Participants: Chris Holland (Host), Tim Standish PhD
Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201537A
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00:11 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 00:14 God's book, The Bible 00:18 Still relevant in today's complex world 00:24 It Is Written 00:26 Sharing messages of hope around the world! 00:38 CHRIS: Dear friends, I'm so glad that you've joined us for part two, "How Old is Old?" How old 00:45 are we? Not when we were born, but the origin of the earth, the origin of the universe. How old 00:53 are we? Today I have a special guest, Dr. Tim Standish. Dr. Standish, so glad that you are 01:00 joining us once again to have discussions on how old is old. DR. STANDISH: I'm glad to be 01:07 back. And yes, I brought some show-and-tell with me too, so I'm excited about this program. 01:13 CHRIS: Yes, we're going to get into the show-and-tell. Dr. Standish, you are the senior 01:18 scientist for the Geoscience Research Institute. Geoscience Research Institute is out of 01:24 California, southern California. What are you doing these days at the Geoscience Research 01:30 Institute? DR. STANDISH: Well, obviously, we're a research institute, so that means that we 01:36 engage in a fair amount of research activity. We have major projects going on in Peru, which 01:44 may be surprising to some people, studying the geology, and also the fossils in one of 01:53 the driest places on earth, and particularly, fossil whales there, which is particularly 02:01 interesting. We also have a major project going on with the granites that are found there in 02:08 southern California, asking questions about how they formed. So those would be two major 02:17 projects that we're involved with currently. CHRIS: Now, why are you doing those projects? 02:22 Are you just there to spend a little time in Peru and be out in the sun in southern 02:26 California? Why are you doing these projects? DR. STANDISH: Well, obviously, none 02:30 of these things is done for one reason. But the ultimate reason is to understand the past. We 02:36 want to know what occurred to produce those fossil whales. What occurred to produce those 02:45 large granite structures in southern California? What's that all about? What does it tell us 02:54 about the history of the earth, and possibly, how does it inform our understanding of history as 03:03 it's recounted in the Bible? CHRIS: And that's very interesting, because that's 03:08 really where we ended. We kind of left on a little bit of a cliffhanger last week. We talked 03:13 about this issue of nature, observing in nature, and just as a review to those who maybe 03:21 didn't catch the show last week, we talked about this issue of natural selection, which a lot 03:28 of people call "survival of the fittest." And as we talked a little, we actually saw that, in 03:35 nature, we actually don't observe this constant fight for survival, but rather, we observe 03:44 a harmony, an interaction. I believe you called it an interdependence. And what we saw 03:54 in that interdependence, or maybe let me ask you, Dr. Standish, when we see that 04:01 interdependence, the bee and the flower working together, the bacteria in the stomach, and a 04:08 human being working together, what do those things all point to? What does this harmony point 04:16 to? DR. STANDISH: Well, ultimately, it points to a plan. There was a plan that was in 04:22 place, so that all these various parts of nature would work together in a coordinated way 04:30 that benefits all of the organisms that are involved. It's a beautiful set of 04:36 relationships that we see out there. See, this is the ecologist in me coming out. I 04:44 love to see this. It is a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing, to see that wonderful 04:50 cooperation that's going on between organisms that's necessary for our survival. 04:56 CHRIS: And we kind of drew to a conclusion last week, that seeing that there's a plan, 05:02 well, in order to have a plan, there must be a planner, and ultimately, that planner that 05:08 has generated the plan is the God of the Bible. DR. STANDISH: That's certainly what 05:13 I believe. CHRIS: Now, we've got this harmony, plan, planner, and you have some rocks there, and 05:24 we're going to talk about those, but we have a little bit of a problem, Dr. Standish, or maybe 05:29 I'll say, I have a little bit of a problem, Dr. Standish. We see that harmony, but we see death, 05:35 we see dying, we see lions chasing antelope. We see that things aren't all harmonious. 05:46 DR. STANDISH: And the lions don't just chase the antelopes. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: They 05:54 kill them and eat them. CHRIS: What's going on there? DR. STANDISH: What's going on 05:58 there? This is a major question. You know, most people look around at the world and they 06:02 understand, there's something wrong here. There's a kind of profound injustice in what's 06:11 going on. I like cats, but I also like rabbits, and you know, rabbits, they're pretty harmless 06:19 creatures - well, they can scratch you - but, you know, they're not doing anyone any 06:25 harm, really, and yet, they are the prey for different kinds of cats and also eagles and other 06:34 birds of prey; foxes, everything seems to go after the poor little rabbits. It just doesn't 06:42 seem right. CHRIS: No. DR. STANDISH: The good guy doesn't win all the time. CHRIS: Yes. 06:46 DR. STANDISH: And what the Bible tells us, sort of, within the Biblical world view, this 06:54 problem of evil in nature is not ignored. What we're told is that this was not God's plan. When 07:07 God did the creation, at the beginning, it was very good. Death was not part of that 07:15 system. It's hard to understand that. I'm a biologist. I can't imagine an ecology working 07:22 without death. But that's the way it was initially. And then human beings were left in 07:30 charge. God said, you know, "You will be my stewards," to human beings. Human beings made the 07:39 decision to go with a different plan. And that's what we see playing out today. CHRIS: And 07:46 you know, not to make light of a very important subject, but it seems that that is kind of 07:54 something that can be observed throughout history, when human beings are put in charge, we 08:00 tend to kind of mess things up. DR. STANDISH: Things sometimes go wrong. CHRIS: Yes. So things 08:06 go wrong, human beings choose a plan other than God's plan. If you're watching today and you 08:14 have questions about this, we actually did a whole series on Noah, where we talk about this 08:21 problem of sin and the entry of sin. If you'd like to get that program, you can go to our 08:28 YouTube page, YouTube.com/iiwcanada, and get some in-depth answers. But Dr. 08:37 Standish, we see sin, we see death, we see the plan, the creation, marred. However, with 08:49 that death, that death has left a record, a fossil record. And even though death is a bad 09:03 thing, it's our enemy - the Bible says death is our enemy - yet the same Bible that says 09:11 that death is our enemy, in Romans 8:28, says that God can bring good out of bad things. 09:20 And so we have the fossil record, which is really, if we lay it all out, just put it very 09:28 plainly, the fossil record is a record of death. DR. STANDISH: Yes. CHRIS: However, 09:34 this record of death plays into this conversation we have on origins. So let's talk about 09:43 that a little bit. DR. STANDISH: Sure, yeah. I'd also want to point out that the Bible 09:45 talks about death being swallowed up in victory. And that's that sort of great, 09:50 divine justice that we look forward to, that you know, God's judgement is to raise people 09:57 from the dead, take them to heaven, do the new creation. It sounds like a good kind of 10:01 judgement to me. CHRIS: Yes. And before we get to those rocks, it's very interesting you say 10:06 that, because we don't want to leave people feeling very bad, that God has a plan, and His 10:12 goal is to get us back on that plan, and that plan is a new creation. One of my favourite 10:18 authors talks about after the new creation, uses this line that I love. It says that after 10:24 God makes this new creation, there will beat one pulse of harmony throughout the universe, 10:31 and that sounds like what God's original plan was, this harmony of interdependence. And that's 10:38 what God wants to get us back to, this victory and this harmony that He has for His 10:44 creation. DR. STANDISH: It certainly sounds like a beautiful thing, doesn't it? 10:48 CHRIS: Yes. So let's talk about some. now, I don't want to call them "rocks," but they may look 10:54 like rocks; however, they are fossils. And these fossils point out some amazing things. Because 11:00 often when we talk about fossils, we may see these fossils at a science museum or 11:07 something like that, as evidence of Darwinian evolution. However, as a scientist, you may see some 11:14 different things in this. DR. STANDISH: You know, there's a difference between data in 11:20 science and interpretation. And the standard interpretation of fossils is that they show the 11:25 evolutionary history of life. Now, everybody agrees that fossils are a record of things 11:34 that lived in the past. Now, the interesting thing about the fossil record is that it's a 11:41 little bit like a book, and you can think of these layers of rocks as being, like, pages in a 11:48 book, one on top of the other, or like a layer cake with different things in there. And 11:53 there are patterns in terms of what appears on the different pages or on the different levels 12:01 of the fossil record. So one of the things that I wanted to point out to you was this: This 12:09 is an organism called a trilobite. CHRIS: A trilobite. DR. STANDISH: A trilobite. Now, 12:13 we might look at it and say, "Oh, that looks like a fairly simple organism," but these were 12:18 not simple organisms any more than a cricket or an insect, you know, some other kind of insect 12:24 might be a simple organism. These trilobites are different from other arthropods, like 12:34 insects, but they seem to have had some similarities with them CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: Now, 12:41 the interesting thing about these is, as you come up through the layers of rock, just as when 12:50 you start turning the pages of a book, you know how there's sort of next to nothing on those 12:53 first few pages? CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: That's what it's like in the fossil record, for some 12:59 time. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: And then, all of a sudden, you have these guys show 13:05 up. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: And they appear. You don't see organisms below them 13:13 that look like they're slowly turning into trilobites. The trilobites just suddenly appear. 13:20 And they have very complex eyes, they had a complex system of growth that allowed them to shed 13:32 their exoskeletons as they grew. They had complex nervous systems. These were really, 13:42 really complicated things. And they show up in incredible diversity. And they show up with 13:48 a whole bunch of other organisms, all in one layer of rock that's called the Cambrian 13:55 layer. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: This is something that's called the Cambrian 13:58 explosion. There are a few fossils that you find underneath, but they don't look 14:05 like they are slowly evolving into these organisms that you see in that Cambrian layer. Just 14:11 boom, all of a sudden, you have huge diversity of organisms. You may not have as many species as 14:19 you have living today, but you have whole groups of organisms that simply are not known to be 14:25 living today. We certainly haven't found them anywhere. And trilobites would be an example 14:31 of these. Whole groups of organisms that have disappeared. But the point is, they show up 14:37 all of a sudden, including, interestingly enough, even vertebrates. Now, not human 14:43 beings. Human beings don't show up, human fossils don't show up in the Cambrian. But fishlike 14:48 fossils do. And none of these organisms do you see coming from some sort of slow, Darwinian, 14:58 evolutionary process. As you go up to other layers in the fossil record, you also see things 15:04 suddenly appearing, birds, for example, right at the top of a layer called the Jurassic, that 15:12 some might have heard of because of a film called Jurassic Park. CHRIS: Sure. DR. STANDISH: Right 15:15 at the top of that layer, and the bottom of the next layer above, called the Cretaceous, 15:20 all of a sudden, you have a lot of different kinds of birds, and they appear pretty much all over 15:26 the world, all in that same layer of rock. So sudden appearance is something that you 15:32 see in the fossil record. It is essentially the opposite of what Darwinian evolution predicts. 15:41 CHRIS: Now, this is fascinating. So I just took a visit out to Drumheller, here in Canada. And 15:50 Drumheller is the dinosaur capital of the world, right here in Canada. When we went out 15:55 there to Drumheller in the badlands, you can look out, and you see this layering happening, 16:02 you know, various colours, various densities, various different things. And what 16:07 you're saying is, as you look at the fossil record, you don't have organisms underneath the, I 16:15 believe you called it the Cambrian layer, where the trilobites are found, that are 16:20 organisms that look like they're becoming trilobites, organisms becoming trilobites; they simply 16:29 just appear. DR. STANDISH: That's right. It's as if they came from nowhere. But 16:35 you see the same thing with birds, you see the same thing with other major groups of 16:40 organisms. The appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record. Charles Darwin talks 16:49 about it as an abominable mystery. And he was well aware of this problem. CHRIS: Yes. 16:57 DR. STANDISH: What he attributed it to was problems with the fossil record rather than 17:03 problems with his theory, which is an interesting thing. He called it imperfection in the 17:11 geologic record, geological record. So that's an interesting thing. Another thing that you 17:16 see is sudden disappearance of things. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: Things are very 17:20 systematic in this. So for example, this here is a little piece of dinosaur bone. And 17:28 dinosaurs, which we've already talked about a little bit, they appear in what are called 17:36 mesozoic rocks. You can think of the mesozoic as being like a chapter in the book that these 17:43 layers of rock make up. Then they disappear at the top of the mesozoic. At the same time, 17:51 another kind of organism - this is called an ammonite - disappears as well. In fact, a 17:59 huge number of organisms disappear. And we never see them again. They don't live. they're 18:04 not found living today. There's a big question about what caused things to be sorted out in the 18:15 way they are in the fossil record. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: And to be perfectly 18:18 honest with you, I've listened to lots of explanations. I've listened to explanations that 18:28 involve huge periods of time. They don't work. I've listened to explanations that involve 18:32 short periods of time. And of course, those of us who believe the Bible believe that the time 18:38 is thousands of years, not millions or billions of years. And to be perfectly honest with 18:43 you, I haven't heard an explanation that really accounts for these kinds of patterns, the 18:48 sorting-out that we see in there. However, the sudden appearance does not go along 18:56 well with Darwinism. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: In addition to that, when you look 19:00 at these organisms, I mean, look at this trilobite here. It's a beautiful thing. These organisms 19:07 look just as complicated, just as elegant, just as beautiful as the organisms that we see living 19:16 today. We don't see organisms going from simple to complex. We don't see organisms going from 19:25 just one kind to multiple kinds as you go up through the fossil record. What we see is sudden 19:36 appearance of complex, elegant, beautiful creatures. CHRIS: And so, sudden appearance, sudden 19:45 disappearance, but let's just focus on the sudden appearance of complex, beautiful creatures. 19:52 You say you haven't. you've heard lots of lectures, no explanations. DR. STANDISH: I've 19:58 read lots of books, too. There are explanations, but none of them really fits. None of them 20:04 does an adequate job of truly explaining why things are sorted out so neatly in the fossil 20:15 record. Invoking huge periods of time is not particularly helpful for many reasons. And we could 20:25 talk about that, but it'd take a long time to unpack, but just let me give you one example. 20:29 CHRIS: Please. DR. STANDISH: If you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, or pretty much, probably 20:34 in Drumheller you can see this, did you notice that the layers were very flat there? 20:39 CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: Some of those layers are supposed to have gaps of time between them, 20:43 millions of years. Well, over millions of years, things erode away. That's how you're supposed 20:51 to get things like the Grand Canyon, right? It's supposed to have taken. I mean, now, I don't 20:55 believe that the Grand Canyon took millions of years. But my point is this: everybody 21:00 understands that there should be erosion in there. You shouldn't have nice, flat layers; they 21:04 should be eroded. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: Dramatically eroded. But that's not what you 21:09 see. It doesn't look like the time is there. CHRIS: So, what's the explanation, then, 21:17 Doctor? DR. STANDISH: Well, I wish I could. you know, I don't want to give you a glib, simple 21:22 explanation. I believe that much of the fossil record can probably be accounted for by a 21:28 global catastrophe. Now, I'm being very parsimonious, because other scientists believe that 21:37 there were several global catastrophes. So I'm merely saying, I just think there was 21:41 probably one global catastrophe. We call it Noah's flood. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: And 21:47 that may explain much of what we see. The problem is, no one was there. The account of the flood 22:01 that we have is the closest thing that we have to a sort of eyewitness account, or at least, 22:07 an account that was passed down over time to modern people. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: But 22:16 you know, we see that account in cultures all over the world. It seems like it made a profound 22:21 impact on humanity. CHRIS: Yes. So we're seeing this pattern, and these patterns showing up in 22:29 the fossil records, patterns that seem to point to some type of catastrophe happening 22:37 worldwide. What are some of the conclusions that we can draw from these patterns that we're 22:42 seeing, and this question of origins and how old are we really? DR. STANDISH: Well, 22:49 there are a couple of points that I pull out of this. First of all, it's very interesting to 22:54 me that the Bible provides both a coherent story of origins, or account of origins, one that at 23:01 least provides an adequate clause for what we see with living things. And then it also 23:07 provides an account of a global catastrophe - the flood - that also may help us understand why 23:17 we find all of these fossils stacked up as they are. Now, it also leaves plenty of open 23:25 mysteries for us. CHRIS: Sure. DR. STANDISH: We don't know why it is that you only find the 23:30 dinosaur remains in the mesozoic rocks. You know, why is that? It's a very interesting and 23:38 mysterious thing. Maybe we'll figure it out one day. Maybe we'll have to wait until Jesus 23:45 comes. But, the thing that I would point out is, these patterns do not fit with the 23:54 Darwinian model. The Darwinian model of slow, gradual change over long periods of time is not 24:03 recorded in the fossil record. CHRIS: And so saying that, you know, it's very interesting, 24:08 Jesus made a statement one time. He said that, as He was making the triumphant entry, and the 24:16 Pharisees were telling Him to quiet the people who were all happy to see He was coming, 24:20 "Glory to God in the highest," and He says, "If I quiet them, the rocks will cry out." And Dr. 24:28 Standish, it seems to me, as you're talking about this, that the fossil record - and I know 24:35 scientists wouldn't like for me to call fossils "rocks" - but it would seem to me that the rocks 24:41 are crying out, that our world - oversimplifying things a little bit - our world, me as a human 24:51 being, I'm not the product of some accident or rearrangement of atoms, but it seems that it 25:00 points to something. Dr. Standish, what's it pointing to? DR. STANDISH: Well, I would say 25:05 that it points towards. first of all, it points backwards towards a creation. These organisms that 25:12 lived in the past are just as amazing as the organisms living today. They didn't slowly come 25:18 into existence. So it points back to the original creation. And it also encourages us, then, 25:27 to look forward to the new creation that the Bible talks about. God says, "I will make 25:33 all things new." CHRIS: Dr. Standish, it is hard to believe we are out of time once again. 25:39 Thank you for sharing this. And let's have a word of prayer, thanking God that He has a plan, 25:47 and that plan is driving toward a new creation, when all things will be harmonious once again. 25:56 Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful that You are the planner, that You had a plan, 26:03 and that plan is that each of us would be a part of the new creation in heaven where we 26:12 could spend eternity with You. We thank You so much, in Jesus' name, amen. DR. STANDISH: Amen. 26:34 # 26:37 CHRIS: My dear friends, how exciting it is. The fossil record, which is a record of 26:43 death, which is the enemy, yet even the enemy, that record of death, points to a God that has 26:54 a plan, and that plan is to bring us back to the new creation. Today, I'd like to 27:02 offer to you an authentic fossil. I also want to offer to you the Discover Bible Guide. 27:09 The Discover Bible Guide will help you get to know the planner, Jesus Christ. Here's 27:15 the information you need to receive today's offer. 28:18 # 28:20 CHRIS: Dr. Standish, thank you so much for being with us today. DR. STANDISH: Thanks for having 28:23 me. CHRIS: Dear friends, join us again next week as we continue this discussion, how old is old? 28:32 Until then, remember, it is written: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 28:39 that proceeds from the mouth of God." 28:43 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ |
Revised 2016-09-28