Articles » Introductory

Once the heady days of the moon landings had faded into history, many people grew bored with space exploration. Some Christians even concluded that the main objectives were atheistic or evolution-based anyway, so why should we support such endeavours?

It is certainly true that the main objectives for exploration of the solar system are based on evolutionary preconceptions. According to longtime NASA scientist Dr. Robert Jastrow, exploration of the moon initially did not seem very interesting to the NASA planners. In his 1989 book Journey to the Stars, Dr. Jastrow declares that the top people at NASA “were not terribly interested in the moon at that time, in fact, from a scientific point of view they did not know it existed …” (p 12). This was certainly strange when one considers that the mandate for the fledgling organization was to launch the US into space as soon as possible, and to explore what was there. Read the rest of this entry »

Suppose you were to discover something new, maybe a piece of art, or a delicious dessert, a new book, a piece of furniture or even a building. One of the first things you might want to know is, who made it? It has been ever thus. Even ancient peoples noticed and made observations concerning what they saw around them. And they reflected on these issues. They studied the motions of the stars (and planets), the seasons and weather, and even plants and animals. For example, the prophet Isaiah wrote concerning God: “I made the earth and created man on it, it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.” Other ancient peoples attributed natural phenomoena to terrible pagan gods, never to the one true and benevolent God. For example in Psalm 96: 5-6 we read “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.”

Some people may wonder why we pay so much attention to fossils. These artifacts, of course, are the traces preserved in rock, of organisms that lived some time in the past. Well why do we concern ourselves so much about organisms which are dead and gone? After all, human biology, the environment, the wonderful diversity of organisms alive today, and new products and machines are interesting enough and of current value besides. Read the rest of this entry »

My husband and I recently visited the Philip J. Currie Museum at Wembley in northwestern Alberta. The rationale for building this beautiful new facility was the Pachyrhinosaurus bonebed at nearby Pipestone Creek. This horned dinosaur is very interesting, known from bonebeds in Alberta and the north slope of Alaska. The museum did not display a model of the highly concentrated bone bed (up to 200 bones per square metre), nor a skeleton of Pachyrhinosaurus, nor a model of the creature (that I saw). They did however display different sizes of one kind of arm bone to illustrate that animals of all ages were overtaken by the same watery catastrophe. Read the rest of this entry »

The study of science really was a lot less complicated a generation or so ago. What we knew about the planets in our solar system, for example, was short and sweet. The planets basically had location, size and mass, rings or no rings, moons and names. That wasn’t too hard to learn. Since the advent of the space age however we have discovered a wealth of exciting new information. Every planet is different not only in appearance from all the other planets, but also in important physical characteristics. Three planets (Venus, Uranus and Pluto) spin in a backwards (retrograde) direction as do a few moons. In addition the axis of rotation for Uranus is tipped so steeply that it is basically spinning sideways. Moreover four gaseous planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all exhibit magnetic fields just as Earth does. The orientation of the field however with these giants is exactly opposite to that on earth. A compass on any of the four Jovian planets would point southward. Evidently the solar system is becoming more complicated with the launch of each additional probe. Read the rest of this entry »

How’d you like to live the life of a snake? For one thing, you’d find getting around much different without arms and legs. But then dust would be a big part of your diet. Blah! Scientists have learned that snakes use their forked tongues for tasting and smelling. Even with its mouth closed, a snake can stick out its tongue; an amazing feat indeed. These slithering reptiles smell their prey by picking up scents from the air and from dust on the ground in order to find their next meal. The tongue then carries these particles to a specialized organ located on the roof of the mouth, called the Jacobson’s organ. This sense organ performs a chemical analysis of the ingested particles. Think of the salivating smells from some fine cooking. A snake bites the dust of the ground not so much for nutrition but for smelling his way to his next meal. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Jerry Bergman, who needs no introduction to readers of Dialogue, is the author of a delightful new book for families and animal-lovers and all who enjoy fascinating details from nature. Readers of Dialogue, for more than fifteen years, have been blessed with little known insights into some well-known creatures. His new book Wonderful and Bizarre Life Forms and Creation is a collection of the “best of Bergman” from Dialogue plus a few completely new chapters. The twenty-three chapters present each creature with pictures and highlights. This is an attractive and well documented book in full colour, which will inspire much reflection and discussion. Many will want to buy several copies, one for personal use, and others for those special people in their lives! Read the rest of this entry »

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a small, easy to understand, nicely organized book about the global flood that could serve as a starting place for understanding this issue from a Biblical and scientific point of view?  Well look no further… Answers in Genesis has produced just that; a handy little book called “A Pocket Guide to… The Global Flood”. Read the rest of this entry »

European scientists are excited about the Large Hadron Collider, a massive machine which is expected to begin to perform fancy physics experiments later this year. The idea for this machine was first proposed in the late 1970s. By 1990, European scientists were still trying to raise money to build this expensive device. Now finally in 2008, it should finally begin to work. Read the rest of this entry »

Geophysicist Dr. John Baumgardner came to Edmonton after having delivered lectures in the Lower Mainland of B.C., and in Calgary. In Edmonton he delivered four lectures to large appreciative audiences. In all his presentations Dr. Baumgardner set the context by declaring that in our society today, secular science is used as a weapon to draw young people away from their early Christian training. Dr. Baumgardner illustrated this with images of five castles, strongholds deployed in a battle against the knowledge of God. These strongholds are Darwinian evolution, uniformitarian geology, big bang cosmology, materialist philosophy and radioisotope dating methods. During this lecture series in Edmonton, our guest speaker touched on materialist philosophy (Friday evening), Darwinian evolution (Saturday morning and afternoon) and uniformitarian geology (Saturday evening). Read the rest of this entry »

The visit of palaeontologist Dr. Marcus Ross to Edmonton on October 15 and 16, provided a wonderful opportunity for students, as well as for everybody else, to learn from the insights and experiences of a recent graduate in the field of dinosaurs and marine reptiles. Trained entirely in secular institutions, Dr. Ross nevertheless was able to resist the attractions of the evolution model. In order to encourage others, he shared his experiences studying science in secular universities. It was not all smooth sailing. He encountered some major opposition that could have completely derailed his studies. Nevertheless he refused to quit, and in the end, he graduated with a Ph.D. in the appropriate field from a well recognized institution. Read the rest of this entry »

Versatile and Beautiful

Have you ever noticed how beautiful objects are which are made of wood? The people of Bible times also appreciated and used beautiful wood. The ancient Phoenicians (Canaanites) exported cedar wood for temples and palaces of many contemporary empires. One of their more famous customers was the Assyrian Sennacherib (about 700 B.C.) who commissioned two fleets of ships to be built from the cedars of Lebanon, one for the Tigris River and the other on the Euphrates River. King David himself made extensive use of cedar wood in his palace and his son, Solomon, proved to be even more enthusiastic about the cedars of Lebanon (Cedrus labani). Solomon promised massive payments to his friend and father-in-law King Hiram of Tyre in return for importing cedar trees for the temple. Much later, the Romans sought cedar wood from Lebanon for their own ships. However, Emperor Hadrian cautioned against over-exploiting this resource. Unfortunately, nobody listened and few of these trees remain today. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine that you had never seen a car or any automobile before. You might well be curious as to how the device is able to move. So you examine some vehicles in motion and you come to the obvious conclusion that the wheels are the agents of motion. This is all very obvious and all very true. However if you build a device with chassis and wheels only, you will not get very far. What a car requires is an engine manufactured in a factory and fuel to run the engine. Of course your car needs mechanics to maintain the engine too. It is immediately evident to you that the whole system is the result of designers who conceived of the whole idea and who specify how your car is to be manufactured and operated. Read the rest of this entry »

Any visitor, upon entering the Royal Tyrrell Museum (in Drumheller, Alberta), could certainly be excused for exclaiming “Wow!” as they catch sight of the first fossil on display. The visitor has already passed through a simulated scene of Albertosaurus models, posed as they might have appeared in life. This scene is based on a bone bed of 22 individuals discovered about 1910 by Barnum Brown at Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. But we press onward and wow!! There high on the wall to the left in the next gallery is a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, almost all there, displayed as it was discovered lying in the rocks. Read the rest of this entry »

A prominent biology journal has withdrawn a research article which it had published a few weeks previously. The sole reason was three references to the “Creator” in connection with the structure and function (design) of the human hand. Retractions or withdrawing scientific articles from publication used to be almost unheard of. In recent years however such events have become increasingly common. The most common reason is that the information contained therein was falsified or fraudulent (made up). Read the rest of this entry »