Friday Summary Report, August 24

(1) After having a couple of weeks of relative calm as summer wrapped up, things have started to get busy again as my grad school classes for the fall semester have started up. My struggles studies in Greek continue, as this semester I take a course with a heavy emphasis on translating readings from the New Testament, and I’m also in a Global Evangelism class.

(2) Things have also been busy at work, as, in addition to regular duties and the start of my classes, I preached last week, am preaching again this week, and have also had various tasks to do to help with preparations for our upcoming year of Thursday Bible School.

(3) Here is an interesting report on the demographics of social network users. Did you know that the average age of Facebook users is over 40 (and getting older!)? Meanwhile, the average age of Twitter users is 37, and is getting increasingly younger. A lot of other interesting information is in the linked article.

(4) I’ve thought for some time that natural evidences for the existence of God don’t do much to convince people who aren’t already believers. Basically, if you already have your mind made up that God doesn’t exist, then you can look at countless examples from nature that scream Intelligent Design to the rest of us (believers) and find some other ways to explain it. But, if you, like me, find that “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19.1), then you’ll enjoy this article on Why Giraffes Don’t Have Brain Damage. The complexity and wonder of God’s creation never ceases to amaze me!

(5) The big news from the world of sports is that Lance Armstrong has decided to quit fighting the doping allegations that have been made against him for years (while maintaining his innocence), and that he will likely have his 7 Tour de France titles stripped from him as a result. I don’t know whether Lance is guilty or not, but I do know that he has been tested constantly for years without ever failing a test, and that there are a lot of people who have been working obsessively to try and tear down his legacy. He might be as guilty as he can be, but there are a lot of elements to the saga that resemble a witch hunt.

Darwin And Irreducible Complexity

In On The Origin Of Species, the work in which Charles Darwin first put forth the theory of evolution, he wrote:

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Had Darwin lived an additional 120 years or so, he would’ve become familiar with the compelling argument of irreducible complexity, which basically demonstrates that, indeed, there are many complex biological systems that “could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications.”

And I’d like to think that Darwin (unlike many of his scientific successors) would be intellectually honest enough to not just ignore the implications of such an argument.

A Wasp that can do Brain Surgery?

I don’t usually post for the sole purpose of linking to something I think is interesting, but tonight, I will make an exception.

As a Christian, I am always interested to find occurrences in nature that seem too remarkable to have happened just by chance, without a Creator behind it. This is certainly one of the more remarkable things I have come across.

Apparently, during its reproductive process, the emerald cockroach wasp does what basically amounts to a form of neurosurgery on a cockroach that makes it docile and ultimately suitable as a nest for the wasp’s larva.

But maybe this is no evidence for a Creator at all, and the wasp just decided one day to try and operate on a cockroach after watching an episode of ER.

Yeah, maybe the Cubs will win the World Series this year too.