Participants: Stan Hudson
Series Code: ITB
Program Code: ITB000003
|
00:19 Hello, I'm Stan Hudson speaker for In the Beginning.
00:22 I'm looking at an old family album that is over 00:25 100 years old. 00:27 It has pictures of my great grandparents in it 00:30 and their family. 00:31 They are from London and I'm looking at these old pictures. 00:35 This was my great-grandmother's book and it is organized 00:39 somewhat chronologically so that the farther I go back, 00:43 the earlier it gets. 00:49 These pictures show me a lot about people that made 00:54 me who I am. 00:58 As I go back to the very beginning of this book, 01:04 what if I were go back maybe, a page before this book began? 01:08 I would see an older generation in London England. 01:14 But if I were to go back to a imaginary beginning of my 01:17 family tree, what would the first pictures show? 01:21 Would they show a chimpanzee? 01:25 Maybe even going back further would it show an amoeba? 01:30 Today we are going to look at the origins of man. 01:34 In the beginning, Pond Scum, or Divine hand? 01:39 I really think that what you think about your own family 01:43 tree and where the human race came from, where you came 01:47 from, most definitely affects what you think about yourself. 01:51 What you think about others. 01:53 What you think about planet Earth. 01:54 How a teaching impacts society is probably a question 01:58 that religion can also address. 02:01 It is not just about me individually and my own view of 02:04 myself, it is also how a teaching impact the world 02:08 in which I live in. 02:10 It was Doug Adams whose Hitchhiker Guide into the Galaxy 02:15 gave us the idea in the total perspective vortex that we 02:21 are indeed very, very small. 02:23 It was this device he created to show us how small we are 02:27 compared to the rest of the universe. 02:29 It was so effective, it was a device that had a tendency 02:32 to drive people mad that went inside. 02:35 Well when we look at the universe with out any other 02:39 revelation of who we are or where it came from, 02:43 if we just do a strict observation, it is not too 02:46 difficult to come up with a similar perspective of 02:49 how small we are. 02:50 Yet Scripture teaches that the very hairs of our head 02:54 are numbered and we have been created by the hand of the 02:57 Divine and loving God that is revealed in its pages. 03:01 It is a very high view of mankind indeed. 03:05 In 1859 when Charles Darwin released his book On the 03:10 Origin of Species, many people were beginning to ask the 03:13 very basic question, are you saying the theory of evolution 03:17 is a way of explaining how we came here? 03:19 Are you saying that the biblical account is not accurate? 03:23 Darwin was clever enough to avoid directly addressing the 03:27 question, but he did say this. 03:29 In Chapter 14 of his book, "in the distant future I see" 03:34 "open fields for far more important researches. " 03:38 "Psychology will be based on a new foundation that the" 03:42 "necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity" 03:46 "and gradation. " 03:47 "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. " 03:53 The ramifications immediately became apparent to people 03:56 as they start to think about whether we had indeed evolved 04:00 from lower races of animals. 04:02 If that was the case, then what do you do with various 04:06 races among the human family. 04:08 Are some more superior than others because they have 04:10 evolved more significantly than others? 04:13 Racism actually became somewhat supported by science. 04:17 Let me read to you from the book that was used in the 04:21 Scopes trial in 1925 in America. 04:26 This is from the chapter entitled Evolution from Hunter's 04:30 Civic Biology textbook, the one that John Scopes taught 04:33 from and became an issue in the trial. 04:36 It says this on page 196, "at the present time there" 04:40 "exists upon the earth five races of varieties of man. " 04:44 "Each very different from the other in instinct, social" 04:47 "customs and to an extent in structure. " 04:50 "These are the Ethiopian or Negro type" 04:53 "originating in Africa. " 04:54 "The Malay, or brown race from the islands of the Pacific. " 04:58 "The American Indian, the Mongolian or yellow race" 05:02 "including the natives of China, Japan the Eskimos. " 05:06 "And finally the highest type of all, the Caucasians" 05:09 "represented by the civilized white inhabitants of" 05:13 "Europe and America. " 05:15 This is where the issue of social Darwinism comes to play. 05:20 To what extent did the Darwinian theory affect our 05:24 thinking about the way we should live? 05:27 Here's where religion probably most gets involved in the 05:31 discussions on the origin of man. 05:33 What sort of moral beliefs are brought to the table when 05:37 we talk about where men came from and what sort of 05:40 structure we might expect a moral society to have? 05:43 What would it be based on? 05:45 On the survival of the fittest or on other norms that 05:49 perhaps religion would provide from authoritative sources like 05:52 the Bible, let's say. 05:54 But it is probably true for most of us that survival of 05:57 fittest isn't exactly the world we would like to live in. 06:01 The idea that you have to be the biggest, the strongest, 06:04 fastest to really, really succeed. 06:06 That there is no place for those of us that can't quite match 06:09 up to that kind of competition? 06:12 Well it was the eugenics field, it was a field started 06:17 by France's Galton who was the cousin of Darwin. 06:20 He actually believe that the best thing we could do for 06:23 the human race was to try and weed out those that weren't 06:26 quite as helpful in producing things for the rest of us. 06:30 Those attended to be sponges. 06:32 Those that were handicapped and we all know what 06:36 Adolf Hitler did with that kind of theory in the practice 06:39 that he used in his efforts during World War II. 06:44 Now what I am talking about Hitler and using eugenics in 06:47 the theory of evolution as a basis for all that he did. 06:50 I am not saying that everyone who believes in Darwinian 06:53 evolutionist naturally is going to become a Nazi or try to push 06:57 for another holocaust, but it is true to say that as a 07:00 basis for what he believed, he did use a science of 07:03 Darwinian evolution to support what he did, what he believed. 07:07 But it is clear that Christianity brings a different 07:12 approach to the subject of the fittest. 07:16 It was Jesus who in His ministry practiced ministry to those 07:21 that were least capable of producing, functioning 07:24 well in society, like the lepers for example. 07:26 The very ones that eugenics and those that believe in the 07:30 survival of the fittest might have thought would be best 07:33 to eliminate, but Jesus ministered to all. 07:37 It is that kind of religious input into this subject, 07:40 or perhaps Christianity is most affective in bringing 07:44 something to the table. 07:46 On the subject of races, are there many races? 07:51 According to Paul when he spoke to a group of Athenian 07:54 philosophers on Mars Hill, he said that God has made us 07:57 all one race, one blood, we are all one family. 08:01 That seems to suggest that we are all in this together. 08:10 Hello again everybody. 08:11 I hope you are doing well. 08:13 We are going to be talking about a fairly rubber meets 08:16 the road kind of issue today. 08:19 As we talk about In the Beginning, 08:20 Pond Scum or Divine Hand? 08:25 You may notice in one of the brochures that a friend of 08:30 and I do a radio program, is not local, Walla-Walla 08:34 would be the closest, but it is on a national network, 08:38 a Christian network. 08:40 It's called "Sink the Beagle" is the name of the program. 08:44 Sometimes we call out everybody at the beginning of the 08:48 program, "Greetings, Pond Scum". 08:52 So actually this is a fairly controversial subject that 08:57 we will talk about tonight. 08:58 Let's take a look at In the Beginning, 09:00 Pond scum or Divine Hand? 09:12 Really when we talk about the subject of origins, at some 09:16 point fairly early in the discussion we are wondering what 09:19 does this mean about my personal ancestry, my personal 09:23 family tree, where did I come from? 09:25 Now here's something very interesting. 09:27 We talked about creation and evolution polls that have 09:31 been taken by Gallup. 09:32 Harris has taken some polls on the subject 09:35 of human evolution. 09:36 Here are the results of this poll. 09:40 There were two polls taken some years apart. 09:43 The first one in 1994. 10:04 What is interesting in this poll they took it again in a few 10:07 years later, 11 years later excuse me. 10:17 So it seems like there is a trend away from believing 10:21 in human evolution as is traditionally taught in 10:24 our school system. 10:26 This is interesting, why is it, how can I say it? 10:30 Why is it the popular image where we came from as evolving 10:35 through an ape-like ancestor, why is it that this is not 10:39 apparently catching on? 10:40 In some cases it is actually slipping a little bit. 10:44 I would like to suggest to you that we are hard-wired to 10:47 think something differently. 10:50 According to the Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says, 11:01 There are some things beyond our understanding apparently. 11:05 But more importantly it says we are hard-wired to think 11:08 in terms of greater images, eternity. 11:10 Bigger things than just ourselves. 11:13 Maybe when we are told we are not very big that we have 11:17 evolved from some small it doesn't resonate with 11:19 something inside of us. 11:20 It doesn't resonate with the hard-wiring we have. 11:23 Maybe we suspect there is something more to it. 11:25 That is just an opinion, but I think there is 11:28 something to that. 11:29 Well when you think about your family tree, when you think 11:32 about where you come from you think about your old family 11:35 pictures, these are a bunch of my old family pictures and 11:37 you can see where I get my good looks. 11:41 You think about where you come from because where you 11:44 came from, your family, makes up who you are. 11:47 Your ancestry contributes to the image you have of yourself. 11:50 That is why these issues are very, very significant. 11:54 So if you think your family is this, this is a museum display 11:58 where evolution is supported, it says are relatives belong 12:02 to the ape family down at the bottom. 12:04 So there's a family picture. 12:05 You would think it affects your self image a little bit. 12:09 I think it has tremendous implications of how you view 12:13 yourself depending upon where you believe 12:16 you have come from. 12:17 So when we talk about these issues, Darwinism and 12:21 Christianity, at least evangelical Christianity, 12:25 it seems like there are images that are different there. 12:29 They are significantly different. 12:31 Well again as we talk about Darwin and his retracing 12:35 a little bit of history. 12:36 Remember he sailed to the Galapagos Islands 12:38 on the HMS Beagle. 12:40 He spent some time there researching while they were 12:43 doing some maps. 12:45 He wrote the origin of species in 1844 and published it 12:49 15 years later. 12:50 When this book came out one of the very first things that 12:54 people were asking about, wait, wait, wait, a minute. 12:58 Are you saying that people evolved too? 13:03 Darwin, I think intelligently, did not really deal 13:07 with that subject particularly in the first book. 13:11 He knew it would be controversial. 13:13 He said I believe the only statement he made on this whole 13:18 subject was to shed light on human origins. 13:21 That is about all that he would say. 13:23 So he left that lingering. 13:24 It nevertheless was in the mind of many people and 13:28 eventually he did write a book, "The Descent of Man". 13:32 In this book he says on page 181, 13:51 What I would like to know, if I could get into the heart 13:52 and mind of Darwin, I wonder if he was saying that cynically, 13:55 or was he serious, I sense a little sarcasm. 13:57 What do you think? Is there some sarcasm? 13:59 What do you think? We should take a vote. 14:01 But anyway "the wonder and glory of the universe proceeded. " 14:06 He did say it and of course for that he got labeled and 14:10 characterized by those who weren't quite ready to accept 14:14 a theory, so "The Descent of Man" by Charles Darwin. 14:20 Well Darwin eventually was buried in Westminster Abbey. 14:26 You might wonder why he was given that honor. 14:30 He had some friends that lobbied for him to have his 14:33 body buried there, and he was buried not too far 14:35 from Sir Isaac Newton. 14:37 He has a very simple stone in the floor there. 14:40 Charles Robert Darwin and we are coming up on the 200th 14:44 anniversary of his birth year of February 12. 14:46 That brings to mind a statement recently released, 14:50 this is just off the press. 14:52 the Church of England director said this. 15:13 So there is a public apology to Darwin for making his life 15:18 uncomfortable back when he was sharing his views in the 1800's. 15:27 Now what was happening at the time Darwin was writing about 15:30 Man and there was a lot of discussions about the origin of 15:34 man, the origin of species had just come out and so forth. 15:37 There was an interesting discovery made in Germany in the 15:41 Neander Valley, the Neander Valley has some caves and in 15:44 this cave they found some bones. 15:47 They were human bones, they looked human. 15:49 They looked kind of human and as they studied them they 15:54 later found out that some of the earliest remains had 15:58 rickets and maybe arthritis and so forth. 16:01 They reconstructed what this original human being look like 16:05 and this is one of the earliest artist rendering of the 16:09 Neanderthal, Neanderthal is German for the Neander Valley. 16:14 So the Neanderthal man began to be displayed this way. 16:18 This is the first caveman, at least the first caveman that 16:22 got any real publicity. 16:23 Now remember, think of the timing, there is sensational 16:26 stuff coming out in the mid-1800s. 16:28 The time of Darwin's theory was getting publicity and 16:31 people are thinking about origins and evolution and 16:34 looking at the biblical account in a much different light. 16:39 Creationists were having problems explaining things. 16:42 We are saying some pretty silly things in trying to defend 16:45 what was being found. 16:47 Like dinosaur bones were not real and the devil made them, 16:51 and things like this. 16:53 So there was an interesting thing going on there in the 16:56 middle 1800s as they were suddenly discovering a 16:58 lots of things. 17:00 So the thought was maybe this was some kind of an 17:03 ancestor of man and apparently we came from caves, 17:06 at least at one point. 17:08 So the image was well set in the mind of the Western man. 17:13 A caveman. 17:16 The earliest pictures of Neanderthal's looked like 17:20 that, but we moved into more recent pictures. 17:22 Some more recent reconstructions of the Neanderthal's as 17:26 they found many, many other skeletons of the Neanderthals. 17:29 Now you may have read the recent National Geographic 17:34 article on this where they are talking about how they are 17:36 trying to recover some DNA even. 17:39 But in any case they believe now that there is good 17:42 evidence they had red hair and green eyes and so forth. 17:46 They would be fairly indistinguishable between 17:50 modern man, if they were walking in the crowd it be 17:52 hard to pick them out. 17:54 So you can see why does it start off this way in the upper left 17:58 and then move down to this with more research. 18:01 Of course the image at the time was this must be somewhat 18:06 ape-like, in fact here's the comment made by, this is not a 18:10 creationist magazine at all on Neanderthal art. 18:16 The ones you see in National Geographic and so forth 18:18 on our ancestors and make the covers a lot. 18:30 Again this is in-house and not critics from the outside 18:35 saying something, this is how they admit the artwork is done. 18:39 Well when we studied Neanderthals, we found out they 18:43 bury their dead, they buried, past tense, their dead. 18:47 They played musical instruments. 18:49 And a very interesting part of them, they had larger 18:53 brains than we do. 18:59 That already tells you something. 19:01 Were they more primitive then us or not? 19:04 When you talk about the subject of human origin you cannot 19:08 talk about it without mentioning Louis Leaky. 19:12 Louis Leaky is probably the most famous paleoanthropologist 19:16 maybe of all time. 19:17 He dedicated much of his life in the middle and late 1900s. 19:38 It made a lot of natural geographical articles 19:42 back in the day. 19:43 What are the things that he is looking at, 19:45 the skull on the right, he is looking at Zinjanthropus skull 19:49 from supposedly, I will guess like one a half million 19:53 years, or something like that. 19:55 It is the supposed estimate of the period and when this was 19:59 discovered it was considered to be more or less a firm 20:03 establishment now that man had ape-like ancestors, or ape-like 20:09 I put in quotes "ancestor" since Zinjanthropus 20:13 may have been one. 20:14 They are now looking at Zinjanthropus in a different way 20:19 Well anyway there was another discovery the Leakey's made 20:22 and that was that at Laetoli Tanzania. 20:25 They found these human footprints, 20:28 human looking footprints in ash, volcanic ash 20:33 that have become something like mud with a little water. 20:36 There were some adults and a child that walked across 20:39 this ash and left footprints. 20:41 The thing that is interesting about the footprints, 20:44 and there is one blown up, what the footprints indicate, 20:47 according to Potassium Argon dating, is that 20:50 3.7 million years ago. 20:52 It is volcanic ash so you can date it with Potassium Argon. 20:56 The ash was dated 3.7 million years ago and yet the foot 21:00 prints are extremely humanlike, so much so, that folks again 21:05 this is in-house, natural history. 21:14 Which is another way of saying somebody like you and me today. 21:19 So again this is a muddled study as we look at the supposed 21:23 ancestors of man because we are not finding a clear 21:27 information, we get mixed pictures. 21:30 When we look at Zinjanthropus which is a word that means 21:34 ape-man of Zinjan which was the area in Africa it was found. 21:39 Was it an ancient man or is it an extinct ape? 21:44 That is the question. 21:45 There is different artist that has renderings of the same 21:48 skull, so you see you can have quite a variety of the way 21:50 you imagine it to look like based on the same skull. 21:53 Something very ape-like, or something very human. 21:56 So sometimes there's a little leeway in the 22:00 way things are portrayed. 22:02 Zinjanthropus, I am seeing now as I'm reading most recent 22:06 reports on Zinjanthropus is sort of slipping away as not 22:10 significant as it used to be because Homo-habilism 22:14 that are found on a more deeper level are more modern in look. 22:18 Which goes along with the foot prints that looked fairly human. 22:22 Now Lucy, do you remember Lucy? 22:25 When Lucy was found by Joe Hansen, Lucy was considered 22:30 to be clearly an ancestor to man. 22:33 It had a leg and hip structure that suggested that it was 22:39 an upright walker. 22:40 Here's the problem, one of the things they looked for in 22:42 human ancestors among the bones, to try to indicate whether it's 22:46 an ape or human or on its way to human or something like that. 22:49 There are two things they look for. 22:51 One, is the size of the brain. 22:52 Is the brain getting larger from a monkey of some kind 22:56 to a human of some kind that would be generally thought 22:59 to getting larger evolution. 23:01 Second thing, they look to see if in the hip structure 23:04 that it is an upright walker or not. 23:06 One of the problems with upright issues is that a number 23:10 of monkeys today walk upright and that is usually an 23:15 indication that they are tree dwellers. 23:16 They walk along branches and so forth and the hip 23:18 structure what have them that way. 23:20 So you would see an old set of bones with something that 23:24 appeared to be walking upright, it could mean it's walking 23:27 on the ground or it could mean a tree dweller. 23:29 So it is not quite as clear-cut and that adds to some of 23:33 the confusion as to whether or not the things they find 23:36 are good candidates or not for ancestors to man. 23:40 So they found Lucy and Lucy for a while was sensational. 23:45 Once again it hit the papers like the Zinjanthropus did. 23:49 It put the whole subject in front of the public and 23:52 National Geographic and everybody publishing lots of 23:54 things about Lucy. 23:57 Lucy made all the museums with a plaster cast of the bones 24:03 and models were erected and everything. 24:05 However, again as you look at this famous fossil now, 24:09 this famous skeleton, and they have found a few more like 24:12 Lucy and they are fairly certain that what Lucy represents 24:15 is certainly an extinct ape. 24:17 They are not talking so much about Lucy as they used to be 24:20 it's been a good candidate for human ancestry. 24:24 It is a muddled picture, now take a look at this comment. 24:28 I find this a funny comment from Lord Solly Zuckerman. 24:32 It is talking about this whole subject of 24:34 the origin of man. 24:47 This is not a creationist. 25:00 What he is making a comment on is simply this. 25:02 In the field of human ancestry, paleoanthropology there is 25:07 lots and lots of faith, well that is a religious term. 25:12 There are a lot of assumptions made and much is made out 25:16 of fairly small evidence. 25:19 How much evidence are we talking about? 25:20 When you talk to Richard Lewontin, who is anything but 25:23 a creationist, from Harvard, said. 25:41 He is saying it is challenging and I remember reading in 25:43 one National Geographic article about some human remains 25:46 that were found, I'm pretty sure it was in Mongolia. 25:48 They were more modern looking than they expected to find. 25:51 I remember one comment made by an anthropologist as he 25:54 saw the bones, he said, 25:55 "please put those back in the ground". 25:57 Because it didn't fit what they expected to find. 26:01 It is an open session and even though he said draw lines, 26:04 it is up to you to draw the lines, people have certainly 26:07 felt comfortable drawing lines for a number of years now. 26:10 Assuming where human ancestry comes from and in this 26:14 particular case you see a picture of the Negroid race, 26:18 and one separate Caucasian race, and another Mongloid, 26:22 and another Asteroid on the fourth track. 26:27 There you see the branches quite separate fairly early on. 26:30 So every time you see a new chart it is different. 26:45 That's from New Scientist. 26:47 I thought this was a pretty funny picture, at least for 26:52 me it's pretty close to evolution of man. 26:55 That's pretty well me at the end on the right. 27:01 It's funny how you try to assume how evolution has taken 27:06 place, but to be serious, to go back to those comments you 27:11 just saw, in-house comments are frustrating. 27:16 Where the money goes is interesting in the 27:19 area of evolution. 27:20 For years, I'm going to guess now, 1950s to say the 1970s 27:25 or so, much of the grant money, money that was available 27:30 for doing in-field research and digging up fossils, 27:33 much of it was spent on trying to find human ancestors. 27:36 Much of it in Africa, the Olduvai Gorge and Louis Leaky 27:39 all that funding and Louis Hansen and so forth. 27:42 A lot of money was sent that way. 27:44 You don't hear too much about it now. 27:46 It seems like more money is being sent towards dinosaurs 27:51 studies and dinosaur to bird evolution is especially getting 27:56 grants and money and that. 27:58 I not sure if that is an indication of frustration or a 28:01 lack of finding things or other issues are going on. 28:05 I'm not sure, I don't know. 28:07 Yes, is man still evolving? 28:09 That's a good question, what is that from? 28:12 Planet of the apes, and there's interesting social logical 28:17 things in this movie about evolution. 28:25 So we talk about God and man, if God was indeed the 28:30 Creator, did He use evolution, did He use a primate of 28:35 some kind to start with? 28:37 One of the questions that has come our way in the box back 28:41 there, was can you tell what various religions think 28:46 about evolution? 28:48 I can at least cite the number of mainline Christians 28:52 churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Church 28:55 of England, as you saw that comment of the apology to 28:59 Darwin and so forth. 29:01 Many other mainline Christian churches do except evolution. 29:06 I know that the Pope has written some papers, 29:08 or I should say the previous Pope, has written papers and 29:10 the current Pope agrees with it. 29:13 For instance, the view was that something like a pre-man 29:18 was somewhere along the evolutionary line and at some 29:23 point God infused that man with a living soul and that 29:27 was a special act of creation, something not evolution. 29:31 Man became a modern man with the ability to think 29:35 through this act of God. 29:37 It is sort of accepting evolution and also creation and 29:43 melting the two together. 29:45 So that is the Roman Catholic official position. 29:49 And there are the churches that have similar kinds of 29:52 thoughts and it is a struggle because why? 29:56 Because in this society, the Western society, we have 29:59 a high view of science, we have a high view of religion, 30:03 and Christianity in this part of the world, when you put 30:07 Christianity and science together have high views, 30:10 they disagree fundamentally on something, you look for ways in 30:14 which they can melt it and put it together. 30:18 Those are the attempts that are made and 30:22 I understand the problem. 30:24 So did God make man via primordial soup? 30:31 Was that an act of God? 30:33 Remember we are talking about the various images of God. 30:36 Remember we are talking about the image of God is always 30:38 central and how you view things. 30:40 Your world view will include the involvement of God at 30:43 some level, if you believe in God at all, 30:46 if he makes your world view. 30:48 Or can you go with a more direct biblical account which says. 30:57 Let me spend a few moments on the biblical account so you 31:00 get that and I assume a number of you know it. 31:03 Just by way of review God said, let us make man in our 31:07 image according to our likeness. 31:09 God is apparently in us and when God spoke, He said we 31:12 are going to make man like us. 31:16 He will enjoy and understand fellowship. 31:19 I know this is an old picture, whenever you see Adam he 31:23 is always Caucasian and blue-eyed and sometimes blonde. 31:27 In this case what, brown? 31:44 Now this is where it gets good. 31:46 And that is this. 31:53 So he took out of man something and created a woman and 31:57 brought that back to man to complete man. 32:00 It's interesting that Adams said this when he saw Eve. 32:03 After he had seen all these other animals he said. 32:15 I wanted to give you a little insight gentleman, 32:18 the very first thing that Adam said when he saw a woman, 32:22 and it's not translated very well in modern translations, 32:27 some say, oh look or behold, or now, something like that. 32:32 What the word actually means WOW. 32:44 Now that is a distinctly different view of where we 32:45 came from, I think. 32:52 So in God's image mankind was made in us as well. 32:56 The ultimate experience. 33:07 And that means that God made man in His image in 33:11 three different ways. 33:23 And have dominion over the world which also means 33:25 incidentally that we should be stewards of what God has 33:27 given us and be very careful on the environment 33:30 if we take these words seriously. 33:35 So this is very interesting, Genesis 2 goes into a little 33:38 bit more detail as to how God created man. 33:40 Do you remember how God did the creating of things before? 33:43 He just said let there be, and there was. 33:45 Why doesn't God said, let there be man, and there was? 33:48 Instead it says. 33:55 The question I have is. 34:01 Is very personal, very hands on, very close and intimate 34:05 way, I would like to suggest to you that mankind was 34:09 the ultimate of His creation. 34:11 Everything prior to that was setting the room up, 34:15 painting and putting the crib in order and everything else. 34:18 The planet, the food, the animals, everything God was 34:23 setting up and this was what God is specially wanted to do, 34:26 was to create mankind in His image. 34:30 So He enjoyed doing it and took a little time doing it. 34:34 Now we know a story that Adam and Eve made some bad 34:38 decisions and loss practically everything when they fell 34:41 to sin and within just one generation there was 34:44 murder on the planet. 34:53 The world went downhill rapidly. 34:55 When we talk in the beginning of the flood we will talk 34:59 about the conditions that are edited in the fossil record 35:02 that indicate one of the reasons why God had to destroy 35:05 the planet as He did. 35:07 People have questions, why did God destroy the planet? 35:10 Things started to go south on planet Earth very soon 35:14 after great, great, great, great, grandma and grandpa 35:17 made some mistakes. 35:19 Here's one of the saddest verses in the Bible. 35:26 God was sad because He saw how bad things had gotten, 35:30 and all the suffering on planet Earth. 35:38 To fix things, it is God's intention to fix things. 35:42 Well I would like to talk now about the Scopes trial. 35:47 A very significant event in the history of the discussion on 35:52 where we came from. 35:54 I'm not sure if you are all familiar with the Scopes trial. 35:57 It is sometimes called the monkey trial. 35:59 Are you familiar with that? 36:01 The monkey trial took place in 1925 in a little town, 36:05 Dayton, Tennessee. 36:10 Let me set the stage for you. 36:14 Tennessee was a state legislator. 36:16 Tennessee was getting pressure from the constituents of 36:19 Tennessee because they were hearing that teachers were 36:23 starting to talk in school about evolution of man. 36:26 That man had developed from lower animals, monkeys and 36:29 so forth and they thought that was a negative thing for 36:33 the people of Tennessee so they and enacted a law that 36:36 said you can teach evolution, but you cannot teach 36:40 that man evolved. 36:41 So they separated that out. 36:44 Well right away that was going to be challenged in court. 36:49 There was a fairly new organization, maybe you have 36:51 heard of it, The American Civil Liberties Union. 36:54 You may have heard of them, they decided to make this a 37:00 test case, so they advertised for a teacher willing to 37:06 bring this to court. 37:08 Would you be willing to basically be charged with a 37:11 crime, this new Texas law, and we will defend you for free. 37:14 We'll pay your expenses and that kind of thing to help 37:17 you through this, if you want to do that. 37:18 Well Scopes decided he would be willing to do that. 37:21 This was actually fill-in teacher, but nevertheless 37:24 he agreed to do this. 37:26 Meanwhile back in town, there were some businessmen who 37:31 thought, our town needs some to get on the map. 37:34 We need something big, what can we do? 37:36 So shall we say, converging forces came together for 37:42 a very unique event. 37:44 So this became the trial of the century. 37:47 Both sides hired the very best attorneys of the day. 37:52 If you go to this place today, you will find a very nice 37:56 Museum, the original County Courthouse is still there. 38:00 There is a basement display of all the things that took 38:04 place and the original room where everybody was 38:06 arguing and talking. 38:08 The microphones were all set and everything is still there, 38:11 it is a very interesting place. 38:12 So it involves John Scopes, and it involves of course two 38:16 heavyweight lawyers. 38:19 We have seen big trials in the last few years, 38:22 but this was as big as it came. 38:25 On the left is Clarence Darrell, he was a famous defense 38:29 attorney, he had just had the equivalent of a OJ Simpson 38:34 type trial, a murder trial prior to this involving a very 38:39 famous murder in America. 38:41 He did the defense and was in all the papers so they hired 38:46 him to defend John Scopes. 38:48 On the other side, to prosecute him was, William Jennings 38:52 Bryant who at one time had been a secretary of state. 38:55 He was considered at the time to be one of the nation's 38:58 best orators, best talkers. 39:01 So between the two these were two heavyweights. 39:04 Darrell was an agnostic and Bryant was a conservative 39:09 Christian, so that added fuel to what would take place. 39:14 It was an amazing trial talking about where we came from, 39:19 and are you challenging this? 39:22 Bryant would challenge are you saying we came from monkeys? 39:24 Are you happy your grandparents were monkeys or something? 39:27 There were be those shots and back toward Bryant was 39:32 how old was the earth? 39:33 Do you really think so, and educated people don't think that 39:36 Back-and-forth shots across the aisle. 39:41 I am wondering if this is the origin of the famous question 39:44 that often comes up. 39:46 I'm kind of grateful it hasn't come on the card yet. 39:48 Where did Cain get his wife? 39:50 That was actually at this trial, where did Cain get his wife? 39:54 Does everybody know were Cain got his wife? 39:57 Don't know? Take a look at Scripture and you will find that 40:00 Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. 40:03 The first generation of all living things intermarried. 40:07 That's just how it was the first generation or two. 40:11 But anyway I chased a rabbit there. 40:18 This was the first nationally broadcast cast news event 40:23 in the history of the United States. 40:25 So they gave a blow-by-blow, you would think they were 40:27 doing something like boxing. 40:29 There was a right and then there was left. 40:32 They would be reporting the arguments and Darrell and 40:37 Bryant were on the radio in 1925. 40:40 It was a big deal. 40:41 Stormy scenes in the trial of Scopes as Darrell moves to 40:45 bar all prayers, because Bryant wanted to maneuver by 40:47 saying can we have prayer before they get started? 40:49 No, the typical kind of fights. 40:55 The papers love this thing. 40:58 The papers just loved it. 41:01 And Bryant of course did his talking, preaching. 41:04 It was quite a show. 41:07 Let me end it on this thought, the way it ended was this. 41:13 Scopes was declared guilty because he had actually taught 41:19 evolution from one of these books. 41:24 This is actually a Civic biology, Hunter's Civic Biology 41:28 original in 1914 edition was taught from this book. 41:32 I'm going to read you something from it in just a minute. 41:35 I think you'll find it interesting, but he technically 41:38 lost but was freed on something they didn't do right. 41:41 So a technicality actually got him off. 41:43 Here's the thing that is significant in the whole subject 41:45 of the origins of man. 41:46 Listen to this. 41:48 Darrell was an expert at raising doubts and questions. 41:54 Pointing out weaknesses in Christian arguments on 41:56 creationism and the age of the earth, 41:58 and things like that. 42:00 He was an expert at it. 42:01 He secretly agree with Bryant ahead of time by saying 42:04 I'm going to talk about interviewing you and 42:07 putting you on the stand, is that okay? 42:09 So he did, you can put me on the stand afterwards. 42:11 After Bryant had got up and did all that he says some 42:14 things that you wish he hadn't said. 42:19 Then when it was time to turn, Darrell moved that nothing 42:23 further be done and for them to go ahead make a decision 42:28 and he didn't end up on the seat after all and got out of it. 42:31 Anyway these were slick guys, both of them. 42:34 As it turned out, creationism took a huge hit because we 42:40 didn't have good answers at the time. 42:42 Darrell was well prepared to ask big questions that 42:46 didn't have good quick answers. 42:47 So creationists, even though technically the law stood in 42:51 Tennessee for a while after this. 42:53 Technically Scopes was guilty, nevertheless creationism 42:57 lost tremendously in this public trial. 43:00 It ended up inspiring "Inherit the Wind," have you seen 43:04 that movie with Spencer Tracy where in essence he took 43:12 Clarence Darrell's role in the movie and make Christians 43:16 look really, really dumb on the subject of where mankind 43:19 came from in history of the world. 43:21 So that is the fallout from the Scopes trial. 43:26 Even though technically the law was on the books for a 43:29 number of years afterwards, decades afterwards, it wasn't 43:32 really prosecuted and people were not really brought to 43:35 trial over it after this. 43:36 So from that point on he would be safe to say that 43:40 creationism slid out of, as being taught about in school. 43:45 Slowly but surely evolution took over. 43:47 To some extent was affected by the publication perception 43:52 that came out of the Scopes trial. 43:54 Now I want to talk about something else that was a 43:56 sensational thing, here is another sensational story. 43:59 The Piltdown hoax. 44:06 In 1913, I believe it was, in Piltdown England a man said 44:13 that he found part of a skull and didn't know what 44:17 to do with it. 44:18 He brought it to the experts and one thing led to another. 44:21 They found a partial jaw, teeth and so forth. 44:25 They thought, what is this thing? 44:28 This is not human, not quite human. 44:31 As turned out they put it on display in the British Museum 44:35 and it was a sensational find, the Piltdown man. 44:37 He was put on display in the British Museum for 40 years. 44:43 It wasn't until 1953 that they took it out of the museum 44:46 because it was found to be manufactured. 44:49 It was a hoax. 44:51 It was a human top of the head, which was probably a 44:53 medieval head, like 500 years old. 44:55 An old English head, this part of the skull. 44:58 Then the jaw was from an orangutan. 45:01 They filed the teeth down to where it looked 45:07 a little more human. 45:09 So for 40 years it was on display and absolute top of 45:13 the field experts took it to be evidence of human 45:18 ancestry from apes. 45:20 This is a tremendously embarrassing thing and I want to 45:23 say that creationists have done some very embarrassing 45:26 things too, I can also cite stories but for personal 45:28 reasons I do not want us to look too bad. 45:30 There are some stories where creationists have also 45:35 fumbled over things they were hopeful about. 45:38 For instance, human footprints and dinosaur footprints 45:42 together and the stories there have not been 45:44 panning out so well. 45:46 So the point is they believe this to be evidence, 45:49 and solid supportable evidence, because it fits the image 45:53 in the world view they have already in place. 45:56 They expected to find something that looked sort of human 45:59 and sort of ape like, and when they were presented with it, 46:02 they accepted it. 46:05 Even though there were some experts for a number of years 46:08 saying, this doesn't look really right, have you taken 46:12 a good look at it? 46:14 There were other experts saying it looked a little too good. 46:17 So the Piltdown hoax is one of the more famous stories. 46:22 So the Scopes trial, the Piltdown hoax, there are lot 46:27 of things that are spotted, the debate on our human ancestry 46:31 over the years are not good and solid and happy stories. 46:35 Some of them are some fantastic things that have taken 46:38 place on both sides of the aisle. 46:40 So here's the Piltdown area where they went back looking 46:43 for more, and it is almost like a murder mystery. 46:48 It is just an unsolved thing to this day they do not know 46:51 who it was that filed the teeth down and tried to perpetuate 46:54 the hoax, to this day it is an unsolved mystery. 46:58 It makes for good books. 47:00 Anthropology has been using this as a support. 47:06 Maybe you have heard about the famous Haeckel drawings 47:11 phylogeny and ontogeny, phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny 47:15 Or did I say that backwards? 47:18 That is the famous drawings that came out of the 1870s 47:24 by someone who was agreeing with Darwin. 47:26 He said have you ever looked at embryos at certain places 47:29 in the development of embryos, animals look very similar. 47:33 Maybe as they are growing into more mature animals they 47:37 are actually, kind of, by stage re-living evolution. 47:42 Maybe they are going from small and simple to complex and 47:45 they just are recapitulating or re-living evolution. 47:53 For years something like this has appeared in biology books. 47:56 I remember seeing this in biology books, in public school 47:59 as a kid, this has been considered good evidence 48:03 to this day. 48:04 Even now you occasionally see pictures using this as 48:08 supportive of evolution. 48:10 The problem is, and of course creationists are delighted 48:15 to point this out, that these were doctored pictures in 48:19 a number of places. 48:21 The scale is not right and a lot of things are added, 48:25 subtracted, and is attempted to make for instance the 48:27 gills to look like there were gills on things when 48:30 they really weren't. 48:32 A lot of things like that to where this is considered 48:35 to be poor evidence now for evolution, even though it seems 48:38 to be still around. 48:40 For instance, here is a fairly modern book that still has 48:43 it in even though Haeckel's pictures were clearly altered 48:46 and is significantly enough to where evolutionist leaders 48:49 said, we shouldn't use it in our books. 48:52 But it hasn't quite got around to everybody yet. 48:58 I wanted to read this little section from the Civic Biology 49:01 book by Hunter here because one of the impacts that 49:06 Darwinism had on the subject of humanity is in the 49:10 area of social Darwinism. 49:12 I know that people get defensive when we talk about 49:14 this because we do not want to suggest that everybody who 49:18 was an Darwinist and is somehow is short on the moral ladder. 49:22 We do not want to say that at all. 49:24 That is an unfair thing to say and I resent it when 49:26 I hear creationist suggesting it. 49:28 But I will also say this, there are some interesting 49:31 developments that have come from people who were great 49:34 believers in the evolution of man. 49:37 Let me just read to you, for instance from the book, 49:40 that Scopes was teaching from. 49:42 This is on page 196, in fact I will blow it up here. 49:47 This is the part that I am reading and we will 49:50 let you see it yourself. 50:11 And that is in the chapter teaching about human evolution 50:14 that Scopes was being challenged for. 50:17 You never hear this thing talked about when we talk about 50:21 social Darwinism, a lot of unfair things I mentioned before 50:25 are said, but let me quote to you some fairly well-known 50:29 evolutionist talking about the subject. 50:31 The least of which is Stephen Jay Gould. 50:34 He said this. 50:57 Now take a look at this cover page for Origin of Species. 51:01 Take a look at the middle there were it says, 51:03 The Preservation Of Favored Races. 51:08 At the time Darwin wrote this, the British Empire ran 51:14 the world pretty much. 51:17 The sun never set on the British Empire, 51:19 as the old saying goes. 51:21 How can you explain that biologically? 51:25 Well among other things you might be able to explain it 51:28 with the social implications of evolution and that is the 51:31 survival of the fittest. 51:33 The most fit are in charge. 51:34 It may be a social way of underlying why the British were 51:39 the favorite race of the day. 51:41 It was because they seem to be fit. 51:44 Anyway, I realize that is a bit controversial but let 51:48 me talk a little bit about Charles Darwin's cousin, 51:51 Sir Francis Galton. 52:01 "Eu" means good?, euthanasia, a good death, Euangelon, 52:06 is where we get evangelism, Euangelon means good message. 52:19 Again this is the cousin of Charles Darwin. 52:22 Darwin did not always agree with the social implications 52:26 of his cousin, but others did agree with Galton and 52:31 certainly a great belief of eugenics was Adolf Hitler. 52:36 You know the story there on the idea of perfecting the human 52:40 race by human engineering, human evolution. 52:43 Although we are abhorred by the idea of eliminating any race 52:48 of people, or any kind of people, from a strictly logical 52:53 standpoint, it does make sense if we are interested in 52:57 preserving the human race to at least look at ways in 53:00 which we can improve the human race and that gets into 53:03 some interesting areas. 53:06 I will leave it at that. 53:08 Who would be in charge of that sort of thing? 53:10 So the implications of the Scopes trial are interesting 53:14 because back in that day you could talk about evolution. 53:17 You couldn't talk about human evolution, and certainly in 53:20 a classroom, however today if you try to speak about 53:23 anything but human evolution in the classroom, you will 53:27 get the dunce sitting in a corner treatment. 53:30 You cannot talk about intelligent designer, 53:32 or anything else in a public school setting. 53:35 Have you seen the movie "Expelled"? 53:38 I recommend it, but it does illustrate what I illustrated 53:42 yesterday in my own journey. 53:45 I should say the first night my own personal journey when 53:48 I encountered, I thought, in science. 53:50 A lack of willingness to talk about theories on the origin 53:56 that in any way diverted from the Darwinian view. 54:00 It seemed like there was a difficulty in talking about it. 54:03 So I recommend the movie if you get a chance to see it. 54:06 If the person doesn't think there is a God to be 54:09 accountable to, then what is the point of, this is an 54:13 interview, trying to modify your behavior to keep it 54:17 within acceptable ranges? 54:19 That's how I thought about it anyway. 54:21 "I always believe the theory of evolution was truth and" 54:24 "that we all just came from the slime and we died that was" 54:26 it, there is nothing. " 54:28 Now guess who said that? 54:31 That was actually Jeffrey Dahmer. 54:33 If you remember the story of that man, a very gruesome 54:36 tale of a mass murderer. 54:39 His moral boundaries, at least for him, was somewhat 54:45 established by the Idea he was just slime. 54:48 There was nothing in the future anyway so this life was it. 54:53 I'm not saying that that is a natural occurrence from 54:56 Darwinism, it is not a natural A. equals B. equals C. thing. 55:01 It goes from this, to this, to this, to this. 55:02 It is interesting that it's somehow contributes to, 55:05 how should I say, to the despair some people feel about 55:09 their own selves. 55:11 So the question remains, is there a Divine hand in any way 55:15 directing anything, or are we here by the way of a 55:19 Divine hand or not? 55:20 Biblical records of humanity is a very, very high record 55:25 according to the Bible. 55:26 We were created in the image of God, with a Divine image 55:30 as the map that God used in forming us. 55:34 If on the other hand you feel like you are fortunate 55:40 creature, I can't use the word creature, being that has 55:45 come here by a way of series of accidents, and you are 55:49 riding on a planet that's here, fortunately just right 55:55 for you to occupy, and you have absolutely nothing 56:01 in the future particularly to go to, I think it does affect 56:06 your self image. 56:08 Remember those glasses we talked about. 56:10 Remember the worldview, the worldview is also is something 56:14 you see yourself in the mirror when you look. 56:17 You have a concept of who you are. 56:18 If there is anything about evolution that really bugs me, 56:23 it's what I consider to be a fairly low view of a human. 56:27 That we are simply just one of many kinds of critters with 56:32 no particular future different from anybody else's. 56:36 If, I'm just going to say this for you to think about. 56:40 If in fact the biblical account is closer to the truth and 56:45 we have a Divine origin, with a Divine purpose. 56:47 For people to have lost sight of that and lost out on that 56:52 information, to me it is something that will motivate 56:54 me to talk to groups like yourselves. 56:57 I thing it is something that will affect positively people's 57:00 images of themselves if they know this, what I consider 57:03 a truth and supportable by my own experience and with God, the 57:08 things I read about and I don't find conflicting things in 57:12 nature that will shake me from that view. 57:14 That is my view. 57:16 I don't think were pond scum. 57:17 I think we are here by a Divine hand. 57:19 I hope you enjoyed the talk today. 57:21 Thank you very much. |
Revised 2014-12-17