Catching the Sky

I have been reading some excellent arguments from a biologist who believes in God and has been engaged for many years in debates against prominent creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design. His name is Kenneth R. Miller. His essay, " The Flagellum Unspun ", is the best single rebuttal of ID that I have come across, by which I mean that it is accessible to the layperson but still technical enough to demonstrate specifically where ID is wrong, from the point of view of science. A more philosophical overview and rebuttal is offered in this excerpt from his book, Finding Darwin's God . But also see his home page , and particularly his page for Evolution Resources . All the links on the latter page will be useful to someone interested in this subject, but I can particularly recommend his PBS debate , for anyone seeking a place where the strongest arguments on both sides are laid out against each other succinctly. I particularly appreciate him because he sees no necess...

Some recent reflections. We know with certainty that the universe has come to reflect upon itself in some sense because we, who are a part of the universe, reflect upon it. When we reflect upon its ultimate origins, we are left contemplating a mystery. But it hardly seems uncertain that consciousness has arisen where once there was only unconscious matter. For the moment, let's think of unconscious matter as unintelligent and merely obeying the laws of nature. We look out on the universe and we see conditions that are, in the immediate sense, hostile to any life or consciousness that might come into contact with it. Nothing, for instance, lived in the early seconds after the Big Bang, when temperatures prevailed which were so high that atoms did not yet exist; nor do we detect the possibility of life in the much reduced infernos at the centers of present-day stars. The heat is too hostile, and so is the crushing gravity. When we look out in the universe and back into time, or we lo...

At Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog, I've been posting several comments in an ongoing discussion/debate about the nature and origins of the Intelligent Design movement. This is not a question I'm currently working on, and I doubt I can give it much time, but I would like to get a better grip on this question since it's so much in the news. And it's an important issue in itself. The focus of my postings so far at Bad Astronomy has been whether and how ID can be classified as a form of creationism. I've started a thread at the BAUT Forum seeking opinions on this, and would welcome any thoughts on it -- here or there, in writing or in person, or by phone, email, chat, singing telegram, carrier pigeon, whatever.

This is the mini-conjunction I've been seeing around Jupiter. I took this photo through the telescope, and adjusted the orientation to match what would be seen through binoculars. In my binoculars (9x63) I saw a triangle made by Jupiter, the star, and the right-most moon. It should go without saying that the whole scene looks quite crisper than this photo, which is a blurry shot taken with the camera held up quickly to the eyepiece. Well worth checking out; the moons are constantly shifting, so no two conjunctions will be alike. From left to right, the moons are Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. The star to the lower left is Nu Librae, or SAO 159028. Photo taken March 2 at 3:21 a.m., New York time.