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Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201535A
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00:01 It Is Written How Old is Old #1
00:06 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:10 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:15 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:19 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:23 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:27 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:31 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:35 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 00:39 It Is Written How Old is Old #1 01:29 # 01:31 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 01:34 God's book, The Bible 01:38 Still relevant in today's complex world 01:44 It Is Written 01:46 Sharing messages of hope around the world! 01:58 CHRIS: The great questions of life - philosophy, science - many have asked the question, 02:07 "How old are we?" Not when we were born in a hospital, but really, what is the origin of 02:14 all things? I am thrilled to have with me in studio Dr. Tim Standish. Dr. Standish is a 02:22 friend of mine and he is a friend of the show. Dr. Standish, I want to welcome you 02:27 again to It Is Written to have a discussion on origins. DR. STANDISH: Well, thank you, it's 02:33 great to be back. CHRIS: Now, Dr. Standish, for those who are watching maybe for the first 02:38 time and not familiar with who you are, you are a senior scientist with the Geoscience 02:44 Research Institute. You have a B.S. in zoology and a Master's in biology. Then you have a 02:54 Ph.D. in environmental biology and public policy from George Mason University down in 03:00 Virginia in the States. DR. STANDISH: That's correct, yeah. CHRIS: And that's a lot and a 03:04 big mouthful. But maybe just as a bit of a review, what is it that the Geoscience Research 03:11 Institute has dedicated itself to? What is the mission and what are you doing with the 03:17 Geoscience Research Institute? DR. STANDISH: Well, the mission of the Geoscience Research 03:21 Institute is to seek out understandings that make sense of the Bible and science. Now, 03:31 most of the time, if you look at most things, the Bible and science are not necessarily in 03:36 conflict with one another. Clear statements of scripture really don't conflict with what science 03:44 has discovered. Occasionally, you find things that are remarkable congruences, 03:51 particularly in archaeology. However, there are also some areas, a surprisingly small 03:58 number of areas, where there's some tension between the way that scientists, at least 04:04 traditionally, have been interpreting the data from nature, and the clear claims 04:13 that are made in Scripture. So where that tension exists is really where we are interested. 04:19 There's something interesting going on there, and what do we do with it? We're all 04:24 Christians. We're also all Ph.D. scientists who remain active in our disciplines. So we sometimes 04:35 struggle with this. Sometimes we think we come up with good answers, sometimes we have to 04:41 say, "You know what? We don't have answers yet. We live by faith, as all Christians do." 04:46 CHRIS: Yes, yes. Any exciting project that you're working on right now? DR. STANDISH: Well, I 04:51 mean, a number of things that I've been working on. Probably the thing that I'm most excited 04:54 about is a paper that one of the graduate students I worked with published as a senior author - 05:00 obviously, I'm on it - that deals with something that seems very obscure, I know, but it's 05:07 the mating habits of a certain kind of sea turtle that's endangered. This particular one 05:16 isn't super endangered, but we study a species that is not in critical danger, and see if we 05:24 can't find out things there that then we can apply with those that are more threatened. And we 05:30 were able to use molecular genetics as a way of figuring out some very interesting things 05:38 about the mating habits of these sea turtles. CHRIS: Wow, that is very, very fascinating. You 05:44 know, Dr. Standish, as a scientist, you've made a decision, and that is, your 05:51 decision is that you believe there is a divine force, God, who has caused creation. DR. 06:01 STANDISH: Yes. CHRIS: And this is a big question that could take long hours for us to go 06:10 through. But fundamentally, why is it that you have come to that conclusion, which is vastly 06:14 different than a great deal of the scientific community? DR. STANDISH: Well, my first 06:19 question back was going to be, "How long is this show?" There are several reasons that I would 06:25 draw to your attention. First of all, of all of the accounts of origins, to me as a scientist, 06:36 the one that makes the most sense is the Biblical account of origins. That doesn't mean that 06:44 I don't recognize that there are some tensions in there. There are some difficulties. And I 06:50 don't have all of the answers. But, the tensions with other views of how things have worked 07:00 out are so much greater, that I have faith that the tensions that exist there between the 07:07 claims of scripture in terms of origins, the relatively small number of issues offer greater 07:16 hope of resolution to me than the massive problems that I see, particularly with Darwinism, but 07:23 also, belief systems like theistic evolution and so on. You know, we don't have all the 07:34 answers on these things, which is what makes them interesting. Sometimes I speak at churches 07:39 and I meet people who do have all the answers, and they must live boring, sad lives. We don't 07:46 have all the answers. But I go with the Bible because it makes rational sense and because it 07:55 does line up with the data very well. Of course, that's obviously. there's still a step 08:01 of faith there. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: One other reason is that the Bible gives hope. It 08:09 gives us hope for the future, the new creation. It also gives us hope in the moment as well. 08:22 There is a creator God. He does love us. He is wise. He cares about us. And I believe that He 08:32 is active in the lives of human beings and in His creation. CHRIS: And so from your 08:37 observation, you've come to this conclusion that the Biblical model is the best model. And so 08:44 here's the question that I have for you. You know, when you look out in the world, when you read, 08:48 there are many people that talk about, write about origins. And for a lack of a better word, the 08:55 seeming go-to model is an evolutionary model that takes millions of years to produce 09:02 complex organisms, and then eventually, human beings. Why do you have a problem with that? 09:09 DR. STANDISH: My primary problem is that ultimately, I don't see it as being a scientific 09:16 undertaking. There are a number of reasons, again, for that. Number one, we see this kind of 09:24 theory from long before the emergence of modern science. So for example, if you go back to 09:31 the Roman writer, Titus Lucretius Carus, he actually lays out a theory of evolution 09:40 in which the atoms move around randomly without any guidance from the gods, and through 09:47 unguided interactions, they form the earth, the sea, the sky, and the generation of living 09:54 creatures. I'm paraphrasing him in English; he wrote in Latin. And he died about 55 B.C. So 10:03 before the time of Christ, these ideas were around. They didn't have the methods of trying to 10:10 date things that we have today. But another thing that really bothers me as a scientist is 10:19 that everything, all the really heavy lifting, is put way back in the past where it's 10:26 unobservable and untestable. So a lot of what is postulated to have happened is philosophically 10:38 necessary, given the presuppositions that are being started with. But they are not 10:47 evidence-based things. Now, there is some evidence out there that can be well interpreted 10:55 within that Darwinian model. So we don't want to pretend that that's not the case. However, I 11:02 believe that the majority of the evidence is not well interpreted within that model, and is far 11:10 better interpreted within the view that is presented in scripture. CHRIS: Okay. Now, I 11:19 need to kind of put my mind around this. You know, when I grew up, I grew up in school 11:24 being taught that this model of millions and sometimes in conversation even of billions of 11:32 years, and the catchphrase for this model is "survival of the fittest." I grew up learning 11:40 that. So tell me, I mean, what's the problem? You don't see survival of the fittest? I'm 11:47 pulling from your comments. Why aren't you seeing survival of the fittest? DR. STANDISH: Well, 11:53 let me rephrase that slightly. Charles Darwin came up with a theory of evolution based on the 12:02 idea of natural selection. Now, natural selection was kind of paraphrased as "survival of the 12:10 fittest," okay? And this is a term that's commonly used. And it does capture some of the 12:17 meaning of it. The idea is that certain individuals produce offspring, and others don't. And 12:28 that is not a purely random thing. The ones that produce more offspring have something 12:36 about them that can be inherited that is passed onto their offspring that somehow causes 12:45 them to make more babies. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: So he who has the most babies wins, in 12:52 this model. It can be really boiled down to that. And obviously, there is some truth 12:59 to natural selection. The question is, does natural selection really explain what we 13:08 see in the world today? What Charles Darwin said was that you started out with one organism, 13:18 and it developed variations, and certain variations were superior, or you know, were 13:24 selected above others. And as these different organisms sort of split apart, you slowly got 13:31 many, many, many different kinds of organisms. A pattern, by the way, that is almost the opposite 13:37 of what you see in the fossil record. But we can talk about that later. That's a big topic. 13:45 CHRIS: We're going to have a couple of shows on the fossil record. DR. STANDISH: However, 13:49 in this view, you have organisms that are competing with one another for survival all the 13:58 time. And everything is in a struggle to the death. And the most closely-related things are 14:07 in the most intense struggle to the death with one another, because you know, you are a 14:15 human being, and I'm a human being, so we eat the same kind of food, and in this Darwinian 14:22 view, there's only so much of that food, so we have to fight over it to see who gets it, and 14:27 whoever wins gets to eat and gets to breed. CHRIS: Okay. And so this phrase, "survival of the 14:34 fittest," the more proper term in the evolutionary model is "natural selection." Now, you 14:40 said something, and I want to spend just a moment kind of digressing just a little bit. 14:45 You said there are certain instances where natural selection is happening. We can 14:51 observe this? DR. STANDISH: Well, yes. Babies that are stillborn don't get to have 14:57 more babies. So if there's some genetic reason that, you know, a child is dying before it reaches 15:11 the age that it can reproduce, obviously, that's natural selection at work. What natural 15:17 selection seems to do in nature is kind of keep things the same. It stops wild variations that 15:26 are lethal to that particular species of organism. CHRIS: And you just said something now 15:34 that's got my mind kind of exploding with questions. You said natural selection actually 15:39 narrows things. DR. STANDISH: Well, it keeps things stable. CHRIS: Keeps things 15:44 stable. However, when we have this natural selection keeping things stable, it seems, in 15:58 evolutionary explanations, that natural selection is actually used to explain the development 16:03 of organisms into another organism. DR. STANDISH: There are really two parts of Charles 16:09 Darwin's theory of evolution that you have to understand to understand how this all works 16:15 together. You start out with variation. If you look at organisms like you and me, we're 16:22 a bit different. We're both very handsome, but a little bit different. And so that variation 16:29 is then acted on by natural selection. Now, most of the time, what natural selection 16:37 seems to do, what it's been observed to do, is kind of keep things the same. It stops these 16:44 wild variations. According to Darwin's theory, occasionally, there's a variation that makes 16:52 you have more babies. And whatever that variation is, it could be, you know, having a 17:00 larger nose, or having blond hair and blue eyes, I don't know what sort of things make human 17:06 beings have more babies, but something genetic makes you have more babies, and then that's 17:14 passed on, and natural selection kind of then moves towards that new kind of standard. So the 17:23 idea is that natural selection can sort of move an organism in a certain direction, even though 17:30 there's no goal in mind. It's just a matter of a certain variation making more babies. So 17:39 that's how it's supposed to work, at least. CHRIS: And why do you think that that's not how 17:45 it works? And when you observe nature, you're coming to a different conclusion than 17:50 Darwinian evolution. DR. STANDISH: Well, certainly from a scientific perspective, it just 17:55 doesn't look like it works. First of all, when we try doing selection on organisms, so dogs, 18:05 for example, what we find is that we can get amazing variability in dogs. You've got 18:11 little Chihuahuas and big Great Danes and so you've got this incredible variety in dogs. 18:21 However, you don't have elephant-sized dogs, and you don't have dogs turning into 18:27 watermelons or something like that. There's a limit on the variability. And once you hit 18:34 that limit, you just don't seem to be able to go beyond it. CHRIS: That's very interesting, 18:40 and I spent a few years learning about growing apples. And I knew a man in Wisconsin who had an 18:47 orchard. He grew 450 varieties of apples. And it was a fascinating thing. He had apples 18:53 called Coconut Crunch, which had the crunch of a coconut, but at the end of the day, it was still 18:57 an apple. He had another apple called Hawaii that had a little tinge of pineapple flavour to 19:03 it. However, it wasn't a pineapple, it was still an apple. So what you're saying is, 19:07 when we observe, we see variety, but there's a limit to that variety. You don't have a dog 19:13 becoming an elephant. DR. STANDISH: It just doesn't work that way. It's certainly not 19:20 something that we've observed. Now, I sometimes use roses as an example. You can have red roses, 19:28 you can have yellow roses, you can have white roses, and you can have all sorts of variations 19:34 in between, because roses have the genetic potential to make those different colours in 19:41 there. So a pink rose has just a smaller amount of the red pigment produced. Amazing 19:47 variety within roses. But you don't have blue roses, genuinely blue roses. CHRIS: Yes, right, 19:56 right. DR. STANDISH: Now, I've actually tried to make blue roses. I actually grew something 20:02 called a blue rose. It was a very sick kind of rose, not a happy rose, and it certainly was 20:09 not blue. Not blue like our shirts. The way you make a blue rose is by either using 20:16 Photoshop to photograph it and then turn it blue, or perhaps, you know, dyeing it blue in some 20:23 way, or, you can take a gene for making a blue pigment from another flower and put it into a 20:32 rose, and you can actually do that. That's engineering. It's guided. It's intelligent design. 20:39 So we know that ultimately, variability like this, the kind of sort of big jumps in 20:47 variability that you've got to have if you're going to evolve a rose into, let's say, an iris or 20:55 something, that those don't happen when we do artificial selection; why would we expect 21:01 that they happen when you do natural selection, for which there is no guide? CHRIS: No, 21:06 no. So when we look at it, maybe a word that we could use is, there's harmony rather than this 21:14 fighting for survival. What do you see there? DR. STANDISH: Well, there is amazing 21:22 harmony in nature. And frankly, the idea of survival of the fittest, in my opinion, is quite 21:29 a corrosive view of nature. Biology is not in a constant state of war. You know, we're 21:39 not in a gigantic competition for mates and food with each other. We have a good, friendly, 21:48 cooperative relationship. But if you look at nature in general, that's the way it works, and in 21:53 fact, that's the way it has to work. Think about bees and flowers. They are not in a 22:00 competition with one another for survival; they're cooperating with one another. The flower is 22:07 producing pollen that it wants the bee to carry for it to another flower, and it is also 22:15 producing nectar that then feeds the bee and rewards the bee for doing it. So everybody comes out 22:22 on top. Another example would be the fungus that grows in association with the roots of 22:30 plants. CHRIS: Mmhmm. DR. STANDISH: This is an amazing, amazing relationship that's 22:37 there. They're not at war with each other at all. The plant supplies sugar, the fungus 22:42 supplies minerals, it increases the surface area of the roots, it can absorb more water. And by 22:51 the way, it's also been found that plants can signal using the fungus between one plant and 22:56 another. This is remarkable. Human beings ourselves. You know, there are more non-human 23:05 cells in a human body than there are human cells. Now, that's because, to a large degree, 23:13 bacterial cells are much smaller than the average human cell. But in our gut, we have all kinds of 23:20 different bacteria that live in there and help us. Without those bacteria, we probably couldn't 23:28 survive. So we have a beautiful cooperative, interdependent relationship with all of these 23:36 organisms that live on us and in us, and without them, we can become very ill. CHRIS: And 23:43 without that cooperation, and a model that requires warring for survival, in fact, it would seem 23:52 to do almost the opposite, in that you would have nothing survive because you would not 23:57 have this interdependence. DR. STANDISH: "A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand," to 24:02 quote Jesus Christ Himself. Yes, if all of nature was at war with everything else, life could not 24:13 exist, or at least, it certainly doesn't look as if life could exist. And irrespective of 24:19 whether it could exist or not, what we actually observe in nature is, the vast majority of 24:26 the time, amazing cooperation and not some kind of fight to the death for survival. 24:34 CHRIS: And so, having said that, and I'll use this word "harmony" again, this harmony and 24:41 interdependence, as a scientist, as a zoologist, a biologist, an environmental biologist, and as 24:51 you observe nature, and we've given several examples - roses, bacteria - what does this all 24:58 point to for you? DR. STANDISH: To me, it points towards a plan. Imagine a 25:04 factory, let's say. If you're going to produce something in a factory, there has to be a plan, 25:12 and all sorts of different systems have to come together and work together in a 25:17 cooperative way. We know that that's how things work. When we look at nature, we see something 25:24 vastly more beautiful than a factory or anything that a human being has made. Why would we 25:33 interpret it differently than we do something as ugly as a factory? Nothing against 25:41 factories, of course. CHRIS: No, no, sure, sure. DR. STANDISH: But they do illustrate 25:44 an important point. Nature requires a plan to work, a plan for that cooperation. And 25:55 without a plan, there would be nothing. CHRIS: And I don't want make too big of a jump, Dr. 26:04 Standish, but if there's a plan, it would seem to me to indicate that there is a planner. DR. 26:12 STANDISH: That's right. Somebody designed a plan. CHRIS: . that generates the plan. DR. 26:15 STANDISH: Yes. CHRIS: And as you observe, and as you ask this question, and as you see, 26:21 there's design, there's a plan, which must mean there's a designer or a planner. 26:27 Ultimately, in your mind, who is that planner or that designer? DR. STANDISH: Well, that is 26:34 Jesus Christ. And probably the most amazing thing about history to me is, it's indisputable that 26:45 Jesus Christ existed. Jesus Christ came down, became part of His creation, and demonstrated 26:55 His power over the creation. And this is a matter of historical record. It's not fanciful 27:02 stories; it's an actual historical record that we have of this occurring. To go with 27:10 any other idea is simply a denial of history. So I'm very pleased to not deny history and 27:21 to accept a view that it makes sense and is beautiful. CHRIS: And so Dr. Standish, we 27:29 are unfortunately out of time once again. But what a beautiful thing. Nature demonstrates there 27:37 is a plan, and a plan requires a planner, and that planner is Jesus Christ. DR. 27:44 STANDISH: Amen. CHRIS: Let's pray. Lord, we thank You that there is a plan, that You are 27:50 that planner, and that You have a plan for each and every one of us. We thank You so much. In 27:58 Jesus' name, amen. 28:04 # 28:07 My dear friends, what a phenomenal thing it is to know that there's a plan, and behind 28:14 that plan, there is a planner, and that planner is God, and He has a plan for your life. Today, 28:20 I'd like to offer you to the book Beyond Imagination, a book by Dr. James Gibson, the 28:26 director of the Geoscience Research Institute. In addition to that, maybe you want to learn 28:32 more about how to enter into a relationship with that planner Jesus Christ. I'd like to also 28:42 offer to you the "Discover Bible" lessons which will take you on a journey of discovering 28:47 a relationship with Him. Here's the information you need to receive today's offers. 29:34 # 29:36 CHRIS: Dr. Standish, thank you so much for being with us today. DR. STANDISH: Well, thanks so 29:40 much for having me. CHRIS: Dear friend, I want to invite you to join us again next week as Dr. 29:45 Standish and I continue our discussion on origins. Until then, remember, it is written: 29:53 "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." 30:00 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ |
Revised 2016-12-01