Episodes
Wednesday Jan 31, 2024
Stars, Cells, and God | Soft Tissues in Fossils and Evidence for the Planet Theia
Wednesday Jan 31, 2024
Wednesday Jan 31, 2024
Join Fazale “Fuz” Rana and Hugh Ross as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.
Soft Tissues in Fossils
A research team from the University College Cork (UCC), Ireland, published two separate reports in which they present evidence for melanin pigments and keratin filaments in fossilized feathers. The researchers developed models for the chemical alterations of melanin and keratin during fossilization. Using these models, they identified degradation products in fossilized feathers that age-date 120 to 130 million years old.
Young-earth creationists cite the recovery of soft tissue materials in fossils as evidence that Earth is only 6,000 years old, and the fossil record is the result of a global deluge. They argue that it’s impossible for biological materials to survive for millions of years and, therefore, the fossils must be thousands of years old.
In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana describes the UCC researchers’ work and explains how certain biological materials can endure in fossils for tens of millions of years, negating the claims of young-earth creationists.
Resources:
Preservation of Cornelius B-Proteins in Mesozoic Feathers
Additional Resource:
Fazale Rana, Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth
Evidence for the Planet Theia
The only plausible explanation for the origin of the Moon is that a collision between two rocky planets, Theia and the proto-Earth, occurred when the solar system was about 90 million years old. However, direct evidence for the existence of Theia has been elusive. Now, simulations performed by 12 astrophysicists (combined with seismic measurements) show that two large regions, thousands of kilometers across, deep in Earth’s mantle are denser than the surrounding mantle. Therefore, these regions must be the remains of Theia’s iron-rich mantle that sank and settled above Earth’s core, where it deposited an extraordinary high density and exceptional abundance of the heaviest elements.
Resources:
Moon-Forming Impactor as a Source of Earth’s Basal Mantle Anomalies
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Clear Thinking | A Theological Exploration of the Human Soul, Part 1
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Wednesday Jan 24, 2024
Stars, Cells, and God | Free Will: An Illusion?
Wednesday Jan 24, 2024
Wednesday Jan 24, 2024
Join Fazale Rana and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.
Free Will: An Illusion?
The prominent neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky has created a stir with the recent publication of his book Determined. Based on a wide range of findings from neuroscience and genetics, Sapolsky argues that free will is an illusion. All of our decisions are predetermined by influences beyond our control.
In this episode, biochemist Fazale Rana discusses the radical and far-ranging implications of Sapolsky’s dangerous idea, before presenting the scientific evidence, demonstrating that free will really exists.
Rana concludes by offering a model for free will based on the Christian worldview.
References:
Monday Jan 22, 2024
Wednesday Jan 17, 2024
Stars, Cells, and God | Cosmic Explosion Risk and Dust Drives Dinosaur Demise
Wednesday Jan 17, 2024
Wednesday Jan 17, 2024
Join Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.
Cosmic Explosion Risk
Astronomers have discovered yet another risk to advanced life in the universe—extremely luminous, fast-cooling transients. The most likely explanation for this newly discovered cosmic exploder is a tidal encounter between a star and a stellar-mass black hole or a star and an intermediate-mass black hole. It will take further observations to determine the precise risk of these events to advanced life in the universe. Initially, however, it appears that Earth resides in a galaxy, galaxy group, and galaxy cluster where such events should either be nonexistent or extremely rare.
RESOURCES:
AT 2022aedm and a New Class of Luminous, Fast-Cooling Transients in Elliptical Galaxies
Dust Drives Dinosaur Demise
Overwhelming evidence points to dramatic extinction events in Earth’s history where most of the life died out. One of the most well-known extinction events occurred 66 million years ago (the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods) and marked the end of the non-avian dinosaurs on Earth. Although the evidence pointing to the extinction is strong, scientists still seek to understand what caused the mass death. New evidence points to a specific size of dust particle that caused photosynthesis to shut down for almost two years after the impact of a miles-wide asteroid hitting Earth. This new research provides insight into Earth’s history as well as the processes God used to prepare Earth for humanity.
RESOURCES:
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Clear Thinking | Tassos Lycurgo on Responding to the Culture War
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Wednesday Jan 10, 2024
Stars, Cells, and God | Pig Organs in Humans and Will AI Do Science?
Wednesday Jan 10, 2024
Wednesday Jan 10, 2024
Join Fazale “Fuz” Rana and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss ground-breaking scientific discoveries that have theological and philosophical implications, including for the evidence of God’s existence.
Pig Organs in Humans
Recently, research teams from NYU Langone Health, the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and the University of Maryland independently achieved milestones by transplanting kidneys and hearts from genetically engineered pigs into brain-dead patients and terminally ill patients otherwise ineligible for transplants.
Xenotransplantation holds the promise to ease the demand for organ transplants but raises a host of ethical questions.
In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana discusses the technical challenges that xenotransplantation must overcome before it can move into the clinical setting. He also describes some of the ethical challenges associated with xenotransplants.
Once these challenges are overcome, the questions remain: What should the Christian perspective be on xenotransplantation? Should we “play God”?
References:
Results of Two Cases of Pig-to-Human Kidney Xenotransplantation
First Clinical-Grade Porcine Kidney Xenotransplant Using a Human Decedent Model
Developing Pig-to-Human Organ Transplants
Additional Resources:
Pig Organs May One Day Save Human Lives by Fazale Rana (article)
Advance Holds Potential to Resolve Cloning’s Ethical Challenges by Fazale Rana (article)
A Theology for Synthetic Biology, Part 1 by Fazale Rana (article)
A Theology for Synthetic Biology, Part 2 by Fazale Rana (article)
Will AI Do Science?
Researchers currently utilize AI (artificial intelligence) to diagnose early-stage Alzheimer’s, analyze vast databases to discover protein-folding classes (and new protein folds), and determine whether a sample is biotic or abiotic in origin. The AI in the last example also differentiated between recent biotic and fossilized biotic samples. As AI development progresses, one wonders whether it will be able to do science rather than just assist scientists. Fuz and Jeff explore this question in light of recent advances.
References:
Can the AI Driving ChatGPT Help to Detect Early Signs of Alzheimer’s Disease?
Artificial Intelligence Tools Shed Light on Millions of Proteins
Did Life Exist on Mars? Other Planets? With AI’s Help, We May Know Soon
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Clear Thinking | 3 Science-Related Arguments for God’s Existence, Part 2
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
Stars, Cells, and God | JWST Galaxies Explained and AI Sees Differently than Us
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
Join Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.
JWST Galaxies Explained
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed that early galaxies have much brighter ultraviolet luminosities than many big bang creation models predicted. Do such data challenge the creation view? Further research suggests not. Using a computer simulation, astronomers have found that the standard big bang creation models can still accommodate the new data from JWST. Their conclusions remain consistent with the findings reported in the Stars, Cells, and God episode #79 on the “Source of Heavy Elements”, aired on November 29, 2023.
RESOURCES:
Bursty Star Formation Naturally Explains the Abundance of Bright Galaxies at Cosmic Dawn
Dilution of Chemical Enrichment in Galaxies 600 Myr after the Big Bang
AI Sees Differently than Us
As AIs (artificial intelligence) mimic more and more human behavior, the question continues to arise of whether AI is truly intelligent or not. One way to assess the data is to understand whether the AI does things differently than a human. In the arena of image and audio recognition, AIs have advanced tremendously, but there are some noticeable discrepancies between AI and human categorization. Research into one type of discrepancy shows that humans and AIs really do see the world differently—and those differences highlight important defining features of humanity.
RESOURCES:
Model Metamers Reveal Divergent Invariances between Biological and Artificial Neural Networks
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Clear Thinking | 3 Science-Related Arguments for God’s Existence, Part 1
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Monday Dec 25, 2023
Clear Thinking | A Jewish-Christian Incarnational ”Christmas” Hymn, Part 2
Monday Dec 25, 2023
Monday Dec 25, 2023
Wednesday Dec 20, 2023
Stars, Cells, and God | Too Many Early Galaxies and AI Easily Fooled
Wednesday Dec 20, 2023
Wednesday Dec 20, 2023
Join Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.
Too Many Early Galaxies
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed about ten times as many galaxies within the cosmos’s first 420 million years as what some big bang creation models predict. Astronomers are searching for an explanation for this overabundance of early galaxies. Possible scenarios include a high number of supernova events during the universe’s first 420 million years. Different big bang models predict different average star masses and different star formation rates during the universe’s first half billion years. It will take at least another year of JWST observations to determine which of these big bang creation models correctly describes very early and later epochs of cosmic history.
Resources:
Pointlike Sources among z > 11 Galaxy Candidates: Contaminants Due to Supernovae at High Redshifts?
AI Easily Fooled
Powerful large language models (like ChatGPT) have demonstrated remarkable abilities to provide solutions to problems that require complex reasoning. Yet researchers want to discern the level of understanding by the AIs (artificial intelligence), just as a teacher wants to know how well a student comprehends a correct answer they provided. A recent study shows that despite generating good answers, AIs have very little understanding of the issues involved. Specifically, when confronted with challenges that involved absurdly wrong facts (like 8 x 7 = 14), the AIs will disavow the previous answer and apologize for being mistaken. This research demonstrates that, while AIs accomplish impressive tasks, they do not demonstrate some essential features of “intelligence.”
Resources:
Can ChatGPT Defend Its Belief in Truth? Evaluating LLM Reasoning via Debate
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Clear Thinking | A Jewish-Christian Incarnational ”Christmas” Hymn, Part 1
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Monday Dec 11, 2023
Monday Dec 11, 2023
Monday Dec 04, 2023
Monday Dec 04, 2023