When it comes to origins, there are two different ways to think about things: religious or scientific. Religious ideas represent blind faith in an outdated sacred text. Scientific ideas about origins, however, are made in light of cold hard facts. Even religious people have bought into this idea – that their religious thinking applies only to their faith. When it comes to origins and other aspects of the real world, scientific thinking must take over.

In the last essay, we covered how bacteria share helpful genes with each other, and what that means for the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria (“superbugs”).

Another aspect of the bacterial world is that of chemicals and molecules. When you live in the world as a single cell, you cannot eat the kind of food we do, and you cannot interact with your environment the way we do.

What is the relationship between science and religion? While modern society may be prone to suggest that reason is better than faith, a quote from a famed scientist suggests a wiser approach.

“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein

Relativism is often summed up with the phrase, “There are no absolutes.” Which, of course, is an absolute statement. So it refutes itself.

Seems like a trivial enough philosophy. At least it did, until I took “Philosophy, Science and Religion” from The University of Edinburgh, a MOOC at coursera.org. In it, the professor outlined a couple different forms of Relativism, some of which forced me to take it a little more seriously.

The human body is not just a matter of anatomy and physiology, of biology on an organismal and cellular level. Anatomy and physiology are each fascinating subjects. But there is so much more to explore.

If God is infinitely powerful, can he create a rock so big, he can't move it?

You think you're so clever, don't you? I know you ask your question as a jest. Forgive me for taking it seriously. I like to pretend I'm clever, too.

Let's start with this. Did you know that the Bible says God cannot lie?

[S]o that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who would have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. (Hebrews 6:18)

There are some other things we know God can't do.

One major moral objection to the existence of God is this: God cannot be both omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (perfectly good).

If God is perfectly good, he would not want any evil, death, or suffering to be in the world. If God is perfectly powerful, he could take all evil, death, and suffering away. As it happens, evil, death, and suffering all exist in this world. Thus, the only options are that God is not good (he allows suffering), God is not powerful (he cannot stop the suffering), or God does not exist (there is no escape).

According to common-descent evolution, all living things on the planet evolved from one original living organism - by all accounts a unicellular, asexual, autotrophic, prokaryotic creature. How, then, did we get from that to multicellular, sexual, heterotrophic, eukaryotic creatures?

I took a course in Evolutionary Biology over the summer and kept note of quotes I found amusing as I studied. While most of the course dealt with observable, scientific, change-within-a-created-kind evolution, we did of course cover the whole common-descent evolution thing as well.

A butterfly’s wing – shimmering in the light, black at this angle, blue at another – with orange and white spots embellishing each half. It’s the very definition of beauty, and it sits upon a fluffy brown abdomen adorned with six thin legs, huge kaleidoscope eyes, and two elegant antennae.