Todd's Blog

This has been a fascinating week for symbiosis, the study of how organisms live together.  My pal Joe Francis is a microbiologist, and he's enthusiastic about how microscopic creatures play important roles for everything else in the world.  He thinks that we really should be thinking more carefully about these symbiotic relationships if we are ever to understand God's great design for living things.  I think he's quite right about that.  Think about God's desire for relationship with us: He sent Jesus to die and rise from the dead so that He could have a real relationship with us.  That's an amazing commitment to relationships, and I would expect any creation made by that Creator should be chock full of relationships.  Everywhere we turn, we should find intricate interdependencies between organisms. Recently, I saw an interesting story about bacteria called clostridia and how they might relate to peanut allergies.  It seems that food allergies are on...

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a large audience at Granger Community Church and present my views on creation and evolution.  What made this particular event interesting is that I had only 15 minutes to do all that.  Faced with this impressive time limit, which normally would be quite difficult for academics like me, I opted to forego trying to make a detailed argument and just go with a visceral, passionate plea for being a young-age creationist like me.  Personally, I think it worked out just fine.  The audience laughed and applauded and seemed to appreciate what I said.  I just hope the little taste I gave them inspired some of them to check out some of my other work, where they can learn about all those details I had to leave out. So what does that have to do with that weird mushroom-looking thingy up at the top of this post?  That is Dendrogramma , and that is a big reason people get into science in the first place.  Ultimately ...

I've recently been enduring "encouragement" (that's a nice word) to revive and resuscitate my blog, mostly from one person who continues to suggest articles I ought to write and even tells me what he thinks I could say.  It's kind of like the persistent widow and the unjust judge, which makes me the unjust judge.  In the face of his relentless enthusiasm for my opinion (which I admit is a little odd), I have decided to try posting something once a week.  That's a schedule that might be too ambitious, but hopefully I can come up with something every week that's worth writing about and the time to write about it. The past few weeks have had some interesting science stories, from alleged genetic testing on Jack the Ripper (which Smithsonian mag finds legitimately doubt-worthy ), to the world's largest sauropod (behold Dreadnoughtus ), to a 24-year old woman born without a cerebellum (How is that possible!?   Check it out. ), but being the odd bird that...

I'm just now getting a little bit settled from the big Colorado trip, and I wanted to update everyone on the major announcement from the Origins2014 conference.  We've planned out the next three conferences, and here they are: Origins 2015 July 23-25 Truett-McConnell College, Cleveland, GA Origins 2016 July 21-23 Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA Origins 2017 July 20-22 Venue TBD The 2017 venue is still up for grabs, and we are considering proposals now.  If you'd like to host a conference in your area, email me and I'll tell you what we need to know.  We'll make our final decision on 2017 at the next conference.  God willing, we'll keep this pace up and start planning two years in advance instead of just one. The 2015 call for abstracts will be available shortly. Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

I'm at the Origins 2014 conference right now, and I wanted to let everyone know that the geology and biology abstracts are published now at the JCTS website.  Check them out! Origins 2014 biology abstracts Origins 2014 geology abstracts Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

We've got two weeks left before Origins 2014, and there are still tickets available.  The full schedule is online , and we will have a great time Saturday touring the Garden of the Gods.  The conference is being held at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, July 23-26. Register Here Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Well, I didn't see this coming, but maybe that's my own unfamiliarity with the denomination.  According to an article by Michael Zimmerman at Huffington Post , a committee at the 2014 general assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted overwhelmingly (47 to 2) against a measure that would have designated an "evolution Sunday" wherein the denomination would have advocated evolution.  In essence, the proposal would have approved  The Clergy Letter Project , which claims to be about the compatibility of science and religion, but is more about advocating evolution, as even a cursory glance at their website will tell you. I'm surprised, because I've always understood the PCUSA to be the sort of "liberal" wing of Presbyterianism.  Again, I confess that I'm not really up on my Presbyterian politics, so I might be unduly influenced by all my conservative friends who know more about Presbyterians than I.  Nevertheless, given what I've heard in ...