By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 Many evolutionists ridicule the idea that nature’s designs indicate a designer. Richard Dawkins and Francis Crick, among many others, claim appearance of design is misleading and…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 Around midpoint of the last century, bio-scientists increasingly began to talk about evolution unifying every dimension of life science. In 1958, evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 Flashback to our early days of child rearing: Collect a few milkweed caterpillars, the familiar larvae of the monarch butterfly…Keep them well supplied for a week…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 Indicators of an intelligent Creator stare at us from the microcosm to the macrocosm. Design features logically and rationally point to a designer. In the world…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 Science writers are fond of describing our planet with phrases like “Our Dynamic Earth.” Dynamic is a word used to convey force, power, and energy. Even…
A number of factors propelled changes in science education when I first entered teaching. One important event was Russia’s launch of the satellite Sputnik 1. I vividly recall viewing Sputnik…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 Instructors at an NSF Oceanography Institute I attended in the mid-1960s were still using the term “continental drift” to describe the apparent movement of continents with…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 Recycling has become a distinctive of modern life. Citizens who were alive during World War II, however, may recall a few formal recycling practices, such as…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 In the 1960s I recall the relatively new term “ecology” becoming popular. At first some used the term synonomously with the word “environment,” as in certain…
By: Jim Virkler; ©2008 During my career as a science educator there were times my wife (a math educator) claimed there was a factor stacked in my favor in capturing…