DISCI

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Comment by Rev. David Waggoner, PhD on July 25, 2011 at 11:05pm

Church Camp and a Star Gazing Party: A Winning Combination.  Growing up in Idaho, I always looked forward to church camp.  And some of my favorite memories were looking up at the night sky awash with the stars of the Milky Way as we sat around the campfire, or taking an after-dark stroll with the whole camp.  I've lived in Oregon for over 30 years.  We are fortunate to have a church camp site that sits at the base of a summit in the Cascade Mountains, which is only about a half hour's drive to one of the most ideal star gazing areas anyone could hope for  Called Dee Wright State Park, it sits at an elevation of 5300 feet in a large shallow bowl covered by one of the more recent lava flows here in the United States.  The picture on the Wikipedia site of the observatory is very poor.  Here is a much better one.  And also attached is a photo of me taken on the top platform with two the of the Three Sisters peaks in the background.  The sky is great and the scenery's not bad either!

Along with another amateur astronomer, we'll have a total of four telescopes set up for the campers to look at objects both in our solar system and in deep space.  It's a fantastic experience for the campers (and any other visitors who happen to climb to the top platform--In good Disciples style, all are welcome at the eyepiece!) to experience not only the beauty of God's vast universe, but to learn some REAL astronomy in the process.  All we need is clear skies!  Oh, and my point?  Even if your church camp doesn't have this kind of setting, all you need to do is find a two or three avid backyard astronomers who are members in your region or area and ask them to show up.  They'll be there at the appointed place and night.

Comment by Rev. David Waggoner, PhD on November 28, 2010 at 12:05am

Doug-- Thank you for sharing this. I often perceive pictures of craters as convex rather than concave, even though I know they are. I had wondered if perhaps it was an illusion produced by my contact lenses, since I have a distance contact in one eye and a reading contact in the other. Now having read the article and watched the video, I think perhaps it has nothing to to with my sight correction and is just my brain doing what it's designed to do.

David

Comment by Douglas C. Sloan on November 27, 2010 at 8:52pm

Schizophrenic Brains Not Fooled by Optical Illusion


Be sure to watch the video embedded in this article.

Schizophrenics aren’t the only ones who see the concave face — people who are drunk or high can also ‘beat’ the illusion. A similar disconnect between what the brain sees and what it expects to see may be occurring during these drug-induced states.

Comment by Rev. David Waggoner, PhD on September 11, 2010 at 1:13am

DISCI celebrated its first anniversary on Sept. 5. And what an interesting year it has been. Our discussions have ranged widely all over the scientific and theological landscape. Our WordPress blog site has published 25 posts, and the site has had, as of today, 8953 hits.

I also thought it would be fun to experiment with a new theme for the blog, so today I activated a more vibrant colored theme for the site, predominantly blue, following the thematic color change here on The Intersection. You can take a look at it by clicking here.

I also modified the header to fit the new theme:

Let me know what you think. And here's to another very interesting year of discussion about religion and science.

If anyone of you are reading Stephen Hawking's new book, The Grand Design, I'd encourage you to write a review of it for us to discuss.

Blessings,

David

Comment by Douglas C. Sloan on May 21, 2010 at 7:24am

Blue Heron Biotechnology

The link is to the company referenced in the NY Times article referenced in David's post.

On its home page, the company claims, "Since 1999, Blue Heron Biotechnology has delivered tens of millions of base pairs of perfectly accurate genes to thousands of customers worldwide."

Think about the implications: I can order a custom gene sequence. Here is the SciFi angle - at the molecular level, I can order Frankenstein DNA - and have been able to do so since 1999.

David - we're a little behind the 8-ball on this one.

It is all in the DNA sequences - what sequences yield what functions and then how do we tweak those sequences to adjust or replace the functions. That has always been the goal of any genome project, not the knowledge of the sequence, but how to control the sequence.

What has been achieved so far is only version 0.9 (or less), but obviously the rate of development and discovery is beginning to accelerate and attract strategic investment.

I am not so much worried about their successes as I am about their failures and unintended consequences and uncontrolled experimentation.

Comment by Rev. David Waggoner, PhD on May 21, 2010 at 1:21am

Doug, I read about it on MSNBC, too. My jaw dropped at the implications. Want to take a stab at a theological paradigm and the language to go along with it? On the news they were using the term "reboot" when the DNA was inserted into the bacterium. I think that's completely inadequate to describe what happened. Just newspeak because they have no idea what to really call the process. Maybe it should be called a liminal event, something that implies oganicity not cybernetics. Of course, perhaps the implication of structuring DNA like a quantum code and then by inserting it into a dormant organism and watching it connect to the molecular switches in the bacterial core is just too complex and above the average American's understanding of biology or computer science to talk about in a 30 second news piece on the 6 O'Clock News. This article from the New York Times is more critical of the process: Synthetic Bacterial Genome Takes Over Celll. But no one denies the process works, just have different opinions at what rate the potential practical applications can actually be developed--and marketed, of course. What I don't yet see is the ability to take single molecules of G, A, T, and C, and direct them into a predetermined computer-generated order one at a time until the particular DNA/RNA string that is desired. It seems different than the 0/1 bit programing that creates computer software. Am I right, or is the process already more sophisticated than I'm perceiving?

David

Comment by Douglas C. Sloan on May 20, 2010 at 5:47pm

Artificial DNA

For the first time scientists have created an organism controlled by completely human-made DNA.

Comment by Rev. David Waggoner, PhD on March 27, 2010 at 3:27pm

I read a snippet of the book on the CRC Press website. I find it quite amazing that a cybernetist would be so astute to to the ethical issues of robotics. It's very much worth it to read the few pages they feature because they also include some amazing photos of prototypes and operational combat robots. We're talking Star War battle droids, here. Some gave me shivers just looking at them. The book at $60 is pretty spendy.

The church and clergy are so far behind on this issue (with a few exceptions, I'm sure) it could take generations. Not too encouraging, from my perspective.

Comment by Bill Rose-Heim on March 27, 2010 at 3:07pm

It will be interesting to see if the Church chooses to participate in the conversation about the future of robotics because the topic is not on the radar screen of many clergy, or, it we will call out and support the best Christian scientists and thinkers in related fieldsto craft a more God-honoring outcome than might otherwise be possible without their input.

Comment by Douglas C. Sloan on March 27, 2010 at 7:49am

Geneticist wins $1.5 million religion prize


"A former priest who became an evolutionary geneticist and molecular biologist and helped scientifically refute creationism with his research is being honored with one of the world's top religion prizes."

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