Dr Greg Bahnsen - Is Evolution Scientific?: Can Theistic Evolution Save The Theory? (Part 2)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

I'd like to quote from the 1972 book, Can Something come from Nothing? There's no field of thought where it's considered rational to think so. And yet in evolution you must believe that. That at some point there was nothing. But that's only the first major blind leap of faith that is required if.

You'Re going to be an evolutionist.

The second is this. Now that we have something, we don't.

Know where it came from or how.

But now that we have something, order came from disorder. This something which is just random now is no longer random, but is orderly. Once there was nothing, then there was something. Once there was disorder and randomness. And now we have order again. You don't have to be an expert in the natural sciences to look at the theory of evolution and to see the problems that it has. How can order come from disorder? You have the very opposite of a quality arising from the quality itself. Isn't that another version of something coming from nothing? Once there was no order, nothing, order. And then there was something, order. And so at the beginning there's nothing out there, but then there's something. At the beginning there's no order, but then there's order. But there's a third leap of faith necessary, and that's that this orderly inorganic matter somehow had life spring from it. Remember what I quoted from Dobsonski last hour? Just a grant that life came from matter once. And I can explain by means of evolution everything else. Well, yeah, but that's a tall order, isn't it? Does life come from nothing? That's contrary to what we know about the natural world. We don't believe in spontaneous generation anymore after pasture.

You know that it's considered a sign.

Of ignorance to think that maggots just spontaneously arise from rotting meat. And yet the evolutionist believes something that preposterous on an order.

What do you think, a thousand?

A million times greater? He says that life itself sprang from inorganic matter. But that's not the only leap of faith the evolutionist must accomplish. Fourthly, he must believe that variation arose from the same identical factors. Let's see if I can put this together.

Kind of cartoon strip style.

Once there was a blob of living whatever. Now, what acted upon this blob? Well, I don't know, but let's just say they are factors X, Y and Z. Now, if factors X, Y and Z acted upon the blob then everything that's in the blob had X, Y and Z factored into it. But somewhere along the line, the evolutionist says the blob is no longer a blob. It's canaries and rabbits and bacteria. The blob goes a lot of different ways. But you see, in the original condition of things, all the factors were the same. But in the output of things you have variation. What I want to know is where do you get from common factors to varied consequence? That's utterly unscientific to reason that way. If all the factors are the same in the primordial blob, nothing's going to change in the primordial blob. Or if it does, it's all going to change. That's one of the laws of science. We reason by means of types. The same type of thing happens when anything has the same type of factor brought to bear on it. And so evolution requires four leaps of faith. Something came from nothing, Order came from disorder.

Life sprang from inorganic matter.

Variation arose from identical factors. But it requires another leap of faith and that's that at some point along the line. I don't know how the blob got to a humanoid form as contrast to a canary or giraffe, but somehow it got there. And once it got there, intelligence sprang from non intelligence. You had things which have no self consciousness or what we would call intelligence, the ability to reason from A to B to C. And now you've got a creature that has that ability to reason. Now how is that possible?

Listen to the behaviorist today. They'll tell you it's stimulus response, right?

But what were the stimuli that made the humanoid respond that way? I'd like you to make this story credible for me. Besides, if it's only stimulus response, then there's never any creativity. You realize that the behaviorist theory of man can account for creativity? The behaviorist theory of language, let's just take that for a moment, says that children are in a proper stimulated condition and learn to utter a word, let's say ball, so that whenever they are stimulated in that way, from now on they know to utter ball, okay?

The stimulus is supposed to be, of course, to bring around rubber, red object or something into their sight and touch, whatever, okay?

So whenever they are stimulated upon in the red round rubber way, then they know how to say ball, okay? But you see, children do more than just look at objects.

Although it is kind of humorous to see children acting like they know so much and they go ball, shoo.

Children Use sentences. But now on the theory, the behaviorist theory of language, children should learn sentences in the same way that they learn to use single words. So mama, I want my bottle is the sentence that is used under the stimulus. Condition of hunger in the stomach. You see someone that under the right stimulus looks like your mother and so.

Forth and so on.

So you use the sentence mama, I want my bottle. But here's the amazing thing about children.

I love them. They refute behaviorism so easily.

Sometimes without you ever teaching a child a sentence, the child gets creative and.

Says, mama, I want my ball.

How did the child do that? On the behaviorist theory, it's stimulus response, which is to say the responses are all to set stimuli conditions. A set of common factors leads to the same response. Where do children ever learn to use language? If behaviorism is true now language is just one part of the problem. Self consciousness is even more technical a subject and difficult in philosophy than is.

How we learn to use language.

How did something which had no intelligence, no language, all of a sudden start using. Well, all of a sudden, over billions of years learn to use language and to become self conscious? This is just amazing. And remember, as Jacques Monad says, pure chance is at the root of evolution. We get no hope and help from a creator. No free rides. It's got to be chance and chance.

Alone that does it.

Something from nothing, order from disorder, life from inorganic matter, variation from identical factors, intelligence from non intelligence, self consciousness from non consciousness, language from inarticulate animation, and finally morality from what is non moral. If evolution were true, why did humanoids that somehow got language and self consciousness, why did they ever start making what we call moral judgments? Not just judgments about what is the case? I am hungry, I am thirsty, the sun is hot. Where did we come up with the concept of you ought not to go to bed with your neighbor's wife? Forget what the issue is, whether it's sex, property, whatever. Where does the ought not come from? Where does the humanoid that learns now to use language and has self consciousness come up with the ought or ought not his thinking or her thinking for that matter. You see what I'm getting at? Evolution requires incredible faith. Over against the faith of the evolutionist. I feel like an absolute rationalist. As a Christian, I look at this world and the only way I can account for is I say there's an intelligent God that made it all and so forth. Oh boy, we can outdo that. We don't have a God, we don't have anything out there. Something came from Nothing. This came from non intelligence. Morality came from the non moral. Now of course, I'm playing the part of the evolutionist and putting these words in his mouth. Evolutionists don't ever come out and tell their classes that though, do they? They don't come out and say, well, I'm really kind of embarrassed to tell.

You this, but I have a real.

You know, religious faith that has got.

Me going this morning. I believe order came from disorder and life sprang from non life.

But now that we got that started, I'd like to now teach you about.

Biology and zoology and all the rest of.

They never admit that and yet they have the audacity to ridicule our brothers.

And sisters in the Lord when they say, well, you know, I just don't.

Have as much faith as you.

I've got to believe there's a God who does all those things.

Second problem with evolution, why it needs to be saved. There are tremendous scientific difficulties with the theory of evolution and I'll begin illustrating that by asking you this question. What advantage or function is there to a partially developed sex organ?

Yeah, that's right.

When you're a debater, you learn to go for the juggler. You're going to embarrass the theory, embarrass it bad. Okay, allegedly. You have small incremental changes in an organism, right? Develops, you know, a little change here, a little change there.

No major thing.

What I want to. I don't even sure I can say it. What I want to know is what a partially developed genitalia does for you. Can you propagate the race that way?

No.

Your chances of survival, if you mean.

By that having offspring, are pretty, you know, dismal.

It certainly isn't advantageous from the standpoint that it gives some kind of gratification or sensual pleasure. How does the evolutionist account for the evolution of our sex organs?

Oh, there's a bigger problem than that. If you think about it.

This is amazing miracle that at one point organisms multiplied by cell division. All right, you start in the primordial soup.

Okay.

In which what? The lightning struck.

I don't know where the lightning came.

From, but primordial soup, the lightning. And then life begins.

If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

But we believe this. And now there's life. But the life, of course, is amoeba, like life. I mean, not a whole lot of interest here, not well developed. And these amoebas or whatever they are, how do they propagate? Through cell division. You've all had high school biology.

You know this, right?

Okay. Now let's go to the end of the line. After billions and billions of years, now you've got a boy and a girl, and they propagate by making babies the.

Way, you know, babies are made.

Let's call that copulation. Over here we have cell division. Over here we have copulation. I'd like an explanation of what goes on in between. How do we get from cell division to genital organs? And beyond that, how do we get boys and girls? Have you ever thought about that? How does the evolutionist explain that? Why didn't the humanoids that develop all develop as girls? How did we get boy humanoids and girl humanoids? But it's worse than that. How did the boys and the girls know what to do to make a baby? Okay, let's say you can surmount all of those easy questions. I've got one last question for you. Doesn't it require incredible faith to believe that the human race could have survived in this way? Because here's what it amounts to. We all know that the period of a female humanoid's fertility is limited.

Okay.

When a baby girl is born, she.

Can'T have another baby, you know, 10 seconds or nine months later.

Right?

Okay.

In fact, she can't A year later. I mean, I'm just giving you the facts of biology here. How old does a girl have to.

Be before she becomes fertile? Well, let's generalize. Let's say 13.

Okay, if I'm off on that.

Forgive me.

Okay, I'm going to say 13. Now, for how long can a woman bear a child? Till she dies? If she lives to be 500 years old, she can have children till she's 500, 400, 300.

Let's go down to our generation.

100, 90, 80, 70. You know the answer. It's no. Because there is this thing with menopause so that she stops being able to bear children. So now, if we say that our specimen at 13 can start having children, she's capable. And if we say that our specimen at.

I don't want to scare anybody.

Let's say 63 can no longer have children. Then what do we have here? 50 years? Did I do my math right? We'll ask Randy.

Is that right?

50 years. But you see, because I'm a generous kind of guy, when I debate people.

I want to make it easy on them.

I'm going to double it. I'm going to say the period of female fertility for this one individual organism is 100 years. Now let's go back and look at the big picture. You have to remember that evolution took place over billions of years. Ah, let's make it easier. Millions of years. Millions of years. And if millions of years is from that wall to that wall, do you know how wide 100 years on the timeline is? Even I can't see it, it's that wide. I just want to give you something to think about here and now. How likely is this? In the millions of years of chance development of organisms, somehow during the same infinitesimal slice of 100 years, you got a boy organism and a girl organism and they made a baby. You believe that?

That's preposterous.

Evolution cannot account for sex, differentiation or.

Even the history of, of moving from.

Cell division to copulation as the method. Well, there's other problems. What advantage or function is a partially developed eye? Have you ever thought about the amazing miracle of the human eye? How does the evolutionist account for the.

Evolution of the eye?

Do you think a partially evolved eye is helpful? Does this make it more fit for survival? A partially developed eye, it doesn't do anything for you. But here's how the evolutionist explains it. Okay, I've read this.

This is fascinating.

According to the evolutionary account, light sensitivity. Light sensitivity cells at some point became a receptor organ.

You read that sentence and say, could you come again?

Light sensitivity cells became a receptor organ. Why did the cell. First of all, why are some cells light sensitive and others aren't?

Don't know.

But somehow the cells that are light sensitive, I guess they traveled, you know, got together kind of like in Terminator.

2, you know, so this thing kind.

Of blobs together and then we got an organ that's light sensitive. Well, that's amazing. But then the organ becomes a cup like depression. Why?

It just does.

And then the cup, like depression acquires focusing capacity. Of course, that assumes attendant unexplained muscle.

Changes for the sake of focusing.

And then the cup fills with the transparent matter that becomes the lens. At this point, it's still of no use to the organism. How many generations you have to go through all these changes, we still haven't got anything that helps. But for some reason, light sensitive cells getting together, making an organ depressing, getting, okay. And then focusing becomes imaging. That's the one that, as a philosopher, I love. Here you have an organ. It's cup, like has muscles attached to it, and it can focus, okay, so it can open, close, open, close. And then the next step, without a word of explanation, the textbook says, and Then it became a focusing mechanism. Focusing. How does it become an imaging organism? We don't know. Here's another problem. Why do people have two coordinated eyes? What was the evolutionary advantage of that? If there is, by the way, an advantage, why not three Flies have quite a few. One eye would do it. And so we not only have to believe that you have cells that somehow get together, they're light sensitive, making an organ that gets depressed, that gets this lens in here, that starts focusing and then imaging. We have to believe that it happened twice and all in the same part of the body, for that matter. That's great. Two coordinated eyes. How did nerve connections develop to the brain? Because at this point, you have to remember, we haven't got any brain interpretation. We've only got light sensitivity and focusing. And we know very well that the human brain reverses or interprets a reversed image. What evolutionary advantage is there for this image being reversed and then the brain having to interpret it and turn it on? In fact, why, if evolution is true, is the visual cortex at the back of the brain, and yet that which receives the signals that go to the visual cortex situated on the front of the head, why would it evolve that way? So that now you have to have nerves that go from the back of the eyeballs to the visual cortex. Does that seem efficient, survival of the fittest to you? Well, it gets worse than that. The right side of the visual cortex is associated by nerve connections with the left and field of vision for both of the eyes. Talk about how confusing human visual biology is. The right side of the visual cortex. The right side of the visual cortex is associated by nerve connections with the left hand field of vision in both of the eyes. So the left hand field of vision, this over and this over is, is controlled by the right side of the visual cortex in the brain and vice versa. Now I'm saying that is not the sort of thing you would expect that efficiency in the survival of the fittest would bring about. And moreover, if the reason why a mutant form of organism maintains a change is because it must be advantageous in the struggle for life, then I want an explanation of how this developing light sensitivity cells, organism, so forth, ever helped the organism until all the stuff was connected and plugged in and working.

It takes incredible faith to be an evolutionist.

It takes incredible faith that chance mutations created a series of small steps over vast periods of time and developed an interrelated, complicated organism that requires a heart.

And a lung and requires that it work, that they work simultaneously. I've already asked You.

What good is half a genitalia?

What good is half an eyeball?

What good is half a heart? What good is half a lung? I can go. You better. What good is a whole heart without a lung? How good is a whole lung without a heart? And we're supposed to believe on the theory of evolution that over a long period of time, chance mutations not directed by God. Just remember Jacques Monod, pure blind chance, chance mutations made incremental small step changes and that you ended up with creatures.

The vast majority of mammals, that have.

Hearts and lungs that work simultaneously and require each other. Remove the lung, the heart dies. Remove the heart, the lung dies. How did that happen? By chance. You see, we're not talking about. We're looking for more discoveries to finally understand. We're looking at a theory which, on its own internal logic is impossible. You can't have small changes when you need big organs working together, or else they don't work at all. Oh, and then there's also the embarrassment of the fossil record. You realize that evolutionists have not one piece of evidence in the fossil record for intermediate creatures.

Many Christians, because we've been browbeat, I'm.

Afraid, don't hear that. I'm going to say it again. I am not saying that we as Christians have a body of evidence and evolutionists have a body of evidence and ours is bigger than theirs. I'm saying they have zero evidence in the fossil record.

Zero.

No intermediate forms, no missing links. So embarrassing is this that the leading.

Archaeologist of our day, paleontologist, who is.

An evolutionist, has come up with a way to explain that Stephen Jay Gould now propounds the theory of punctuated equilibrium. What happens is evolution doesn't take place continuously and uniformly over long periods of time. It's punctuated. And so what you have is a period of time where there's a lot of evolutionary activity and change. Boom. And then things level out, thousands and thousands. There's another period of evolutionary activity. Now, again, that just adds one more thing back over here to all the faith leaps. Why should things just go along nice and uniformly, then all of a sudden there are these evolutionary changes? Well, the advantage you see, is that if the evolutionary changes take place in real short bursts of evolutionary energy, then it won't leave any fossil record. And so what you get in the fossil record is one type of creature, then long periods of uniformity and then another type of creature, and you don't need intermediate forms anymore. Isn't that great? So you save your theory by building into it immunity from Evidence, that's exactly.

What he has done. And yet, you know, if we as.

Christians did that about any of the.

Things we believe, we'd be laughed right out of the classroom.

And here's a man who writes things in scholarly journals and people go, oh.

Yeah, that makes sense.

There's a problem with biochemistry as well. DNA research has made evolution utterly impossible. The development of life requires too many.

Simultaneous things in terms of amino acid chains for evolution to be conceivable. I thought it'd be good to quote something here from Michael Denson's book Evolution.

A Theory in Crisis, just to give.

You an idea of what we're talking about here.

He says, envisioning how a living cell could have gradually evolved through a sequence of simple proto cells seems to pose almost insuperable problems. If the estimates above in his discussion previously are anywhere near the truth, then this would undoubtedly mean that the alternative scenario, the possibility of life arising suddenly on Earth by chance, is infinitely small. To get a cell by chance would require at least 100 functional proteins to appear simultaneously in one place. 100 simultaneously in one place, that is 100 simultaneous events, each of an independent probability which could hardly be more than 10 to the minus 20th power. Each one of the 100 has its own probability. Y' all remember how to do this from school 1 over 10 to the 20th.

What does 10 to the 20th mean?

How many zeros? 20 zeros.

That's a big number.

That's the likelihood of 1:1. And you need 100 simultaneously appearing.

100.

Giving a maximum combined probability of 10 to the minus 2000. Recently he goes on to say Hoyle and Wickma.

I can't say this other guy's name. Hoyle in Evolution from Space, Their book.

Entitled evolution from space 1981 provided a similar estimate of the chance of life originating, assuming functional proteins to have a probability of 10 to the minus 20th power.

1 over 10 with 20 zeros.

And now we quote from them. By itself, the small probability could be faced because one must contemplate not just a single shot at obtaining the enzyme, but a very large number of trials such as are supposed to have occurred in in an organic soup early in the history of the earth. The trouble is that There are about 2,000 enzymes and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial. That's the hypothesis.

Remember Jacques Monad? Pure chance.

The trouble is that There are about 2,000 enzymes and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 20th power factored by 2000.

That is to say, when you put.

All this together, the chance is 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power. One chance put a 10 there and 40,000 zeros. That's the chance of life originating by chance with the enzymes that are necessary. And they call this an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. And yet people believe this. Big Bang cosmology has become a real problem for the theory of evolution because Big Bang cosmology is challenged by discrepancies in recent astronomical findings. According to the Big Bang theory, regions that have higher density at the light flash point, that is areas which under gravity, formed matter clusters and galaxies at the point of the initial bang, regions that have higher density at the light flash point should be detectable as slightly warmer than regions of the background radiation. The points of the flash should, even now.

I mean, the universe carries its history astronomically. That's a theory that I don't have time to explain to you.

Anyway, the background radiation, you see should be slightly cooler than the flash points.

Where matter come to existence.

And the problem is the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite which has been up there sending this embarrassing data back. Sure, uniformity of temperature throughout the universe. No point for the Big Bang. The background radiation is the same general.

Temperature as the foreground clusters.

Well, there are plenty of books that you can pursue.

You didn't ask a philosopher to come in here and entertain you with all these things.

You could look at Norman Macbeth's book written in 1971, Darwin retried. Or you could consider the 1984 book by Thaxton Bradley and Olson, the Mystery of Life's origin. Or the 1985 book Evolution A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton, most recently 1991 book by Philip Johnson, Darwin on Trial. And you will have your head full of the problems in the theory of evolution. Not the philosophical ones by which it has already been utterly slain, but now the scientific ones that embarrass it. So now I'm going to ask you a question. Could these massive problems be taken care of? Could these massive problems be explained away if we came up with a religious version of evolutionary theory? You see, evolution has no mechanism. But if you bring God into the question, God then gives the mechanism. The theory of evolution requires a personification of the natural order. But if you bring God in, then you've got a person behind the natural order. The theory of evolution requires incredible leaps from nothing to something, disorder to order. But if you bring God into the equation, then all those leaps could be taken care of. All these gaps could be filled in. And so what about theistic evolution? Could theistic evolution save the theory of evolution? Let me give you an example. I just cited Philip Johnson's book Darwin on trial from 1991.

I quote him.

The concept of creation in itself does not imply opposition to evolution. If evolution means only a gradual process by which one kind of living creature changes into something else, a creator might well have employed such a gradual process as a means of creation. Evolution contradicts creation only when it is explicitly or tacitly defined as fully naturalistic evolution, meaning evolution not directed by any purposeful intelligence. So here's a man who knows fully well that evolution is in deep trouble. But he says it's only naturalistic evolution that's in deep trouble. You could have a religious version, a purposeful intelligence behind it all. And so we have the theory of theistic evolution.

And it would be put this way.

Man gradually, by slight degrees, evolved from lower animal forms over many years by a physical process which God providentially guided and in which he periodically intervened supernaturally. Once again, theistic evolution.

I'm defining it for you.

Man gradually, by slight degrees, evolved from lower animal forms over many years by a physical process which God providentially guided and in which he periodically intervened supernaturally. Now, you know that I would not.

Have set you all up for this and brought you this far if I was going to say, eureka, I've seen the light.

That's the answer.

I don't believe it is. I have to explain to you before you go home tonight why, you see.

This raises crucial questions. Let's forget all the talk about the.

Evolution of eyeballs and all those other difficulties.

I'm going to get out of the.

Realm of science and just talk to you now.

When people start talking about God, what is required? Because the theory of theistic evolution makes reference to God.

What is required when we talk about God?

This raises crucial questions of religious epistemology.

Epistemology is theory of knowledge.

By what theory of religious knowledge did you learn this? What defines our concept of God? What governs our concept of God and what we say about him?

What justifies our claims about God?

When we speak of God, do we rely on human imagination and speculation? Of course, not only God can tell.

Us what he is like.

And so we must turn to the self revelation of God himself. And so those who propose theistic evolution must be asked how they warrant this idea they have about God. How do they justify saying God providentially controlled the physical process by which man.

Evolved from lower animal forms.

If they are being arbitrary in saying that, then what they're saying is not reasonable.

Arbitrariness cannot be accepted as a foundation. It's not reasonable.

And of course, if they're arbitrary, then their theory is reversible.

I can arbitrarily say, no, it didn't happen that way. When they say, why not? I say, I don't need a reason any more than you do.

So arbitrariness isn't going to be helpful. Only God could tell us with authority what he is like and what he does supernaturally. So when we turn away from speculation and arbitrariness to revelation, we turn to the teaching of God's Word in the Bible. What I would contend is we find no justification for theistic evolution, but rather God's work, which stands in conflict with with the notion of theistic evolution in terms of literary honesty, that is, using the same rules of interpretation we would apply to other pieces of literature, whether we're interpreting Plato or Shakespeare or Will Durant using literary honesty. There is no way in the world to reconcile the biblical account of creation and later statements about creation in the Bible with the modus operandi of evolutionary theory. You cannot hermeneutically bring the Bible into line with theistic evolution. Why is that? Well, we read in the book of Genesis that when God created things, he.

Did so in six days. We'll come to the six days in just a moment.

The point is, the description given in the book of Genesis is the description of a mature creation. When God created on the six successive days, he made things in their mature form. The Bible does not say he made the prototypes and then they developed, that he planted the seed and then they grew. It says he created the plant forms and the animal forms and man in their mature state. That's the way it's presented. You have the freedom intellectually to reject that, to say, no, I don't believe that's true. You do not have the freedom to.

Say, that is not what the Bible says.

It speaks of mature creations in six successive days. Moreover, those things created are created after their kind. God has built into the created order this structure of different kinds, different species. What's the origin of species? The biblical answer is God. He's the one who created the specie lines so that things would develop after their kind. Thirdly, what the Bible says about the days of creation will not allow for the millions and billions of years needed for evolution to take place. That's because the Bible says that everything was created in Six days.

That is.

Six sequence of light and darkness. With respect to these days, the Bible says there was morning and evening, a.

Second day.

Morning and evening. Now you know that the standard answer.

To this offered by theistic evolutionists is.

Well, the days of Genesis are long periods of time. Like we speak of the day of Shakespeare, we don't mean one 24 hour day, we mean that period of time. We might speak of the day of the Roman Empire, a long period of time.

But you know what, when we speak.

Of days as long periods, we never.

Say there was morning and evening and it was a day.

That morning, evening sequence tells you that in the language of Genesis, it was intended as what I'm not going to get out of stopwatch and worry about.

Right down to the second, but what we would call basically a 24 hour day.

Moreover, in Hebrew you will find if you do a study in the Bible, though the word day can apply to a period of time, it never applies.

To a long period of time when.

An ordinal adjective is attached to it. That is when some numerical qualification is given. First, second, third, fourth, always first day, second day. Third day means 24 hour day. You don't have first long geological period.

Second long geological period.

The word day is not used that way when it is qualified with numerical or ordinal adjectives. Moreover, in Exodus 20:11, God gives the background for the Sabbath commandment. Why it is we're supposed to rest on a weekly basis for 24 hours a day is because in six days he made the heavens and the earth.

And rested on the 7th.

Just think what that would mean if.

God used long geological periods for those days. We get around to Sabbath rest, that means a long, long rest.

Obviously the pattern of the weekly Sabbath.

Six days and a day of rest.

Being the model, I mean, being modeled after the creation week tells you the.

Nature of the creation week as well.

I'd like to quote something that you'll find in Ken Ham's book on evolution dealing with its crumbling foundations. He says.

Professor James Barr, before I quote this, I should tell you.

Professor James Barhs, if he's not the.

Most highly esteemed Hebrew scholar in the world, he's in the top three. Anybody would tell you that. And he's not a fundamentalist, he's not somebody that I theologically have a real high regard for. But as a semanticist and as a.

Hebrew scholar, he is first rate, top shelf, front burner.

This guy cooks, he knows his stuff.

Professor James Barr, a renowned Hebrew scholar and Oriel professor of the Interpretation Scripture at Oxford University said in a personal letter April 23, 1984, writing to Ken.

Ham and I quote, so this is now Barr being quoted as he wrote to Ken Ham.

So far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world class university who does not believe that the writers of Genesis 1:11 intended to convey to their readers the idea that creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24.

Hours we now experienced. Now I want you to understand he's.

Not saying all Hebrew scholars believe that it's true, but all Hebrew scholars believe that's what the language means.

Let me say it again.

So far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world class university who does not believe that the writers of Genesis 1:11 intended to convey to their readers the idea that creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience. When someone comes along and proposes theistic evolution, the first question is, you don't have the right to speak for God by speculation. God then must have told you, when we go to God's word, can we make the text of scripture coordinate, harmonize with theistic evolution?

And the answer is no, we cannot.

Unless you think evolution took place in.

Six 24 hour days.

More importantly, when we read the Bible, we see that man's origin is described in the Bible as distinctive from the animals. Not only can these other problems not be reconciled with theistic evolution, man was created with the words let I God, the holy Trinity speaking, let us through the special event, make man. All other animals were created according to a pattern. After their kind, after their kind, after their kind. And then in Genesis when man is created, you would expect he's created after his kind and he is in the image of God created he them. Man's kind is not after the animals. Don't you see? Man is created after the image of God. And so you have this uniqueness about man. Again, even a person who doesn't believe it to be true, who is sensitive to literary analysis can catch that the author of Genesis set man's creation apart from the animals. And there's a unique procedure described metaphorically here. God forms man from the dust of the ground and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life.

And man becomes a living soul. It doesn't say he receives a living soul. Remember he becomes a living soul.

Man is formed and inbreathed by God. No other animal has that kind of Thing said of it. So man is distinct from the animals. He is the image of God. Man's life is a particularly sacred character. No animal proves to be a suitable counterpart to man. So God creates Eve to be the counterpart to man. Man names the animals. The animals don't name man. There's an enormous chasm then between man and the animals. But the Bible says there is no enormous chasm between man and God. You know how we know that? Psalm 8.

What is man that you should consider him.

You have made him just a little lower than God. Man is not, you see, just the final push up from the evolutionary procedure in animals. He's not just a little more than the animals, He's a little less God.

Well, there's one final way out. And with this we'll end tonight. Theistic evolutionist might say, no, no, I can make the Bible fit into theistic evolution.

I can overlook all of the problems. I don't know how you would answer them. Take care of all those problems. And what I would suggest is when the Bible says God formed man from the dust of the ground, that that.

Was a poetic way of saying God used man.

God brought man about through evolution from the lower creation, from the dust of.

The ground, God brings forth man.

Remember, that's poetry.

That's metaphor.

Maybe that's a metaphor for evolution.

From the lower creation dust to the higher creation, man.

And then after a period of evolution and formation, then God breathes the breath of life into him. What you have then is man, who.

I guess was previously lifeless. No, it would have to be soulless.

And so then God gave man that.

Was a living creature, a soul.

Well, now, can you do that from a literary standpoint? Is it true that this development from the dust of the ground was lifeless?

The Bible says God breathed the breath.

Of life into it.

And not God imparted a soul, but man became a living soul. It's talking about one procedure is what I'm getting at.

Moreover, if the dust here refers to the lower animal creation from which God.

Providentially has man evolved, and we've got a real problem, because in Genesis 3:19.

God says, From dust you came, and.

To dust you shall return.

If we are to interpret the dust here as living dust, the lower animal forms from which man evolved, then man's return to dust at death must mean that he devolves.

And so people don't really die. They just kind of become apes and then.

On down to amoebas. From dust you came, to dust you shall return.

And with that reductios hope that we finally dusted off the spot where the theistic evolutionist once stood.

Evolution cannot stand. It is not a scientific theory. Evolution requires incredible, almost insane faith in.

A chance universe doing wondrous things. Evolution cannot be squared with the known principles of science. And theistic evolution will not save it because theistic evolution cannot be squared with the teaching of God's own self revelation.

Take a break. Yes, I think it'd be a good idea actually, but I announced otherwise. Okay, let's take maybe 10 minutes here.

And then I think it's time to send you home.

In the far back.

Do you have introduction to what if those studies?

I'm fairly doubtful that you would find.

Much of a trail of mysticism, but you will find a very wide trail of philosophical speculation about the natural order that claim to be rationalistic. So that's the very opposite really of a mystical approach to knowledge. So I guess I'd be skeptical.

But then again in a field like.

This you have to be open to all sorts of interesting insights. And if someone were to verify that, I would certainly be willing to hear it. I just don't know of any verification at this point for such an idea. Other questions about evolution, its nature.

Yes sir, I would like to go.

Back to what you were talking about in Perplexing concerning the philosophical climate of the mid 18th century. Okay, maybe just ask for a second. It seems that there was a pent up energy that took advantage of Darwin and his theory.

Or he took advantage of advantage. Right.

Challenge our view of the natural world taking mankind right at the same time that it seeming that the same sort of philosophy, the same sort of worldview successfully challenged our view of God's word as far as scriptures and how that be looked at. And that is important.

I agree.

And at the same time seemingly in schools of theology there was a successful challenge to article John and his Solomon in that the concept of Istanbul the Armenian you see to prevail at least pulling out of that period of thought. Can you speculate as to what happened? Were they still good? Were Christians so weak of what happened right there in that 50 years between 1810 and 1890 that caused the principles that we don't care to be challenged?

Well, I think you're right in seeing.

That as a revolutionary period in American intellectual and political history, social history as well. A lot of things happened in that time, one of which was the development of dispensational eschatology. Another was the influx of German higher criticism and doubts about the veracity of God's Word. And Christians often would try to deal with that by quarantining religion from history and science and saying we're dealing with kind of spiritual things and it doesn't make any difference what history and the natural world is like. So there was a retreat of Christians.

From the world waiting for the Rapture.

There was a retreat of Christ from the world intellectually saying history and science are not all that important.

The growth, what I think you're describing.

As the growth of Arminianism is probably more the explosion of revivalism and the forward push of Christianity to the west coast. And that tended to be Arminian for the most part rather than Calvinistic. And so perhaps numerically it could be said that Calvinism waned.

It did not take the forward lead.

In terms of evangelism in the westward development of our country. There are still good Calvinist institutions, Princeton Seminary during the period we're talking about and so forth.

But by the end of the century.

Christians have become very latitudinarian about their theological convictions. They become very retreatist about changing the world and they become very anti intellectual about defending the faith.

So I do agree with you that.

Period of time is crucial and brings basically an intellectual revolution in this country. But you asked me to speculate as to why. I can't tell you.

I don't know.

I mean, I can give you general.

Descriptions of faithlessness and so forth, but if you're asking me to give a corporate explanation for why the church in general went that way, I don't know. It's been tragic though. And here we are a hundred years later and I think we're at this point. I don't want to be accused of being a false prophet, but I get the feeling that we're just now at the turning point away from that where the church is realizing what a dead end all that represented. I sure hope so. There's a question down here.

Zimlock in very heavily on the Ark there were the animals beyond 5, 7 male, female and uncle. And that my problems and a common ancestor from that same mind that was absorbing that drawn to it.

Oh, he did. Darwin's grandfather had a proto evolutionary theory of his own. Erasmus Darwin and there are others. As I said, Darwin was not the first one. So that's why some reviewers were a little upset that he seemed to be taking credit for developing ideas that other people had. And this fellow, Alfred Wallace developed the theory of natural selection the very same year and presented a paper with Darwin on it in 1858, the year before he published his book. So, yeah, there was plenty of that going on at the time. Darwin just happened to be the winner historically, and he's the one we remember.

For it back here.

Yeah. I believe the second law of thermodynamics is inconsistent with evolutionary cosmology. However, I also know the rescuing devices that evolutionists take to protect themselves against that refutation and what they will generally do generally for the sake of time. I'll be simple here.

Generally, evolutionists will now restrict what we.

Mean by the second law of thermodynamics so that it doesn't apply to the whole energy system itself in which we live. And so it's going to always be limited systems that see the second law of thermodynamics applies to them, but we cannot tell about the system as a whole. My feeling is that's an embarrassing rescuing device. But for the most part, when I.

Talk with evolutionists, the sorts of things.

You heard me say in the lecture tonight are the ad hominem embarrassing things that I usually bring up. I'm getting tired of them saying you don't understand the second law of thermodynamics because we understand it this way, and then having to explain, well, actually I do understand that and I'm really kind of a step above that watching you redefine this so that you don't have to be refuted.

And then, oh no, we aren't doing that.

And well, okay, tell me about how boys and girls came about. Explain that one to me, sir.

How seriously evolutionary saw a retarding or scale from happening, a better medical understanding and cure for various. I remember years ago there was some thought that.

Right.

And it appeared to me that that was originating from the idea it was.

Certainly it fit in nicely because then vestigo organs would be thought to have once served a purpose they no longer do with the development of the organism as a whole. However, in terms of anyone doing research into how it retarded medical theory and so forth, I'm not aware of any.

And if anything, you might find the opposite.

I am aware that some people have argued that the theory of evolution, though.

False, has been helpful in many ways in medical research by giving a model.

By which to look at things and to pursue various possibilities.

I'm not vouching for that theory.

I'm just telling you that it is out there. But I've not heard the opposite. Hey, Randy, we'll make this the last question.

How are students who are facing professors and others who are presenting the evolutionary position who oftentimes may be buffaloed by professor being able to present particular scientific pieces of data that allegedly proves their position provided those three. And how to deal with those who may have greater knowledge in particular and yet get to the heart of the issue from Christian point of view and press home that thinking. Is this a scientific versus faith issue?

Well, they have to do a little.

Bit of two things, it seems to me.

One, they do have to know the.

Details of their field or they'll never be listened to and considered credible. And so it will not be enough for them to counter detailed scientific theorizing with an analysis of theory formation, which is what basically I've been doing tonight.

However, they need for themselves to master what the nature of the debate is.

So that they can, as it were, keep track of what's going on in the argument, not get lost in the.

Details, and be able to answer the.

Fool according to his folly when the appropriate opportunity arises. Because they've shown the difficulties in, say, particular applications of evolutionary theory. And so they're going to have to do double homework.

They're going to have to be theoreticians.

Of evolution as well as those who study the details so they can answer their professors. I should also say that it's not my particular view of Christian apologetics at the university that they should be challenging their professors all the time about that. I know that may sound like, Dr. Boston, you're recommending compromise, but I guess what I'm saying is if you've chosen to study under an evolutionist, then you need to recognize that you've chosen to study under an evolutionist.

He did not invite you into his.

Class for you to become his peer and to argue with him continually. And what usually happens in terms of the social interaction between a professor and.

An obnoxious Christian apologist who may even have the right answer, is that you demonstrate to the class that you don't have Christian grace, that you don't have.

Respect for your teacher, and you show.

Your own foolishness, and that you think.

That somehow a professor put in a public situation will admit that he's wrong. That is not the way to convince somebody. You go back to his office and get to know him, show that you do good work, gain his respect, engage him in conversation, be respectful, ask questions, don't become demanding, dogmatic, and over time, if God so wills, that kind of encounter can be blessed.

In private, he might admit that he.

Was wrong, but you will. I mean, I don't know the statistics. I'll just be making it up. But, you know, the chances are less than you know, 1% of 1%, that given the pride of man, that a professor in front of his own students is going to let you refute him, he'll just throw a smokescreen up before he'll admit that he's wrong.

So my advice is take them on in private, do your homework, do good work, and then you have to do.

Twice as much work as everybody else while they're mastering the details. You need to master the nature of the debate itself. Also for your own protection and also for effectively answering the fool according to his folly.

Because the day will come when, if.

You'Ve done this, you can ask the professor.

He says, well, you've just got faith.

That God did this. And you're going to say, but, professor, don't you have faith that order came from disorder, something came from nothing? And I know it will seem like.

Doesn't he already know that?

The Bible suggests he does, and yet in another sense, he suppresses it.

He pushes out of view all the.

Embarrassing features of his theorizing. And a student that has done respectable work, I think can ask questions that will make him go home and will.

Gnaw at him much more than trying.

To embarrass him in the classroom. So that's enough of the free advice that you get about being an apologist at school. I do hope that you'll be back.

Tomorrow.

We're going to be changing the subject.

Something important about our Christian worldview. But now, instead of apologetics, we'll talk.

About the developing of an ethical outlook and how we might change the world world round about us. Do you have any announcements, Randy? Very good. Let's have a word of prayer.

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our website, bonseninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.