Below are web article summaries with links for the period 15-21 December
1999, in descending date order.
My comments are in square brackets.
Wishing you all a safe and happy Christmas!
Steve
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http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/122199sci-archaeo-jupiter.html
New York Times. December 21, 1999...The Star of Bethlehem has been
called ... comet, ... planets, ... supernova, ... miracle, ... myth ... Dr. ...
Molnar, an astronomer ... proposes that the star was the planet Jupiter,
seen in the constellation Aries the ram. ... April 17, 6 B.C. ... Jupiter ... the
regal star ... would have been looked upon by the wise men... astrologers
... as strong portents of the birth of a great king ... Aries was ... the symbol
of Judea. ... Dr. ... Altany, ... professor of religion. ... said ... "Whenever a
ruler was born, there usually was a star connected with his birth... By
including a star in his account, the writer of Matthew was "putting Jesus up
there with the other heroes." ... (111/1115) Also at:
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC2000/abc2000science/christmasstar991220.html
[Molnar's theory is not new, but it could be part of the truth. The Biblical
account in Matthew Chapter 2 speaks of the star indicating to the Magi that a
king had been born in Judea but they did not know exactly where. Then having
travelled to Jerusalem and having been told that the Messiah was to be born in
Bethlehem, they again saw a star which led them to the very house in which
Jesus was. The theologian's response is a good example of applying
Methodological Naturalism to the Bible. One ends up with an account
stripped of the supernatural. That is OK if one knows for certain that God
does not exist (Materialism), or would not intervene in the natural world's
chain of cause-and-effect (Naturalism). But if that is the case, why believe
in a God at all? But if God does in fact exist, and does intervene in human
history, like the Bible says He does, then MN is a "hollow and deceptive
philosophy" (Colossians 2:8)].
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TRAVEL/NEWS/12/21/australia.new.year.ap/index.html
CNN ... Sydney promises to trump all New Year's Eve shows December
21, 1999 ... SYDNEY, Australia (AP) ... The centerpiece of the
celebrations will be the city's famous bridge...will be turned into a
launching pad for fireworks but will also be lit up with the word "Eternity."
The word is Sydney's most famous graffiti. "Eternity," in copperplate
handwriting, was written in yellow chalk across city sidewalks for nearly 40
years by a reformed petty criminal, Arthur Stace, before his death in 1967.
Stace estimated he wrote the word 500,000 times. ... (93/979) [I know this
is off-topic but I couldn't resist this bit of Australiana. As a West Coaster, I
never saw Stace's famous graffiti `tract', but I understand that many were
converted to Christ through thinking about that single word "Eternity". It's
truly amazing that Sydney is going to feature it in their celebrations, but then
what better word to use as a symbol of time passing from one `millennium' into
another? Maybe many more people will *really* think about that word "Eternity"
as it applies personally to them?]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/grass991220.html
ABCNEWS ... No-Mow Grass Growing in Lab. Scientists Play With
Genes and Invent Dwarf Plants By Philip Brasher. The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - Don't throw away the lawnmower yet, but
scientists have found out a way to stunt the growth of grass and other
plants and keep them greener longer by tinkering with a single gene. It
could be a dream come true for suburbanites weary of the weekly mowing
ritual. ... The gene regulates production of a steroid hormone that causes
plants to grow (88/897) [My joke of a few days ago about a no
maintenance lawn may become a reality! Now what other Internet
Creation/Evolution forum can I join with all that new spare time? :-)] Also
at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_574000/574184.stm
and http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991220/sc/science_plant_1.html
Yahoo! ... December 20 ... Scientists Discover Steroid-Regulating Plant
Gene ... (Reuters) ... The gene potentially allows growers to set the height
of their grass, trees and other plants... "By tinkering with the entire set, it
should eventually be possible to influence every aspect of plant growth and
appearance."... (46/461) [An example of `evolution' by (human) intelligent
design?]
http://www.cnn.com/1999/US/12/20/gay.marriage.01/index.html CNN ...
Vermont's top court backs rights for same-sex couples December 20, 1999
...The Vermont Supreme Court ruled Monday that gay couples must be
granted the same benefits and protections given married couples, a decision
called the first of its kind in the nation. ... "We hold that the state is
constitutionally required to extend to same-sex couples the common
benefits and protections that flow from marriage under Vermont law," the
Vermont court's decision said. ... "Whatever system is chosen, however,
must conform with the constitutional imperative to afford all Vermonters
the common benefit, protection, and security of the law," the ruling added.
... At least 30 states banned gay marriages, and Congress passed the
Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal recognition of homosexual
marriage and allowed states to ignore same-sex unions licensed elsewhere.
... (134/1362) [Without any transcendent source of moral values, e.g. in a
Divine revelation like the Bible, on the premise of what's left, i.e.
naturalism, no basis can be found for any rational system of noncoercive
normative ethics. Although to derive an `ought' from an `is' is known in
philosophy as `the naturalistic fallacy', naturalism has no choice! From a
teleological perspective it is obvious that woman was made for man and
vice-versa, but Darwinism, in rejecting design, has rejected natural law.
Maybe ID theory will eventually re-establish a basis for natural law?]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_572000/572529.stm BBC
... Sci/Tech ... Monday, 20 December, 1999 ...Quake hazard map released
... Scientists have released the most detailed map yet of our planet's
earthquake hazard zones. ... Researchers combined existing hazard maps,
data from recent and historical quakes as well as other records that stretch
back 2,000 years. Biblical passages were even used for parts of the Middle
East. ... (62/843) [Again puts paid to the demarcation criterion that
information derived from the Bible is inherently unscientific]
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC2000/abc2000world/Time2000_feature.html
ABCNEWS ... December 20... despite our best efforts to control it, time
seems to have more power over us than we do over it. But what is time?
Some say it's merely a man-made creation, a figment of our imagination.
Others argue that time must exist because everything ... ages and decays. ...
By dividing our world into days, years, and millennia we give it order .
Kristen Lippincott ... of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, says that
order seems to alter our perceptions. ... ancient Greek[s] ... suffered with
the same feelings we have today of time speeding up. ... " (92/992) [Again
if science doesn't know exactly what time is, but can only measure it, then
the demarcation criterion that to be scientific something must be explained
rather than just described would seem to rule theories about time outside of
science?]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_572000/572884.stm BBC
... 20 December, 1999 ... The Galileo spacecraft has captured images of an
active volcano on Jupiter's moon Io ... shooting a plume of lava a couple of
kilometres above the moon's surface. ... the most powerful volcano in the
Solar System ... is ... on Io. ... The moon suffers from huge "Io-quakes" ...
a chain of huge calderas ... dwarf other craters elsewhere in the Solar
System ... mountains ... seem to be in the process of collapsing. ... (69/715)
[Doesn't seem like much hope of finding life on Io!]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/exped_set1991216_part5.html
ABCNEWS [December 16, 1999] ... Keeping the SETI Faith... [SETI] ...
has been around for nearly 40 years and has ... failed to find a single radio
blip ... So how can SETI scientists stay sufficiently motivated to continue
the search? ... Our capability to do so is improving rapidly. ... Our
experiment here in Puerto Rico is reckoned to be 100 trillion times more
effective than Drake's [1960] search. ... Even if...watery worlds are
sprinkled through the galaxy ... how many of them have churned their
primeval complement of rock, water and air into beings able to produce
language, art and radio transmitters? ... SETI may be on a wild goose
chase, with no certainty that the geese exist ...[but] It's our best and only
hope for finding the answer to the question ... is Earth the sole place where
self-aware, thinking beings exist? (130/1301) [SETI is perhaps the closest
thing to a naturalistic religion! But there are two good things about SETI:
1) it has forced naturalists to reconsider that intelligent life may only exist
on Earth, which argues against materialistic-naturalistic assumptions that
natural processes alone are sufficient to explain life and intelligent life; and
2) it has helped legitimise as scientific ID's claim that the marks of
intelligent design can be reliably detected even if the designer is unknown.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=wQMonlnb&atmo=hhhhhhpe&pg=/et/99/12/16/ecrimo16.html
Electronic Telegraph. [16 December 1999] ... Charles Shaar Murray ...
Information...is power... In old-fashioned, traditional tyrannies ... despotic
governments attempted to enforce docility by restricting the flow of
information ... Under more sophisticated regimes, information is devalued
because there's a glut of it.... truth... buried under a mountain of trivia,
disinformation and lies. ... the most powerful information you can have is
the information that enables you to assess the reliability and credibility of
the information you've already got... (73/736) [Sounds like a new twist on
Phil Johnson's Microphone Man in _Defeating Darwinism_. If you can't
control the one microphone, then allow many of them! The applicability of
this to the science establishment's control of the creation/evolution debate
by disinformation is striking.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_567000/567882.stm BBC
... Friday, 17 December, 1999 ... In its annual top ten list of the biggest
developments of the past twelve months...This is how the editors of
Science magazine saw 1999...Early life: By finding telltale signs of cells
that contained a nucleus in 2.7-billion-year-old Australian rocks, scientists
said the world was populated by eukaryotes (cells that have a nucleus)
much earlier than previously thought...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_418000/418540.stm ...
The decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to drop evolution
from its science teaching has been voted the breakdown of the year ... 12
Aug 99 ... Kansas rejects theory of evolution (101/1074)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_417000/417996.stm
[That SCIENCE in this area is more concerned with propaganda than
resolving the conflict is apparent when they continue to repeat that the
Kansas Board of Education *dropped* evolution from its science
standards. The fact is that the previous standards contained almost no
teaching about evolution at all, and the Kansas Board *increased* the
teaching of evolution by adding microevolution as compulsory but making
macroevolution optional. The discovery of complex eukaryotes 2.7 Gya
"much earlier than previously thought" shows why dogmatic teaching of
Darwinian macroevolution (without openly admitting the problems with,
and philosophical assumptions behind it) was not made compulsory by the
Kansas Board of Education.]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/apeman_fossi1991215.html
ABCNEWS ... Another Ape-Human Clue ... Dec. 15 - Scientists today
announced the discovery of a complete 3.3 million-year-old arm and hand
of an ape man at the ... Sterkfontein caves in South Africa ... "This is the
first time that a complete arm or hand of ... Australopithecus, has ever been
found ... (50/512) [There is a fundamental contradiction here. We are told
that although the fossil record of hominoids is fragmentary, scientists can
reliably reconstruct what the missing bones were like. But then why all the
fuss when they find the missing bones? Also, the report actually says the
elbow joint looks like an orang-utan's. Maybe it *is* an orang-utan's? But I
guess that wouldn't be as newsworthy or grant-worthy?]
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"The personal and intellectual drama of Darwin and Dana provides the
main subject for this essay, but I also write to illustrate a broader theme in
the lives of scholars and the nature of science: the integrative power of
worldviews (the positive side), and their hold as conceptual locks upon
major innovation (the negative side)." (Gould S.J., "Leonardo's Mountain
of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History", [1998],
Vintage: London, 1999, reprint, p103)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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