Did We Evolve from Lower Life Forms? | Table Talk S03 E11

You guys, it's pretty obvious that we live in a world in which the evolutionary theory is pervasive in all of Western culture and it's pervading the whole world. We happen to be four individuals sitting around this table who are creationists.

The question that we want to tackle right now is can we take the biblical account of creation seriously? Because increasingly our culture does not take it seriously. And for many people, the very idea is laughable. You really believe that God created the world in which we live? Certainly Darwinian evolution is unimpeachable. It is the way we came into existence. And then we've got this strange place in between where we have creationists on the one hand who believe in the existence of a God who created. We've got materialistic evolutionists on the other hand who say there is no God, there was no creation, and it's all natural selection and survival of the fittest. And then we have all of these individuals in the middle who are saying we believe in God. We also believe in evolution, and evolution is the mechanism, the means by which God. That's called theistic evolution. So we are increasingly in a minority of thinkers who reject Darwinian evolution as the large idea that explains the existence of the universe, the world, and, well.

Not so much the existence of the universe, but the existence of the origin and the diversity of life, of biology. And you are exactly correct. Ty to say there. I read a book a number of years ago that suggested correctly that evolution is the most influential idea ever produced by science. Now that's a big claim to make. You think about the various scientific theories, from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics to the theory of electromagnetism, et cetera. There have been a lot of scientific ideas that have been brought to bear and many of these have given us things like iPads and iPhones and cars that can drive, etc. But this book that I was reading said that all of those ideas have to take a back seat in terms of just not even prestige, but influence to Darwinian evolution because it is not stayed safely ensconced within the biological discipline of. Within the academic discipline of biology. There's evolutionary psychology, there's evolutionary sociology, there's evolutionary cosmology, even there's evolutionary theory.

It becomes a wide explanatory scope into every field.

Well, it's suggested that it has a wide explanatory scope, and to be fair, it is a reasonably compelling way of viewing the universe. In other words, if you take God out of the picture, if you say at the Outset what's called.

As a presupposition that there is no God. As you make your presupposition that the universe is godless, how are you going to explain it? Exactly. And this is where evolution and the various evolutionary influenced academic disciplines become very persuasive because you need some means to create biological life, to create social structures, to create the world that we see around us. And the Darwinian model is reasonably persuasive. It's compelling.

Yeah. One example, David, would be you mentioned evolutionary psychology. I subscribed to a magazine called Psychology Today. And one of the things I've noticed over and over again in this magazine is every once in a while, two or three times a year it looks like to me, there is an article that is trying to pose the question, and one of them very blatantly posed the question, why do men cheat?

Why'd you lent me one of those articles when I read it?

Yeah. Why do men have extramarital affairs? And over and over again, the answer boils down to, well, we're evolutionary animals and the urge to reproduce is so strong that expecting a man to be faithful to marriage vows is simply not reasonable. Men are made for mating with the strongest of the genetic options around them in order to produce progeny. So don't expect your husband to maintain marital fidelity. It's just not gonna happen. We're evolutionary animals and there's really nothing of a moral nature about it. So get over it.

And that makes sense. If the foundation was true, that makes perfect sense. It's a logical sequence.

I just read a. Not only read a blog, but I actually put it on my Facebook page that was written by, I think his name is Matt Walsh and he wrote a blog titled Is Monogamy Natural? Is Monogamy Natural?

And.

And the blog that he writes is in response to a professor that's taking issue with him. He's a Christian. He's a believer in various moral standards that go along with Christianity and even creation, including but not limited to monogamy. And in this particular blog, a university professor has written to him and said, this is an antiquated idea. Exactly what you're saying. It's an antiquated idea. It's unrealistic. Monogamy doesn't work. It's known to not work. You're living in the dark ages. Catch up with the times and wow. In this blog, Matt Walsh just has his way logically, on an evidentiary basis. I mean, he really has his way with this professor and with the various arguments that the professor made. And my takeaway from it was, as I put on my Facebook page there, I said, I guess I'm living a myth, because I've been living in a happy, connected, beautiful, wonderful, mutually supportive marriage for almost 17 years now with my wife, Violeta, that has been truly and wonderfully, blissfully, happily monogamous. So here's somebody saying, hey, that can't happen. That doesn't work. That's not whatever. And I'm saying, au contraire, mon frair.

It's working for me.

Quite the opposite. It's working quite well for us.

But the point here is this, is that the word that I've used in the past is the word ubiquitous. It means it's everywhere. It is absolutely saturative and evolutionary thinking is like an acid that is eating away various academic disciplines. In other words, it's infecting those disciplines, whether it's sociology, psychology, theology, biology. It's just everywhere. It's ubiquitous. But here's a very interesting thing. I read another book, a great book. I've actually read it, like five times. It's just such a good book. You've read it as well? The Devil's Delusion by David Berlinski. Highly recommended.

But in that book, one of the things that Dr. Berlinski brings out, he's a secular Jew. He's not writing from a Christian perspective. He's not even writing from a religious perspective. He's just basically saying, yeah, this scientific, allegedly scientific atheism doesn't get the traction, that it doesn't deserve the intellectual prestige that many are giving it. The Dawkinses and the Harrises and others of the world. Well, here's the point that he makes. He says, in the case of evolution, there has never been a scientific theory that has been so widely touted and accepted by the scientific community and so widely disbelieved by everybody else. There are still huge swaths, particularly in America, but all over the world, who deny if you ask them two questions. Number one, did God have his hand in it? There is an overwhelming percentage of. For example, especially in America. In other countries, it's similar. Not all countries, but did God have a hand in it? Yes. I don't know. It's like 60, 70%. It's very high. And then you say, was the Earth created recently, say in the last 50,000 years, depending on exactly how they word the question. And in America, the statistics that are associated with that, even lately, 2010, 2011, 2012, is still close to 50%.

So you have this disconnect between what we're being told from the ivory tower, the intellectual elite, scientific elite, and what the average person down here is saying, I don't think I'm a monkey. I don't think I'm an evolved monkey. I don't think my children are evolved monkeys. There's something about evolution that is, and I think you'll appreciate this, that's irreverent. Now what I mean by that is it's not just electromagnetism, it's dehumanizing. It's not just electromagnetism, it's not.

Quantum physics or any other such thing. It is saying, in fact, you're a naked ape. In fact, there is only a difference of degree, not of substance, not of quality. It's not a qualitative difference between you and any other animal in the animal kingdom.

Which immediately puts us in the realm again of morality, because it's absolutely inconsistent to truly subscribe to the evolutionary theory and all it implies and then to have some kind of advocacy of morality. A high morality, a high morality. There's no way that the evolutionary theory can actually put forth and consistently maintain even the idea of altruism. Does a man love his wife? Does a wife love her husband? Evolutionary biology, evolutionary science can only reach so high as to say the best thing that's happening there is that it's in his best interest.

Propagation of his.

Yeah, it's in his best interest to be in relation to her. If you want to call that love, call it love. But really it's just a sophisticated form of selfishness.

It's a sophisticated. We had a whole conversation where we talked about the herd mentality and the difference between the kind of morality in a best case scenario that evolution could give us and biblical morality. And you'll recall that the difference was in the best case scenario, evolutionarily speaking, it would be, I will do something good for you. Because in some way, either directly or in some circuitous way, it redounds to my benefit, which is. Or biblical morality is I will do something for you to benefit you.

That's the whole point of Richard Dawkins, I think, his first bestseller. And the title of the book itself tells us a lot. The book is called the Selfishness Gene.

The Selfish Gene.

The Selfish Gene. And the point of the book is basically to say that human beings operate. The highest law that is operable in human experience and in all of living creation is self preservation. That's as high as it goes. There's nothing beyond that, whatever looks like love, beyond that, or altruism altruism, whatever looks like it is just that it looks like it, but it's not. It's just a more sophisticated expression of survival of the fittest. That's all it can be.

Another expression or articulation of this is Ravi Zacharias, I guess, popularized this whole sequence between origin, meaning, morality, destiny, and destiny. But the concept there is, what we're getting at, is that origin denotes value. Right. Something's origin determines its value. I always think of if you're in the mall and you're walking around in the mall and you see a shirt, you may think, that's the ugliest shirt I've ever seen in my life. And you. You go look at the price tag.

David was wearing one of those the other day.

I think I'm wearing it. Right.

I didn't want to say that. I just wanted to.

Hey, I'm ready for a picnic. I'm ready for a picnic. I got the tablecloth I'm wearing. You are.

And I don't know what the label here is, but with this kind of shirt, if you saw it in the mall or some other kind of shirt, you'd be blown away when you see the price tag and you think, who in their right mind would pay that much, $300 for that shirt? And then when you see the label origin, Armani Exchange or whatever.

Right.

So basically, the point there is by looking at the label, by its origin, you can determine the value of a thing. Right. So just translate that into social Darwinism, translate that into society, and with the worldview of our origins as being descended from lower life forms and so forth and so forth, and you run into a huge wall. When you now try to deduce from that any sense of meaning or inherent value, or like you're saying, morality. Morality, yeah.

And then destiny is off the table.

Yeah.

You've just stripped the foundation upon which all sense of meaning, purpose, and all.

Of that is all sense of the things that we humans take for granted. Every culture.

Religious inclinations. Moral inclinations, a sense of purpose, of meaning, of destiny, of being part of something larger. What we would call broadly religious ideas have arisen spontaneously in every culture in human history. In other words, we have a sense. You look out at the stars, you have a sense. You stand at the ocean and you see the waves breaking, the beautiful sunset. There is this sense, and this isn't just an American.

Modern sense. Cultures are almost unanimously theistic, whether it's a polytheism or it's a pantheism, or it's a monotheism, whatever.

It's theistic nonetheless.

It's the sense that there's something else out there. There's something bigger, there's something more. And this is why I used the term earlier about evolution being somewhat irreverent, because what it does is it lays the axe to the root of that tree. Let me just say it this way. If evolution is true, if Darwinian evolution is true in the biological realm, then therefore it would also begin to be true in these other realms. In other words, these would be legitimate applications. Then what we're doing here at this table would be a waste of time talking about the Bible, talking about God, talking about Jesus, talking about a higher meaning, a higher purpose, all of that.

This is, yeah, you know, balderdash. Because there's no purpose. I always think, throw at our students at arise the question with a show of hands, how many of you have ever brushed your teeth with a hammer? Nobody reads.

That would be most of them.

And then I'll say, conversely, how many of you have ever nailed a nail to the wall with your toothbrush? It would never occur to you. And I asked the question, why? Because a hammer wasn't created for that or designed or made for that purpose. In other words, you can determine whether something is being used.

Rightly or wrongly by.

Looking at it from what was it created for? You see what I'm saying? But if there was no purpose for which it was created, you could never say, you're using that wrong.

Oh, that's a great idea.

You're using that wrongly. To which I would say, well, what do you mean? See, so if we've descended from lower life forms, or how can somebody say, you're living wrong. Your action was wrong.

You shouldn't have raped that woman. You shouldn't have abused that child.

I would say, why?

I would say, why?

On what basis do you hold me accountable for.

The word should have implies an ought an ought, and that implies that there was some kind of intention or purpose behind of us, outside of myself, behind my creation. And so that's where I think it meets right there.

I think what we're saying so far in this conversation is that we have basically two stories that are being told in our world. Basically two stories. There are variations, but two stories that are being told. There is what we could call the creation account of reality, and there's the Darwinian evolution account of reality. The creation account of reality naturally equates to human dignity. It's a high view of the human being created in the Image of God. The Darwinian evolution view, that storyline is demeaning to human dignity. It's an insult to human dignity because.

It offers no basis for a human being rising above merely operating by animal instincts and doing whatever it is that the secretion of chemicals in the body dictates that you should do. We're just highly evolved animals. Think for example of Darwin's book On the Origin of Species. We know that book by the title on the Origin of Species. Not a lot of people and you can't even hardly buy it nowadays with the full original title that Darwin gave to the book. The book had a really long title that was expressive of the theory in all its glory, philosophical significance. And the title of the book was on the Origin of Species or, and the title goes on to say, the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. So there's something going on in Darwin's thinking. What's going on there? He's essentially saying that species have evolved through a process of natural selection and some races, that is certain categories of life, not just humans, but at all levels, certain races or categories of living organisms are favored above others. So there's a favoritism going on, there's a self preservation that's going on. And you come all the way up to the human situation and this is fascinating. Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton is the father of what is referred to as eugenics. Eugenics is a Greek word that means well born or high born. And it was from Darwin's theory of evolution that postulated the idea of inequality essentially among races, that there are favored races, races are favored.

Favored aspects of life or I don't know what the word I'm looking for.

Those favored aspects of life.

Are to be eliminated by the stronger. So then you have eugenics and then you have World War II where the Nazi scientists and physicians take the eugenics idea, which hails from Darwinian evolution and they develop their Aryan view that well, yes, indeed, there are higher life forms. There are favored races and it's perfectly okay for the higher perceived higher races to eliminate the lower in order to lead the human race to higher and higher and higher levels of evolution. So the idea is completely contrary to human dignity. It's difficult to imagine treating others with true dignity within a strict evolutionary framework of thinking. We have to take a break, but we're.

James, you are proud in that one. Did you say anything?

Didn't get a chance to.

No, you did. I did hear you say twice. You said mm, and I appreciated that.

When you Take a big time.

We come back, we'll get James.

Hi, I'm Ty Gipson. Welcome to Dygma.com I am so excited about this website because you're about to discover a powerful new way to share life transforming messages and videos with your family, friends and anybody else on the planet who has access to a computer. Dygma is a Greek word. It basically means to show or to reveal something by means of a pattern or an example of some kind. It's the second half of the word paradigma from which we get the English word paradigm, as in paradigm shift. And so what you're going to find@dygma.com is a growing library of short videos and transcripts dealing with paradigms and fundamental questions. What's the meaning of life? What is our origin and destiny as human beings? What happens when we die? Does God exist or are we alone in this vast universe? Why is there so much evil and suffering in our world? An estimated 70% of Americans have a computer right in their home and stay in touch with family and friends by email. And more than 400 million people are active on Facebook and 5 million new users are signing up every week. We are literally in the midst of a communications revolution of massive proportion. This is granting the Gospel direct and easy access to millions upon millions of homes and hearts. And that's what Dygma.com is all about. It's a tool for leading our family and friends on an exciting paradigm shift by revealing the truth of God's creative power and his incredibly beautiful character. In contrast to our world's popular misconceptions.

About who God is.

We closed the first part of our conversation exploring the two different storylines, the story of creation versus the story of evolution. And we saw, or we at least began to explore the idea that that one communicates dignity, it invests the human being with dignity. And the other storyline doesn't even have the raw materials from which to ascribe dignity to human beings. And I think that one way we could think about this is with the Declaration of Independence.

Yeah.

Does somebody have that?

I do. I was thinking about it and I'm glad you pointed to me because David mentioned that I didn't say anything on the last program, so this is great.

So, James, could you say something?

Well, the thing I like about this is what I like about the Declaration of Independence. It is a stark contrast to the nation or power that you mentioned earlier, which seemed to be an outworking of Darwinism, the eugenics, the Nazis, the Germans.

Oh yeah, Nazi Germany.

And when I say the Germans, I should say Nancy Germany, because it's not the Germans, it's Nazi Germany. It's the direction they took which was based upon this evolution model. And in the United States you have a completely different direction. So you have really in the post of these two developments, 1776, Declaration of Independence and Darwinism, you have two conflicts that take place. It leads to conflicting views.

It does.

And two conflicting nations. And the opposite is in these words, and these are just beautiful words from the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created, emphasis equal. You listening, Jeffrey?

I'm listening. I know.

You could speak this from memory.

Right?

I'm reading it.

And they are endowed by their creator. There it is again with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There's no way I can say that without someone else saying it. Also because we're sitting here and our whole lives are based upon this.

And we know.

I see it in the Bible, it's in Revelation we have these texts.

That's a thoroughly biblical statement. Yes.

These are lamb like principles. These are principles that come that find their origin in God.

They find their origin in creation.

In creation.

And I love the fact and freedom that when Jefferson's writing this and the others are assisting in their sort of evaluation and amendments to it before it's finally put to the burgeoning new country. This inclusion of self evident.

Self evident?

Yeah, I mean that's the strongest possible way to say that.

Wow.

How else could you say that we hold these truths to be self evident?

We don't need to argue it. It's intuitive.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

It doesn't say we hold these truths because the footnotes.

Here's our line of argumentation to be.

Self evident, that all self evident means we know this created, created.

Can I see something on that?

Well, that's at exact odds with the.

Eugenics things and endowed by the creat.

And there's this but the word equal there, that's a fascinating thing. Everybody today, secular or not, is especially, you know, we live in the state of Oregon and it's activism for everything, you know, and social rights, equality, all of these very familiar notions and ideals that we know that we read about in the news all day, every day.

I just love that fact that you can't. I'll pose the question rather. Can you arrive at any sense of equality among human beings?

Can you argue that human beings should be treated equally that we should all have equal rights from a purely evolutionary perspective, because we're not. Some would, but we're not equal, though. We're not all equal. People differ in iq, people differ in physical capabilities. Physical capabilities. People differ talents in. Talents in cultural development, in occupation.

So that kind of equality is not referenced in the Declaration of Independence. Right.

But my point is the notion of even assuming.

Yes, yes, got it.

That even assuming that human beings possess innate equality. My point is you don't get that.

From biology, from science, from evolution by.

Leaving the biblical narrative. The biblical narrative gives us the premise of equality, and that is that every human being, regardless of race, skin color, intelligence, iq, gender, what have you, was created in the image and the likeness of God because they were created.

Yeah.

So that's the thing, the objective thing that we all hold. And on the basis of that, we can argue for equality. And my point is, if you remove.

That out of the picture, where's the basis?

And actually, there's. One of the leading political.

Legal philosophers, Joel Feinberg, I believe was his name in the 60s.

Wrote on the concept of ethics from a secular perspective. And that's exactly the argument he posed.

He. He said.

This is a legal philosopher. He said, we don't really have a basis for equal rights.

It just seems to be the right thing to do. But he says that at its very core, we don't have a basis for it. And his argument for that was because we're not equal. We're not equal. From an evolutionary perspective, we're not equal.

Or a financial perspective, or an intelligent. Yeah, all of that.

I think that point doesn't get enough attention. I think that's a huge point that that's overlooked.

Here's how I would say it. We conduct government, we conduct law, we conduct the treatment of criminals. We do life on the assumption of the creation story. Like Ty was saying, there's the two stories. You have the creation story and you have the evolutionary story. You were made in the image of God's story or you've evolved from lower life forms. We don't do life based on this. We punish people that do life based on this. Oh, I'm going to this room and I'm going to take what I want. We say, okay, you're unsafe to society. We're gonna stick you away.

Right.

Or in extreme cases, they'll shoot them. We don't do life like that. We do life like the writers of the Declaration of Independence did. That's not to say that they were all evangelical Christians. Sure, they weren't. But there was this saturated idea that there is some sense in which we have, as you said, innate dignity. And where does that come from? It has to be transcendent to us. It can't come from among us. It has to come from outside of us. It's investing. Jeffrey, equally with David, with James, with Ty, with the cameraman, with the world.

And the fact that we do life. I love how you said that we do life. Assuming that another philosopher used the analogy of a borrowed credit card, is that so many people in the secular world or whatever world that are.

Contrary with.

The creation narrative and worldview live life on a borrowed credit card because they live life as if, according to the.

Credit card, that was true.

Yeah. They live as if there was purpose and meaning and as if individuals were valuable. But they're on a borrowed credit card. They're borrowing credit card to make purchases, to purchase these things and experience these things. But they're not inherent in that worldview. They have to reach outside the worldview borrows and import those ideals into a foreign worldview that doesn't have the underpinnings for it.

And the dignity of the individual goes in the direction of our systems of justice. In the creation perspective, there is legitimate reason for which we should all be held accountable for our actions toward others. Right. But in the evolutionary worldview, what's the basis for accountability?

On what premise do I say to you that was wrong what you did, and now you're going to suffer the consequences of what you did? There's no basis for a just society to be established or constructed, particularly, and.

This is probably going more philosophical than we want to go in this conversation, that we could, particularly when you realize that strict materialistic Darwinian evolution lends itself to determinism, that is to say that you don't really have a choice. You blame it on your genes, you blame it on a hundred other things. This is the person you were. Well, how do you punish that? How do you say, and we live in a world. You're going back to the first program there where, why are men unfaithful? Why are people unfaithful? Why can't they stay in bed with the right person? And, well, you have an evolutionary excuse. Well, because you can't not. Well, if you tell me that I can't not but do something, how are you gonna then punish me for doing it? Whether it's violence or infidelity or whatever.

I have an article just outside in the car in the parking lot. And then the article's titled My brain made me do it.

And in the subtitle, that's the point.

Something to the effect of how neuroscience enters court. And the article is literally dealing with the dilemma now in the court system of what you just said. And it highlights two individuals, otherwise perfectly sane, normal people. Some of them were physicians, some were educators. After years and years child molestation, all this stuff surfaces. Now they're in court and, oh, there's a chemical imbalance in the brain. And I don't want to take away from that. Obviously, there are cases where these things take place.

Brains can be broken.

But my point is that the article's.

Saying.

It'S like, what do we do with this? Now everybody gets the insanity defense, right? That's the thing.

There's no moral attachment to you or.

Not according to the evolutionary theory. It can't even rightfully be called insanity. It's just we're living in a chaotic explosion that occurred 14 billion years ago. And here we are on the tail end of that. We're evolving animals, and there's no reason to expect anything of anybody that would operate or act with respect for any other. And so there's no moral quality at all to human actions.

You go ahead, James.

Well, I wanted to bring not all of this to a conclusion, but I wanted to bring this together with a statement that I wanted to read because I think we're looking at very legitimate arguments against evolution, arguments that I think need to be brought to the table. A lot of times when we talk about this, when we discuss this subject, we try to defend the Bible, we try to defend God. And I think there's not enough offense in this. In other words, there's not enough people that are questioning the reasons behind evolution and the arguments behind evolution. I think that's what we're doing right now. So I want to read a statement to you, and I want you to see if you can pick out at least three points in here, solid arguments against evolution as I read this statement. See if you can bring them out. When we're finished, we'll talk about it. When consideration is given to man's opportunities for research, how brief his life, how limited his sphere of action, how restricted his vision, how frequent and how great are his errors in his conclusions, especially as concerned the events thought to antedate Bible history. How often the supposed deductions of science are revised or cast aside, with what readiness the assumed period of Earth's development is from time to time increased or diminished by millions of years, and how the theories advanced by different scientists conflict with one another. Considering all of this, shall we, for the privilege of tracing our ascent from germs and molluscs and apes, consent to cast away that statement of holy writ, so grand in its simplicity, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. Genesis 1:27. Shall we reject that genealogical record prouder than any treasured in the courts of kings, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God? Luke 3:38. Now, did you catch? Did you catch?

There's a lot there.

Yeah, but did you catch those three?

I think I want you to tell us what they are, because I wrote down the fear of action, but.

Well, the ones that I was specifically thinking about were this. First of all, there's this revision of science. Science is continually being revised by millions of years, up and down, up.

The earth is.

No, it's this. Then there is this.

The theories. In other words, there are different theories that are accepted or cast aside. Accepted or cast aside. We have this theory, then we have another theory, then we have another theory. And then when we come to some of these conclusions, number three, we have conflicting theories. One scientist will say 4 billion, other scientists will say 2 billion others. So you have the casting aside of ideas, then you have the adding and taking away millions and billions of years, and then you have the conflict of the final theories.

The only point of just correction on that, that I would say, is that the numbers of years, the amount of time, both cosmologically and biologically, in other words, for life and for the cosmos, those times aren't going up and then back, they're just going up. In other words, the revisions are always adding years. And there's reason for that.

Reason. I was thinking of theistic, but, like, in terms of, like, classical biological evolution. Okay, here's the simplest way to say microscopes didn't exist. The kinds of microscopes that we have access to today did not exist in the 1850s when Darwin's writing Origin of Species. So with their rudimentary tools, they look and they see something that looks like. Just gonna borrow this here, Ty. They see something that looks like that. They see a basic border, they see a parameter, and they see a dark spot in the middle. They know that's a cell. They can look at a leaf, they can put it on a glass. And they had a very simple. It looks like a brick, a simple brick. And you take a brick and you build a cathedral. You take a brick and you build a library. You take a brick and you build a house. So DNA is not going to be discovered. This is 18 for 100 years.

Love it. Yep.

Right. And the tricky thing about DNA is not just that it's this spiral. Whatever. This looks kind of like DNA. It's not just that it's this spiral chassis. That's not what makes DNA awesome. It's that. That spiral. In the same way that this iPad is pretty cool, but it's not this nice glass screen. It's what's inside of there.

The info.

The chassis contains information. It contains data. This is light years beyond this simplistic notion of what. And so originally. Okay, man. Evolves over this period of time. Whoa, whoa, whoa. There's a complexity here.

We need more time to account for the complexity.

But the thing is, David, that there's nobody who has brought forth any theory or any actual evidence that we witness any increase in basic DNA information.

Yeah, that's the. Yeah. Now we're kind of. Okay, so now we're getting to sort of the point of the thing. And the truth of the matter is. Not a scientist. Not a scientist. Not a scientist. Not a scientist. Right.

Very important.

That's huge. We have to admit that. But we also have to admit that the question of origin is too important to leave to professionals. You feel the weight of that. In other words, we can't allow.

We all haven't invested in.

We can't allow the priests of modernity, namely scientists, to have cart. You know, to have. They're the only ones allowed to speak to these issues just because we can't. No, no, no, no, no. We have held our children in our arm with the exception of Jeffrey. We have held our child. We have seen sunset. The same sunset they've seen. We have heard a symphony. The same symphonies they've heard. We have smelled the smell of magnolias or lilacs or whatever it is for you.

We.

We have tasted a mango plucked fresh from the tree. We know. So to say, for somebody to come to us and say it's really meaningless. It's just a number of episodes ago, Ty, there was a statement where you read this thing about how the universe is just in this decay. Bertrand Russell this decay. And we're just like a blip, a flash in the pan. I reject that. And can I reject it on the strictly scientific biological?

No.

But I'm comforted by the fact that there are scientists who disagree with the mainstream view, number one. And number two, I'm comforted by the fact that Scripture says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and let us make mankind in our own image, because that resonates deeply with my sense of justice, morality, the love, camaraderie. I mean, I'm preaching now.

Yeah, I was going to say it resonates with your experience. Experience in life.

Yes, it does resonate with my life.

Experientially, that resonates and it corresponds with the reality that I've experienced.

And I think that it's resonated with most people, most cultures which have been religious. And it gets us back to the Declaration of Independent statement. It's self evident. Come on now. Don't tell me that I am the mere product of biology. I can't accept that.

Can I tell you that our time is up and that we need to finish?

Our time isn't completely up. That's the end of segment two. We have one more segment.

We'll be back.

Take a break.

Let's take a break.

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This conversation is a little heady. My tongue was twisting a few times and I sensed that among us, we're a little bit out of our depth. I'm preaching because. Well, I'm talking about the fact that we pointed out that we're not scientists. You are preaching biblical ideas. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. We're not scientists, but we are theologians. We do love the word of God.

I wouldn't say we're human beings.

We're human beings.

I'm speaking as a human being.

As a human being, we sense the gravity of the subject matter. We've got two stories before us. We've got a creation story that invests human beings with dignity. And we've got an evolutionary storyline that is void of the raw materials from which to construct humans.

I like the way you say that.

Dignity.

Raw materials.

Yeah. So as we look at this subject a little bit further, I think it would be great if we could get to some of the biblical ideas that are completely incompatible with the evolutionary worldview. For example, the Bible very clearly and explicitly tells us that in Romans 5:12 that death came by sin. So here we have something that all of us, all human beings, hate and fear and dread death. The evolutionary worldview basically says this is just a part of the process of the evolutionary development of human beings and all life forms. But the biblical account says no, death is the product of sin. We have theistic evolutionists that come along and they try to retain a belief in God and retain the biblical narrative. But then what happens with death? Suddenly we're left with the distinct impression that, that if God used evolution as his means of creating the world, then death didn't come from sin, it came from God. God used a process that has death, not just death, but brutality inherent in the thing that is called evolution.

In other words, billions and billions of creatures.

Yeah. So if we accept theistic evolution, then we would have to necessarily believe that there is a brutal element in the character of God, that God is the one who came up with this method, this survival of the fittest self preservation methodology. How can we worship or love a God who thinks up a method that is so absolutely fantastic of pain and.

Suffering, Pain, suffering, death.

I think we can only go one of two directions. It's either full blown materialistic evolution and there is no God, or the biblical narrative, this theistic evolution thing in between. What is that?

You disagree with that?

No, I'm saying absolutely.

Especially when you have Jesus in the New Testament saying a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground, but your heavenly father takes notice.

But evolution would say this.

Take.

Evolution would say a sparrow falls to the ground. And that's part of a process that God developed in order for us to.

Be able to move on and grow.

The picture shows a tender brooding looking in picture over a sparrow. I'm a birder, as you know. I love my birds. I love that picture of God. Jesus also said, consider the ravens. I just love this idea that there's the tenderest, smallest things God is aware of. He's cognizant of. He created and he loves versus this picture that you're describing, which puts brutality as in the heart of God, as the mechanism, the creative mechanism by which he said, hey, how am I gonna get to my, you know, Adam and.

Eve in the garden? And the biblical story says death is what broke God's original mechanism, not part of his mechanism.

But take it a step further. What about the biblical idea of atonement? Oh, the whole thing the wheels. What do you do with that? So Jesus comes into the world and he dies, for what? If theistic evolution is true, how is the death of Jesus remedying sin?

Yeah, that's right.

A remedy for death. It makes no sense.

When we read the New Testament, the New Testament writers and Jesus himself assumed the basic historicity and truthfulness of the creation account. In other words, they're not building up to prove the creation account, they're starting with the creation account as their basis upon which they build their ideas.

Right, Right.

So if we say, okay, no creation, the creation account, where death comes after sin and where sin is an alien in God's otherwise beautiful and wonderful creation, if we start at a different place than that, then the New Testament doesn't make a wink of sense. That's my opinion.

That's why I say you got to go one of two directions.

I know there are well meaning Christians that are trying to marry the two and they see a basic compatibility. I've looked for it, I don't see it.

And the arguments are not persuasive. For example, in one conversation, an individual who is espousing theistic evolution, the basis of accepting that theory and retaining a belief in God, was to say, well, the Genesis account of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is clearly a poem, therefore it can't be taken literally. Well, the fact is Genesis 1 and 2 is written as a poem. It's a poetic, it's structured as a poem. But here's the thing. Just because it's a poem doesn't mean it's not describing things that are true. Isaiah 42 is a poem and it's describing the coming of the Messiah. We don't say that we can't have a Messiah because that's a poem. People write poems and love songs to express real things.

It's not describing every detail.

It's not telling us down to exactly what's going on with God at the molecular level. It's just describing that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. And it's a beautiful poem and it's telling us the truth.

Something I wanna about that is that while we are not scientists or philosophers of science.

There are many, not the majority, not by any stretch, but there are many scientists and philosophers of science and other thinking people out there who are familiar with the various disciplines and nomenclatures of these other academic areas that also are calling evolution into question. Not on biblical grounds, and that's the key.

But on scientific grounds.

But on scientific grounds, a number of Years ago I read a book that, it's a little heady but recommended especially for those that are interested in this, titled Uncommon Dissent, which is a play on the idea of common descent, the Darwinian mechanism of common descent. Uncommon descent intellectuals who find Darwinism unconvincing. Right. One of those intellectuals that writes in the book, there was a man by the name of David Berlinsky. David Berlinski's a, a writer, an author, secular Jew, mathematician, philosopher, and I've read most of his books, at least his non technical books. I've read most of his popular books and some of his books I've read repeatedly. And Berlinski is somebody who, though he's a Jew, he's a secular Jew, he's an admitted agnostic and he's not coming and saying, well, the Bible says therefore. Scripture says therefore. The Jewish Scriptures say therefore. He's saying, I'm not even sure about this whole God thing, but I know that's not true. So here's a scientist, here's a philosopher of science and there are others, there are many others that are taking issue with this basic picture not because they're in defense of some theological position which we could be accused of in this program. Somebody, a scientist or somebody else might watch this program and say, okay, but where's the scientific data? But we're not scientists, right?

So we're not going to bring that.

But we can say philosophically we don't feel it when it comes to governmental systems, when it comes to basic sense of justice, when it comes to human dignity, when it comes. We have addressed philosophically where evolution tends to. We talked about Germany and eugenics. But I'm greatly comforted to know that there are people out there like Dr. Berlinski, William Dembsky, Dr. Sean Pittman and this is a friend of ty and I's, Dr. John Ashton, wrote a great book, Evolution Impossible 12 Reasons why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on earth. He's a PhD microbiologist and just a really, just a cool guy. I mean he's got the longest eyelashes in the world by the way.

Yeah, he has beautiful eyelashes. That is a fun book to read. It's very fun. It's at the lay level.

It's at the lay level. So I love the fact that there are people out there who are conversant in that nomenclature and in that terminology that say, oh, by the way, another great resource is the website I mentioned. Dr. Sean Pittman, detectingdesign.com I don't know if you've been there or not. That's a huge resource for me. Detectingdesign.com and I'll be honest, a significant percentage of that goes over my head. But what I get, I love. Now, with your guys permission, I want to read one of my favorite quotations from David Berlinsky from his book the Devil's Delusion, which is a response to Richard Dawkins, the God delusion that describes.

By the way, that's a fun book to read too, and anybody can read it. It's not technical, it's entertaining, hugely entertaining. But it's so stimulating intellectually.

I've read the book four times and sections of it like 10. It's just pure. It's intellectual candy. It's a joy. It's fun to see a mathematician, a scientist and a philosopher of science give other intellectuals a hard time about the gaps in their own thinking and reasoning. Anyway, he has this great quotation from the book the Devil's Delusion that's talking about the fundamental difference that we all know intuitively between us and apes, us and lower life forms. Can I share that with you?

Sure.

Do it.

He says the idea that human beings have been endowed with powers and properties not found elsewhere in the animal kingdom arises from a simple imperative. Just look around. It is an imperative that survives the invitation fraternally to consider the great apes. The apes are, after all, behind the bars of their cages and we are not eager for the experiments to begin. They are impatient for the food to be served. They seem impatient for little else. After years of punishing trial, a few of them have been taught the rudiments of various primitive symbol systems, sign language. Having been given the gift of language, they have nothing to say.

I love that line.

He says in much of this, apes communicating. In much of this, we see ourselves. Now listen to this. But beyond what we have in common with the apes, we have nothing in common. And while the similarities are interesting, the differences are profound. If human beings are as human beings think they are, then religious ideas about what they are gain purchase. Last part. These ideas are ancient. They have arisen spontaneously in every culture. They have seemed to men and women the obvious conclusions, self evident. The obvious conclusions to be drawn from just looking around. An enormous amount of intellectual effort has accordingly been invested in persuading men and women not to look around.

I think that quote was really good, but I also think that it was read really well too.

I just read it so many times, I just love it. He's basically saying the sense that we are different than the other animal kingdom arises from this imperative.

Just look around, Take a look around.

And he says there's been a lot of intellectual effort invested in getting people to not look around.

We mentioned earlier that we're not scientists, and of course we're not. But there's something there that I think is interesting, the just look around part.

That invites everyone, that invites normal people.

That invites everybody into the discipline, into the process of observing, and that's science. We may not be able to observe on the scientific level that specialists are observing, but we sure can look around us and see the way the world operates. We sure can look at the relationship that we enjoy between a husband and a wife, between parents and children. We can certainly look at deeds of hand, heroism that we witness in the world around us, and we find ourselves spontaneously lauding it. Yes, just. Wow. Beautiful. Well done. There's something in us that agrees with moral beauty and there's something in us that pushes back on anything contrary to human beings rising to the level of what we know in our heart of hearts we were made for.

That reminds me of a Lewis statement where he says that we can look out there to try to understand the universe and try to understand. He says, or you can look somewhere closer to home. You can look at yourself and study your own processes and your own experience. And that itself is. That's the most accessible lesson book than looking out there, looking at other species. How about looking at our own species?

John Calvin, the reformer, had this great quotation where he basically said.

Go sit under a tree and it will become obvious to you that the faculties which you possess could not possibly have come from yourself. In other words, just spend a moment in self reflection. Of course, televisions didn't exist in this day, but turn off the television, turn off the iPad, get away from the Internet and just go sit under a tree for a while. Look at the birds, listen to the sounds, look at the grass and look inside of yourself and you will become aware that the world is a beautiful place and that you occupy a divine niche in that place. God speaking, both external and internal.

We don't do that enough in today's society.

It's just.

I think we should go back to that. Just staring out the window.

Well, this is rich. Coming from a city boy.

I heard that I have chickens now. I own chickens and my wife keeps bees in the backyard. But I listened to a song last night with my wife. The musician was saying, we need to turn the screen off and go out and stare at the stars. We need to do that more often. And I just think that's Powerful. And I think that everyone, in a sense, is a natural scientist, in the sense that we're natural observers of the world around us.

You're talking about turning screens off. Can I ask you to turn your screen on and read us that quotation? Because you have that one that.

I heard that one.

I just love it.

This quotation, Robert Jastrow, put. Robert Jastrow, God and the astronomers. And this one here is basically painting a picture of how for all these years the Bible has been telling us that the universe had a beginning. The universe had a beginning. And what is so obvious now to the scientific community hasn't always been, I think it was mid 20th century, 1960s, big bang theory and all of that. Right. So here's what he says. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He's about to conquer the highest peak. And as he pulls himself over the final rock, he's greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Oh, I love that.

And on that point, it's basically.

In the beginning, God created the world, and with that all of the components that we understand of life.

And that's not a diminishment of the scientific enterprise at all. What it's saying is, is that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Scripture has said that for 3,000 years. Right. And it's been the intuitive sense that man has had for even before Scripture was written. And then science has. That's been the storyline of human history for a long time. And then this modern sort of atheistic enterprise, last couple hundred years, has kind of gone away from that. And then now the actual discoveries of cosmology and other scientific disciplines are bringing it back. And so he's saying, man, this ends like a nightmare for these guys.

I read somewhere that a little bit of science makes a person an atheist, and a lot of science makes a person a believer.

Yeah, I've heard the same quotation, but with philosophy. It's a Francis Bacon quote.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

So really we've come full circle in our discussion here, and I think there's something. Something more than merely what we observe. We notice in human hearts our own, and in other human hearts that we aspire to something that finds no perfectly satisfying match in our present state of affairs. It's a great point. We're longing for a love, for a dignity that we cannot find satisfaction for in any relations in this world.

Wow.