News to Note, September 4, 2010

1. Backdrop of a Grand Canyon Raft Trip

What should the Christian believe about the age of the earth and the origin of life? WORLD magazine editor-in-chief Marvin Olasky explores the issue against the backdrop of a Grand Canyon raft trip.*

2. Stephen Hawking's Emphasis on Universe Without God

Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most famous physicist since Einstein, has again emphasized that the universe didn’t need God to get things rolling.

3. Australian Lizard: Live Birth and Eggs

A strange Australian lizard that can, apparently, both give live birth and lay eggs: is it evolution “caught in the act” or a curiosity explainable by wearing creation lenses?

4. Killer Whales Quickly Evolving?

Killer whales “are still evolving, and quickly,” BBC News reports. But is it really so?

5. Fossil Finds Cause Little Change in Evolutionary History

A new, overarching study of fossil discoveries reveals that most fossil finds cause little change in scientists’ view of evolutionary history. Why is that newsworthy for creationists?

6. And Don’t Miss . . .

• Beware of a “mutant” form of Christianity known as “moralistic therapeutic deism”—that’s the warning of Princeton Theological Seminary’s Kenda Creasy Dean, the United Methodist minister who has authored Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church. According to Dean, “Churches don’t give [young people] enough to be passionate about.” How often is their lack of passion due to a lack of belief?
• How’s this for a “mind[-]blowing result”: not only is it puzzling why certain physical constants of the universe are tuned “just right” to support life; now, scientists have suggested that those constants are only just so in our “corner of the cosmos.”
• Were the dinosaurs wiped out by an asteroid impact 65 million years ago? Not so, BBC News reports; rather, it was at least two impacts. The conclusion comes from research led by Aberdeen University’s David Jolley. But an impact isn’t what did in North American mammoths, another study concludes.
• E. coli with a mutation allowing them to resist antibiotics helped other microbes survive the antibiotic onslaught, suggesting “altruism” in bacteria. But a new study dismisses the theory that such altruism in nature is due to “kin selection”—that is, that altruistic actions help one’s genes survive through close relatives. “It is time to recognize this theory’s very limited prowess,” scientists wrote.
• Meet Balaur bondoc, the “stocky dragon” found in Romania. The dinosaur fossil reveals “enormous muscle attachment areas,” hence the name.