Participants: Chris Holland (Host), Tim Standish PhD
Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201538A
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00:11 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 00:15 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 # 00:40 CHRIS: Friend, thank you so much for choosing to watch It Is Written. We'rein the third part 00:44 of our series, "How Old is Old?" Not when we were born, or when our last birthday was, but 00:53 asking the question of origins. How old are we? Where did we come from? How long ago did we 01:02 come from it? And to help me in this conversation, I want to welcome again good friend Dr. 01:09 Tim Standish. Dr. Standish, thank you so much again for being here with us. DR. 01:16 STANDISH: Well, thanks so much. You know, I'm having fun with this, and I hope that 01:19 everybody's enjoying just digging into these questions a little bit. We don't have all 01:25 the answers. But you know, there are some great answers there, both in science and in the 01:28 Bible, that can really, I believe, build our faith and give us hope for the future. 01:34 CHRIS: Absolutely. And speaking of that, you work for the Geoscience Research Institute as 01:42 a senior scientist. And part of your mission is to look at this relationship between faith, the 01:50 Bible, and science. What are some of the projects that you're working on right now as a group 01:56 to look at that relationship between faith, science, and the Bible? DR. STANDISH: Well, I 02:02 will tell you that one project that we're looking at right now has to do with the problem of 02:07 evil. You know, what really does the Bible say about this? How do we explain things in nature? How 02:17 does the Bible explain things in nature that look designed, but look like they're designed for 02:25 an evil purpose? So, for example, how do we explain things like the envenomation 02:32 system that you see in rattlesnakes? You know, that's a system that's designed to kill. 02:40 How could a good God have made something like that? We're actually taking a step back, 02:48 with some other colleagues - because we don't work in isolation; we work with other 02:55 academics - looking at what the Bible actually says about these things. So we're taking actual, 03:03 real, scientific examples and comparing them with what the Bible says, to see, hey, you 03:14 know, is there something there that actually makes sense? Is there something that works in 03:20 all of this? CHRIS: Wow, that is very exciting. And if somebody wanted to kind of follow that 03:24 research, read about other research that the Geoscience Research Institute is doing, 03:29 where might they find some of that information? DR. STANDISH: They can follow us on 03:32 Facebook. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: And certainly, I encourage them to visit our web 03:36 page, that's grisda.org, grisda.org. And we have a blog there, we have a huge collection 03:49 of excellent papers and articles on science and faith. We have a constantly-updated series of 03:58 links to articles that deal with questions relating to science and faith. So it's an 04:05 interesting, constantly-changing page. Some things are very academic, other things are for a 04:11 broader audience. CHRIS: You know, Dr. Standish, we have been having conversations about this 04:18 issue of how old is old, what are our origins? Dr. Standish, you are a biologist, you have a 04:24 Ph.D. in environmental biology and public policy. You have a Master's of Science in biology. 04:31 You have a Bachelor's of Science in zoology. You've taught as a professor of biology in two 04:39 different universities. So when we look at this issue of fossils, of rocks, why are they 04:49 so important? DR. STANDISH: Well, the most important thing, for me, at 04:55 least, about fossils is that they allow us to do the closest thing we can to time travel. 05:02 Because we can't go backwards in time, we have to look at whatever record is there. 05:10 Obviously, the best thing is a written record by somebody who actually witnessed something. 05:16 But the fossils reveal to us important information about organisms that lived in the 05:26 past. CHRIS: And what we talked about in our last show was patterns. We see these patterns, 05:35 and probably most importantly, the pattern that is absent from the fossil record is organisms 05:45 such as the trilobite, which we talked about, shows up in the Cambrian layer, but before that, 05:53 you don't have organisms that look like they're becoming trilobites, and eventually 05:59 developing into trilobites. What's happening there? They just appear. DR. STANDISH: They 06:06 appear from nowhere, apparently. CHRIS: Yes. And we talked about those patterns, and those 06:11 patterns point to a plan, a design, a planner. And actually, this fossil record, although a 06:22 record of death, although a record of the marring of creation- because somewhere 06:28 along the line, creation kind of set off on a different plan - the fossil record shows that 06:38 there is a God, a master designer behind it. Now, here's my question, though, that we 06:44 need to get into today, because that's wonderful that the fossil record shows patterns. Here's 06:50 the thing. A lot of science literature, when I took science class in junior high, high 06:57 school, talked a lot about fossils. In fact, I fell in love with dinosaurs when I was very 07:02 young. But here's the issue: When we read the literature, when we hear 07:08 scientists, when we look in our science textbooks, most of them are talking about fossils being 07:14 millions, if not billions of years old. What are your thoughts on that? DR. 07:21 STANDISH: Well, first of all, isn't that a horrifying thought? That millions and millions and 07:27 millions of years, hundreds of millions of years, by most accounts, innumerable organisms 07:36 have been dying, you know, suffering and death, suffering and death, for hundreds of 07:41 millions of years. Now, there are a few fossils that are supposed to be billions of years 07:49 old, but those are rare and unusual. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: It's really fossils 07:54 that show up in that Cambrian layer, which was supposed to start about 540 million years 08:00 ago, where all of a sudden, you see lots and lots and lots of fossils. Below that, not so many 08:05 of them. However, there's a recent paper that is very fascinating when it comes to 08:10 these things. And that bears on this issue of time. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: It turns out that 08:18 the carbon that you find in living things has a slightly different isotopic ratio. It has 08:26 a little, like a chemical signature that's a little bitdifferent from carbon that's 08:31 just out there and didn't come from a biological source. Now, the interesting thing about that 08:38 is, they find carbon with that biological signature in it that is in rocks, little zircon 08:48 crystals, okay, little zircon crystals that are supposed to be older than 4 billion years. Now, 09:00 why is that important? CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: Because even in the 09:04 conventional dating scheme of things, it means there was no time for life to evolve. 09:11 Basically, the way things are supposed to have worked is this: about 4.5 billion years ago - 09:20 bear in mind, I do not believe these numbers - 4.5 billion years ago, dust and stuff all 09:27 amalgamated together to form the planet Earth. But, it was very hot. And so the earth was a 09:37 molten ball. Nothing could live on the surface of molten rock. CHRIS: Sure. DR. STANDISH: And 09:47 supposedly, it took half a billion years for the earth to cool enough to have a crust on 09:54 it. So what that means is, rocks that are older than 4 billion years are barely the first rocks 10:05 formed when the earth cooled enough to get a crust on it. There's no time between being a 10:13 molten ball and this organic carbon for life to actually evolve. Now, somebody will 10:21 probably figure out away of inserting a few years in there. But the point is, that even when 10:29 you take these numbers for what they claim, there are major, major problems with the 10:37 development of life, giving life enough time to develop for chemicals. It's hard to imagine 10:45 that happened in an instant. We haven't observed it happening in several thousand years. So you 10:53 know, the idea that it would occur in an instant is pretty optimistic, let's put it that 10:58 way. CHRIS: So if that model is not a model that works, in your mind, let's talk about time. 11:08 What is a model that does work? DR. STANDISH: Well, I believe that the biblical account of 11:12 history is an accurate one. And it's still not necessarily that easy to put your finger on 11:21 exactly when the creation occurred. Remember that I'm a biologist, so my primary 11:29 interest is in when the organisms were created. So there was that six-day creation week, 11:36 followed by rest on the Sabbath, where all of the creation is basically enjoying rest after a 11:42 very eventful week. The question, then, is, when did that week happen? And the Bible 11:51 gives us some great data to work with. We see it in the form of genealogies. CHRIS: Okay. DR. 12:00 STANDISH: So in these genealogies, what it'll say is, "Well, in such-and-such a year, 12:05 when so-and-so was such-and-such an age, they had a son, and that son's name was such-and-such." 12:14 It could've been Noah or something like that. And then when Noah was such-and-such an 12:19 age, then he had a son, and that son may have been Shem, let's say. CHRIS: Yes. DR. 12:26 STANDISH: And if you look at these, you can actually figure out, okay, there's a certain 12:33 number of years between all of these births, and you can get up to an actual historical event, 12:40 at which point you can then figure out the time between that historical event that we have a 12:46 date for and the present day. And when you do that, you get something between 6 and 12:55 something less than 10,000 years. It depends on how you add the numbers up, and there are 13:02 other variables that you can put in there. So we can't put our finger on exactly when the day 13:07 of creation was. But the point is this: It's thousands of years ago; it's not millions or 13:14 billions of years ago, according to the Biblical account. So then the question is, well, why is it 13:21 that scientists are saying, "Well, life was never created, and it came into existence 13:31 billions of years ago," basically, and there's this huge amount of time? Well, there are 13:39 two major reasons whythat's done. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: Number one, the 13:45 thinking is that if you have enough time, that, combined with natural selection, will be kind 13:55 of like the magic source that somehow or other produces this amazing diversity of life that 14:02 we enjoy and celebrate today. There are major problems with that. I mean, obviously, it sort 14:10 of becomes unscientific after a while. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: What it's saying is, 14:14 because we scientifically do not observe this happening today, we're going to put it well 14:23 beyond the possibility of observation by putting it way back in time. Everybody agrees 14:30 that no human being was there to observe the creation. CHRIS: That's right. DR. 14:36 STANDISH: So somehow or other, we've got to use data and we have to, you know, look at what 14:45 our philosophical system demands. The materialistic, Darwinian system demands huge 14:52 amounts of time. Now, as we discussed before, even with those huge amounts of time, 14:57 there are immense problems for the Darwinian system. Time is not the same thing as magic. And 15:04 stuff that, you know, we believe, to at least a limited degree, that the present is the 15:10 key to the past, as scientists, we believe that the laws of physics remain the same, and so 15:16 on. So why would we expect an event that we don't observe happening today to have occurred 15:25 a billion years ago or three billion years ago or longer? It just, it's kind of a leap of 15:33 faith. I'm not all that comfortable with leaps of faith like that myself. Then the 15:40 question. but there's this other major reason why a scientist might start talking about long 15:46 periods of time, and that is because there's actual data that are well-interpreted within that 15:55 kind of model. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: And you've probably heard of radiometric dating. 16:00 CHRIS: Yes, for sure. DR. STANDISH: That's probably the number one thing out there. But 16:05 there are other methods as well. You might look at rates of erosion, things like that. 16:10 CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: And then sort of start doing extrapolating from that. 16:16 CHRIS: Now, we've had some previous discussion in our previous shows, that that first 16:21 reason that you were talking about, of long periods of time and natural selection. DR. 16:27 STANDISH: Yeah. They're a sort of philosophical reason, I would call it. CHRIS: Yes. That just 16:32 doesn't seem to work, because the evidence of the fossil record, for example, the 16:38 trilobite, it doesn't show this long period of time in the fossil record where you have 16:45 this evolving organism that becomes a trilobite. You simply have trilobites that [snap] 16:53 there they are. DR. STANDISH: There they are. CHRIS: And so the evidence, the 16:57 observable, scientific evidence, not there. Now, this second thing, radiometric dating and 17:05 some of these other things, very briefly - and we don't have time to have an in-depth conversation 17:11 for radiometric dating - I need to be able to ask you intelligent questions, and it 17:14 would be very hard for me to understand - but very elementary explanation, what challenges are 17:20 we having there? DR. STANDISH: Well, when we look at rocks, there are certain 17:25 isotopes, certain variations on elements that we find in there. And some of them are unstable. 17:34 So they'll convert from one type to another type of atom, basically. And we can easily - 17:41 well, not easily - but in the lab, we can measure the quantity that is present. And so the 17:50 bottom line is this: if you know how many were there in the first place, and you know how many of 17:55 a certain isotope you have now, and if you know that it changes from one form to another at a 18:02 constant rate over time, you can calculate the time. That's the basic idea. CHRIS: Okay. DR. 18:09 STANDISH: It's a little bit complicated. It seems to work sometimes. But then sometimes it 18:19 doesn't seem to work. The thing that fascinates me about radiometric dating, and the best 18:22 method that I understand - I should say the method I understand the best - is 18:27 carbon-14 dating. It's the only one that really can measure how old a biological sample is. 18:40 CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: Now, it's quite limited. You really can't get dates much beyond 18:45 100,000 years using carbon-14 dating. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: So carbon-14 dating 18:52 has never shown, and can't show, in theory, even, that something is millions of years old. 18:59 CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: And the thing that's interesting, to me, about carbon-14 dating is 19:04 that actually, as far as I've been able to determine, nobody truly believes it, at least, the 19:10 theory, because instead of using the theoretical rate at which carbon-14 is supposed to 19:18 change-actually, to nitrogen-14, interestingly enough- instead of using that, a standard curve has 19:28 been developed based on the known dates of samples. And you can imagine where this is going. 19:37 What that means is, people don't truly believe the theory, and they go with these known dates, 19:44 but that assumes that you actually know the dates of these pieces of wood or whatever it is 19:50 that you're working with. So it's an interesting method of dating things. It does sometimes 19:57 seem to work. Sometimes it doesn't seem to work. So for example, when you look at the 20:02 dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, sometimes the carbon-14 dating lines up with the dates that are 20:12 actually written in the scrolls; sometimes they don't, which is kind of unexpected. CHRIS: Yeah, 20:21 sure. DR. STANDISH: But that would be an example of how there's a lot of uncertainty in 20:25 this. I'm more interested in not, you know, with something within 100 years of a certain 20:31 date; I'm interested in this big question: Is life hundreds of millions of years old, or is it 20:37 thousands of years old? CHRIS: And that's what I was going to ask you. So we have a 20:42 challenge here. We have a great deal of science saying millions and billions; we have the Bible 20:48 saying thousands; we have a fossil record that seems to indicate millions and billions 20:55 not possible, and thousands, much more plausible. So what do we do with that, Dr. Standish? 21:02 DR. STANDISH: Well, obviously, you should have an understanding, at least as a 21:08 scientist, I believe you should have some sort of evidence-based idea about this. So going in 21:12 between is basicallycoming up with a theory that doesn't have any data to support it. 21:19 CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: I happen to go with the Bible. But it does turn out that if you 21:24 look at fossils, there's plenty of evidence that in fact, they are not millions of years old. 21:33 CHRIS: And what is some of that evidence? DR. STANDISH: I'll give you an example. This here 21:37 is a piece of dinosaur bone. It's been cut through there. And you can see that this particular 21:45 dinosaur bone is mineralized. The original bone that was there has been replaced with minerals 21:55 of various kinds. However, sometimes you find dinosaur bone that doesn't have the bone 22:04 actually replaced by other minerals. And you can remove the normal minerals that are found 22:14 in bone, the calcium phosphate that's there, and in bone, there's actually quite a bit of 22:19 protein that's present. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: Now, this has been reported in the 22:24 scientific literature. Now, bear in mind, dinosaurs are supposed to have gone extinct about 65 22:33 million years ago. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: So any dinosaur bone should bemore than 65 22:41 million years old, and yet, various biological molecules, and in particular, specific 22:49 proteins, have been found inside these bones. That is shocking news. CHRIS: Yes, very shocking 22:59 news. So we're shrinking down that major long ages. DR. STANDISH: Proteins do not last 23:06 millions of years. This has been tested very, very carefully in laboratories, because it's one 23:12 of those things that can be used in forensic science. You want to know how old the body is? One 23:19 thing you can look at is how fast the proteins break down in those bones. Now, they might be 23:25 able to stay around for thousands of years, but millions of years? Wow. That's pretty 23:32 optimistic. That's pretty optimistic. So that would be a biological example. CHRIS: Okay. 23:38 DR. STANDISH: It's not just proteins. Right now, I and some colleagues have been collecting 23:47 papers, reporting in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, the presence of 23:53 biological molecules associated with fossils of various kinds - proteins, fats, other things 24:03 that are produced by living things - they shouldn't be there, and yet they're present. 24:08 CHRIS: This is fascinating, Dr. Standish. We are running a bit short on time, but you were 24:16 going to show, I think, something else here. DR. STANDISH: Let me show you one 24:19 more quick one. CHRIS: Please, I like show and tell, yes. DR. STANDISH: In salt, there are 24:22 little bacteria that get trapped inside the salt crystals. These bacteria that are supposed to be 24:28 on the order of hundreds of millions of years old can be brought back to life. Now, there 24:38 are obviously multiple explanations that you can have for this. But if those bacteria 24:43 are truly over a hundred million years old, there is no possibility that they could've 24:51 lasted that kind of time period and still be alive in there. That's just incredible. And like 24:59 I said, this is in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. It's not some sort 25:03 of marginal thing or somebody who's just sort of making this up. So that would be another 25:08 example. Another example has to do with the rate at which the human genome and the genomes of 25:14 other organisms seem to be breaking down. The idea that you can push the ancestors of human 25:24 beings back hundreds of millions of years without their genomes simply breaking down to the 25:29 point that everything goes extinct, is very optimistic. Thousands of years, yes; 25:36 millions of years, no. CHRIS: You know, Dr. Standish, we are out of time, and we could 25:42 say a great deal more on this topic. But once again, we see evidence of a recent creation, a 25:53 recent design, by a loving God who wants to lead us to a new creation. Let's have a word of 26:01 prayer as we end our time today. Heavenly Father, we thank You. We thank You that we are 26:10 designed and we are fashioned in Your likeness, and that You want to make us a new creation. We 26:20 pray in Jesus' name, amen. DR. STANDISH: Amen. 26:28 # 26:30 CHRIS: Friends, evidence demands a verdict. And the evidence points to a plan with a planner, 26:40 and that planner is Jesus Christ. Today for our offer, I want to give you some of that 26:47 evidence. I'd like to offer for you fossils, your own fossils, where you can see the evidence 26:54 of God's divine plan. In addition to that offer, I'd like to offer you the DVD, the 27:00 three-part series on a DVD of Dr. Standish and I discussing, how old are we? You can have 27:10 that DVD for any size donation; the fossil, absolutely free. Here's the information you need 27:17 to receive today's offer. 28:07 # 28:09 CHRIS: Dr. Standish, thank you so much for helping us on our study of how old are we. DR. 28:14 STANDISH: I'm so thankful to God that He hasn't left us suffering for millions of years. CHRIS: I 28:19 am as well. Dear friends, I want to invite you to join us again next week. Until then, remember, 28:27 it is written: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from 28:33 the mouth of God." 28:36 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ |
Revised 2016-09-28