Book Review: Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students – Part 1

Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students (Answers in Genesis, 2021) is a must-read book for any Christian student bound for a secular university. Engler discusses what students will likely encounter in the culture and classes of college and how to keep the faith despite the opposition. She explains in detail how students can grow strong spiritual, intellectual, and interpersonal foundations against anti-Christian propaganda, faulty assumptions, logical fallacies, and self-defeating secular philosophies promoted on campus. She explains how to develop critical thinking skills for analyzing false claims about Christianity, the Bible, and evolution. She shows how students can separate fact from interpretation.

book titled Prepare to Thrive

The Discovery and Implications of Orphan Genes

The goal of this paper is to review some significant findings from the analysis of genetic sequence data over the last few decades. These results have surprised many biologists and are believed by many to challenge the key assumptions about how life came to exist on this planet. In particular, these recent findings indicate that the diversity of genetic information across the entire range of life forms is much greater than previously known and that this information in the form of protein-coding genes shows that all forms of life are much more distinct from each other at a very fundamental level than ever was previously understood. These results call into question specific key assumptions that make up the evolutionary explanation for life:

Inspired Evidence

I‘ve been reading Inspired Evidence by Julie Von Vett and Bruce Malone for quite a while now, and it is awesome because it provides a new page of inspired evidence for a Biblical worldview every single day for all 365 of them. These authors actually made Romans 1:20 come alive for me:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. (KJV)

Fragments of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient greek analog computer that is believed to be used to help teach Greeks about our place in the cosmos.

Evolution’s Fake News: There is a Mechanism to Drive Macroevolutional Change

The term, and even the concept, of “fake news” is a relatively new phenomenon in the context of political journalism. In the past, “news casts” were thought to be objective reporting of the facts regarding the news of the day by unbiased journalists seeking only to discover the truth. For instance, in the 1970s almost no American would have questioned the veracity of any report coming from the lips of Walter Cronkite. Much has changed since those days! Only the most naïve of American citizens believe they can blindly trust the words of political journalists. We realize that almost all reporting comes with the particular “spin” of the journalist and network reporting on the news of the day.

Insects: Musings on the Monarch, It’s Migration, and Butterfly Metamorphosis

Insects are amazing! The monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus L., is featured in this article; however, there are thousands of other species with intriguing lifestyles. The European honey bee, Apis Mellifera L., for example lives in colonies with up to 60,000 nest mates— nearly all are sisters of one mother (the queen). After a young bee completes her duties as a “nurse” bee in caring for the immature “brood,” she takes flight in search of nectar-rich flowers as far as three miles from the hive. Upon her return, the location (flight path) and richness of her find is “communicated” to other foraging bees by way of a unique dance on the surface of the honeycomb.

Butterfly development cycle

Creation Ministries International’s Recent Superconference at Myrtle Beach

I recently attended the Creation Ministries International (CMI) five-day Creation 2022 Superconference at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. TASC board members Drs. Jeff Gift and David Greear were also in attendance. The conference was held from May 30 to June 3 at the beautiful Hilton Myrtle Beach Resort, located right on the ocean. There were 597 in attendance from all over the country, 22 lectures, 10 CMI presenters, a massive bookstore, a children’s program, optional opportunities to attend a guided tour through a nearby aquarium with marine biologist Dr. Robert Carter or to match wits with chess master Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, and free time to enjoy the beach.

July Creation conference lecture hall