I had the privilege of visiting the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History a few months ago and got to touch a piece of Mars! The Naklha meteorite fell to the Earth near Alexandria, Egypt, in 1911, and is most famous for killing a dog (no human has been killed by a meteorite in recorded …
Creation care quotes from Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II had much to say about the environment and human responsibility for good stewardship of the creation. Here are a few quotes: "When man turns his back on the Creator's plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order. If man is not at peace …
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Another diminishing resource
Helium. The second most abundant element in the entire universe. And a limited natural resource here on Earth. From the February 2011 print edition of National Geographic (page 22): the US Government's helium reserve has dwindled from 32 billion cubic feet in 1991 to 19 billion cubic feet in 2008. The United States' (and the …
The ESV Study Bible on creation — Genesis 1
The following item was originally posted on The GeoChristian in November 2009, and 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, with some editing. I am re-using this post about the ESV Study …
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Fifty million little leaguers and pianists later
Almost twenty years ago I got into a discussion about abortion with a female coworker in the break room. I'm not sure how the topic came up; I don't go around looking for controversial topics to debate with my coworkers. She was in her mid- to late-twenties, and like me, was at the beginning of …
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Video: 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes
A four minute video on world wealth and health that is a more interesting presentation of statistics than the norm: The video ends on an optimistic note: everything is getting better and better, even for those down at the bottom. I would be more cautious: while life expectancy has improved for all but the poorest …
Around the web 1/21/2011
A few items from the many tabs I have open in my browser... Mammoths in the meadows? -- Japanese researchers hope to replace the nucleus of a fertilized elephant egg cell with the nucleus of a woolly mammoth, then implant the cell in an elephant's womb to create a living woolly mammoth. This is much …
Renewable by 2030?
From National Geographic: Going "All the Way": With Renewable Energy? In a world where fossil fuel provides more than 80 percent of energy, what would it take to go completely green? Could the world switch over to power from only the wind, sun, waves, and heat from the Earth in only a few decades? The …
EFCA Theology Conference — Genesis 1-3
A brief note about the Evangelical Free Church of America Theology Conference was posted on Facebook this morning: EFCA - Evangelical Free Church of America With wit and wisdom, Dr. Kaiser opened the EFCA Theology Conference with three principles required by a study of Genesis 1-3 which must inform our theology of creation. 1) This …
Arthur C. Clarke and GPS
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was not only one of the first persons to conceive of geostationary communications satellites, he may have also been the first to come up with the idea of the Global Positioning System (GPS). From the Winter 2010/2011 issue of ArcNews: Rendezvous with Reality -- Arthur C. Clarke Sees the …
Airplanes of the future?
From FoxNews: NASA Shows Off Planes of the Future Grace and Peace
Quote from T.S. Eliot — nature and theology
From T.S. Eliot's essay, "The Idea of a Christian Society": A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God. Grace and Peace
Operation World — missions and the Earth and environmental sciences
One of the most significant influences that directed me into missionary service (my family served with ReachGlobal---the international mission of the Evangelical Free Church of America---from 2002 to 2008) was when we purchased a copy of Operation World back in the early days of our marriage. This book is a day-by-day prayer guide to the …
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Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2011
Martin Luther King, Jr. is celebrated in the United States for his vision and leadership in the civil rights movement. In my previous post, I argued that Christianity provides a much more solid foundation for human rights than secularism, and Martin Luther King's Biblically-based arguments for equality illustrate this nicely. He did not argue that …
The origin of human rights, or “Is napalming babies culturally relative?”
Timothy Keller, in chapter nine of The Reason for God, discusses the origin of human rights. Do humans intrinsically have unalienable rights, or are these rights something that we have arbitrarily come up with? Keller outlines three possible answers to this question, following Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz: Human rights come from God. God has …
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Video: Polar bears destroy BBC cameras
From Yahoo News: Polar bears destroy BBC documentary cameras.
Around the web 12/30/2010
Eurypterids in the petting zoo? -- Eurypterids---the giant, scorpion-like arthropods of Ordovician to Devonian seas and lakes---may not have been the terrors of the waters that most have assumed. From FoxNews: Ancient 8-Foot Sea Scorpions Probably Were Pussycats. Some may have been vegetarians or scavengers, though the researchers acknowledge that species other than the ones …
2010 Reading
I didn't get as much reading done in 2010 as I did in 2009, but that reflects the stage of life I'm in. Here are the books I finished this year: The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton -- Walton makes the case for a "cosmic temple inauguration" view of Genesis one. A …
Reading the Bible in 2011
Many make a New Year's resolution to read the Bible more consistently than they have in the past, and many don't stick to that resolution. Here's what works for me. Rather than using a reading schedule, with a daily listing of what chapters to read, I usually use a Bible reading checklist: The GeoChristian Bible …
Around the web 12/11/2010
In the beginning... -- Blogger Joe Carter (at FirstThings.com) finds Stephen Hawking's cosmology as expressed in The Grand Design to be a bit "drab and nonspecific." Carter rewrites Hawkings to make it a little more of a "creation story for young atheistic materialists." In the beginning was Nothing, and Nothing created Everything. When Nothing decided …
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