I am sorry for the long duration between blog entries. I have returned from New York where I was doing research at the American Museum of Natural History and was quite successful. (For many of you who have been genuinely or acerbically concerned that I would be “Destroying my scientific career” by questioning long held dogmas, I would like to reassure you that things are going great.) The research done in New York will soon result in a new publication and lectures for scientific societies in Southern California this month.

Now for a quick note on some of the comments in the last blog.  “CamilleS1957” asked me “What are you grounded by?” She asserted that she is a strong Christian who believes in a living Creator God. This is my response for CamilleS1957. I am grounded by science. Honest objective science is what I actively seek in my life. Because of that I end up taking a lot of heat from both sides of this debate. There is nothing wrong with a solid faith in a deity, however, as a scientist I cannot and will not say that God absolutely exists and that makes a lot of Christians angry. I have certain personal beliefs and inclinations, but I do not have proof and will never have proof of an all powerful Creator God. I do not feel the need to defend the Bible at all. If the Bible is a true document then it will stand up to the test of science. (See my first blog entry.) My goal is to follow the scientific evidence where ever it leads me. On the other hand I have all the members of the evolutionist camp angry because I am willing to ask the difficult questions that the theory has either neglected or ignored. Especially in the area of Abiogenesis, naturalism has a lot of work to do before it can put together a really strong case for the origin of life. For writer “rrt” I want to reassure you that the tenants of evolution are certainly not fact. Evolution has only been testable and provable on very small scales. Evolutionary mechanisms have the ability to distinguish new species through adaptation and selective breeding, but it has never been clearly demonstrated that these mechanisms can be extrapolated into the origin of entirely unique features and systems. These are important questions that we have not found the answers to yet and may never find the answers too. And these questions have huge implications on our worldview and paradigm of life.

Maybe some of you have read Stephen Jay Gould’s book “Rocks of Ages”. Gould is one of my favorite scientific writers and I feel he was willing to look outside the box for answers which science was not yet ready to tackle. In this book, however, he asserts that Religion and Science operate in two distinct “Non-Overlapping Magisteria”. What he is saying is that both realms of thought have equal importance but occupy different areas of our human experience. Gould states that religion cannot speak on matters of science and science cannot speak on matters of metaphysics or religion. This is why it is pointless to try to prove that God exists. Where Gould makes the mistake though is when he states that one should not affect the other. Of course the discussion of our origins is going to affect our paradigm on life. It is preposterous to think that it would not deeply affect every worldview that we have.

In conclusion remaining open minded and truthful in this discussion is a very fine balancing act. We must not overstate our case on either side. "Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know. "~ Bertrand Russell

Next time we will dive into the nature of mutations and what role they play in the evolutionary Yahtzee.