Join biochemist Fazale “Fuz” Rana and Christian apologist Steve Anonsen as they explore the real story of Galileo Galilei, beyond the myth of a lone hero battling the church.
Galileo built on centuries of Christian scholarship devoted to rethinking the solar system, physics, and the broader cosmos. His ardent defense of Copernican heliocentrism and his conflict with the church highlight both the brilliance and the limitations of one of history’s great scientists.
This discussion challenges the common “science vs. faith” narrative, showing Galileo as a complex, gifted figure whose legacy still offers lessons for today.
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
Whose Revolution? Copernicus, Brahe & Kepler
Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science Against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo
Deferent and Epicycle
Why Didn't Aristarchus’ Theory of Heliocentrism Stick?
Simplicity in the Copernican Revolution: Galileo, Descartes, Newton
Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany
Galileo's Letter to Christina: Some Rhetorical Considerations
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Neanderthal Brain Differences | Infant-Directed Communication
Join biochemist Fazale “Fuz” Rana and astrophysicist Hugh Ross as they discuss new discoveries with theological and philosophical implications that point to the reality of God’s existence.
Who were the Neanderthals? How do they fit into the biblical account of human origins? Were they image-bearers like us? Or were they “soulish” animals? In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana details how recent work by researchers from the UK on the origin of Chiari type 1 malformations (brain abnormalities) offers insight into these questions.
Also in this episode, Hugh Ross explains field experiments that provide further evidence of human exceptionalism—highlighting infant-directed communication as a unique tool for rapid, complex language acquisition. Unlike great apes, adult humans use specialized gestures, sign language, and acoustic and structural verbal features when communicating with their infants. As a result, human infants can easily distinguish between adult and infant-directed communication. Moreover, they receive significantly more infant-directed input than their great ape counterparts, further accelerating their linguistic development.
LINKS AND RESOURCES
Evolutionary Hypothesis for Chiari Type I Malformation
A Test of the Archaic Homo Introgression Hypothesis for the Chiari Malformation Type I
The Evolution of Infant-Directed Communication: Comparing Vocal Input Across All Great Apes
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Rapid Tibetan Plateau Uplift | AI: Efficiency vs. Learning
Join astrophysicists Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries with theological and philosophical implications that point to the reality of God’s existence.
Researchers have reconstructed ancient lake temperatures in the Qaidam Basin (western China)to show that either 11.0 or 7.6 million years ago, the northern Tibetan Plateau rose by 1,650 or 1,525 meters in less than 500,000 years. Hugh Ross explains how this final major event in the collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia created a “third pole” of ice covering 1 million square miles. This pole made global human civilization possible. The fact that the event occurred 7.6 million years ago means the resultant tectonic activity has subsided to a nonthreatening level for human civilization.
While today’s AIs still lack skills humans possess, advances continually push AI technology to accomplish things we thought only humans could do. Jeff Zweerink discusses how a recent studyindicates that AI may one day do science as well as humans. However, if we focus only on efficiency, we could miss the reason why we do science—that God designed us to learn how to relate to him and learn about him through his revelation in creation.
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
Terrestrial Temperature History Reveals Late Miocene Rapid Uplift of the Northern Tibetan Plateau
Flow-Driven Data Intensification to Accelerate Autonomous Inorganic Materials Discovery
This AI-Powered Lab Runs Itself—and Discovers New Materials 10x Faster
Representation of Locomotive Action Affordances in Human Behavior, Brains, and Deep Neural Networks
Affordances in the Brain: The Human Superpower AI Hasn’t Mastered
“Dragon Man” and the Image of God | Earth Escaped Sputtering
Join biochemist Fazale “Fuz” Rana and astrophysicist Hugh Ross as they discuss new discoveries with theological and philosophical implications that point to the reality of God’s existence.
Researchers from China recently determined the identity of a hominin dubbed 'Dragon Man' that had been classified as a distinct species called Homo longi. However, new evidence places them in the category of the Denisovans—the mysterious hominins known from ancient DNA they left behind in nondescript fossils.In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana describes how these scientists determined the Denisovans’ identity and what this insight means for RTB’s human origins model.
For the first time, astronomers have observed atmospheric sputtering—where atoms or molecules are ejected from a planet’s atmosphere due to impacts by energetic particles—at Mars. Using 9+ years of argon isotope measures at Martian altitudes from 250–400 kilometers, astronomers determined that the argon sputtering rate was more than four times higher than model predictions, and especially high during solar storms. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross explains that the sputtering rates shed light on how, when, and why Mars quickly lost its water and nearly all its atmosphere, and why Earth was able to retain both.
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
Denisovan Mitochondrial DNA from Dental Calculus of the >146,000-Year-Old Harbin Cranium
The Proteome of the Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin Individual
First Direct Observations of Atmospheric Sputtering at Mars
Designed to the Core
Discussions of new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, as well as new discoveries that point to the reality of God’s existence.
Ireland