John Buchanan, a Christian psychiatrist in Melbourne, reflects in The Spectator on the recent passing of a euthanasia (assisted suicide) bill in Victoria.
John Buchanan, a Christian psychiatrist in Melbourne, reflects in The Spectator on the recent passing of a euthanasia (assisted suicide) bill in Victoria.
The December issue of the ISCAST Digest begins with a passionate plea from the Executive Director. The Digest is full of fascinating stories and resources, and it's now available for download.
In conjunction with Bruce Craven and John Pilbrow, Allan Day compiled extensive notes on science and Christian belief.
Augmented and virtual realities promises to dramatically change how we work in the future, but the technology is already having an impact in education and training.
Our friends at Eastern College Australia are looking for a reviewer of four undergraduate units in Earth and Environmental Science as preparation for offering an Earth and Environmental major of six units to education students. The College needs the units to be reviewed for alignment with the AQF and appropriate content and material for the respective units.
John Pilbrow, ISCAST Fellow and former President, has been cataloguing and compiling the ISCAST archives. To many within ISCAST, his paper given at COSAC 2007 is pivotal, changing the way ISCAST saw itself and ushering a new future for ISCAST. This paper has recently been loaded to the ISCAST website.
George Ellis spoke at COSAC in 2005. The slides from these presentations have been recently added to the ISCAST website and can be found using the links below.
Other interesting resources can be found on our resource page.
Climate change denial, intelligent design, creationism, and anti-vaccines hypotheses: are these scientific?
This week as I was demonstrating “Messy Church Does Science”, I extracted someone’s DNA using salt water, washing-up liquid and methylated spirits.
Although too much can be made of connections between Protestantism and science, it is not coincidental that the Reformation and the rise of modern science occurred at the same time and in many of the same places.
A super-precise measurement shows proton and antiproton have identical magnetic properties, writes Cathal O’Connell.
ISCAST fellow Mick Pope writes: "Any time there is a ‘natural disaster’, or what insurance companies might call ‘an act of God’, there is a variety of responses from Christians. Some mourn with those who suffer, but quickly jump in with what they think is most needed - Bibles. Some are very quick to judge and scapegoat whatever cause, be it social or political, they dislike. Others, like Kirk Cameron, make ill-timed statements that are only half-correct ..."
ISCAST fellow Ian Hore-Lacy featured recently on the ABC's slightly irreverent weekly radio show God Forbid; he was discussing a Christian perspective on the use of resources. Ian was mildly frustrated at the lack of opportunity to correct some of the ill-informed comments of others on the program. You will find Ian's comments just after 18 minutes into the program.
ISCAST fellow Mick Pope writes ... George Monbiot recently wrote a piece in the Guardian challenging us to change our language when it comes to talking about topics like the environment, climate change and extinctions.
ISCAST fellow James Garth writes ... Two decades have passed since the day I saw a remarkable advertisement in Aviation Week. It took up a full page and featured a beautiful artist’s concept of an elegant, futuristic spaceplane.
The latest issue of the ISCAST Digest, full of fascinating stories and resources, is now available for download.
It is usually towards the end of Year 4 that students begin to ask me various questions concerning the creation of this world. How did God create the world? Did it begin with a big bang? What did God make humans out of? How does God heal people? How old is God because I think he must be 14 million years? Of course this last student has had some conversation or read about the age of the earth somewhere and put together the age of the earth with the age of God.
Jonathan Clarke has just returned from another mission to simulate life on Mars. This time he was on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, where the sun never sets in the northern summer. It’s all part of a project to see what some of the challenges are, should humans one day decide to live on Mars. (Jon will be speaking at ISCAST's science, faith and apologetics conference in March 2018.)
ISCAST friends might be interested in this online Coursera course.
ISCAST Executive Director Chris Mulherin interviews Professor Peter Harrison on the history of the complex and interdependent relationship between science and religion in the West.
"Religion is not going away any time soon, and science will not destroy it. If anything, it is science that is subject to increasing threats to its authority and social legitimacy. Given this, science needs all the friends it can get. Its advocates would be well advised to stop fabricating an enemy out of religion, or insisting that the only path to a secure future lies in a marriage of science and secularism."
A recent lecture by Alister McGrath challenges simplistic notions about truth and knowledge. The lecture begins,
Do we simply make up our most cherished beliefs, creating a world that fits in with our preconceived ideas, or our deepest longings? I am one of many who are concerned that we are moving into a post-truth world ...
Alister will be in Australia at ISCAST's invitation in March 2019.
ISCAST Director, Chris Mulherin, writes in Eternity News, "As we remember the revolution that we call the Reformation, we are also remembering an age when another revolution was in its infancy: the scientific revolution. But what we forget, or perhaps never knew, is that the revolution that gave us science as we know it today, was one largely led by Christian believers faithfully exploring the works of God’s creation and pointed to by the Psalmist: 'The heavens declare the glory of God.' In the words of one writer, '[Nicolaus] Copernicus, as much as Luther, revolutionised how Europeans thought of themselves, their world, and their God.'"
Old-Earth or Evolutionary Creation? is an important new book on the vexed problem of reconciling mainstream evolutionary science with serious theological and biblical interpretation. This book documents an extended discussion between people from two US Christian organisations, one rejecting the mainstream view and one accepting it, resulting in contrasting approaches to early chapters of Genesis. The discussion is moderated by authors from the Southern Baptist Convention.
Whether or not octopuses should be viewed as charming or terrifying very much depends on your personal perspective. But it’s hard to deny their intelligence.