Two events in November 2006 are illustrative of this trend. The first was a conference at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Entitled “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival,” the event was sponsored by the Science Network, an educational organization underwritten by San Diego entrepreneur Robert Zeps. The reason for the conference, stated in the promotional material, was a fear that the gains of the Enlightenment (of the eighteenth century) might be lost in the face of increasing support for religious faith.

As alternatives, evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience might help us create a new story of origins and a reason for being. The title “Beyond Belief” meant that religious faith was to be left behind and a glorious new evolutionary and atheistic future was to be embraced.

A variety of people were invited to the conference, but the ones who attended exhibited a profound interest in evolution and an intense dislike of religion, particularly Christian faith. The conference venue, the Salk Institute itself, has long been associated with atheism and support for evolution. Along with Jonas Salk, the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Bronowski, an English mathematician, was best known for the BBC TV series The Ascent of Man. This evolutionary theme was a strong inspiration for Carl Sagan’s atheistic television series Cosmos in the United States. Francis Crick, the other founding consultant, was co-discoverer of the DNA helix along with James Watson. Crick was an outspoken atheist, who spent his final years at the Salk Institute seeking an evolutionary explanation for human consciousness.

Two participants in the “Beyond Belief ” conference have continued the Crick tradition of research into consciousness at the Salk Institute. Some other attendees conduct similar work at other institutions. Evolutionists are very interested in finding a naturalistic explanation for human consciousness so that no one will be tempted to look to God for its source. Thus far they have found no answers to the conundrum.

Besides the people interested in human consciousness, there were astronomers. One of them, Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, expressed dismay over the results of a recent poll of members of the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences. Apparently 85% of members declared that they do not believe in a personal God. He rhetori- cally asked why it is that any members believe in a personal God. What can be done to change that 15% to zero, he asked.

There was no more dedicated evolutionist and atheist present than Sir Richard Dawkins himself. This man has written a number of books hostile to Christian faith, but the recently released The God Delusion, is the most bitter yet. It is interesting how many reviewers support the pronouncements in this book. Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and cosmologist from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and another participant in the “Beyond Belief” conference, reviewed Dawkins’ book in the journal Nature. Dr. Krauss declared that Dawkins views on childhood and religion are “precisely accurate.” According to Krauss, “We do our children a great disservice (which Dawkins goes so far as to call abuse) by forcing religion upon them”. In doing so, we encourage them to rely on potentially destructive emotions rather than to use their brains.” (Oct. 26/06 p. 915).

Another American physicist and astronomer at the same conference, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg of University of Texas, also approved of the Dawkins book. He stated: “Of all the scientific discoveries that have disturbed the religious mind, none has had the impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.” Dr. Weinberg points out that Dawkins describes God with long lists of insulting adjectives. According to Dr. Weinberg, in this strategy, Dawkins exhibits “a constructive purpose. By attacking the God of sacred Scripture, he is trying to weaken the authority of that God’s commands” Dr. Weinberg sees nothing wrong with this tactic. (Times Online, Jan. 17/07)

The participants apparently see themselves in a fight of titanic and global proportions. Sir Harold Kroto, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry, declared that scientists must launch a coordinated global effort of education and media outreach. Such programs have worked in the past, he said, and they can again. Furthermore he insisted that faith schooling must be overcome and subdued as well.

Later in November, the newly established Washington, D.C. office of the Center for Inquiry released the text of a “Declaration in Defense of Science and Secularism.” The document, signed by more than fifty prominent scholars, began by declaring that public disdain for science is “aggravated by the excessive influence of religious doctrine on our public policies.” In order to “correct” this situation, the document advocates extending the separation of church and state to ensure that public policies are based on secular principles. This would affect embryonic stem cell legislation among other ethical issues. The document urges that society “in particular, not permit legislation or executive action to be influenced by religious beliefs.”

Thus far scientists in the United States are merely at the talking stage. However this is a country where the teaching of creation and intelligent design are not allowed in the public schools although most of the public support these views. Time will tell how effective this new initiative might be. Meanwhile each one of us should fight such dangerous proposals. These people are much too intolerant.

Humans are proud of discovering ways of detecting magnetic fields that we have put to use in thousands of ways. Yet research into animal behaviour has recently found that many animals possess magnetic field sensitivity (a sixth sense) that they use for such purposes as backup navigation systems. Bees expertly use the sun as a compass to make navigational calculations. At night or on very cloudy days, they rely on extensive patterns of polarized light in the sky. And when those patterns are blocked or diminished by clouds, bees use a third, non-celestial reference system to get themselves home:  the earth’s magnetic field.

Many creatures are designed to run, fly, glide, and even parachute to the earth, all engineering marvels that humans have now effectively copied. Humans brag about our airplanes, but compared to birds, they are poorly maneuverable. The idea of flying first came from birds, and flying improvements were also inspired by flying creatures. Dragonflies can carry as much as fifteen times their own weight as they travel through the air, yet most high-performance aircraft cannot carry a load much more than their own weight. Intrigued, scientists studied the dragonfly wings and found that they function by generating lift by producing an airflow “whirlwind.” Efforts are now being made to apply this principle by designing aircraft wings that can “whirl the air” to produce greater lift.

Owls have special curved feathers on the front row of their wings that change the direction of the air as it flows past, allowing them to fly at slower speeds than most other birds. Slower flight is also quieter ? obviously of great value in hunting prey at night. Owls can sneak up on small game such as rabbits and mice with nary a whisper and whisk away what will shortly become their dinner. Owl studies exert a big influence on the design of airplanes and helicopters so that not only will these craft fly faster in air, but also they will be able to fly at much slower speeds than presently. The advantages would be enormous: a few of the more obvious ones include less noise, shorter runways, and less costly airports.

We take pride in our modern jet engines, but octopuses have effectively used jet propulsion eons before us. They expand the muscular “sack” in their streamlined body to suck water in, then vigorously contract it to force a water jet spray out of a small, welldesigned opening with enough force to propel them forward. Alternate expansion and contraction of their muscular sacks effectively jet propel octopi through their watery world.

Humans have developed radar and sonar systems to guide their planes safely through fog and their ships through water. Bats, however, have effectively used this miracle of modern science (radar echo location) for eons. Setting blindfolded bats loose in a dark room that was strung with many fine, silken threads, revealed that they could effortlessly dart about without striking or breaking a single thread. Such experiments were first carried out in 1793 by the Italian monk Spallanzari who confirmed that bats were using sonar because they flew in confused patterns if one ear was plugged.

We now know that bats use ultrasonic vibrations that range from 12 to 120 kilohertz (humans hear from 20 to 20,000 hertz, a fraction of what bats use). Bats emit supersonic sound pulses (as many as sixty per second) that hit objects and bounce back to their ears. An accurate measure of the time required for the echo to return is used by the bats to calculate the location of objects. More amazing still, when bats send out their signal, their ear muscles automatically shut off their normal hearing so that their radar picks up only the guiding echoes.

The echo-location system used by dolphins allows them to be as skillful in water as bats are in air. Dolphins can avoid slim metal rods equally well in the day or night – and they can even distinguish between different fish of the same size by echo-location. Dolphins also use their system of navigation for communication. They can obtain a panoramic view of their environment by producing as many as 100 sound bursts per second – while scanning their head to receive information from a large area in front of them.

Humans are proud of the many kinds of clocks we have invented, clocks that come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and accuracies. Nevertheless many plants and animals have built-in clocks that use a mechanism that still intrigues scientists. Some crabs can tell time, a fact known because they react to tide cycles – but if moved they still react with the same accurate timing. Their physical reaction is not due to perceiving time from the environment, but their own internal built-in clock. Even plants such as algae operate on cycles, and if put in a different environment, the same cycle persists.

Fiddler crabs change colour to camouflage themselves as the tide goes out, an ability not linked to the tide, but to the animal’s internal clock. The cycle occurs even if they are removed far from the ocean. The cycle is also not linked to a twenty-four hour day, but occurs fifty minutes later every twenty-four hours. Only the start of the cycle is connected to the particular locality in which the crab lives. The cycle is set when the crab is born and, once set, accurately corresponds with the tide until it dies.

The ability to travel on all types of terrain existed only in the last century with the invention of snowmobiles, four-wheel-drive jeeps, and balloon-tire vehicles. Smooth travel on really rough terrain, though, has so far eluded our best engineers. Thus researchers have turned to daddy-long-legs for inspiration. The ability of these arachnids to coordinate their jointed legs to traverse smoothly across extremely uneven surfaces, has helped in the development of ‘walking machines’ designed to carry people across terrain presently accessible mainly by helicopters. Daddy-long-legs have effortlessly solved some of the most frustratingly complex problems which engineers and roboticists are still trying to solve. Lifting up their legs in order to traverse flat terrain is relatively easy, but a device capable of making the constant adjustments needed to “walk” across an uneven surface is a very difficult accomplishment. Spring-loaded tires absorb some bumps, as do vehicles that can toss and turn easily, but researchers are hoping to develop non-wheeled devices that can walk across ocean floors or distant planets. Ohio State University’s Robert McGee noted that we know that it works well in nature, and are now trying to reproduce it. To duplicate the daddy-long-legs’ technical achievement, McGee and other researchers are analyzing the animal’s movement.

To do this, researchers filmed the progress of the arachnids across rough terrain constructed from wooden blocks of different sizes. They then studied the logic of the animals’ biological programming and, from this data, inferred the organization of the nervous system. Next, they attempted to reproduce the mechanical aspects of the feat. The researchers found that the eyes of the animal were not essential for navigation, rather they use their longest pair of legs as “feelers” to sweep the ground ahead. They then program each leg to stop at a different point so as to keep the body level. After years of research, compared to the average arachnid, walking robots are a bunch of pitiful shufflers, but rapid improvements may be expected as computer technology advances.

We cannot conclude from these marvels that the working of natural law, time and chance alone produced it all. When we see the enormous intelligence implanted in so-called unreasoning creatures, we appreciate that they are the result of wisdom and power that designed them. Many human inventions only poorly copy God’s creations – and our imitations took the best minds, and centuries to develop. Since scientists know more of these wonders of creation than others, they, of all persons, should vividly see with their eyes of understanding the great wisdom and power of the Creator who made all things.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, astronomers had long since realized that Uranus did not follow a predictable orbit. There was always a discrepancy between its predicted position and its actual position. Some astronomers suggested that a planet, more distant yet, might be exerting a gravitational tug on Uranus.

In the 1840s, two astronomers began to search for another planet. Both men shared the honours when the discovery of another planet was announced on September 23, 1846. This one was named Neptune, for the Greek and Roman gods of the sea.

Few people however believed that the search for planets was at an end. Even after astronomers allowed for Neptune’s gravitational effect, Uranus still seemed off course. They deduced that there must be another planet farther out, which was causing this very slight extra wobble.

It was not possible to draw conclusions about the new planet’s orbit however because its progression around the sun is so slow: 165 years for Neptune compared to only 84 years for Uranus. The astronomers had quite a lot of information about Uranus’ orbit, so these were the data upon which They based their conclusions.

The search was on for a new planet, called Planet X for purposes of discussion. In the early 1900s, American astronomer Percival Lowell (1855-1916) began the search for Planet X. Based on the wobbles of Uranus, he predicted that the new planet would be found 6.4 billion km from the sun (actual 6 billion km) and that its annual orbit would take 282 years (actual 248 years). He never found the ninth planet, but before his death he set up a trust fund for a continued search.

With additional donated money, a new camera was purchased in 1929 for the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. A local youth was hired to make a systematic search for the new planet. Thus Clyde William Tombaugh (1906-1997) achieved fame and fortune when the discovery of the new planet was announced March 13, 1930. This was the 149th anniversary of the dis- covery of Uranus.

The new planet was named Pluto after the Greek god who was ruler of the dark underworld. The choice seemed apt, the first two letters of the name were P and L (for Percival Lowell) and the planet was extremely far away from the sun in a place of perpetual darkness. Pluto however turned out to be something of a disappointment.

Computer models, based on modern ideas of planet formation, suggest that Pluto should have been as large as Neptune (about 50,000 km in diameter). Instead it seemed to be only about the size of Earth (13,000 km in diameter). Moreover, since its discovery, the size of Pluto has been modified downward several times. It is now estimated to be only 2300 km in diameter.

In addition, it seems to consist largely of ice, unlike the four inner rocky planets and the four outer gaseous giants. Certainly such a distant and light-weight body could not be expected to exert an effect on Uranus. Once the rejoicing about Pluto’s discovery was over, Clyde Tombaugh spent a further thirteen years searching for another planet. He never found anything.

Recently astronomers have concluded that they do not need a planet beyond Nep- tune to account for the wobble in Uranus. Analyses of the space probes Pioneer 10 and 11, launched in the 1970s, revealed that the trajectories of these probes were not affected by a tenth planet. Further calculations of the orbits of these two planets then revealed that mutual effects by these two bodies adequately explained their wobbling. If astronomers of the past had known what we now know, they would never have looked for Pluto.

Attitudes toward Pluto’s status as a planet began to change in 1992. Increasingly sophisticated digital technology and fancy software in high speed computers, have enabled scientists to detect small bodies moving in orbits farther and farther away.

In August of 1992, two astronomers identified an icy object 240 km across, occupying an orbit 8 billion km from our sun. (Pluto lies only 6 billion km away). Officially named 1992 QB1, this was the first object identified beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Soon after, a similar object was found. As of 2006, more than 1000 such objects have been documented beyond Pluto.

These discoveries suggested that there must not be a large planet in this region where so many small objects exist. Also, many astronomers decided that Pluto could better be grouped with these fragments than with the conspicuous planets.

The most compelling discovery was revealed in 2005. An object dubbed 2003UB313 was discovered 14 billion km from the sun. Indirect studies of the light spectrum reflected from this tiny dot led astronomers to conclude that the object is 3100 km in diameter.

As 2006 dawned, there were hints of controversy in astronomical circles. Some people suggested that Pluto be demoted. Others suggested that 2003UB313 (called Xena for a while but now officially dubbed Eris, Greek goddess of chaos and strife), and similar objects, all be given planetary status.

Many American astronomers staunchly defended Pluto’s status as a planet, while international astronomers led the charge for the other side. The showdown took place in August at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague. Some determined scientists declared that a planet must ‘dominate’ its local orbital zone, or in other words, sweep other objects out of its path. According to these individuals, this criterion would disqualify Pluto as a planet. On August 24 that indeed is what the delegates voted to accept.

Later, one scientist pointed out that the accepted definition was not clear. In that Pluto twice crosses Neptune’s orbit in one circuit of the sun, the definition should disqualify Neptune as well as Pluto since neither has cleared its orbit. In addition, Jupiter should be disqualified since it shares its orbit with certain as- teroids. Nobody wants to disqualify Jupiter or Neptune however, only Pluto.

Most likely Pluto will not disappear from public view. New Horizons space probe to Pluto was launched on January 19, 2006. The mission is expected to arrive at its target in 2015. The whole event has been an object lesson in the importance of definitions in science. In this case, our perception of what bodies there are in space, depends on what scientists want to see out there. It can’t hurt to critically evaluate scientific information. Don’t accept everything the experts say.

In 1905, the 26-year-old Einstein challenged Newtonian physics by developing the idea that the speed of light is a constant for all observers, and his theory helped lay the foundation of modern physics. The constancy of the speed of light (usually designated mathematically by “c”) was the basis for Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2.

But almost a hundred years later two physicists questioned Einstein’s theory just as Einstein challenged Newton before him. Dr. Joao Magueido, a professor at the Imperial College in London, and Andreas Albrecht of the University of California, suggested that once upon a time, light moved much faster than it does today.

They proposed that immediately after the universe was born, the speed of light traveled at near infinite speeds and as the universe cooled, the speed of light quickly dropped to its present value.

This process might have been sort of like water changing into ice as temperatures fall. When the temperature of the universe dropped below a critical value, light “froze” at the speed we now observe.

What would make these two physicists come up with such a nutty idea? What made them brave enough to challenge the long-held tenet of physics that the speed of light shall be 300,000 km per second? Why would they set out to debunk Einstein’s theory?

Here’s why. Recently astronomers have discovered that no matter what direction anyone looks, the universe appears uniform with the same temperature, density and consistency. It’s as if a cosmic blender had homogenized the entire universe early in its history (assuming that there really was a long history). This observation of uniformity does not fit “big bang” theory.

To solve the thorny question of why opposite extremes of the universe should be so uniform, Magueido and Albrecht proposed the theory of a varying speed of light. If light traveled at its present speed, there is no way to equilibrate conditions, no way that physical forces could equalize temperatures or mix the cosmos so that it is all the same. Traveling at 300,000 km per second is simply too slow. At every stage of the universe’s existence, even when it was just a trillionth of a second old (assuming an expan- sion process), light from one end of space would not have had enough time to reach the other end.

But if in the infant stages of creation, light had moved much faster and could zip across space at near infinite speeds, then equalizing the temperature and homogenizing the early universe would be possible. This would hold even if space were called into existence in a form other than the big bang.

Another thorny question comes to mind: “How can the universe be young if the stars are old?” If a star is, say a million light-years from Earth, wouldn’t it take a million years for its light to reach us? Perhaps, if light never exceeded 300,000 km per second. Indeed, scientists believe that it has taken billions of years for some light to reach Earth. This is the reason most scientists believe that the universe is very old.

A changing speed of light would not only explain some of the great mysteries of cosmology such as why the universe is so uni- form, it would also explain how distant starlight could reach Earth in a short time frame and not have to take billions of years. (Other explanations for a short time interval are possible too.) At any rate here we see secular scientists coming up with an explanation which could drastically reduce the estimated age of the universe. Maybe the universe is not that old after all!