Participants: Stan Hudson
Series Code: ITB
Program Code: ITB000006
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00:13 Hello I Stan Hudson speaker for In the Beginning and today
00:16 we look at a very important topic, Noah's flood. 00:19 In the beginning there was water Did that flood really happen? 00:23 We'll show you the science, in Scripture, and support for it. 00:26 I hope you enjoy. 00:29 Hello everybody! 00:30 We are glad you are here. 00:32 Look at these folks, this is number six out of seven. 00:35 We just have one more meeting after this evening and 00:38 we appreciate very much your giving of your time to come 00:41 out and listen to these things. 00:43 I think perhaps we have a little bit of a soul mate thing 00:46 going here because these are some subjects that are 00:48 interesting to you as they are to me. 00:50 These are the great questions that we are looking at. 00:52 In the Beginning. 00:54 Tonight we are going to look at In The Beginning, of course 00:58 with a hint as to the flood, in the beginning there was 01:01 water, and everybody agrees there was water. 01:05 Whether you believe in billions of years, or thousands, 01:08 or any thing in between, everyone agrees that water was 01:11 significant in the early world. 01:13 And Genesis also agrees. Genesis 1:2 01:25 There was waters in the beginning. 01:26 Now remember we talked briefly before about the spiritual 01:31 or moral conditions of the world that led up to the flood. 01:36 It was a significant change, something that caused God to be 01:39 so drastic in His actions as to literally reverse the 01:45 creation, that He did, to send the world back to a void, 01:49 and without form, watery place. 01:52 He literally turn the clock back. 01:53 So let's take a look again at the condition that led to that. 02:17 So God unfortunately had to start over again. 02:21 When we talk about Noah's flood, almost everybody, it seems like, 02:28 considers it to be something of a fairytale, or a myth. 02:31 Pictures like this probably don't help, but many people 02:36 think of it as a fun story, a child's story and maybe tell 02:39 children but they certainly can't see anything serious or 02:42 anything support of it really having happened. 02:44 Well you will probably hear a little bit on the other side 02:47 of that tonight as we take a look at this. 02:49 Of course when you talk about the search for Noah's Ark 02:52 everybody wonders about this kind of thing. 02:54 Have they ever found Noah's Ark? 02:57 They have certainly looked for Noah's ark. 02:59 There has been a lot of antidotal stories about people 03:03 who supposedly have not only seen it, but in a couple 03:07 of cases walked around inside of it. 03:09 So there are these stories that seem to abound and there 03:12 is a bit of a legend that grows over whether or not they 03:16 have found Noah's Ark. 03:17 The biblical account, if you recall in the Hebrew, the 03:20 biblical account is that the Ark set down in the mountains, 03:24 plural, of Ararat so it was really talking about a region 03:29 where it came down, not necessarily the specific 03:31 mountain itself. 03:33 But it gets pretty sensational when people are 03:36 looking for Noah's Ark. 03:39 There we go, found on Mars. 03:41 I knew it was somewhere, and there it is. 03:45 Well let's take a look at it a little more serious evidence. 03:50 Now one of the things that has pushed legend a bit and 03:55 sensationalized it, is occasionally a picture that 03:59 looks very intriguing, some thing like this as you can see. 04:02 This elongated formation of some kind, snow-covered 04:09 somewhat and people look at things like that and say is 04:11 is that a boat? What is that sticking out there? 04:13 There are these kind of pictures that exist. 04:16 If you hit Noah's Ark on the Internet the search engine 04:21 will pull up a lot of stuff. 04:23 There will be a lot of stories. 04:25 One of the things that helped with the image of this great 04:32 hunt for something very rare and interesting, was the fact 04:35 that Mount Ararat is on the border between 04:38 Turkey and Russia. 04:40 If you are familiar with a little history of the Cold War, 04:43 anyone walking around on the top of Mount Ararat were in 04:47 the gun sights of the Russians soldiers on the border. 04:51 So there was a sensitivity about how many people the Turks 04:55 would allow to go up and take a look for Noah's Ark 04:59 and any expedition because they didn't want to 05:01 stir up things with their neighbor. 05:03 For years it was virtually impossible to get permission to 05:05 go look at that helps push any legend about what may be up 05:10 there, I wish we could go look. 05:11 Well now things have changed and people can go look. 05:14 Actually Mount Ararat, the area of it, is quite pretty. 05:19 This is the main mountain and there are other 05:21 mountains in the area. 05:22 Take a look at some of these pictures. 05:25 For instance here is an interesting rock formation that 05:28 certainly would look like maybe a boat from the air. 05:32 But when they look at it up close it doesn't appear to be 05:35 anything other than an interesting rock formation. 05:38 There are other formations, places in this area do have 05:41 things that looked interesting should there be snow on it 05:45 it may be intriguing and perhaps from a distance look 05:49 like it had some potential. 05:51 So there is no question that some of the rock formations in 05:54 the area almost look like boats, or boat like objects. 05:58 Yet when we go we haven't found the boat. 06:05 That is important because if you think about the ancient 06:10 people and typically when they had a chance to use materials 06:15 from a pre-existing building or anything, they would. 06:19 For instance, have you ever seen pictures that like Roman 06:25 or Greek settlements, what are usually left are the pillars 06:31 and the Arches of old buildings. 06:33 Everything else seems to be gone. 06:34 Notice all those pillars and arches? 06:36 Why are there only pillars and arches? 06:38 Because the ancient folks believed in recycling. 06:41 They recycled stones there were useful. 06:45 If you think about it, after the flood if there was a 06:48 flood, a worldwide flood and everything was destroyed, 06:52 and resources were few and far between it is very likely 06:56 that they took apart much of the Ark just to use the wood 06:59 and building or whatever. 07:01 It is very possible, it is typical of the ancient folks. 07:04 So there may not be of much up there. 07:06 When we talk about the ancient stories of the flood, 07:10 it is not unusual for people to say, and scholars to say, 07:14 you see the Genesis account is simply a Jewish version of 07:18 a Babylonian story, the Gilgamesh epic. 07:20 They will say that because the Gilgamesh epic which was 07:25 discovered and found on these tablets in Cana 07:27 formed tablets coming from Mesopotamia and Samaria, 07:31 in that area, record a flood story with Utnapishtim 07:37 and Gilgamesh and key characters involving a worldwide flood. 07:41 The gods were angry and flooded the world and so forth. 07:44 It sounds so similar, a lot of the parts of the stories 07:46 are similar to the Genesis account. 07:48 Because it was written down at a very early time many 07:50 people have said the Genesis account is a Hebrew-ized version 07:55 of a legend that came from a Babylonian time. 07:59 That is a typical thing. 08:00 Whereas we may say, the creationists might say, and that 08:04 was one version or a recollection of the Babylonians 08:08 recalling the same event but with their take. 08:10 Their embellishment shall we say, the Gilgamesh epic is 08:16 rather famous but let's talk about flood stories. 08:18 Remember I hinted, and I think based on a couple questions 08:22 I got back that a may have hit a chord with some of you 08:25 when I mentioned the Dragon stories may be evidence of human 08:28 and dinosaur coexistence since they are worldwide pretty much. 08:32 Well there is only thing that is more worldwide and 08:35 I found it among multi-cultures of ancient memories and 08:38 that is flood stories. 08:40 Flood stories seem to be in just about every 08:43 corner of the world. 08:44 Let me give you a little bit of a quick scan, 08:49 a quick survey of some of the stories in the world. 08:52 We start with the Hebrew, or the biblical account. 08:58 Let's take a look at what other cultures had flood stories. 09:01 The Babylonians, the Egyptians, and Persians, the Assyrians. 09:05 there is a Islamic version as well of a flood story. 09:08 When you go to Europe you see the Romans, Greeks have even 09:12 dated the flood pretty close to the period the Jewish Bible has. 09:16 The Romans, Scandinavians, the Celtic's all had flood stories. 09:20 Let's keep going, Africa, the Nigerian's, Congan's, pygmies, 09:25 the Tanzanians all have flood stories. 09:28 When you go to Asia you see eastern Russia, Mongolia, Korea, 09:33 the Philippines, there's a Hindu version, a Siberian, 09:37 Chinese, Tibetan all have flood stories in their memories. 09:42 Let's keep going, let's keep going to the South pacific. 09:44 Australia, Fiji, Tahitians, Maoriane's and you can see right 09:48 on down the line. 09:50 Let's go to the Americas, Central America the ancient 09:53 Mayans, the Toltec's, the Incas had stories. 09:57 More in the north we have the Navajo, Hopi, the Cherokee, 10:01 the Blackfoot, you can see all these different way up to 10:04 the Eskimos, Algonquin's have flood stories. 10:08 Since we are presenting this story near Spokane, 10:13 I thought we would mention that even the Spokane Indian 10:15 tribe, and I'm not talking about baseball, has a flood 10:18 story in their ancient memory. 10:20 So flood stories abound from all around the world, in every 10:23 corner and there are these ancient memories fairly similar. 10:27 It would be something like this. 10:30 The familiar or similar parts are the gods were angry with 10:34 mankind, the world and so they destroy the world with a flood 10:38 and there are survivors that are on a log, a boat, or a raft 10:43 and somehow make it through and from those people 10:46 that repopulate the world. 10:48 These stories are found in every culture in virtually 10:50 every language, so again it makes it seem like there's 10:55 something to it. 10:56 Even the American Museum of Smithsonian Institute in 10:58 Washington DC, a fairly new museum, wonderful museum. 11:02 I had an opportunity to go there a couple of years ago and 11:04 walk up to the top and start looking at these beautiful 11:06 displays of native Americans on display starting with the 11:12 oldest things at the top and working around and you can 11:16 see the way it goes down. 11:17 While I was up there I leaned in to hear what one of the 11:21 native American guides was saying to a group there, 11:23 to hear her talk to the group about some of the 11:26 things in the case. 11:28 She turned and looked to the group and said, you know my 11:30 people have a flood story in their background. 11:35 And she looked at them and said, you guys do to, 11:37 maybe there is something to it. 11:39 I had to chuckle, but then I pulled myself away. 11:44 It is interesting how many cultures there are that have 11:49 flood stories and that is a significant thing they all 11:52 seem to recall something way back when. 11:55 Well the Bible seems to indicate that what happened, whatever 11:59 started the flood, broke forth all the fountains of the deep. 12:04 It is a word. It is a terminology that can 12:06 mean more than water, the fountains of the deep. 12:09 So somehow or other there was a great catastrophe that tore 12:13 up the crust of the earth and caused there to be 12:16 water covering everything. 12:18 This was the standard understanding for centuries on 12:21 how the planet looked the way it did. 12:23 All the fantastic geological structures and the crust of the 12:28 Earth was attributed to what we would call catastrophism. 12:32 A catastrophist view of the history of the earth. 12:36 In other words what we see in the crust are especially 12:39 caused by great events in the past. 12:42 And then things changed again, as we talked about, in the 12:46 flow of thinking, in the scientific world especially, 12:49 with the rise of secular humanism. 12:52 This is Oxford and Cambridge in England. 12:55 The decline of Christianity in the rise of secular humanism. 12:58 Change thinking about a lot of things and including the 13:02 interpretation of the Earth's crust. 13:04 So along came James Hutton, the father of modern geology. 13:15 By very gradual processes. 13:19 The things we see now are things that have happened in the 13:21 past and there hasn't been any great catastrophe to speak 13:24 of, pretty much everything has gradually been made. 13:27 If you look at the Grand Canyon, with James Hutton's view, 13:31 you would be looking at the end where it comes out at Baja 13:35 California where the Colorado comes and you would be 13:39 measuring how much dirt and how much material comes out 13:41 and roll the clock back and they would tell you how long 13:46 that has been carving out the Grand Canyon. 13:48 That is a Uniformitarian model of how to figure out 13:51 what has taken place in the past of the earth. 13:55 And given the context, Hutton was especially saying, 13:59 No to the Bible, no to the Bible. 14:02 He had to resist the older theories there. 14:15 Watch and see what is going on now and you will 14:18 understand what has gone in the past, that is the view. 14:30 Now enters a UW dub, James Harlan Bretz. 14:39 We are talking now about the 1920s. 14:41 As a young man he studied some of the scab lands, 14:46 the Missoula scab lands, from Missoula Montana all 14:50 the way through the Columbia River basin. 14:53 When he was studying he was looking in particular 14:55 Dry Falls up in the Coulee area. 14:58 You look at this and obviously it was some kind of a 15:03 waterfall in the past and that was easy. 15:05 There is hardly any water there now, the area is all 15:07 deserty now and so he began to look at this and study 15:11 what he thought were, when you go to Missoula Montana you 15:15 look at the hills above Missoula and see what it looks like. 15:18 With a little imagination it looks like shorelines with 15:22 little bit of indentations water may have caused 15:25 marks in the hills there. 15:26 So he began to put together a theory in the 1920s. 15:32 He has suggested that some of the hills in the area 15:34 including even the Columbia River basin was caused by 15:38 some kind of flood, a great catastrophe where 15:42 water came shooting out there. 15:43 Well let's just say that he was resisted very strongly in the 15:50 scientific community because it was against Uniformitarianism. 15:53 Uniformitarianism was the philosophy of the day. 15:57 It took him 40 years, 40 years of proving and trying to 16:02 prove his theory to where finally they admitted there was 16:05 something to it and what actually took place was some 16:09 kind of ice dam, we would call this the ice age and yes the 16:12 flood story the creationist believe in accounts for an 16:16 ice age as well. 16:17 A much shorter and more recent one, but still an ice age. 16:20 An ice age that included an ice sheet that came down and 16:24 blocked a significant river coming out of Missoula area 16:28 and backed water up. 16:29 So much water in volume that it was the size in terms of 16:33 volume like one of the Great Lakes. 16:35 It was like Michigan or Erie, that much water and it broke 16:39 through and emptied out in a matter of a day or two. 16:41 If you could imagine the amount of water coming through 16:44 there, I have seen like 65 miles an hour and cubic miles 16:49 of water per hour. 16:50 The amount of water that came through there was anywhere 16:53 from one times to 10 times the flow of all rivers in the world. 16:58 At one time, flowing out there so you can imagine the 17:02 amount of water coming through there. 17:03 Take a look at the Columbia River basin and you can see 17:06 that maybe that indeed happened. 17:08 It took 40 years for his theory to be accepted and now 17:13 they have looked at this and study this and believe there 17:15 has been a number of floods in the areas, 17:18 actually repeated floods and so forth. 17:20 There is evidence of more than one. 17:22 I have lived in Spokane Valley for a few years. 17:24 I live up the side of the hill maybe 100 feet above the 17:28 general area there. 17:29 Up in our yard there is all kinds of round river washed 17:33 rocks there that most certainly were from this event. 17:36 Washed through the area because it came right through Spokane. 17:39 So this is interesting, it was a catastrophe that could 17:44 explain much of what we are seeing in the geologic column. 17:48 That was news that some things could be explained better 17:52 by a catastrophe then Uniformitarianism. 17:55 Does that make sense? In other words it was a key event 17:58 in recent geology and geologic interpretation. 18:02 What J. Harlan Bretz said, the man lived into his 90s and 18:06 died here about 10 years ago, what he did say was maybe 18:09 now we ought to look at the Grand Canyon 18:12 in a different way. 18:14 That is an interesting feature and a number of people 18:18 have speculated that the Grand Canyon appears to be 18:20 something caused more from a single drainage event then 18:26 millions of years of a single river down at the bottom. 18:30 If we had time we would talk about some of the interesting 18:33 technical features of that, but we cannot talk in the 18:37 Northwest about catastrophes without spending a little 18:39 time on Mount Saint Helens. 18:41 And looking at this group, I'm going to get mixed answers 18:44 on this question. 18:46 Where were you 18 May, 1980? 18:52 Some of you weren't even sparkles in your mothers eyes 18:54 yet, but many of you may recall that day. 18:58 Up in the North West you will remember where you were. 19:04 What happened of course is very well known. 19:07 1300 feet of the summit of Mount Saint Helens was blown 19:11 sideways off of it toward the north. 19:14 The North side just heaved off and slid down the side. 19:17 Of course there was 57 people killed. 19:20 It was the largest volcanic disaster in American history 19:24 anyway and very dramatic. 19:26 All the amounts of material, 200 square miles of trees 19:31 were flattened or carried away by mud and so forth. 19:35 It was an incredible time. 19:38 Just blown off the stumps and cleaned off the bark. 19:42 What became of it, a lot of things came in term of 19:46 the study of this great catastrophe. 19:48 Naturally a number of people were interested to see how 19:50 it affected just the geography of the area, the geology 19:54 of the area and of course Mount Saint Helens is a heaven 19:57 for geologists, there are so many interesting things 20:00 to look at there. 20:02 You see two divers here in Spirit Lake. 20:05 They are dare I say, creationist scientist who had some 20:10 questions and they were allowed to come in and study 20:12 in this area. 20:14 They came in and studied the logs that were floating in 20:18 Spirit Lake because it was much higher now, the elevation 20:20 because it was filled with so much debris on the bottom. 20:23 Many of the logs were floating here and they watched 20:25 and studied these logs and noticed that after a period of 20:29 time the heavier root part of the logs were more dense and 20:37 tended to water log this way and started floating with the 20:43 base down until eventually they watered logged so much they 20:47 would sink slowly down into the base of the lake and the 20:51 sentiment was still coming in so they were literally being 20:54 filled up in place like this. 20:56 Well you might think okay, so what? 21:00 What is interesting about that is it gave them a whole 21:04 new interpretation of the petrified Forest in 21:06 Yellowstone National Park. 21:08 There are two places, Specimen Creek and Specimen Ridge, 21:11 both are sizable hikes. 21:13 You can get way up there and see these places where these 21:17 trees, these petrified trees are standing in place. 21:20 If you look up the side of the hill you can actually see 21:24 several of them in different layers up the side of the 21:26 hill and you wonder. 21:28 There are signs in the Park that says here is evidence of 21:32 millions of years, look at this. 21:34 You have a tree growing there and it is covered 21:37 up and petrified. 21:38 There is another layer appear in you having other tree and 21:41 it is petrified in place and so forth. 21:43 And it goes on so on and so forth and it looks like millions 21:45 of years, I mean that would be the imagination. 21:47 But now the same scientists asked permission to dig around 21:50 some of these trees. 21:52 So they dug around the roots expecting to find roots and 21:55 there is actually no root systems underneath these trees. 21:58 They are not growing in place. 22:00 They were not petrified where they were growing and so 22:03 suddenly they must've been transported there like that. 22:08 They looked at Mount Saint Helens and said okay what we 22:11 are looking at in Yellowstone is a single great event 22:14 not unlike Mount Saint Helens, it is only multiplied 22:17 many times and that ought to give you some imagination. 22:21 If you have ever seen the map of Yellowstone you know 22:25 that the Yellowstone Caldera is actually quite huge. 22:29 It is many miles across the volcanic mouth basically 22:34 of all that is going on in Yellowstone. 22:36 It is huge, so whatever happened in Yellowstone in times 22:40 past was catastrophic. 22:42 There was water present at these trees floated and sunk 22:47 just like Mount Saint Helens. 22:49 One time I had a chance it one of the gift shops there, 22:53 I was listening to a video and they were talking about 22:57 their petrified forests. 22:59 I thought I wanted to see with the latest was on that. 23:01 Sure enough they said they were given credit to 23:04 Mount Saint Helens explaining how this petrified Forest 23:07 was put in place. 23:09 So they are changing their views and it is partly 23:12 because creationists scientist have an open-mindedness 23:16 to put catastrophic features in the Earth's crust and asked 23:20 different questions than evolutionary scientists when 23:23 they look at the same data. 23:24 They wonder could this be explained by catastrophe and 23:27 they approach it that way and find out things that 23:30 perhaps might not have been found out otherwise. 23:32 It depends upon the glasses that you bring to 23:34 look at the data. 23:36 So now they understand the petrified Forest here in 23:39 Yellowstone national park. 23:41 It also when talking about other features that came out 23:44 of Mount Saint Helens, on the north fork of the 23:46 Toutle River they have a little area they call 23:48 the little Grand Canyon. 23:50 They have found graded beds in one area and it also 23:56 has been washed out as a continuing wash out and it looks 24:02 like a little Grand Canyon with graded beds 24:04 from a single event. 24:06 Which is kind of interesting. 24:08 So again it makes you wonder if the Grand Canyon were 24:13 caused in a similar way, caused by lots of graded beds 24:17 from maybe a single event and we will talk about that 24:20 a little bit more. 24:22 It could also be formed by a receding body of water, 24:29 and inland sea or something. 24:30 Have you ever been to Monument Valley in Utah? 24:33 You see those huge monuments standing with nothing around 24:39 them and you wonder where is all the material because 24:41 you can see there used to be probably huge 24:44 amounts of material there, layers. 24:47 If you look across miles over there and miles over there, 24:49 you see the same layers on these monuments and wonder 24:53 where did all the material go because it's not 24:54 here at the base. 24:56 Where did the material go? 24:57 The material had to been swept out by some kind of water 25:00 action, there is no other real good explanation that I 25:02 can think of with my limited geology from school that 25:06 I can think about to explain that big of drainage events. 25:11 Now enter in Dr. Art Chadwick, a man I admire a lot. 25:15 He is a creationists scientist and the National Park 25:20 Service has allowed him to study some formations 25:23 in the Grand Canyon. 25:24 He has gone down and study the Tippet Sand Stone. 25:27 That is the area that is outlined there in the yellow. 25:31 Tippet Sand Stone is considered to be the base, 25:34 well it is the Cambrian layer and below it there is a 25:38 pre-Cambrian layer so it is considered to be basically 25:41 the beginning of the fossil record mostly. 25:43 Most people believe it is the beginning of the fossil 25:46 record and the standard interpretation for this is that 25:50 it was slow age, millions of years and so on deposited. 25:54 He had questions, and the evolutionary scientists don't 25:57 ask because of the different views. 25:59 So he studied this Tippet Sand Stone, he and some others, 26:03 he has come to the conclusion and he has very good evidence 26:06 to show, especially with the larger stones, that this 26:11 material was laid down as the Turbidite. 26:15 Do you know what Turbidite is? 26:17 It is not an ancient man, a Turbidite. 26:22 A Turbidite is actually a deposit made underwater. 26:27 Let me show you what example is here. 26:30 These are all Turbidite here, these layers are mud that 26:34 was laid down not just with water present, but laid down 26:38 with water up above it. 26:40 So you can have tremendous amounts of material laid as a 26:44 Turbidite in a turbidity current with water driven forces 26:50 behind it and laid out. 26:51 Now they are looking at the very base of the Grand Canyon 26:54 at some of the lowest levels and saying this appears to be 26:57 laid when there was lots of water up above. 27:00 Let's move on. 27:05 Do you remember this, this is a repeat? 27:23 Sedimentary again accounts for most material on planet Earth's 27:27 crust, the surface, and most of it is formed, not all, but 27:31 much of it is formed with water present. 27:33 So it is interesting that there is so much material around 27:36 that had to have water involved in its making. 27:39 Again what is the evolutionists Bible, the evolutionists Bible 27:42 is the geologic column. 27:45 That is we can see time in history correctly recorded 27:49 there if we can interpret it accurately we will know 27:52 what took place. 27:54 Again here at the layers with the names and the standard 27:57 of understanding of millions of years to the left-hand side. 28:00 Now what is interesting is that the Cambrian, pre-Cambrian 28:04 level, and that is where were going to look right now. 28:08 We mentioned briefly that 32/35 basic kinds of living 28:13 things are found at the very beginning of the fossil record. 28:15 One of the interesting critters to look at is a Trilobite. 28:19 I'm going to hold up here what is called mortality plate. 28:23 Doesn't that sound wonderful? 28:25 A mortality plate of Trilobites. 28:29 This is from the Cambrian period, so this is pretty early 28:33 in the fossil record with all these critters caught 28:36 in some kind of material. 28:39 Of course these were Marine dwelling animals, I think 28:41 possibly shoreline, crab like things. 28:44 The problem for evolutionists on this is the Trilobites and 28:51 other things found at this lowest level are rather complex. 28:55 If you think about, the hope would be if you are assuming 28:59 evolutionary model that you would start very simple life 29:02 forms that will work its way up in terms of complexity. 29:05 They would have more complex features and so forth, 29:08 and yet the very first things we find in the fossil record 29:10 are fairly complex, including and certainly the Trilobites. 29:14 The Trilobites, much has been made about their eyes because 29:18 it appears there are different varieties of eyes. 29:21 Almost every kind of eye is found on a Trilobite, given what 29:24 ever type of Trilobite you find, there is quite a variety. 29:28 Again the evolution of the eye is one of the interesting 29:30 challenges for the model, what led to eyes and so forth. 29:36 Now Dr. Ariel Roth has said this about finding the 29:41 Cambrian explosion, that's what this term is for 29:44 suddenly finding all these kinds of animals at the 29:46 very beginning of the fossil record. 30:18 Again the basic types of vertebrae and all these 30:22 different things suddenly appear at the very lowest 30:24 level of the fossil record. 30:26 Now again remember what Charles Darwin said. 30:41 He said if that didn't happen my theory would 30:44 absolutely break down. 30:47 There again is the evolution tree of life. 30:50 With its various branches leading to the different 30:53 kinds of living things. 30:55 You see the animals breaking off early from the plants 30:58 and invertebrates break off of vertebrates at an early 31:02 break to all the different kinds. 31:05 And of course you and I are at the top where we should be. 31:14 I watched or listened to this argument because 31:15 it is key in discussing these kinds of things. 31:43 That is very important that you see this. 31:45 This is none other than Stephen J. Gould who said this. 31:50 He was certainly an evolutionist. 31:52 The evidence, the fossil evidence is not very compelling 31:56 for the complete evolutionary tree of life according to 31:59 no less an authority than Harvard's Stephen J. Gould. 32:03 Now they have, and he has, an approach to try to deal 32:06 with that, but he is saying that the fossil record 32:10 doesn't help Darwin's numerous successive little changes 32:14 approach to evolution. 32:16 Let's take a look and again a big problem for 32:19 evolutionists is of course missing links. 32:23 You have heard this term before, missing links. 32:25 It's not just in the human-ape area, it's all across the board 32:30 as we are talking today. 32:53 Now what does this director of the Field Museum, an 33:00 evolutionist, mean when he says we have even fewer 33:03 examples? What he is saying is the more we study some of 33:06 the accepted fossil transition records for different kinds 33:10 of animals, we find they do not hold up over time. 33:13 We are now having fewer and fewer that can hold up as 33:16 good examples of evolution from point A. to point B. 33:20 Now again this is in-house talking as a look at 33:25 some of the issues. 33:29 To help deal with this let's look at the work of an American, 33:33 a German born geneticist named Richard Goldschmidt. 33:36 A Jewish man who fled Europe at a good time to flee and 33:41 came to the United States and end up at UC Berkeley 33:44 as a professor there. 33:46 He was a geneticist and one of the first people to really 33:49 bring the science of genetics into evolution trying to 33:53 work out some things. 33:55 But notice his observation. 34:05 What is he saying? It's not the tiny changes as Darwin says. 34:15 In other words a big change. 34:17 Somebody had a big different baby that they themselves were. 34:21 A big change and he coined the term that has become his 34:27 famous line, he coined the term that is funny but he 34:32 meant it to be serious. 34:34 Hopeful Monsters, in other words they were hoping to find 34:37 some kind of significantly different animal born from a 34:42 parent, and let's face it the fossil record probably would 34:47 support that more than the tiny changes because those 34:51 transitional ones are not found very often. 34:54 Now no less again I'm going to quote Stephen Jay Gould 34:58 again, the late great evolutionist from Harvard says, 35:19 punctuated equilibrium is another way of saying 35:26 equilibrium in the fossil record, or in animal history. 35:31 They basically they stay this way for quite a while and is 35:35 punctuated, it stops, and then there is a big change and 35:38 then it goes in that way for a while, and then there's a 35:41 big change so it is punctuated equilibrium but only for 35:45 periods of time. 35:46 That is the approach that some take now. 35:49 It is fair to say the evolutionists have not 35:52 jumped on this bandwagon. 35:54 This is probably something of a minority view. 35:57 There is no question that the fossil record would probably 36:00 better support this than those little tiny changes that 36:05 are still hoped for. 36:07 Now what Dr. David Menton, and this is an anatomist, 36:11 and a creationist mentioned about this. 36:29 That I think is a reasonable statement to make. 36:33 People were asking, and I got a question about fish. 36:37 What does the Bible say, what happened with the fish 36:42 during the flood? 36:43 The plesiosaurs, swimming reptiles and that sort of thing? 36:46 There is no question that we have some marvelous, 36:49 marvelous almost exhilaratingly beautiful fossils of some 36:56 kinds of animals, especially fish that you take a look at 37:00 that and the preservation of that is incredible. 37:03 The detail is magnificent. 37:05 There are not a lot of conditions that will let 37:08 this happen certainly today, and this is not something 37:11 that has been lost. 37:12 Please notice this, hang on for this long quote. 37:58 This is not a creationist speaking. 38:01 Immanuel Velikovsky, he is saying, or arguing that there is 38:06 not a lot of things going on in the world today that are 38:09 producing fossils, or mimicking the conditions that would 38:13 preserve our fossil record. 38:15 He is suggesting, and remember he says the basic point 38:18 is, the Uniformitarian says nothing took place in the 38:22 past that does not take place in the present. 38:24 So something is going against the standard view of the 38:27 evidence about that. 38:28 So today no fossils are formed, he says. 38:33 So the fossil record just for your information, 38:36 what do we have typically in the fossil record? 38:39 Almost all of our fossils are marine invertebrates. 38:41 I can hold up a couple like this. 38:48 Here is supposedly 100 million year old clam. 38:53 If you were to go to the Oregon coast today you could 38:56 find that the color would be different, 38:57 but they look pretty similar. 38:59 Here are some of the other kinds, and you see almost all 39:02 fossils are like this. 39:03 You have all been to places where you see the shells and 39:05 the rocks and so forth, they are fairly common. 39:24 We get down to dinosaurs basically in the bottom part. 39:28 I think the number that sticks in my mind is to how many 39:33 dinosaurs skeletons have been found is probably under 3000 39:36 total, and I know many of us might have images of many more 39:40 than that being found. 39:41 Remember you only needed 10% to be a skeleton. 39:44 And remember that the ?suet is 90% 39:46 and number 2 is 40%. 39:49 So most skeletons have relatively a few bones. 39:51 So actually there is not a lot of non-shellfish fossil 39:56 records around, so you have to build a lot from what 40:00 you have, your image. 40:02 A lot of things were not preserved very well. 40:04 But many things worked. 40:06 Now if evolution was true I would ask a few questions 40:08 like this, just to think out loud. 40:10 If I just was coming straight to the table with an open mind, 40:13 logical, I hear the theory. I want to look for evidence. 40:16 If evolution was true what sort of evidence would we 40:19 expect to find? 40:20 Well the fossil series should show transition to new species 40:24 is not what we find. 40:26 We cannot find those missing links, they are missing. 40:32 Again we find the Cambrian explosion and suddenly 40:35 everything is rather complex and organized. 40:41 Now we are moving up the tree to more and more different 40:44 kinds of things, again it is not so we have lost more 40:46 species and are losing species every day. 40:58 Somewhere somehow we should see evidence of macro evolution. 41:03 We see micro evolution going on but not macro. 41:05 Unless you talk about poodles. 41:07 But anyway that is another thing. 41:09 If creation was true, and I'm thinking again if I was 41:14 just blank and looking at evidence and hear that 41:16 explanation of creation and suddenly everything was 41:19 created at one time. 41:20 When then I would expect in the fossil record I would find 41:24 a lack of transitions to new species in fossils. 41:31 Know what I mean by stasis is like the equilibrium thing, 41:35 that let's say T. Rex shows up in the fossil record of the 41:39 Cretaceous and let's say, I don't remember exactly, 41:42 80 million years and it is taken out of 65 million years. 41:46 That is 15 million years of T. Rex's. 41:48 Well you would expect in your evolutionary model that the 41:53 environment has changed at least a little bit in 41:56 15 million years, you would expect the T. Rex to look 41:59 significantly different, or even a little bit different 42:01 at the beginning than they do at the end. 42:04 What we see is a T. Rex's here and the T. Rex's there and 42:07 that is consistent with most fossils things. 42:11 We see stasis pretty much even though millions of years 42:15 supposedly for some animals existed. 42:17 Remember the Celocant 410 million years and we find them 42:21 today and they look pretty similar. 42:24 Not identical exactly in every detail but close enough. 42:32 If I believed in creation and I believed in the flood 42:34 and things got covered up in the bottom of the flood, 42:37 I would expect that those things would be complex. 42:39 There would not be an issue of simple to complex. 42:42 Again that is how it is. 42:48 Again that is how I see it so let's talk more about it now. 42:53 I told you I was going to tell you about the problems. 42:55 We do have a problem, age issues, 42:57 Radiometric Dating especially. 42:59 There's little cracks in the armor and there's suggestions, 43:01 I could go technical but I'm not going to go technical 43:04 because I am still hoping to find better stuff. 43:07 Right now it is a little weak, and we are still working 43:10 on that, it's a problem. 43:12 Fossil order is the other problem. 43:13 Let me try to explain what fossil order is. 43:16 Dinosaurs are good examples. 43:20 Dinosaurs are found from the middle Triassic up to Jurassic, 43:24 to Cretaceous layer and then there is no more dinosaurs. 43:28 If your image of a worldwide flood is that everything got 43:33 covered up and you expect some to be here in a couple over 43:37 there, few over here and so forth, moved around a bit. 43:40 Some mixtures, but fossil order is pretty consistent. 43:44 It was a British surveyor by the name of William Smith 43:48 in the early 1800s noticed that there were certain kinds 43:53 a marine shells found in certain layers consistently. 43:56 Wherever he was he would find the same kind of shells 44:00 in the same layers. 44:02 It was out of Britain that we began to be getting names 44:05 like Cambrian, Davonian and so forth that were named after 44:09 certain areas of Britain that had to do with the layers that 44:12 were found there and they were identified consistently. 44:15 It was through work like William Smith's and others their 44:18 observation that we noticed there was an order, a fossil 44:21 order in the geologic column. 44:22 Again if your image of a worldwide flood is that 44:26 things may have been churned a bit and sorted out in 44:29 different ways, things are very well sorted. 44:32 Worldwide flood people, like myself, are challenged to 44:36 try to come up with a real good explanation although 44:39 let me share with you a couple of starting points. 44:43 Now fossil order, I say we may have a couple of ways to 44:46 explain fossil order as creationist. 44:49 Here is a couple of them. 44:51 I am not satisfied totally with all of them, but I think 44:55 they are a good start. 44:59 Now there is a good term for you. 45:01 Ecological zonation is another way of saying that animals 45:04 were covered up in their areas by the ecological zone 45:07 they were in, in other words if it was a desert area, they 45:11 got covered up as all desert things would in that area. 45:15 So that desert zone got covered up. 45:17 It was a forest area, or an alpine area, or something like 45:21 that it got covered up the way water was. 45:25 This evidence of water slowly rising, animals trying to 45:29 get a way from slowly rising water, in fact you might say 45:33 all dinosaurs footprints had to be laid in a muddy, sandy, 45:37 watery situation and that is how they got preserved. 45:41 Material floated them before they eroded away, or washed 45:45 away or whatever they got covered up and preserved. 45:47 Water is usually needed for something like that. 45:50 So again if that is the case and animals have some 45:53 time to slowly get away or try to get away before 45:56 they got covered up. 45:57 Now if these kind of things suggest that there was less 46:01 sorting, but maybe slowly the areas were covered up. 46:04 Ecological zonation would be one possibility. 46:09 Here's another good one, motility factors. 46:13 Motility factors will play into something like the 46:17 Trilobites, the trilobites probably couldn't move because 46:21 a lot of silk was coming down into the water, into the 46:25 areas of water they were in. 46:27 They couldn't swim away very quickly and motility would 46:31 affect the lower part of animal fossil record, may be 46:34 they could get away very quickly as the waters were 46:37 rising and the mud was coming. 46:39 So motility might be why birds are toward the top, why 46:44 mammals are towards the top, why animals for smaller brains 46:47 are towards the bottom and things like that. 46:49 They may have just had more trouble getting out of the way. 46:51 It's a possibility again it is only a partial answer. 46:54 Here's a great one. 46:55 Buoyancy factors. 46:57 Or the wonderful bloat and float studies, doesn't 47:01 that sound wonderful? 47:02 How animals float in water, or don't float. 47:05 as the case may be. 47:07 We know that birds, they've done studies on this, I would 47:10 hate to be present for this. 47:11 But they did studies with animal bodies and water to see 47:14 how long it took for various kinds of animals to sink. 47:18 They found that birds took 76 days on average. 47:21 Mammals 56 days and reptiles 32 days and amphibians five. 47:26 I don't know if that contributes somewhat to the sorting, 47:31 but it may be a factor. 47:33 Fossil order is still an interesting one and I'm sure 47:37 that we have more to learn about it. 47:39 I've already told you how fossil order is not a great thing for 47:42 evolutionists as well, because of the lack of transition. 47:45 We both have challenges looking at the geologic column. 47:48 Meanwhile, back to the story involving the flood. 47:53 People have questions about the Ark. 47:54 For instance, how big was it? 47:56 Just how big was the Ark in terms of the 47:58 dimensions and so on. 48:00 Well we know the description puts it as 450 feet long. 48:03 75 feet wide and a height of 45 feet. 48:07 With three decks which means 1.5 million cubic feet capacity. 48:10 To give you an idea what we are talking about in terms of 48:15 regular train car capacity is about 522 railroad cars. 48:19 So that is a reasonable size capacity. 48:22 We already know the dimensions are similar to an oil tanker. 48:26 It is meant to float, not the sail, not to be tipped over. 48:29 That is why they use the word Ark, if you've ever wondered 48:33 how Noah and Moses both had Arks that are considerably 48:36 different looking, it simply means box, or container. 48:40 It's a container ship, I mean the ship was a container. 48:43 It was meant to be a box to hold things in and float and 48:47 not to fall over. 48:48 Here's an interesting old picture. 48:50 But here's the thing, when we talk about the species, 48:53 and a lot of times people are thinking are we talking 48:55 about species that has to be in there. 48:57 There is no way to get all the species in the world, but 49:00 if you went to genera or families, remember the 49:03 classification of different kinds of animals is somewhat 49:06 arbitrary, a little bit arbitrary. 49:08 You could have at least 8000 kinds of animals. 49:13 Kinds is the Hebrew word that is not very scientific, 49:16 kinds? What does that mean? Genera or what? 49:20 8000 kinds of pairs could be in there, that's 16,000 49:25 animals plus provisions for one year and still have over 49:31 half the Ark left. 49:32 So it is possible to have a pretty good number of creatures. 49:36 The story of the flood should never be looked at very 49:39 lightly or humorously because the kind of devastation and 49:43 loss at the time is almost unbelievable. 49:47 But here's a thought and this comes from genetic studies. 49:52 Occasionally we bring in these, they are really interesting. 50:09 But these are evolutionists speaking, they are looking at 50:11 the number of people on planet earth today with the 50:14 assumption of millions of years of evolution this planet 50:17 should be overly crowded right now. 50:19 Although you might say it's pretty crowded. 50:21 Where did all the people go is the question. 50:23 When or how often that may have happened is anybody's guess. 50:28 Environmental disaster could be a reason why we do 50:33 not have more people on planet earth. 50:35 I would at that point raise my hand and say, oh, oh, 50:39 I have a possible answer there, why we don't have more 50:43 people on planet Earth. 50:44 So what happened to the evidence of pre-flood man? 50:46 This is always a question that comes up. 50:48 We believe there was a worldwide flood and there were people 50:52 living before the flood so what happened to their remains? 50:55 We find towns or villages, but why don't we find human bones? 51:01 The Hebrew says this. 51:10 The word destroyed there is literally to wipe off or 51:14 eliminate, to virtually erase the presence of man. 51:17 And that is pretty much what has happened. 51:18 He erased man whom He created from the face of the earth. 51:26 Is there a natural explanation to what might have triggered 51:28 all the things that led to the flood? 51:30 We already hinted at that because there is evidence of an 51:33 asteroid strike, and it is a very possible. 51:37 Now there is evidence of several asteroids by looking 51:39 at the numbers lately and now there seems there's potential 51:43 of three, four, five or maybe more asteroids that struck 51:46 the Earth, and the famous one they talk about is the one 51:49 by the Yucatan in Mexico. 51:51 There was a big asteroid strike there. 51:52 But if you had several huge asteroid strikes in the Earth, 51:56 it could easily have caused some crustal breakage that may 52:00 have led to some of things bursting forth from the deep. 52:05 Again how is it possible for as Richard Dockings put it, 52:09 Middle eastern camel herders, the writers of the Bible. 52:13 Being sarcastic as to their level of scientific knowledge. 52:18 How is it possible that they could guess, or know that 52:23 just if rain fell that wouldn't been enough water 52:26 to flood the earth? 52:28 How would they know you needed to pump water into the 52:30 atmosphere by subterranean vents and fountains? 52:34 How would they know that? 52:35 And because of the atmosphere is totally saturated and you 52:38 went straight up and had as much water in the air as you 52:41 possibly could hold before it would fall, and then it went 52:45 kirplack right down the ground. 52:47 The most you would get would be around a foot of water. 52:50 There's only that kind of capacity. 52:51 Why you get more rain than that in some places is because 52:55 wind is blowing in rain clouds and they keep dumping 52:58 in the same place. 52:59 But you cannot saturate the atmosphere to the extent of 53:03 covering the world in a worldwide flood. 53:05 You just can't do it. 53:06 So you have to have a source for water that the water would 53:09 be pumped into the atmosphere and keep the rain coming. 53:11 The flood would come from beneath and from above. 53:15 An asteroid, it is interesting from the Bible, the Bible 53:19 does describe occasionally use rocks from heaven when He 53:23 deals with problem man. 53:25 So there is a story in Daniel talking about such things. 53:29 Notice this biblical record of what appears to be an 53:32 description of events that took place in the flood. 53:53 So that is interesting, that the mountains rose and the 53:55 valleys sank down during the flood. 53:58 That might explain why mount Everest is at the 26,000 54:03 foot level has marine deposits, shells at 26,000 foot 54:08 level at Mount Everest. 54:10 So at some point the water was even up there, or, I'm 54:12 thinking, the mountain was down here while there was water. 54:16 So everybody agrees that these things happened in terms 54:19 of the mountains going up and the valleys have gone down. 54:22 Evolutionists say it has simply taken a long time. 54:24 The continent breaking apart and shifting and crashing 54:26 into each other and causing mountain chains again. 54:28 Everyone agrees that happens, again it is a question of 54:31 how quickly and how long and so forth. 54:33 The evidence is there that it took place but, 54:35 how long did it take? 54:39 Bertrand Russell said again, and I've used this quote 54:41 that I used more than once. 54:52 Well it is interesting that he said that because on the 54:55 issue of evolution and creation the Bible even predicts 54:58 there will be discussions on this very thing 55:00 in the last days. 55:20 What does that sound like? 55:21 Uniformitarianism, just continuing on and on with no 55:25 involvement of God breaking into the history of this Planet. 55:30 So they are joking that He would do it again. 55:32 It says scoffers in the last days, if we are in the last 55:36 days and we see this kind of a controversy going on today, 55:39 then there is a prediction that came through. 55:52 There is a forgetfulness on the historical record. 55:55 Prediction then, we will be talking about these things. 55:58 When you talk about water and when you talk about fire, 56:01 I think about these kinds of verses. 56:04 From John the Baptist himself and Jesus called 56:07 the greatest prophet. 56:20 There you have the combination of water and fire. 56:22 The two great cleansing agents that God has tended to use. 56:26 Water cleanses, but not as good as fire does. 56:29 So there is One that is coming that will use fire so there 56:33 is a day predicted in the future. 56:51 So water is a prediction of God breaking into this world 56:54 and that He will do it again with fire the second time. 56:58 The good news is there something good that waits 57:00 on the other side. 57:17 You remember the beautiful story of God's deliverance of 57:21 those who were wanting to be delivered, who wanted to 57:25 avoid what was coming on the world. 57:26 God provided an ark. 57:28 People asked, could you get every animal and everything on 57:32 the Ark? I've shown evidence actually there was little room. 57:35 You can answer this question, why was there so much 57:37 room on the Ark? 57:39 The answer would be because God had hoped more 57:41 people would get on. 57:43 Thank you very much hope you enjoyed tonight's topic. |
Revised 2014-12-17