Brilliant and Beautiful, but Wrong

A recent lecture I gave at Loma Linda University for the “Second Look Sabbath Seminars” of Dr. Paul Giem (Link) entitled, “Brilliant and Beautiful, but Wrong” (October 5th, 2019). Sometimes a scientific theory can appear to beautifully explain all or at least almost all of the data at hand.  Yet, upon closer examination, it can…

James Tour (Synthetic Organic Chemist) Critiques Abiogenesis

James M. Tour is an American synthetic organic chemist, specializing in nanotechnology. Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, and Professor of Computer Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas, United States. Dr. Tour is one of the world’s top synthetic organic chemists in…

Viruses and Human Complexity

Viruses Required for Complex Life: The knee-jerk reaction when hearing the word “virus” is an almost universal negative reaction for most people.  After all, viruses are associated with a host of benign as well as severe sicknesses and diseases from the common cold to HIV and its associated autoimmune deficiency syndrome or AIDS. Yet, upon…

The Pale Blue Dot

This presentation is about how an extreme level of significance or importance can be hiding within something that is apparently extremely insignificant. Concepts presented include the history of the Voyager 1 space mission and Carl Sagan’s request to have it take a picture of Earth from 4 billion miles away… as well as various anthropic…

Complex Organisms are Degenerating – Rapidly

The Darwinian mechanism is dependent upon random genetic mutations in order to produce variability in gene pools upon which natural selection can then work to preferentially select out the best mutations to be passed on to future generations.  One of the serious problems here (and there are more) is that beneficial mutations are very rare…

Most Species the “Same Age” with No “In-Between” Species

Mark Stoeckle of Rockefeller University and David Thaler of Basel University recently published a very interesting study based on extensive analysis of over 100,000 species (“Why should mitochondria define species?”, Human Evolution, 2018).  What they found shocked them. Their data showed that almost all animal species on Earth today emerged about the same time as humans. For the…

Feathered Dinosaurs?

Based on a short essay I wrote in April, 2012 (Link), and republished with a few modifications and additions here due to the recent find (July, 2016) of a small feathered dinosaur tail perfectly preserved in amber (Link). Similarities between birds and dinosaurs: Modern scientists have long believed and taught that modern birds originally evolved…