News to Note, March 12, 2011

BREAKING NEWS: We extend our prayers to the victims of the earthquakes and tsunami that have struck parts of Asia and the Americas this week. (Visit our Death & Suffering topic page for articles explaining God’s love amid the consequences of human sin.)

1. PhysOrg: “NASA Scientist Finds ‘Alien Life’ Fossils”

The bold news headlines seemed clear—and overstated, in the case of a Digital Trends article (carried by Yahoo! News) announcing, “NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life.” While other headlines were slightly more conservative in their wording, the tone of much of the initial media coverage paralleled the Digital Trends report, whose first paragraph informed readers, “Aliens exist, and we have proof.”

2. Super-Sized Teamwork

Elephants’ ability to intentionally cooperate has boosted them into an “elite group” of animals, BBC News reports.

Scientists watching by video have observed elephants “understanding” when they need to cooperate to accomplish a mutual goal.

3. DNA We're Missing Makes Us Human

No one, not even evolutionists, disputes that humans have crossed a threshold that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom—even chimpanzees, our “close evolutionary relatives.” But according to new research, it’s actually the genes we don’t have that sets us apart.

4. Them Bones, Them Thigh Bones

What amazing structure is strong yet lightweight? And just as importantly, who was the designer?

Researchers from Imperial College London and the Royal Veterinary College have studied the thigh bones of more than ninety animal species to help learn why bones have such strength despite being relatively lightweight.

5. The Telegraph: “Profile of the BBC’s New Face of Religion”

An atheist with a self-described “colorful” perspective on the Judeo-Christian God will present a new BBC series on the Bible.

In The Bible’s Buried Secrets, University of Exeter theologian Francesca Stavrakopoulou will argue—based largely on a single archaeological find—that God “had a wife,” the goddess Asherah. (The Old Testament clearly declares Asherah a false god, albeit one worshipped at times by idolatrous Israelites.)

Stavrakopoulou has previously researched “the misrepresentation of the past in the Hebrew Bible” and “‘secular’ approaches to teaching and learning in biblical studies.” Last year she shocked viewers of the BBC program The Bible: A History by suggesting that Moses never existed.

She insists that Bible scholars should “leave faith at the door.”

BBC Two will air the first episode of the three-part series Tuesday, March 15, at 9 p.m.

For more information:

• Get Answers: Religion
• Get Answers: Archaeology

And Don’t Miss . . .

• Why have animals “separated by millions of years . . . evolved in the same way”? It’s another case of “convergent evolution,” when creatures not believed to be closely evolutionarily related nevertheless bear strikingly similar biological features. Realistic or not, it’s evolutionists’ only “explanation” of something better explained by common design.
• Evolutionists don’t believe in a Garden of Eden. Obvious? Actually, new research has suggested to evolutionists that there probably wasn’t a single “Garden of Eden” where humans evolved, as previously thought.