Reasons Institute Now Offering Courses for Personal Enrichment

Reasons Institute Now Offering
Courses for Personal Enrichment

Have you ever wanted to take a Reasons Institute course, but didn’t have the time? Check out our new line of flexible on-demand classes. These courses have the same quality content, but with less time commitment. Just listen and learn; there are no written assignments or homework!

Topics include:

• Physics and Astronomy - New!
• Chemistry and Molecular Biology
• Evolution and the Fossil Record
• Examining Humans & Hominids
• Physics and the Christian Worldview

Questions? Contact us at (855) REASONS or via email at learning@reasons.org.

PS Are you a certified teacher or administrator through ACSI? These courses also count toward Continuing Education Units (CEU’s). If you would like more information about CEUs, we invite you to watch a short introductory video. Click on “Continuing Education Units (CEUs).”

John Lennox – Cosmic Chemistry

The John Lennox – Cosmic Chemistry seminar last Monday was excellent. Nine of us from the Sydney Chapter were able to get tickets to the event, and we really enjoyed hearing Professor Lennox speak.

Apparently the ABC filmed it to be shown on their Big Ideas program sometime in the future, so keep your eyes open for this on ABC iView or on air.

The Q&A session was particularly good, with many questions asked by the audience and with Professor Lennox's deep and considered responses.

What was really encouraging was to see that a good proportion of the 3000 plus audience (I would say around 50 to 60%) were younger people either in their late teens or of university age. That's very encouraging when it comes to thinking about the impact that such an excellent speaker has on that generation. At the book signing afterwards, the queue was again predominantly of this age group.

It must have been a grueling trip to Australia for him, with a 2 week whistle-stop run through Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and finally Sydney. He then was heading off to Canada the next morning after the Sydney event.

You can find out more about Professor Lennox and keep up to date on his speaking engagements by visiting his web site at JohnLennox

For a long life, have faith - Telegraph

An interesting article by James LeFanu appeared in the UK's Telegraph back on the 18th August.


For a long life, have faith
Religious faith remains by far the best predictor of a long, healthy life

It is encouraging for those reluctant or unable to engage in vigorous exercise that the splendidly named Dr Duck-chul Lee, of Iowa State University, should have found, as reported in this paper last month, that jogging for as little as five minutes a day should be beneficial, dramatically cutting the risk of dying early.

Still, as Richard Scott, a family doctor, notes in this month’s British Journal of General Practice, religious faith remains by far the best predictor of a long and healthy life.
 

When convalescing recently from a gruelling schedule of chemo and radiotherapy for a tumour of the bowel, Dr Scott, a Christian, read the scholarly Handbook of Religion and Health, whose survey of the research runs to 700 pages.
 

The positive influence of church attendance is well recognised, but the findings of this overview are, he observes, “quite extraordinary”, with faith reducing the risk of a heart attack by two-thirds and being associated with improved survival of a stroke or cancer.
 

For mental health, the statistics are even more dramatic: those with depression recover faster, and those with schizophrenia function better, while alcohol and drug misuse is reduced.
 

“Faith in God,” he says, “is relevant to all diseases yet studied.” That belief could be, as so many nowadays maintain, illusory, but the beneficial effect in conferring “greater happiness, morale, optimism and meaning in life” is indisputably for real.

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If you are sceptical about the benefits of religious belief (i.e. Christian faith for the most part) just take a quick tour through the Health and Medicine section of ScienceDaily and you will find many articles that talk about the health benefits of religious (again Christian faith for the most part) belief. One of the most recent is here: Believers consume fewer drugs than atheists.

Alternatively, if you would like to read about it in a more lay friendly book (lets face it, the Handbook of Religion and Health is a bit pricy). The can I recommend Beyond Well Being.