Stars, Cells, and God

“I am a worm and not a man,” David writes in Psalm 22:6. But which worm did he have in mind?

In this episode of Stars, Cells, and God, Fazale “Fuz” Rana and Hugh Ross explore a discovery from a Judean Desert. Cave researchers discovered a wool fragment about two centimeters across, dyed with kermes—the scarlet dye the ancient world produced from a scale insect known as the crimson worm. The find provides physical evidence for a dye the Old Testament connects to the tabernacle, the priests’ garments, and rites of cleansing—long before David wrote his psalm.

Fuz and Hugh explain why biblical archaeology matters, how Psalm 22 foreshadows the crucifixion, why death and life are interwoven throughout creation, and how fulfilled prophecy points to the Bible’s reliability.

In this episode, they also discuss:

How archaeologists identified a 3,800-year-old red dye

What the Bible’s “scarlet worm” meant to ancient readers

How Psalm 22 describes Jesus’s crucifixion in remarkable detail

Why David’s word for “worm” matters

How life through death runs through creation and the gospel

 

RESOURCES:

Read the paper discussed in the episode HERE

 

DIG DEEPER:

10 Prophecies of Jesus’s Birth in the Old Testament:

Was Jesus a Real Person?

Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible

Spotlight on Fulfilled Prophecy

Are Scientific Predictions Like Biblical Prophecy?

The young Sun may have hurled 1,000 to 10 million times more energetic particles at early Earth than it does today. So how did life survive?

In this episode of Stars, Cells, and God, Hugh Ross and Fazale “Fuz” Rana examine two new studies and what they reveal about the Moon’s surprising role in protecting early life. They also explore why Earth’s Moon is so unusual, how its formation and timing appear to align with the presence of the earliest life, and why proposed naturalistic workarounds still seem to require design.

In this episode:

How the young Sun’s wind compares with today’s

What MAVEN is teaching us about Mars’s disappearing atmosphere

How the Moon may have helped shield early Earth

Why a stable tilt and steady seasons depend on the Moon

Whether the universe is friendly or hostile to life

Why naturalistic workarounds still require design

Why Christians have nothing to fear from science

What the Bible says about creation beyond Genesis

RESOURCES:

The papers discussed in this episode

 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1238

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.00170

DIVE DEEPER:

Designed to the Core by Hugh Ross: https://support.reasons.org/category/featured-products/designed-to-the-core

Improbable Planet by Hugh Ross: https://a.co/d/0296qZMN

A small army of PhD scientists spent 17 years building a protein motor that limps 11 steps down a DNA strand. Your cells build billions of motors—perfectly, instantly, with no research budget. Coincidence, or design?

Astronomer Hugh Ross and biochemist Fazale “Fuz” Rana unpack a Nature Nanotechnology study from Lund University, where a synthetic protein “walking machine” called Tumbleweed was engineered from scratch to move along DNA. They break down how it works—and why it makes a compelling case for a Creator.

In this episode we discuss:

How Tumbleweed was built, and why it needed a precisely timed chemical wash just to wobble 11 steps

Why AI (AlphaFold) was needed to do what natural motors do flawlessly on their own

Why this experiment weakens the “evolution cobbled it together” argument

What it means to be made in God’s image, and why humans alone do science

What this discovery means for the biblical case for a Creator

The future of nanotech medicine

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📄 The paper discussed in this episode:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-026-02211-3

📖 The Cell’s Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator’s Artistry
https://support.reasons.org/purchase/the-cells-design

📖 Creating Life in the Lab: How New Discoveries in Synthetic Biology Make a Case for the Creator
https://support.reasons.org/purchase/creating-life-in-the-lab

For a billion years, life on Earth survived without the one process it can no longer live without. The moment that changed might be the clearest evidence yet that we’re not here by accident.

In this episode, Hugh Ross and Fazale “Fuz” Rana explore a discovery published in Science Advances that raises a fascinating question: Was the emergence of biological nitrogen fixation simply the result of natural processes, or does its timing point to something more?

In this episode we discuss:

The dramatic rise in the abundance and diversity of life

The transition from prokaryotes to complex eukaryotic life

The “hard steps” that had to occur for humanity to appear eventually

Why nitrogen fixation represents such an extraordinary biological challenge for evolution

Skeptical objections and alternative explanations

What Psalm 104 reveals about God’s purposes in creation

How Earth’s history reveals not only God’s power but also his profound care and love for humanity

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📄 The Science Advances paper discussed in this episode:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec4450

 

🌐 Nitrogen Fixation Processes
https://reasons.org/creation/earth/nitrogen-fixation-processes

Get Hugh & Fuz’s book Origins of Life HERE:
https://support.reasons.org/purchase/origins-of-life

Join biochemist Fazale “Fuz” Rana and physician Steve Willing as they discuss discoveries with theological and philosophical implications that point to the reality of God’s existence.

Why do people fight so much? In a world fractured by political polarization, misinformation, and tribal conflict, this question demands answers. Scripture identifies pride as “the first sin” and the root of human moral failure. Contemporary research now provides extensive empirical validation for this biblical insight, demonstrating how pride operates as both a moral failing and cognitive distortion—and how Christians are uniquely positioned to address the divisions plaguing contemporary society.

Drawing on over 140 peer-reviewed studies from psychology, neuroscience, and social science, this presentation explores how research confirms biblical warnings about pride across multiple domains. Studies consistently show that humans systematically overestimate their abilities, inflate their moral qualities, and maintain illusions of control—thereby directly validating Proverbs 21:2: “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes.”

This science-faith synergy offers Christians a framework for serving a broken world. By recognizing the distinctive hallmarks of pride, believers can model humility in apologetics, discipleship, and public witness—reflecting Christ’s light through both rigorous truth-seeking and humble acknowledgment of our own personal limitations.

LINKS AND RESOURCES: 

Superbia: The Perils of Pride, The Power of Humility