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CLEVELAND — Cosmology used to be a heartless science, all about dark matter lost in mind-bending abysses and exploding stars. But whenever physicists and astronomers gather, the subject that roils lunch, coffee breaks or renegade cigarette breaks tends to be not dark matter or the fate of the universe. Rather it is about the role and meaning of life in the cosmos. Cosmologists held an unusual debate on the question during a recent conference, "The Future of Cosmology," at Case Western Reserve University here. According to a controversial notion known as the anthropic principle, certain otherwise baffling features of the...

Design and the Anthropic Principle Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D. Hugh Ross launched his career at age seven when he went to the library to find out why stars are hot. Physics and astronomy captured his curiosity and never let go. At age seventeen he was the youngest person ever to serve as director of observations for Vancouver's Royal Astronomical Society. With the help of a provincial scholarship and a National Research Council (NRC) of Canada fellowship, he completed his undergraduate degree in physics (University of British Columbia) and graduate degrees in astronomy (University of Toronto). The NRC also sent him...

The Fine Tuning of the Universe by Rabbi Mordechai Steinman with Dr. Gerald Schroeder An amazing array of scientists are bewildered by the design of the universe and admit a possibility of a designer. According to growing numbers of scientists, the laws and constants of nature are so "finely-tuned," and so many "coincidences" have occurred to allow for the possibility of life, the universe must have come into existence through intentional planning and intelligence.In fact, this "fine-tuning" is so pronounced, and the "coincidences" are so numerous, many scientists have come to espouse The Anthropic Principle, which contends that the universe...

Expected Guests John D. Barrow and the Anthropic Principle March 22, 2006 On March 15, mathematician John D. Barrow joined the likes of Mother Teresa and Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he was named the winner of this year's Templeton Prize. The prize is awarded for "progress towards research or discoveries about spiritual realities." What constitutes "progress" is as varied as the recipients themselves. I received the award in 1993, so it includes prison ministers and nuns ministering to the poor in Calcutta and noted scientists. Barrow, who teaches at Cambridge University, is the latest in a recent series of scientists to...

In debates over the existence of God and man, the existence of vampires rarely enters the discussion. Whether Count Dracula and his kin exist hardly seems to be a relevant concern. But a fascinating paper by a pair of physicists makes me wonder if the existence—or rather the non-existence—of vampires can shed light on one of the popular arguments for the existence for God—the argument from fine-tuning. In Ghosts, Vampires and Zombies: Cinema Fiction vs Physics Reality, Costas J. Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi use math and physics to illuminate inconsistencies associated with the popular myths about ghosts, zombies, and vampires....

Is there definitive evidence for an expanding universe? by John Hartnett The spectral lines for this element still show the same distinctive pattern, but all have been shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. Expansion of the universe is fundamental to the big bang cosmology. No expansion means no big bang. By projecting cosmological expansion backwards in time, they assert, one will, hypothetically, come to a time where all points are the same. Since these points are all there is, then it logically follows that there is no space or time ‘before’ this moment. It is the singularity, and...

In the fifth century B.C., the philosopher Democritus proposed that all matter was made of tiny and indivisible atoms, which came in various sizes and textures—some hard and some soft, some smooth and some thorny. The atoms themselves were taken as givens. In the nineteenth century, scientists discovered that the chemical properties of atoms repeat periodically (and created the periodic table to reflect this fact), but the origins of such patterns remained mysterious. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that scientists learned that the properties of an atom are determined by the number and placement of its electrons, the subatomic...

Age of the Universeby Dr. Gerald Schroeder According to a possible reading of ancient commentators' description of God and nature, the world may be simultaneously young and old. One of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Torah and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5700-plus years. Whereas, data from the Hubbell telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the age at about 15 billion years.Let...

There is a near universal majority of scholars in many fields—historians, Bible scholars, New Testament scholars, philologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, literature, folklore and oral history specialists, paleographers, linguistics scholars in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, those in the field of the Classics, a Dead Sea scroll specialist or two, and many others—from atheist to Jew to liberal to fundamentalist Christian, who all agree Jesus existed.Over the last two hundred years, there has also been a small group called “mythicists” who have asserted there was no historical Jesus. Very few mythicists are scholars; I know of two currently. They tend to be exclusively atheistic...

CBN.com – Two different religions, with two very different points of view. Fatima Devanbeigi learned the truth about each of these religions in her search for a genuine relationship with God. “On the inside, I felt like there was a huge rock hanging in my heart,” says Fatima. “It was real, and it was painful. It was like something that would draw me down and wouldn’t let me live. There was no hope in it. And there was no hope for the future.” Fatima was raised in Iran as a Muslim. “Being a Muslim is not by choice, it’s by...

General EssaysAnalysis of general principles used by the "borrowing" thesis. Some notes on alleged parallels between Christianity and pagan religions -- an introductory commentary by a classical scholar writing for us as "Justin Martyr" On Napoleon as Myth translated by "Justin Martyr" Glenn Miller's general essay refuting the pagan-copycat thesis Creation Ministries International on Indian creation mythsOld Testament "Borrowing"Figures claimed to be sources for the Old Testament. Named entities in alphabetical order. Akhenaten -- Did the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten influence Jewish monotheism? Sargon -- Did the story of this Assyrian king influence the story of Moses? Sinuhe -- Did the...

CBN.com -Stephen Christo never wavered in his devotion to the array of Hindu gods and goddesses. And he wanted nothing to do with other religions, especially Christianity. “Because they were the only ones keep talking about their god. I said to people, hey, you got one. I got millions. I don't need your one." When Stephen turned 19 he left his home on the island of Trinidad, bound for the US. Naturally, his parents were worried but they also had good reason. Earlier in his teenage years, he developed a recurring illness that had been triggered by the common cold....

Fittest Man in the World Owes His Success to a Fall CBN.com -Rich Froning has earned the title of “Fittest Man in the World” for four consecutive years. And, he’s the only competitor to ever accomplish that feat in the CrossFit Championships. But, Rich will tell you that his road to first, started with a fall. Rich was raised in a large Catholic family and had 24 male cousins. In his family, competition was the name of the game. “There's a lot of boys in that group there, so there’s a lot of testosterone at family get-togethers and it was...

The reliable Gospel eyewitness accounts aren’t the only ancient description of Jesus. There are also non-Christian descriptions of Jesus from the late 1st to 5th Century. What do the non-Biblical accounts say about Jesus and how are we to assess them?[...] Hostile Non-Biblical Pagan Accounts[...] Thallus (52AD)[...] “On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.” (Julius Africanus,...

Extreme Fine Tuning - Dark Energy or the Cosmological Constant IntroductionFine Tuning?Skeptics like to say that fine tuning cannot be proven by science, since we have only one universe to study. However, the discovery and quantification of dark energy has puzzled a number of scientists, who realize that its extremely small value requires that the initial conditions of the universe must have been extremely fine tuned in order that even matter would exist in our universe. By chance, our universe would have been expected to consist of merely some thermal radiation.Rich DeemThe recent Nature study popularized in the press regarding...

Is it really true that entire universes can appear from nothing? This "science" is based upon the real science of quantum mechanics, which has shown that particles can appear from "nothing" and disappear into "nothing." Atheist scientists say that "nothing" is unstable and spontaneously produces somethings. Although the statement is true in a limited sense, atheists aren't telling you the whole story. Why is that? Although these virtual particles appear based upon some probability statistic, they also disappear spontaneously, based upon the same probability. In other words, these particles are not stable and do not behave like the stuff we...

When we think about our Universe at a fundamental level, we think about all the particles in it and all the forces and interactions that occur between them. If you can describe those forces, interactions and particle properties, you have everything you need to reproduce our Universe, or at least a Universe virtually indistinguishable from our own, in its entirety.[...] As it turns out, it takes 26 dimensionless constants to describe the Universe as simply and completely as possible, which is quite a small number, but not necessarily as small as we like. Here's what they are[...]

IntroductionAccording to Carl Sagan, the universe (cosmos) "is all that is or ever was or ever will be." However, the idea that the universe is all is not a scientific fact, but an assumption based upon materialistic naturalism. Since Carl Sagan's death in 1996, new discoveries in physics and cosmology bring into questions Sagan's assumption about the universe. Evidence shows that the constants of physics have been finely tuned to a degree not possible through human engineering. Five of the more finely tuned numbers are included in the table below. For comments about what scientists think about these numbers, see...

ContentsOrigin of God DNAProof of God DNAWhat is God DNA?DNA LanguageAmazing Facts of God DNAExample of God DNA God DNA = Natural DNAGod DNA StructureGod DNA HelixMutationCausesExamplesVariationCausesExampleFAQs about God DNAIs DNA proof of God?What are the four letters of DNA?What does DNA look like?What DNA is made of?Does DNA determine your looks?Does DNA come from mother or father?Are humans coded?Why is DNA so important?Can DNA prove God’s existence?Does DNA read God eternal within the body?Can God change DNA?Is it possible to change your DNA?What is the code for DNA?Is God's name in our DNA?How does DNA point to god?Does DNA...

In the growing movement known as intelligent design, Stephen Meyer is an emerging figurehead. A young, Cambridge-educated philosopher of science, Meyer is director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute — intelligent design’s primary intellectual and scientific headquarters. He’s also author of Signature in the Cell, a provocative new book that offers the first comprehensive DNA-based argument for intelligent design.[...] What would be your main argument for the evidence of intelligent design in the cell? Well, the main argument is fairly straightforward. We now know that what runs the show in biology is what we call...