In the decades after Darwin, we may ask what were the issues of greatest concern in the church? The theory of evolution began to hold sway not only among scientists, but also in the academic world and among Bible believers. Surprisingly, some conservative theologians held an ambivalent stance toward Darwin’s revolutionary proposal. For example, R. A. Torrey (1856-1928), evangelist and pastor associated with Moody Bible Institute, Moody Church, and many other well-known orthodox institutions, alarmed some of his friends in 1925 by saying that a man could “believe thoroughly in the absolute infallibility of the Bible and still be an evolutionist of a certain type.”
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The Cassini probe returns yet more data to back up the idea of a sub-surface sea on Saturn's moon Enceladus. BBC News Full Story

A new discovery has important implications for the understanding of cancer and age-associated diseases.
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The details surrounding the emergence and evolution of religion have not been clearly established and remain a source of much debate among scholars. Now, an article published by Cell Press in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences on Feb. 8 brings a new understanding to this long-standing discussion by exploring the fascinating link between morality and religion.
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The good news is that I just finished Stanley Jaki's The Road of Science and the Ways to God, and I'd like to spend a post or two on that. It was originally presented as the Gifford Lectures for 1975 and 1976. In case you don't know, these lectures were established at the bequest a certain Lord Gifford in order to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term -- in other words, the knowledge of God."
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by Jason Rosenhouse

The icy dwarf planet Pluto undergoes dramatic seasonal changes, according to images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The pictures from Hubble revealed changes in the brightness and the colour of Pluto's surface.

Mike Brown, from the California Institute of Technology, suggested Pluto had the most dynamic surface of any object in the Solar System.

Hubble will provide our sharpest views of Pluto until the New Horizons probe approaches in 2015.
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The notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth's orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change is challenged by findings published this week. The new research was conducted by a team led by Professor Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
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Physicians in training and bioethicists at Johns Hopkins have created an easy-to-remember checklist to help medical students and clinicians quickly assess a patient's decision-making capacity in an emergency.
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Princeton University's Jason Petta has demonstrated a method that alters the properties of a lone electron without disturbing the trillions of electrons in its immediate surroundings. The feat is essential to the development of future varieties of superfast computers with near-limitless capacities for data.
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Boa Sr remained the last Bo speaker for at least 30 years

The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of about 85, a leading linguist has told the BBC.

Professor Anvita Abbi said that the death of Boa Sr was highly significant because one of the world's oldest languages - Bo - had come to an end.

She said that India had lost an irreplaceable part of its heritage.

Languages in the Andamans are thought to originate from Africa. Some may be 70,000 years old.
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In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, scientists in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off "switch" that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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