IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:00.66\00:00:05.90 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:06.20\00:00:12.11 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:12.44\00:00:17.25 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:17.55\00:00:22.42 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:22.75\00:00:28.36 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:28.66\00:00:33.66 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:34.00\00:00:38.27 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:38.63\00:00:42.77 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:43.10\00:00:47.11 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:47.48\00:00:51.28 IIW --- WITHOUT COMPROMISE 00:00:51.78\00:00:55.62 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 00:01:31.39\00:01:34.02 God's book, The Bible 00:01:34.89\00:01:37.43 Still relevant in today's complex world. 00:01:38.43\00:01:41.93 It Is Written. 00:01:43.70\00:01:45.23 Sharing messages of hope around the world. 00:01:45.90\00:01:49.80 CHRIS: Dear friends, thank you so much for choosing to watch It Is Written. You know, one 00:01:58.78\00:02:03.42 compromise that has been suggested between creationism and Darwinism is something 00:02:03.52\00:02:10.33 called theistic evolution. So here's a question: Why not compromise? It would seem to 00:02:10.43\00:02:17.40 make sense to try to merge science and the Bible. Doesn't it make sense? Wouldn't it just 00:02:17.50\00:02:23.04 help us pastors and scientists to just get along nicely and compromise? You know, to help 00:02:23.14\00:02:29.31 answer these questions and sort this all out, I'm joined by Dr. Tim Standish. Dr. Standish, 00:02:29.41\00:02:36.05 thank you for joining us again. DR. STANDISH: Well, thank you for having me again. CHRIS: You 00:02:36.15\00:02:40.99 know, Dr. Standish, we've talked about in previous shows where you're from and what you do. But 00:02:41.09\00:02:46.33 you are the senior scientist for the Geoscience Research Institute. And so maybe just 00:02:46.43\00:02:51.97 briefly tell us, what does the Geoscience Research Institute do? DR. STANDISH: Well, the 00:02:52.07\00:02:56.34 Geoscience Research Institute is an institute that's located. it's in a building in southern 00:02:56.44\00:03:02.64 California. But we are a group of scholars who are interested in the interface between science 00:03:02.74\00:03:10.65 and faith. What kind of compromises might be possible as we seek harmony between these 00:03:10.75\00:03:19.76 two different ways of knowing in our lives? What's the correct way of viewing them? And so 00:03:19.86\00:03:32.21 that's sort of the mission that we have in seeking. But we travel all over the world. Now 00:03:32.31\00:03:39.21 I'm in Canada; a few weeks ago, I was in England. I teach classes in Africa and also in 00:03:39.31\00:03:46.59 Asia at various universities. So obviously, we teach classes, we also maintain active research 00:03:46.69\00:03:55.10 programs. Sometimes we get very tired. CHRIS: I would imagine. It sounds like you are doing 00:03:55.20\00:04:00.47 quite a bit. And in fact, you have a website that is full of resources where people can look 00:04:00.57\00:04:06.01 at some of the research you're doing and some of the different events that are happening around 00:04:06.11\00:04:11.15 the world. Where might someone find that info? DR. STANDISH: 00:04:11.25\00:04:14.75 Well, that's at GRISDA.org. So Grisda.org is the URL for it. CHRIS: Alright. So, Dr. 00:04:14.85\00:04:24.49 Standish, it sounds like you might be the perfect individual here to have this discussion. 00:04:24.59\00:04:28.20 And we've had a number of previous discussions on the issue of origins. And if you 00:04:28.30\00:04:36.97 have happened to miss any of our shows on origins, you can go to our YouTube channel, 00:04:37.07\00:04:44.21 YouTube.com/iiwCanada, and there you can find a number of conversations that Dr. Standish 00:04:44.31\00:04:50.22 and I have had together. But Dr. Standish, we have the Biblical account of origins; we have 00:04:50.32\00:04:55.96 Darwinian evolution; why not just marry those together? Can we just not compromise and marry 00:04:56.06\00:05:00.36 those two together? DR. STANDISH: Well, there are very good reasons not to. And I would 00:05:00.46\00:05:07.84 put it this way: Really, what's going on in much of this discussion has to do with simply 00:05:07.94\00:05:17.38 a wrong understanding of what the questions are. Frequently, we talk about creation versus 00:05:17.48\00:05:30.66 evolution. And we think about things in those terms. So we're looking for a compromise between 00:05:30.76\00:05:41.94 creationism, which is a belief, and evolution, which is science. And under those circumstances, I 00:05:42.04\00:05:51.48 mean, who's not going to go with science? Because you know, somebody's beliefs should be 00:05:51.58\00:05:56.99 influenced. You know, this is sort of the way that people think about these things, 00:05:57.09\00:06:02.52 commonly; or, alternatively, they say, "Well, we reject science and we're going with 00:06:02.62\00:06:08.43 faith." Really, when we're talking about these issues, we're talking about creationism 00:06:08.53\00:06:16.87 and Darwinism, two belief systems. Two beliefs. So that way, you are comparing apples 00:06:16.97\00:06:24.75 with apples as opposed to apples with oranges. Evolution, in fact, can be scientific. It 00:06:24.85\00:06:35.09 depends very much on your definitions and so on. It doesn't mean that it's right to 00:06:35.19\00:06:41.26 be scientific. Whereas Darwinism is a philosophical, it's a religious system, basically Now, 00:06:41.36\00:06:48.97 when you have two very different religious systems, you don't get compromise between them that is 00:06:49.07\00:06:58.71 going to make believers on either side particularly happy. Now, theistic evolution is 00:06:58.81\00:07:07.36 basically the idea that God used the process of Darwinian evolution to produce the 00:07:07.46\00:07:18.63 organisms that we see around us, and particularly, human beings. CHRIS: And so, just to kind of 00:07:18.73\00:07:24.07 put it in some of the terms that you and I have used previously - and you threw out a term there 00:07:24.17\00:07:29.74 real quick - so theistic evolution is kind of the attempt, in simplicity's sake, 00:07:29.84\00:07:37.72 of marrying two belief systems of creationism and Darwinism, and out comes theistic 00:07:37.82\00:07:45.66 evolution? DR. STANDISH: Theistic evolution. CHRIS: And we've used these terms "plan" 00:07:45.76\00:07:49.36 and "Planner," "design," "Designer." And so theistic evolution says there is a 00:07:49.46\00:07:59.07 Designer that has set forth a plan, but that plan is.? DR. STANDISH: Is achieved through 00:07:59.17\00:08:06.21 this Darwinian mechanism. Now, I want to be careful about it, because in reality, when you are 00:08:06.31\00:08:14.69 discussing these things with people who are advocates of some of these positions, what you 00:08:14.79\00:08:21.70 find out is that getting a nice, general definition is very hard to do. Sometimes it reminds me 00:08:21.80\00:08:30.01 of The Sound of Music. "How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin 00:08:30.11\00:08:39.58 it down?" Trying to pin down the exact meaning can be quite difficult in conversations, so 00:08:39.68\00:08:50.09 it's important, if we are talking about these things with specific individuals, that we 00:08:50.19\00:08:53.06 understand what it is they actually do believe, because we might argue something that's 00:08:53.16\00:08:59.40 completely irrelevant to their belief system. So it is a little bit of a catch-all thing, but 00:08:59.50\00:09:04.81 definitely, you have God involved and the process of Darwinian evolution. Those two 00:09:04.91\00:09:11.71 things are pretty much core to theistic evolution. CHRIS: Now, and I'm going to ask you an odd 00:09:11.81\00:09:17.15 question, because some people might say I'm advocating theistic evolution. But is there 00:09:17.25\00:09:25.56 evidence that actually supports the idea of theistic evolution? DR. STANDISH: It depends on who 00:09:25.66\00:09:29.26 you ask. But seeing as you're asking me, my answer is no. And this is possibly the most 00:09:29.36\00:09:33.97 profound problem that I have with theistic evolution. It is not Biblical, and it certainly 00:09:34.07\00:09:42.51 isn't scientific. So why would anyone go with it? It just. it's kind of a, in my mind, one of 00:09:42.61\00:09:57.13 those compromises that doesn't work for anybody. And yet, for some reason or another, it is 00:09:57.23\00:10:04.43 still reasonably popular. Now, that may be because some people have figured out a way of 00:10:04.53\00:10:08.87 formulating things that kind of work for them. But from my personal perspective, I don't 00:10:08.97\00:10:18.78 see the evidence on. from either source - science or the Bible - to really justify this strange 00:10:18.88\00:10:29.89 belief. CHRIS: So let's unpack that just a little bit, and then we're going to get into - 00:10:29.99\00:10:33.80 because there's actually a very major religious figure that talks about evolution, and we 00:10:33.90\00:10:37.63 want to talk a little bit about that - but let me just unpack that slightly. And again, we've 00:10:37.73\00:10:42.64 done a lot of shows that would help someone understand why you've just said what you've 00:10:42.74\00:10:47.24 said. But maybe just to unpack it slightly, you said that theistic evolution is neither 00:10:47.34\00:10:56.79 Biblical nor is it scientific. So let's take those one at a time. Why would you say theistic 00:10:56.89\00:11:02.22 evolution, first and foremost, is not scientific? DR. STANDISH: Because it invokes a God, but a 00:11:02.32\00:11:16.54 God Who commonly, His action is not detectable in some way. It's a very common aspect of theistic 00:11:16.64\00:11:25.55 evolution, or belief in theistic evolution, that the actions of God cannot be detected in His 00:11:25.65\00:11:32.02 creation. So while He may be active, sometimes people say, "Well, it's in the quantum 00:11:32.12\00:11:38.96 uncertainty that we have with atoms," or something like that. "God kind of hides Himself." 00:11:39.06\00:11:47.27 Well, if God's divine action is not observable, science is about observation, so how can this 00:11:47.37\00:11:55.04 have anything to do with science? It's about sort of. it makes about as much sense to me 00:11:55.14\00:12:01.28 as invoking a fairy every now and again to explain things, but the fairy can do nothing. 00:12:01.38\00:12:05.55 CHRIS: Hmm. Now, you also then said, it is also not Biblical. And again, someone can go and 00:12:05.65\00:12:14.93 watch our shows and see thoroughly why that is. But again, in simplicity, why would 00:12:15.03\00:12:19.27 you say theistic evolution is not Biblical, or does not fit with Biblical Christianity? DR. 00:12:19.37\00:12:26.81 STANDISH: This is actually really big. First of all, we obviously have the creation 00:12:26.91\00:12:33.95 account in Scripture that is reiterated multiple times. Jesus Christ Himself talks about Adam, 00:12:34.05\00:12:41.99 the first man, and you know, marriage between the first man and the first woman. There's not 00:12:42.09\00:12:48.93 a difference in the New Testament or Old Testament when it comes to the creation. It's 00:12:49.03\00:12:58.17 very specific that God acted in a certain way, and He is the cause of all things. In fact, if 00:12:58.27\00:13:08.98 you look at the Bible, it consistently says that the reason to worship God is because 00:13:09.08\00:13:17.63 He's the Creator, not because He's the Being Who steps back and just lets things unfold. He 00:13:17.73\00:13:27.17 is an active God. There is divine action. CHRIS: Yes. DR. STANDISH: Now, there are 00:13:27.27\00:13:30.84 profound theological issues that theistic evolution raises. And for me as a Christian, probably 00:13:30.94\00:13:39.85 the most important of those has to do with Jesus Christ. What exactly was Jesus doing on the 00:13:39.95\00:13:50.09 cross? Well, the Bible lays it out. He is dying for my sins. God our Creator valued us so 00:13:50.19\00:14:02.00 much that He was willing to come down, become part of our creation, and experience the 00:14:02.10\00:14:07.51 death that we deserve to win us, and in my place. Well, in the Biblical creation account, God 00:14:07.61\00:14:19.45 created things very good. And then human beings chose a different plan. Now, the result 00:14:19.55\00:14:29.70 of that different plan was precisely what God had said it would be: death. So death enters 00:14:29.80\00:14:37.24 the creation as a result of sin. When we depart from the Life-giver, then life just isn't 00:14:37.34\00:14:44.88 going to last forever. CHRIS: That is. DR. STANDISH: Now, how 00:14:44.98\00:14:51.39 does Jesus' death on the cross to save me from the ultimate death, how does that make sense 00:14:51.49\00:15:02.53 if there was death before sin? And yet, death is central, an essential component of the 00:15:02.63\00:15:11.41 Darwinian mechanism. You have to be able to get rid of the weak and the old; and you know, and 00:15:11.51\00:15:19.35 the strong, the fit are the ones that survive and pass on their genetic information to new 00:15:19.45\00:15:27.96 generations. So things, organisms, have to go extinct, and death has to have occurred. 00:15:28.06\00:15:34.86 And if you look at the Darwinian account of things, then you know, you and I are the product 00:15:34.96\00:15:43.30 of literally millions, possibly billions, of organisms, possibly trillions of organisms, dying 00:15:43.41\00:15:53.58 before we reach this kind of point in evolutionary history where we exist. CHRIS: Now, this 00:15:53.68\00:16:02.96 is a profound thing. So kind of summarizing some of the things you've said: First issue why 00:16:03.06\00:16:07.13 this is not Biblical is, number one, the Biblical account of creation either is or it is not. 00:16:07.23\00:16:15.44 We either take it for what it is, or we have to throw it out. And if we throw it out, there 00:16:15.54\00:16:20.64 are implications of that. And in the It Is Written program, we've dealt with the reliability of 00:16:20.74\00:16:27.92 the Bible and its history. Number two is the issue of death and sin. You know, Romans 6:23 00:16:28.02\00:16:37.53 says: The wages of sin is death. CHRIS: And so a fundamental 00:16:37.63\00:16:42.10 problem with theistic evolution is going to be, you have death entering before sin, which would 00:16:42.20\00:16:48.80 make the evolutionary processes impossible because it requires death. And thirdly, which you 00:16:48.90\00:16:56.51 are alluding to is, I would say, almost an ethical implication, and that is, the Bible says that 00:16:56.61\00:17:03.69 God is love, that God wants to impart life, yet He would be using a process that demands 00:17:03.79\00:17:14.03 death to get to an eventual creation. DR. STANDISH: Why, if God is all-powerful, why would 00:17:14.13\00:17:27.21 He possibly choose a mechanism that involves just slaughter on an unimaginable scale to 00:17:27.31\00:17:40.29 produce, you know, His creation? It's. how can God be love and choose that? You know, the funny 00:17:40.39\00:17:54.10 thing about theistic evolution is that sometimes, people have seen it as a way of distancing 00:17:54.20\00:18:01.08 God from the problem of evil. You know, if God kind of let this mechanism kind of work 00:18:01.18\00:18:08.02 things out, and He was sort of, stepped back and just let it happen, somehow or other, the 00:18:08.12\00:18:14.89 thinking is, "Well, He's not fully responsible, then, for the evil, the suffering and death 00:18:14.99\00:18:22.86 that we see in nature." But you know, in my opinion, it just turns Him into something awful. 00:18:22.96\00:18:31.94 He has the power to do anything, but He chooses to let death and suffering be the engine for 00:18:32.04\00:18:43.02 producing the organisms that He wants in the end. CHRIS: And you used, I think, a profound a word 00:18:43.12\00:18:50.19 that we can kind of gloss over, but I want to just pause there for a minute. You said He 00:18:50.29\00:18:55.70 chooses. You know, because Psalm 33:6-9, but in particular, verse 9, it speaks of the creation, 00:18:55.80\00:19:02.50 and it says: 00:19:02.60\00:19:03.57 And you used that word "choose." Clearly, the Bible says God has the power to speak things into 00:19:09.18\00:19:14.65 existence. But if theistic evolution were true, it would mean that God chose to use a 00:19:14.75\00:19:24.19 process that required death, which doesn't make any sense, because in the book of First 00:19:24.29\00:19:30.43 Corinthians, it calls death the enemy. The book of Revelation says that God will one day put 00:19:30.53\00:19:37.24 to death death. And it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Now, Dr. Standish, we 00:19:37.34\00:19:44.78 could spend a lot of time. This is an area that actually is, I feel, a great deal that we need 00:19:44.88\00:19:52.32 to spend some time on. But I do want to spend just a few moments. You know, one of the 00:19:52.42\00:19:58.26 world's major - and in fact, some would argue, the world's most major religious figure - is 00:19:58.36\00:20:05.47 the pope. And some people say that the Pope supports evolution. Now, I want to ask 00:20:05.57\00:20:15.14 you the question, is that true? And if it is true, how does he reconcile this issue of death 00:20:15.24\00:20:23.32 before sin? DR. STANDISH: I have not had a conversation with the Pope, so I want to be 00:20:23.42\00:20:28.49 careful here. I can only look at his public statements about these things. And I would say 00:20:28.59\00:20:35.53 that, you know, the Pope speaks very carefully much of the time. So recently, for example, I read 00:20:35.63\00:20:46.71 a speech, the text of a speech that he gave to the Pontifical Academy where he did mention 00:20:46.81\00:20:55.85 some things about the origins thing. In my opinion, those statements were actually taken a 00:20:55.95\00:21:02.19 little bit out of context. Now, sometimes people use words in multiple ways, and you know, you 00:21:02.29\00:21:10.90 can sort of go all over the place with that. But my observation has been that the 00:21:11.00\00:21:16.44 Catholic Church maintains a position where either believers can believe in the Biblical 00:21:16.54\00:21:25.65 creation - and in fact, there is at least one Catholic organization that I know of 00:21:25.75\00:21:31.62 that's official and so on that supports the Biblical six-day creation within thousands of 00:21:31.72\00:21:41.53 years rather than millions or billions of years - so that position does exist in the 00:21:41.63\00:21:49.57 Catholic Church. But in addition to that, we see that the Catholic Church allows belief in 00:21:49.67\00:21:57.65 something like theistic evolution. CHRIS: Okay. DR. STANDISH: And so the question 00:21:57.75\00:22:01.38 is, how can the Catholics, the Catholics who have crucifixes, you know, everywhere to remind 00:22:01.48\00:22:06.89 us of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - and to their credit, I think, you know; that 00:22:06.99\00:22:16.83 is obviously a central component of all Christian faith - how can they reconcile the problem of 00:22:16.93\00:22:26.91 death before sin with Jesus dying on the cross? How can that demonstrate God's grace and love 00:22:27.01\00:22:35.18 and achieve the objective of saving us ourselves from death? To do it, you have to understand 00:22:35.28\00:22:45.69 that the Catholic Church, like many other Christian churches, embraces the idea of an immortal 00:22:45.79\00:22:51.77 soul. And this is really brought together in quite an elegant way 00:22:51.87\00:23:05.05 in an encyclical that was written by Pope Pius XII back in 1950. I have a quote from it 00:23:05.15\00:23:13.29 here. It's a little bit convoluted. You know, this is very careful language. It's 00:23:13.39\00:23:17.46 almost like a legal document. But let me read it to you: 00:23:17.56\00:23:20.03 So he's saying, "It's fine for Catholics to believe that the 00:23:56.87\00:24:02.84 human body came from pre-existing matter, or whatever. We can explore that." 00:24:02.94\00:24:07.61 He's not taking a position; he's just saying we can explore that. And then he sort of tells why: 00:24:07.71\00:24:13.52 So the idea is this: All of that death that you see in the fossil 00:24:22.16\00:24:28.10 record, okay, that evolutionists believe is showing the evolutionary trajectory 00:24:28.20\00:24:33.64 unfolding - in fact, it doesn't - but that all of that death is different from the death that 00:24:33.74\00:24:43.38 you get when God comes and puts an immortal soul into a human and they become a human being at 00:24:43.48\00:24:50.49 that particular point. So God uses the process of evolution, then, in this particular scheme, 00:24:50.59\00:24:56.62 to produce the human body, but there is no soul there. God puts the immortal soul in, and then 00:24:56.73\00:25:03.00 death is a completely different thing. See, death before God did that was just the body wearing 00:25:03.10\00:25:09.90 out and dying or being killed or whatever. After God put the soul in, death is the separation of 00:25:10.01\00:25:16.81 body and soul. And that's the death, you see, in this way of thinking, that Jesus was 00:25:16.91\00:25:23.75 addressing on the cross. CHRIS: And we could spend. in fact, we spend a whole series of shows. 00:25:23.85\00:25:29.79 And to our viewer, you can go to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/iiwCanada. Watch our 00:25:29.89\00:25:38.33 series "Is Heaven for Real?" and there, we talk about this. But this has far-reaching 00:25:38.43\00:25:41.57 implications, because the Bible is quite clear that man was made of the dust of the ground. God 00:25:41.67\00:25:45.67 breathed into him the breath of life, and then he became a living soul. He does not have an 00:25:45.77\00:25:51.15 immortal soul, but is a living soul. Paul writing to Timothy is very clear: only God is 00:25:51.25\00:25:59.45 immortal. And so this issue of origins is far-reaching because it actually goes right to the 00:25:59.55\00:26:07.76 very core of the essence of what and who a human being is in God's eyes. DR. STANDISH: It 00:26:07.86\00:26:16.04 touches right on many other doctrines of the Christian faith. If we change the issue. 00:26:16.14\00:26:25.25 our understanding of origins, then all of a sudden, if we're going to remain Christians, we 00:26:25.35\00:26:32.52 have to have something like this separate body and soul idea, something like an immortal soul. 00:26:32.62\00:26:41.70 And then we have the problem of, what do you do with individuals who choose to reject God's love 00:26:41.80\00:26:50.01 and grace? And all of a sudden, you've got things like an eternal burning hell because 00:26:50.11\00:26:53.84 they're eternally punished, and it really has huge knock-on effects in many other areas. I 00:26:53.94\00:27:04.69 personally prefer the actual Biblical view of things. It's much, much more attractive, and 00:27:04.79\00:27:11.63 it makes an awful lot more sense. God is a God of love. Horrifyingly, those who reject 00:27:11.73\00:27:19.47 Him cannot live. But when they die, they're not put into some sort of eternal punishment. God, 00:27:19.57\00:27:30.28 in His mercy, saves all who come to Him. CHRIS: Absolutely. DR. STANDISH: Those who separate 00:27:30.38\00:27:40.06 themselves from the only life-giving power in the universe will die, but that 00:27:40.16\00:27:44.53 means that they will cease to exist. CHRIS: Yes. And you know, Dr. Standish, we are 00:27:44.63\00:27:50.43 completely out of time. But it is very clear that a compromise of theistic evolution actually 00:27:50.53\00:27:59.11 brings upon Christianity a greater threat than simple Darwinian evolution because it 00:27:59.21\00:28:08.02 compromises the faith. Dr. Standish, thank you so much for joining us. Let's have prayer. 00:28:08.12\00:28:16.99 Heavenly Father, thank You so much that You are the Creator and we can believe that. We pray 00:28:17.09\00:28:22.96 this in Jesus' name, amen. DR. STANDISH: Amen. 00:28:23.06\00:28:27.30 CHRIS: Dear friend, would you like to know more about this Creator Who holds you in such 00:28:31.54\00:28:36.18 high esteem that He died for you? I want to offer you the DVD series Is Heaven for Real? 00:28:36.28\00:28:43.32 Here's the information you need to receive today's offer. 00:28:43.42\00:28:49.09 Dr. Standish, thank you so much for joining us today. DR. STANDISH: Thank you. 00:29:43.35\00:29:46.45 CHRIS: Friend, thank you for watching. I invite you to join us again next week. Until then, 00:29:46.55\00:29:52.15 remember, it is written: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds 00:29:52.25\00:29:59.66 from the mouth of God." 00:29:59.76\00:30:01.46