I have been trying so hard to get in a weights session and a cardio session on BOTH days of the weekend. On Saturdays, I get to watch sports and funny men’s videos. On Sundays, I’m watching sermons or videos on apologetics. This past Sunday, I watched two videos on animal design from the 2025 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, and Tuesday night I watched two more.
First, I should say that Denton Bible Church is the best church in the United States for Christian apologetics. They have been doing apologetics events featuring people like William Lane Craig as far back as I can remember. The do apologetics conferences. And they do science and faith conferences. If you live near Denton, you should by all means attend this church. And if you like sermons, they have sermons, too. I’d be more inclined to trust these guys for sermons, because of their long, long, long record of apologetics.
So, on the past Sunday, I first watched this lecture with Eric Hedin on the design of the honeybee:
This lecture is only 35 minutes, but it talks about a lot of the strange behaviors of the honeybee, including their weird message-conveying dancing.
I found an article about it at Science and Culture (formerly Evolution News):
The famous “waggle dance” that a scout bee performs back at the hive after discovering a food source communicates to other bees (by touching, since the inside of the hive is dark) both the distance and the direction of the food in relation to the current position of the sun. Bee keepers have found that if they reorient the honeycomb on which the bee is dancing, the undaunted bee will adapt its dance so that it still correctly communicates the proper direction to the food source. Sometimes the dancing scout bee will continue its dance for more than an hour, and over this time, the position of the sun has changed. In response, the bee will compensate for the sun’s movement across the sky by gradually adjusting the angle of its dance.
So, the next one I watched was by Paul Nelson, and he was talking about the Monarch butterfly:
This one is only 30 minutes. Once, when I was at an intelligent design conference in the early 2000s, Paul Nelson came up to ask a question at one of the microphones. My foot was pushing out into the aisle, and he pinched it and said hello, and he knew my real name, because it was on my name tag. I have remembered it all these years. He is one of my favorite intelligent design people.
Finally, here is the one with Ray Bohlin, talking about the design of woodpeckers:
This one is only 15 minutes long!
I have a couple of red-headed woodpeckers in my backyard, and they had been pecking on my guttering very early in the morning. I got so mad at them, that I started bringing the bird feeders in at night, and putting them out in the late morning. That worked. I’m having a lot of fun watching these amazing little creatures, the older I get. I am putting out water, seeds, nuts, fruits, and nectar (if the hummingbirds are around) every morning, and taking it all back in at night. Next I have to build nesting boxes.
The last animal design video from this conference that has to do with design in nature is the one on plants, which is done by Emily and Daniel Reeves. It’s called “Plants are Creatures, Too!”
Daniel is the biologist, and Emily is the biochemist.
I remember in the old days, I would have order videos like this on VHS tapes through a web site, or by mailing in an order form and a check! And then, because I watched them over and over, I would have to rewind them over and over. Things are so much easier now. I would really like it if more young people knew how to make a case for design in nature by watching these videos over and over. What I would like is for Christians to be thinking about their faith. Not just having feelings, not just having community, but really thinking “could this really be true?” and “how would I explain what I believe to someone who doesn’t accept the Bible as inspired by God?”
Do you all have something to watch during your workouts? I stopped going to pay gyms, and made a home gym in my living room (I have no furniture), and that allows me to watch wholesome constructive videos while I work out and cook meals. It encourages me to work out and cook my own meals, because I can learn something and keep my skills up.
