Biology

Matthew 13:3-8 says:

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Figure 1 - Front cover of the book

We are excited to announce that TASC‘s Restoring the Truth About Origins: Book I is now available! We pray and hope you will purchase copies for yourself, family, and associates as gifts to enjoy and be even better edified on this important topic of origins. What we think about our origins has had a profound influence on the thinking and actions in our society in the past and will today and in the future. So we encourage you to get copies today (see ordering information under Availability and Purchasing heading below)!

I was recently asked to speak on creation in my Sunday school class. TASC had been helping organize the recent Origins Truth conference at the time, so I decided it might be encouraging to share something about the lives and work of two of the invited speakers for the conference: John Sanford and Russ Humphreys. I then added three more scientists: Matti Leisola, James Tour, and our very own Gerald Van Dyke to the talk. Each of these scientists has a unique story and has given glory to God through their life and research. Here, I share the essence of that presentation.

The greatest challenge for evolutionary biology is to account for the information found in codes in DNA, RNA, proteins, and more recently in the epigenome. 1

Darwin's Doubt: the Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design is Stephen Meyer's sequel to his previous book Signature in the Cell. 1

Symbiosis (from Ancient Greek sýn “with” and bíōsis “living”) is close and often long-term interactions between different biological species. In 1877 Bennett used the word symbiosis (which previously had been used of people living together in community) to describe the mutualistic relationship between an alga and fungus in lichens. In 1879 the German mycologist Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as “the living together of unlike organisms.”

Figure 1 - Lichens are an example of a commensal symbiotic relationship.

Stephen C. Meyer

Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design 1 by Stephen C. Meyer is the latest book from a major proponent for intelligent design (ID). 2 Signature is Meyer’s magnum opus. Meyer is the director of the Discovery Institute’s (www.discovery.org) Center for Science and Culture, the flagship organization for the ID movement. He is a trained geologist and has a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science from Cambridge. 3 Signature is written at a level accessible to the layman but also informative to the specialist in biochemistry. The book is a history of Meyer’s interest and involvement with ID. The main focus of the book is the origin of the informational code in DNA, especially as it relates to the origin of life. The book discusses several topics including the history of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the cracking of the DNA code, the history and status of origin of life theories (especially the RNA world), basic information theory, various scientific methodologies and modes of thought and why ID is scientific, historical sciences, detecting design, why ID is the best explanation for the origin of the information in DNA, and responses to ID critics. This review will touch upon some of the book’s highlights.

Most information in this article comes from Nature’s Destiny
by Dr. Michael Denton. 1

Light

About 60% of the sun’s radiation is in the visible range, only about one trillionth of one trillionth of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Amazingly, this same range is what the air, the atmosphere, is transparent to.

Figure 1

The central question evolutionary science has yet to answer is by what natural processes is novel information introduced into the biological world. Until this question is answered, evolution will remain an organized system of unproven speculations and “just so” stories. There are two main events in the evolutionary tale that need this type of explanation: the origin of life and the mechanism for macroevolution.

The genome of organisms contains their genetic material, which largely determines how they will develop. Scientists are learning more and more about the genome of various organisms, which is revealing more and more about the amazing wisdom of God in their design and creation. It seems that our understanding of the functioning of life is always incomplete, and the genome is always more complex than we had thought. Will we ever fully understand the functioning of life, or will it always be a mystery to us?