Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature
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carbon

gsfc-20171208-archive-e002167orig
Photo credit: NASA/Jesse Allen.

There’s a Limit to What Nature Can Do

Nature actually has precious few options for manipulating the natural ingredients (atoms) of this universe. Read More ›
Surfer_in_Santa_cruz_11-8-9_-1
Photo credit: Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Supreme Elegance: The Fine-Tuning of the Properties of Matter for Life on Earth

In the biochemical domain, nature is indeed, as Isaac Newton rightly claimed, “pleased with simplicity” and abhors “superfluous causes.”  Read More ›
Titan_globe
Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Saturn’s Moon Titan as a Habitability Test

It’s called one of the most earthlike environments in the solar system with an atmosphere and organic molecules. How does it measure up compared to Earth? Read More ›
General Sherman tree
Photo: General Sherman tree, by Jim Bahn / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0).

Michael Denton on Nature’s Fitness for Life

Carbon’s suite of life-friendly features is foundational to the cell’s peerless ability to build sophisticated biological forms. Read More ›
Periodic_table_HMNS
Photo credit: Ed Uthman, Houston, Texas, USA, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Remarkable Carbon Atom

This is another one of many countless features of our universe that have to be “just right” for life — in particular, advanced life — to exist. Read More ›
Bryophyte_Leaf_Cells
Photo: Leaf cells, by KarlGaff, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

An Astonishing Life-Friendly Coincidence: The Properties of the Nonmetal Atoms

It is well established that there are far more ways in which the universe might have been that are non-conducive to life than there are life-friendly ways. Read More ›
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Photo credit: Casey Luskin.

In Aurora Borealis, Scientific and Aesthetic Design Arguments Meet 

You appreciate the aurora borealis or aurora australis because you were not created by strictly material evolutionary processes. Read More ›
polar bear
Photo credit: AWeith, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Closer Look at Natural Law 

The property of a keen sense of smell allows a polar bear to smell a seal miles away under the ice. Read More ›
Omega=Centauri
Photo: Omega Centauri, X-ray:, by NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA; IR:NASA/JPL/Caltech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N.

Despite Fine-Tuning, Roger Penrose Is “Agnostic” About Intelligent Design

The slightest changes in almost any of the basic parameters of nature would have led to a universe without stable stars or without stars at all. Read More ›
Sagittarius C
Photo credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and S. Crowe (University of Virginia).

A Philosopher Rejects the Multiverse but Embraces Mythology

Ascribing sentience or cosmic purpose to forces or the particles on which they act is to step out of the realm of science into the realm of myth-making. Read More ›

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