Return to 2nd Quarter 2025 articles.

from Does God Exist? 2nd Quarter 2025

STAY UP-TO-DATE ON NEWS AND NOTES. The stories in News and Notes are condensed from articles previously published on our website DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY. You can use the links within each of these articles to see the original posts (on the Does God Exist? Today website) for more details. (Some of the articles below have links to outside sources, which may not be available after we have published this page.) There are also many other interesting and informative articles on the Does God Exist? Today website each day. We encourage you to follow us daily on “Does God Exist? Today.” On that website you can also subscribe to our free weekly e-mail update. We call it “The Best of the Week from DOES GOD EXIST?” It contains links to the most popular of our posts on DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY and our facebook page (Facebook.com/evidence4god).

OPPORTUNITY TO STUDY WITH JOHN CLAYTON: Because of the COVID pandemic and age, we have suspended our lectureship schedule. In place of that, we are providing an opportunity for congregations to have a lectureship electronically. We want to give the readers of this publication the same opportunity to study with John Clayton.

We will mail you a DVD of the first four lectures in our video series. You or your group can watch the four programs writing down questions and challenges to the material. Please send us your questions via e-mail or postal mail, and John Clayton will respond to them. If you are satisfied with that material, return the DVD, and we mail you the next one. Your only cost is the return postage for the DVD.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send us your name and address, and we will send you the first DVD. Watching the Does God Exist? presentations in the comfort of your home is an excellent way to receive the information without risk from COVID or the inconvenience of driving to a lectureship site. E-mail your request to John Clayton at jncdge@aol.com.

STAY UP-TO-DATE ON NEWS AND NOTES: The stories in News and Notes are condensed from articles previously published on our website www.DoesGodExist.today. You can use the QR codes with each article to see the original posts for more details and references. There are many other interesting and informative articles on that website each day. On that website, you can subscribe to follow us daily. Each week we publish “The Best of the Week from DOES GOD EXIST?” with links to our most popular posts on DoesGodExist.Today and our Facebook page (Facebook.com/evidence4god).

BAIKAL SEALS ARE UNIQUE: The world's only exclusively freshwater seal is the Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica), which is found only in Lake Baikal in Siberia, the deepest lake on Earth. Lake Baikal is covered with ice most of the year, and the ice thickness can be several feet.

Adult Baikal seals can hold their breaths for up to 30 minutes, but their pups can only go a maximum of 15 minutes, so researchers are amazed by how the pups survive. Some freshwater springs in Lake Baikal maintain holes in the ice where adult seals can breathe. A Baikal seal mother will dig a den for her pups under the ice. After breathing in air, she will blow bubbles in the den to create an airspace under the ice for the pups to breathe.

Lake Baikal is on a geological structure with no connection to any ocean. The primary food source for Baikal seals is golomyanka fish that live only in Lake Baikal. The evidence shows that every nook and cranny of God's creation has life specifically designed to survive and prosper in that environment.

References: PBS documentary and Baikal seal and Lake Baikal in Wikipedia

SNAKEBITE ANTIVENOM AND AI: Venomous snakes have a blizzard of toxins in their bite, proteins that can stop a person's heart and ability to breathe. Snakebite antivenom is produced today by milking snakes to extract their venom, injecting it into a horse or other large animal, and harvesting the antibodies. This process is expensive and time-consuming, so researchers want to find a better way. The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry went to three chemists who used artificial intelligence (AI) to design proteins that dampen and neutralize snake venom.

It is essential to understand that snakes control the populations of rats, mice, and other disease-carrying animals. What would happen if there were no predators to eat rodents when they go underground? Rodents above ground are preyed on by foxes, bears, hawks, and eagles, and killed by humans. When they retreat underground, they are safe from all of those, but snakes can go after and kill rodents even there.

Snakes and their venom serve a purpose in God's beautifully designed world, but snakebite antivenom is essential to protect human lives. AI may soon make it easier to prepare antivenom proteins.

Reference: Science News magazine, February 2025, page 14 or sciencenews.org.

SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIPS: A stable ecosystem needs all forms of life to benefit other life forms. When two living things mutually benefit each other, we call it symbiosis. Many symbiotic relationships exist in the insect world, and some insects have multiple such relationships. The red wood ant is an example. The ants have a symbiotic relationship with aphids, which excrete energy-rich honeydew, supplying food for the ants. In return, the ants protect the aphids from their enemies.

Another symbiotic relationship is with Eurasian jays. The birds land on an ant mound and allow the ants to crawl on them, spraying their feathers with formic acid. The acid concentration is low enough not to harm the birds but strong enough to kill parasites that hide in their feathers, including mites. In this way, the jays find protection from mites.

A third symbiotic relationship of red wood ants protects spruce forests by controlling the wood-boring beetles that destroy them. The ants bite the beetles and spray formic acid into their wounds. Killing the beetles protects the spruce trees and provides a home for the aphids that live in them. That takes us back to the ant-aphid symbiosis. Symbiotic relationships show God's design in nature.

Reference: National Geographic, February 2025, page 110 or nationalgeographic.com

DESIGNED TO SOAR: An international group of researchers found that soaring birds are designed differently from non-soaring birds. Using computer (CT) scans, the researchers found that soaring birds have an air-filled sac attached to their lungs. This subpectoral diverticulum air sac exists in diverse soaring birds, including bald eagles, turkey vultures, brown pelicans, and western gulls. The researchers did not find it in any non-soaring birds.

The subpectoral diverticulum appears to boost the power of the flight muscles, allowing the birds to stay aloft for long periods without flapping their wings. Lead author Dr. Emma Schachner of the University of Florida said, “This evolutionary pattern strongly suggests that this unique structure is functionally significant for soaring flight.” But how can evolution explain that lines of soaring birds “evolved” this trait independently? Evolutionary biologists call it “convergent evolution,” but we suggest it shows intelligent design.

An essential point to remember is that evolution does not create anything. It simply modifies what has already been made. Finding a way to create an air sac from an existing structure to supplement flight is a challenge for evolutionists. This structure shows that some birds were designed to soar from the start.

References: National Wildlife magazine, Winter 2025, page 9; Nature

BAT MIGRATION: The disappearance of bats from various areas of the world when winter approaches has puzzled scientists for years. Dr. Edward Hume of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior led a study of bat migrations to determine where the bats go and how they get there. Monitoring bat migration is difficult because bats are fast and travel at night. They have a very low mass, roughly an ounce, so tags used for birds are too heavy for bats. Hume and his associates designed new tags weighing roughly a gram that they could apply to bats.

Research has shown that bats use the warm fronts that precede storms to ride the winds to travel as much as 1000 miles. There are many variables in this system, meaning that the timing and direction of the winds must be very precise to carry the bats where they need to go.

There is a very practical reason for understanding bat migrations. Wind turbines can kill large numbers of bats, so knowing the timing of the migrations can reduce this problem by shutting down the wind turbines. Bats are essential to control insect populations, and humans often make or do things that interfere with God's design.

Reference: “Bats catch a lift from storm winds on long-distance migrations,” NPR for January 4, 2025, by Jonathan Lambert.

ANIMAL MEDICINE: Animals have a fascinating ability to use natural materials to combat or treat injuries or illnesses. Researchers watched an injured Sumatran orangutan extract juice from a plant known for antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties in humans. The orangutan applied it to a wound under his eye, and it did not become infected. In five days, the wound closed, and in a month, it completely healed.

Chimpanzees fold and swallow rough leaves to purge parasites. Great apes, elephants, bears, and porcupines are among the animals with an innate ability to find and use certain plants for medicine. Emory University biologist Jaap De Roode said, “You have to have inherited the gene that gives you the general ability to detect the right taste or smell in a plant for your needs.”

The study of animal medicine shows that they are programmed to deal with the health problems they encounter. When God addressed Job with questions in chapters 38 to 40, Job realized how much he did not know. As we read those chapters, we recognize how much we do not know and are still learning from the lives of God's creatures.

Reference: National Wildlife magazine, Winter 2025, page 16

BUMBLEBEES CAN FLY HIGH: Some people have questioned how bumblebees can fly. Two researchers have discovered that bumblebees can fly high at elevations of 29,527 feet. That is higher than Mount Everest! Michael Dillon and Robert Dudley worked with bumblebees native to Sichuan, China, that live at elevations over 10,000 feet. The question is how these bumblebees do that with the thin air and reduced oxygen levels at such altitudes.

The researchers used a pressure chamber to simulate high-altitude conditions. Using high-speed cameras, they saw that the bumblebees did not change their wings' flapping but rather used deeper arcs to scoop more air with each beat. This technique also enables more efficient escapes from predators and the ability to carry heavy nectar loads.

Bumblebees can fly high, but how they can sustain their metabolism with so little oxygen remains unanswered. We have much to learn from bumblebees, but their design challenges all observers. All of God's creatures have something to teach us, including bumblebees.

Reference: nih.gov

LEARNING FROM BENNU: One of NASA's outstanding engineering accomplishments was the OsirisREx spacecraft landing on the Bennu asteroid in October 2020. Not only did it land, but it also took surface samples of the asteroid and returned the samples to Earth. The samples arrived in September 2023, and examinations of the asteroid material showed that 14 of the 20 known amino acids, the building blocks of life, were present in the asteroid material. The media jumped on that fact and proclaimed that it was now certain that life originated in outer space. The tabloids declared that it was clear that aliens had seeded space with life forms, explaining the origin of life on Earth.

Scientists have known for a very long time that astronomical processes can produce amino acids. They have shown up in certain types of meteorites found on Earth. The mainstream media has not reported that amino acids have a shape orientation to them. The molecule arrangement in amino acids causes them to be either right-handed or left-handed. Life, as we know, requires 100% left-handed amino acids. Science is still looking for the reason, but the amino acids on Bennu are 50% right-handed and 50% left-handed. In other words, they could not explain the origin of life on Earth.

Every discovery made by science raises more questions. The wisdom of having only left-handed amino acids doubles life's food supply, and that may be the answer to why. But one thing is sure: there is a reason for what Bennu teaches us and for the design of life.

Reference: apod.nasa.gov, February 12, 2025.

A PREGNANT WOMAN'S BRAIN: In our day of surrogate mothers, in vitro fertilization, and abortion, we need to understand how a pregnant woman's brain functions. Many husbands will describe very different thinking in the minds of their wives during pregnancy.

Dr. Liz Chrastil, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Irving, realized she could be her own study subject when she became pregnant. Chrastil exposed herself to four MRI scans before pregnancy, 15 during pregnancy, and 7 scans in the two years after the baby was born.

The data on Chrastil was astounding. Pregnancy caused a 4% reduction of gray matter in 80% of Chrastil's brain. At the same time, some of her white matter tracts that carry information around the brain grew stronger, reaching a peak in the second trimester. By the end of Chrastil's pregnancy, the white matter returned to the pre-pregnancy level. Her gray matter changes seem to be permanent.

This research on a pregnant woman's brain has enormous implications. As we have said before, if a woman has an abortion, the vestiges of her pregnancy continue with her for life. Pregnancy permanently alters the brain of a surrogate mother. Those who ridicule the biblical design for motherhood and families are encouraging significant risk to women who choose to alter God's plan. Humans cannot improve on God's system for families. When they try, the result harms everyone.

Reference: Science News, January 2025, page 12, and Nature Neuroscience.

Answers to the 2nd Quarter 2025 CROSSWORD puzzle: ACROSS: 3-eyes; 6-Isaiah; 7-Amalekite; 9-paganism; 10-veil: DOWN: 1-testament; 2-m etamorphic; 4-space; 5-world; 8-time

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Scripture links/references are from BibleGateway.com. Unhighlighted scriptures can be looked up at their website.