Geoscience Research Institute
    — News Archive (December 2001)

DISCLAIMER:  The following links do not necessarily represent endorsement by the Geoscience Research Institute, but are meant to provide information from a wide range of viewpoints and expertise on scientific issues, religious issues, and the interface between the two, particularly in the area of creation and evolution.

DECEMBER 28

• Congress Urges Teaching of Diverse Views on Evolution, but Darwinists Try to Deny It / December 28, 2001 / Discovery Institute
• Santorum Amendment Stripped from Education Bill / December 21, 2001 / National Center for Science Education — the Elementary and Secondary Education Authorization Act does not contain the antievolution "Santorum amendment"
• One-cell organism linked to humans / December 18, 2001 / John Fauber / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — common gene reported, aiding evolution theory
• Dr. Henry F. "Fritz" Schaefer, III / November 2001 / Leadership University — director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, Nobel Prize nominee, and recently named the third-most cited chemist in the world ... "The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan."
  • Biographical Sketch
  • Personal Story
  • Questions Intellectuals Ask About Christianity
  • Lecture Titles
• Earth's Climate: Past and Future / 2001 / William F. Ruddiman / W. H. Freeman — see companion site and also Amazon
• Conference on Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise / February 20-23, 1997 / Robert C. Koons / University of Texas at Austin — reflections from an organizer

DECEMBER 27

• Cosmic Sweet Tooth / December 27, 2001 / Christian Science Monitor
• "Invertebrate evolution (Communications arising): Acaenoplax — polychaete or mollusc?" requires free registration / 6 December 2001 / Gerhard Steiner and Luitfried Salvini-Plawen / Nature, v.414, p.601-602 — see reply
• "PALEONTOLOGY: TV Dinosaur Team Treads Tricky Mammalian Terrain" requires free registration / 30 November 2001 / Andrew Watson / Science, v.294, p.1815
• "GAMMA RAY BURSTS: Cosmic Mystery Objects Start to Yield Secrets" requires free registration / 30 November 2001 / Govert Schilling / Science, v.294, p.1816-1817
• "MICROBIAL GENOMES: Sequences Reveal Borrowed Genes" requires free registration / 23 November 2001 / Elizabeth Pennisi / Science, v.294, p.1634-1635 — sequences are so perplexing that they call into question what defines a species
• "North American Devastation or Global Cataclysm?" requires free registration / 23 November 2001 / Tim Flannery / Science, v.294, p.1668-1669
• "A Near-Earth Asteroid Population Estimate from the LINEAR Survey" requires free registration / 23 November 2001 / Joseph Scott Stuart / Science, v.294, p.1691-1693
• "Indication of Global Deforestation at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary by New Zealand Fern Spike" requires free registration / 23 November 2001 / Vivi Vajda, J. Ian Raine, and Christopher J. Hollis / Science, v.294, p.1700-1702
• Supernovae and Gamma-ray Bursts / July 2001 / Mario Livio, Nino Panagia, and Kailash Sahu, eds. / Cambridge University Press — the greatest explosions since the Big Bang; see also Amazon
• Phylogenetics Trees Made Easy: A How-To Manual for Molecular Biologists / June 2001 / Barry G. Hall / Sinauer Assoc — see also Amazon
• Observing Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays from Space and Earth / May 2001 / Humberto Salazar, Luis Villaseρor, and Arnulfo Zepeda, eds. / American Institute of Physics, Conf. Proc. #566 — Metepec, Puebla, Mexico, 9-12 August 2000; see also Amazon
• Life Everywhere: The New Science of Astrobiology / March 2001 / David Darling / Basic Books — see also Amazon
• Biblical Chronology: The Answer! / Ken Baumgardt / Digger's World — how old is the earth?
• Alien Intelligence? Think Again / 29 February 2000 / Guillermo Gonzalez / Space.com
• Charles Darwin: The Man and His Influence / April 1996 / Peter J. Bowler / Cambridge University Press — see also Amazon
• The Origin of Continents and Oceans / 1966 / Alfred Wegener / Dover Publications — one of the most influential, most controversial books in science, the classic statement for continental drift; see also Amazon

DECEMBER 26

• Education Bill Featured Darwinism Side Show / December 26, 2001 / Christine Hall / CNSNews.com — the recently passed education bill in Congress became a stage for the on-going debate over whether schools should teach alternative theories about the origin of life on earth
• Shooting stars sugar coated / 20 December 2001 / Philip Ball / Nature science update — meteorites could have sweetened the earliest life
• Stanford researchers develop system for field testing mechanisms of evolution / 20 December 2001 / Sheila Foster, Stanford University Medical Center
• "A Review of the PBS Video 'Evolution' Series" / December 2001 / Ken Cumming / Impact, n.342 (Institute for Creation Research) — see also Yahoo! Groups: Creation, Evolution, Design
• Ape Brains Have Linguistic Component / November 29, 2001 / Cosmiverse
• Steady-State Eternal Inflation / 9 November 2001 / Anthony Aguirre and Steven Gratton / Los Alamos National Laboratory, abstract
• Terrorists and Death / September 2001 / Ken Ham and Jonathan Sarfati / Answers in Genesis
• Newton to Einstein: The Trail of Light / September 2001 / Ralph Baierlein / Cambridge University Press — an excursion to the wave-particle duality and the special theory of relativity; see also Amazon
• "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism" / Fall 2001 / Quentin Smith / Philo, v.4, n.2 — nature and goals of naturalist philosophy
• It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions / August 2001 / Richard C. Lewontin / New York Review of Books — see also Amazon
• Superbug Survives Radiation, Eats Toxic Waste / August 2001 / Microbial Genomics Gateway, U. S. Department of Energy — a can of spoiled meat and nuclear waste may appear to have little in common, but the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans thrives in both environments; see also John R. Battista
• Eugenics: A Reassessment / June 2001 / Richard Lynn / Praeger, Greenwood Publ. Group — argues that the condemnation of eugenics went too far and that it needs reassessment; see also Amazon
• Idaho Museum of Natural History
• Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age / January 1997 / Charles H. Hapgood / Adventures Unlimited Press — see also Amazon
• Craters, Cosmos, and Chronicles: A New Theory of Earth / March 1995 / Herbert R. Shaw / Stanford University Press — see also Amazon
• Evolution: The History of an Idea / 1989 / Peter J. Bowler / University of California Press — see also Amazon

DECEMBER 24

• "Carbonaceous meteorites as a source of sugar-related organic compounds for the early Earth" requires free registration / 20,27 December 2001 / George Cooper, Novelle Kimmich, Warren Belisle, Josh Sarinana, Katrina Brabham, and Laurence Garrel / Nature, v.414, p.879-883
• Intelligent design among topics of new Internet-based society / December 20, 2001 / Tammi Reed Ledbetter / BPNews
• "QUANTUM PHYSICS: Spooky Twins Survive Einsteinian Torture" requires free registration / 9 November 2001 / Charles Seife / Science, v.294, p.1265 — in an experiment that turns commonsense notions of causality on their head, relativity and quantum mechanics don't mix, and when they square off, Einstein loses
• "ASTROPHYSICS: Black Hole Blazes Away Without a Fuel Supply" requires free registration / 9 November 2001 / Mark K. Anderson / Science, v.294, p.1263 — theorists baffled by black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy that somehow maintains its jets without the expected vast stockpile of fuel
• "The Origin and Evolution of the Woolly Mammoth" requires free registration / 2 November 2001 / Adrian M. Lister and Andrei V. Sher / Science, v.294, p.1094-1097 — the mammoth lineage provides an example of rapid adaptive evolution in response to the changing environments of the Pleistocene
• "Preservation of Species Abundance in Marine Death Assemblages" requires free registration / 2 November 2001 / Susan M. Kidwell / Science, v.294, p.1091-1094 — relation between fossil assemblages of skeletal material and their source live communities, particularly in relative abundance of species, owing to postmortem transport and time-averaging of multiple generations
• No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence / November 2001 / William A. Dembski / Rowman & Littlefield — endorsements; see also Amazon
• Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain / October 2001 / Peter J. Bowler / University of Chicago Press — see also Amazon
• Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos / May 2001 / Alan W. Hirshfeld / W. H. Freeman — see also Amazon
• Evolutionary Patterns: Growth, Form, and Tempo in the Fossil Record / August 2001 / Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Scott Lidgard, and Frank K. McKinney, eds. / University of Chicago Press — see review: "Changes in Life Across Many Temporal Scales" requires free registration / 2 November 2001 / Richard Bambach / Science, v.294, p.1008; see also Amazon

DECEMBER 21

• "Vesuvius: A Threat Subsiding?" requires free registration / 19 October 2001 / Alexander Hellemans / Science, v. 294, p.495-497
• "GENETICS AND EVOLUTION: Come Fly, and Leave the Baggage Behind" requires free registration / 19 October 2001 / Richard E. Lenski / Science, v.294, p.533-534 — one question that evolutionary biologists love to ponder is why sex evolved
• "COSMOLOGY: A Census of Cosmic Matter" requires free registration / 19 October 2001 / Brian D. Fields / Science, v.294, p.529-530 — new, high-precision data are set to revolutionize cosmology
• "An Ossified Meckel's Cartilage in Two Cretaceous Mammals and Origin of the Mammalian Middle Ear" requires free registration / 12 October 2001 / Yuanqing Wang, Yaoming Hu, Jin Meng, and Chuankui Li / Science, v.294, p.357-361
• Shattering the Myths of Darwinism / March 2000 / Richard Milton / Park Street Press — see also Amazon

DECEMBER 20

• "MAMMALIAN EVOLUTION: Placentals' Family Tree Drawn and Quartered" requires free registration / 14 Dec 2001 / Elizabeth Pennisi / Science, v.294, p.2266-2268
• "PALEONTOLOGY: Utah's Fossil Trove Beckons, and Tests, Researchers" requires free registration / 5 October 2001 / Erik Stokstad / Science, v.294, p.41-43
• "Is a New Eugenics Afoot?" requires free registration / 5 October 2001 / Garland E. Allen / Science, v. 294, p.59-61— a historical account of the early eugenics movement and questions about whether we are now moving toward a new era of eugenics
• "Making Sense of Eukaryotic DNA Replication Origins" requires free registration / 5 October 2001 / David M. Gilbert / Science, v.294, p.96-100
• The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation / November 2000 / Dolph Schluter / Oxford University Press — see review: "EVOLUTION: Explaining Exuberant Diversification" requires free registration / 5 October 2001 / Axel Meyer / Science, v.294, p.64-65; see also Amazon

DECEMBER 19

• "Curiously Wrought" / December 2001 / Henry M. Morris / Back to Genesis, n.156 (Institute for Creation Research)
• "A Review of the PBS Video 'Evolution' Series" / December 2001 / Kenneth C. Cumming / Impact, n.342 (Institute for Creation Research)
• Journey of Faith / December 2001 / Tad Szulc / National Geographic — Abraham’s biblical trek through the Middle East kindled three major religions, whose past and present conflicts would surely sadden this patriarch of peace.
• "The Imminent Death of Darwinism and the Rise of Intelligent Design" / November 2001 / Gregory J. Brewer / Impact, n.341 (Institute for Creation Research)
• Evolution of Whales / November 2001 / Douglas H. Chadwick / National Geographic — Earth’s largest animals are sometimes born with a leg or two, a startling genetic reminder of the time, 50 million years ago, when their ancestors walked on dry land.
• "PALEONTOLOGY: Unhatched Eggs Help Dinos Get a Head" requires free registration / 28 September 2001 / Erik Stokstad / Science, v. 293, p.2371 — see also "Embryonic Skulls of Titanosaur Sauropod Dinosaurs" requires free registration / 28 September 2001 / Luis M. Chiappe, Leonardo Salgado, and Rodolfo A. Coria / Science, v.293, p.2444-2446
• "For Ice Man, the Band Plays On" requires free registration / 28 September 2001 / Ben Shouse / Science, v. 293, p. 2373 — tenth anniversary of the Tyrolean Ice Man's famous emergence from an Alpine glacier
• "Tools Show Humans Reached Asia Early" requires free registration / 28 September 2001 / Ann Gibbons / Science, v.293, p.2368-2369
• SuperCroc / 2001 / Paul Sereno / National Geographic — see also SuperCroc Rocks!, movie
• Was Darwin Right? / Luke Randall

DECEMBER 18

• Darwinism Under Attack / December 21, 2001 / Beth McMurtrie / Chronicle of Higher Education — view that 'intelligent force' shaped life attracts students and troubles scientists; responses
• Hail and Farewell / December 15, 2001 / Anthony Lewis / New York Times — "the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism is not to be found in Islam alone. Fundamentalist Christians in America, believing that the Bible's story of creation is the literal truth, question not only Darwin but the scientific method that has made contemporary civilization possible."
• Cosmos to freeze-frame / 14 December 2001 / John Whitfield / Nature science update — the Universe could be slipping away from us forever
• Space weather forecast step closer / 11 December 2001 / Tom Clarke / Nature science update — the Sun's violent outbursts have deep and twisted origins
• L.A. Times’ readers slam AiG’s Creation Museum / December 2001 / Answers in Genesis
• Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About / August 2001 / Donald E. Knuth / University of Chicago Press — transcripts of six public lectures given at MIT in the fall of 1999 on the general subject of relations between faith and science; see also Center for the Study of Language and Information, foreword by Anne Foerst, and Amazon
• The Peppered Moth - An Update / August 1999 / Ken Miller / Brown University — the Peppered Moth is routinely used as an example of evolution, but is this well-known story wrong?
• The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900 / 1992 / Peter J. Bowler / Johns Hopkins University Press — see also Amazon
• Theories of Human Evolution: A Century of Debate, 1844-1944 / 1986 / Peter J. Bowler / Johns Hopkins University Press — see also Amazon

DECEMBER 14

• T. Rex Meets Biblical Text at Museum / December 9, 2001 / Stephanie Simon / Los Angeles Times — new Kentucky center will present creationism as science, alarming experts

DECEMBER 11

• Engineers Ask Nature for Design Advice / December 11, 2001 / Jim Robbins / New York Times
• Did Noah really need the Ark? / December 8, 2001 / Kevin Cox / Globe and Mail (Canada), p.F6 — Two sets of geologists are having a flood feud. The Americans say they have proof that the Great Deluge happened just when the Bible says it did. The Canadians say it's hogwash.
• Bird Searches for Ark / December 3, 2001 / Ted Olsen / Christianity Today — world's highest-resolution commercial imaging satellite will investigate the "Ararat Anomaly"

DECEMBER 10

• Mission to Pluto edges closer to a 2006 liftoff / December 10, 2001 / Peter N. Spotts / Christian Science Monitor — exploration of the solar system's most remote planet is back on the drawing board ... for now
• Left Behind: Darwin's Redemption? / December 9, 2001 / Per Abrahmson / Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center, Access Research Network
• Physicists: No sign of 'God particle' / December 6, 2001 / CNN News
• Animal Planet / December 6, 2001 / J. Bottum / Daily Standard — What's worse than cloning? Human-animal hybrids. And they're coming to a lab near you.
• Time-Varying Alpha and Particle Physics / 4 December 2001 / T. Banks, M. Dine, M. R. Douglas / High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, abstract — models in which an observable variation of the fine structure constant is explained by motion of a cosmic scalar field, are not stable under renormalization, and require massive fine tuning that cannot be explained by any known mechanism
• Challenging Particle Physics as Path to Truth / December 4, 2001 / George Johnson / New York Times
• Scientism: Science, Ethics and Religion / November 2001 / Mikael Stenmark / Ashgate Publ. Co. — see also Amazon
• American Institute of Biological Sciences / Washington, D.C.
• Of Gods and Gaps: Intelligent Design and Darwinian Evolution / 15-22 July 1998 / Edward B. Davis / The Christian Century, v.115, n.20, p.678-681 — an essay review of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, by Michael J. Behe (The Free Press, 1996); Defeating Darwinism, by Opening Minds, by Phillip E. Johnson (InterVarsity Press, 1997); and The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, ed. by J.P. Moreland (InterVarsity Press, 1993).
• "The Origin of Peoples" / February 1998 / Trevor Major / Reason & Revelation, v.18, n.2, p.9-14 [a monthly journal of Christian evidences by the Apologetics Press]
• The Major Transitions in Evolution / February 1997 / John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary / Oxford University Press — see also Amazon

DECEMBER 7

• The Ghosts of Evolution / February 2002 / Connie Barlow / Perseus Books — see also Amazon
• New society ponders universe's design / 7 December 2001 / Uwe Siemon-Netto / United Press International — Bill Dembski said, "As a Christian -- though not
  as a scientist -- I hold a doctrine of Creation."
• "Direct detection of a microlens in the Milky Way" requires free registration / 6 December 2001 / C. Alcock, et al. / Nature, v.414, p.617-619 — the nature of dark matter remains mysterious, with luminous material accounting for at most 25 per cent of the baryons in the Universe
• "Growth processes in teeth distinguish modern humans from Homo erectus and earlier hominins" requires free registration / 6 December 2001 / Christopher Dean, et al. / Nature, v.414, p.628-631
• 'We Now Know' / December 3, 2001 / John Wilson / Christianity Today — the boast of imperial science
• Evolution Expert Defends Theory But Brushes Off Critics / December 2, 2001 / Rich Elias / Columbus Dispatch — The title of Ernst Mayr's "What Evolution Is" is a statement rather than a question. Evolution is what Mayr says it is.
• Massive hole makes theories leaky / 29 November 2001 / John Whitfield / Nature science update — surprising black hole weigh-in has astronomers scratching their heads
• Far-Out Atmosphere: Scientists Use Hubble to Detect Atmosphere of Distant Planet / November 28, 2001 / Amanda Onion / ABC News — in a method that could someday be used to detect life on distant planets, scientists have analyzed the atmosphere of a planet at least 150 light-years away
• An Interview with the BBC / November 27, 2001 / Phillip Johnson / Weekly Wedge Update, Access Research Network — BBC interview on the book, The Wedge of Truth, and more generally on scientific materialist dogmatism
• Neutrinos feel the force / 27 November 2001 / Philip Ball / Nature science update — the orthodox worldview of fundamental physics is challenged by new experiments
• Dembski and Kauffman Square Off in New Mexico / November 19, 2001/ Phillip Johnson / Weekly Wedge Update, Access Research Network
• The crazy world of Stephen Hawking / 12 October 2001 / Charles Arthur / Independent (UK) — scientists don't generally become cult figures, and their books aren't usually blockbusters, so what's so special about Stephen Hawking and how do fellow physicists react to his fame
• Praying for Pregnancy: Study Says Prayer Helps Women Get Pregnant / October 4, 2001 / Tim Johnson / ABC News — new study on the power of prayer over pregnancy reports surprising results; but many physicians remain skeptical
• Getting the Facts Straight: A Viewer's Guide to PBS's Evolution / October 2001 / Discovery Institute— see also Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and "National Center for Science Education's Shrill Campaign in Defense of 'Evolution'" / September 22, 2001
• International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) / William A. Dembski, Executive Director — investigates information- and design-theoretic concepts for complex systems apart from external constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism
• Evolution, Science & Society — Evolutionary science plays a fundamental role in modern biology. Its unique role in biological research, education and practical applications are described here.
• The 'werewolf' gene / December 1995-February 1996 / Thomas Awtry / Creation Ex Nihilo, v.18, n.1 — a reawakening gene of human evolution, or a harmful mutation
• Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life: A Critical Evaluation of Four Models of Rationality / 1995 / Mikael Stenmark / University of Notre Dame Press — see also Amazon
• Creative Evolution / 1994 / John H. Campbell and J. William Schopf, eds. / Jones & Bartlett Publ. — see also Amazon

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