Jitters from Genomics
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 A list of landmark scientific achievements thought by our ancestors several generations ago to be impossible would vary considerably from person to person. But most would probably cite space travel, or wireless communication, or today’s startling computer technology. The new science of genomics could not have been imagined by our forebears…
Read MoreIdentify the Watchmaker
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 Intelligent Design (ID) has acquired a bad name in the community of naturalistic scientists. Some have called the concept of design, and its implications of a designer, irrational. They feel, as does Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker, that even though design in the cosmos is ubiquitous, there is no…
Read MoreOur Father’s World
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 Some accounts of my personal campaign against NDD–nature deficit disorder–the subject of our last post, are worth sharing. As a college freshman, I was privileged to have poet John Ciardi for my professor in English composition at Rutgers University. One bit of advice I recall from him was “Get the ‘For…
Read MoreNature Deficit Disorder
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 There has been a sea change in our culture in the past sixty years. This change has affected the ways in which science is able to strengthen faith, particularly for our young people. Contributing mightily to the change was the onset of television at mid-century, the social ferment which began in…
Read MoreMetamorphosis Miracle
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 Recently another example of a “teachable moment” for young people presented itself. Our young grandchildren had visited their uncle and aunt for a few days. They were being delivered to our home for the next leg of the journey to their parents on the following day. A few miles from our…
Read MoreTeachable Moments
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 In science studies, teachable moments are abundant. But they are also abundant in everyday life. As a career science educator I formed strong, positive views of the value of science and scientific thinking skills as a tool to strengthen reasoning power, to understand cause and effect relationships, and to promote a…
Read MoreAre Those Stars?
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 “Grandpa, are those stars?” queried my 3 ½ year old granddaughter one late fall evening when I carried her out under the dark night sky of our community. The regulations of our residential association insure that dark skies prevail. But our granddaughter’s home neighborhood, well-lit and secure, does not offer the…
Read MoreEvidence or Revelation?
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 Bible topics widely thought to refer to scientific topics should be approached with care. We must be sure we are using the Scripture mainly to affirm God’s sovereignty and His relationship to His creation rather than as a science textbook. One startling 80-year-old discovery, however, seems to have been addressed in…
Read MoreEinstein’s Vindication
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 Two adult Bible Class courses in my home church in 1997 and 1998 were entitled “Bible Science” and “The Cosmos Cries ‘Creator!’” I taught these classes where members explored in some depth the role of reason and revelation in the acquisition of faith, issues of design and fine tuning of the…
Read MoreScriptural Cosmology
By: Jim Virkler; ©2009 The Apollo 11 moon exploration anniversary may cause us to consider the cosmological concepts held by ancient biblical characters and scripture writers. Did they, for example, see the earth’s moon as a body suspended in space? And did they consider the earth to be a sphere? Greek philosopher Pythagoras in the…
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