Gandhi Grace and Peace
Glaciers on Mars?
Scientists have identified features that could be glaciers at mid-latitudes on Mars. If this interpretation is correct, then these could contain a significant amount of water ice at a considerable distance from the poles. LiveScience: Buried Glaciers Found on Mars There is a cirque-like feature in the foreground (the bowl-shaped feature facing the camera at …
Resurrecting mammoths
From LiveScience: Extinct Woolly Mammoth's DNA Mapped Scientists for the first time have unraveled much of the genetic code of an extinct animal, the ice age's woolly mammoth, and with it they are thawing Jurassic Park dreams. Their groundbreaking achievement has them contemplating a once unimaginable future when certain prehistoric species might one day be …
Crescent Earth
The first images of the Earth taken from the moon wasn't the one taken by Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968; they were taken by unmanned lunar orbiters which were scouting out potential landing sites for the upcoming Apollo missions. This image was taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966, and has been recently reprocessed by …
UK Darwin coin
February 12, 2009 will be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (as well as being the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln). The Royal Mint is producing a 2 pound circulating coin in commemoration of Darwin: I expect to see lots of fireworks from all sides of the creation-evolution debate …
The future ice age
Irregardless of what we do to the planet now, the long-term climate prospect for sometime a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of years in the future is cold: Earth may face freeze worse than Ice Age. This is nothing new to geologists, recognizing that Earth is presently in a short interglacial period …
Another extrasolar planet image
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is another image of planets orbiting another star, this time taken with infrared radiation: These three planets are orbiting the star HR 8799. NASA has an ambitious plan to search for Earth-sized, or even Earth-like planets. The hope is to be able to directly image Earth-sized planets (the above …
Ten arguments for God’s existence
Theologically, I know that I believe in God because, by his grace, he has drawn me to himself. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. (John 6:44). I find apologetics (the rational defense of the faith), however, to be exceedingly useful, including the philosphical arguments for God's existence. …
Compassionate environmentalism vs. plunder the Earth
This item was originally posted in November 2007. I have added it to my blog recycling program. Because I have new readers of The GeoChristian, I will occasionally go back and re-use some of my favorite blog entries. There is a growing awareness among Evangelicals of the importance of environmental issues. There are good Biblical arguments for …
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First image of a planet around another star
From today's Astronomy Picture of the Day: The description from APOD: Explanation: Fomalhaut (sounds like "foam-a-lot") is a bright, young, star, a short 25 light-years from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus. In this sharp composite from the Hubble Space Telescope, Fomalhaut's surrounding ring of dusty debris is imaged in detail, …
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One thing
From the song "My One Thing" by Rich Mullins: Everybody I know says they need just one thing And what they really mean is that they need just one thing more And everybody seems to think they've got it coming Well I know that I don't deserve You Still I want to love and serve …
Good conservative quotes on the environment
I've been involved in a discussion over at Cranach about the battle for the soul of the conservative movement: Conservative civil war. I threw in a few quotes from noted conservatives to point out that there is nothing conservative about allowing pollution and degradation of the Earth. "While I am a great believer in the …
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The moral argument for God’s existence
There are four basic categories of philosophical arguments for God's existence. The one I find most compelling is the cosmological argument, which I have written about here and here. Gene Edward Veith (Cranach, another blog I read almost daily) points to a statement of the moral argument for God's existence by William Lane Craig: The …
The Bible Rocks — Review by Dr. Peter Enns
A good review of Young and Stearley's The Bible, Rocks, and Time by Dr. Peter Enns, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, can be found here. I haven't finished the book yet, but agree with Dr. Enns that "despite this blunt assessment of young-Earth creationism, the authors’ treatment of their opponents’ views are …
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