Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 18, English Standard Version

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VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re excited to be with you today as we continue the new series we recently started on Anchored by Truth, which we are calling “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books and he is the one picking the facts we are covering in this series. RD, why did you entitle this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know?” I’m sure many listeners would think that there are far more than just 10 facts that are pertinent to the Christian faith. There are surely thousands of facts that are important to a thorough understanding of Christianity. Picking 10 seems a bit counter-intuitive. After all, here on Anchored by Truth we’ve probably talked about hundreds or thousands of facts that help demonstrate that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

RD: Well, I’d first like to start by thanking everyone for joining us here today. And you are absolutely right that there are thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of facts that are relevant to the Christian faith. I have wanted to do this series for a while to highlight a couple of key points. But, not all facts are equal and that’s something I want to talk about today. One of the ways we can be confident about the truth of the Christian faith is that Christianity permits us to test it by examining its principle source – the Bible – through the lens of logic, reason, and evidence. Relevant facts are a major part of the evidence that can help us in our examination. But just as in other situations - say a court case – not all facts bear equal weight in helping settle the truth of the major claim at issue. Some facts are informative and in conjunction with others help frame how the jury may view the decision they have to make. But some facts aren’t just informative. They are dispositive.

VK: One definition of the term “dispositive” that we found on “yourdictionary.com” says that dispositive means “That disposes of, or settles, a dispute, question, etc.; conclusive; decisive.” Dispositive can mean facts or evidence that are pertinent to the outcome of a legal case but in the law it quite often refers to facts or evidence that – as the definition says – settles the matter. But I think you’re going to need to give us an example of to tell us what you’re trying to get at.

RD: Well, let’s say that I was accused of robbing a bank.

VK: But you’re innocent, right?

RD: Yes. I’m innocent. But the police were given a description of someone who roughly matches my height and weight. And they said the bank robber was wearing an old brown coat and hat and they heard from my neighbor that I have an old brown coat and hat. When the police talk to me they tell me the bank was robbed on the 13th. But I can prove that on the 13th I was in Montana giving a speech to a crowd of 500 people at the exact time the bank was being robbed. The fact that I was thousands of miles away would be dispositive in demonstrating that I was not the one who robbed the bank. Now there may be other facts that might also be equally dispositive but all I really need is one.

VK: You mean that there may be other facts that are equally strong in ruling you out as a possibility for the bank job. Maybe the robber was 6 feet 8 inches tall but you’re a foot shorter. Maybe the robber had a physical deformity like a missing finger on one hand but you still have, thankfully, all of your fingers. Maybe a bank guard shot the robber and they know that your blood type doesn’t match his. In other words there might be many facts that rule you out as a suspect but you’re saying you really only need one to settle the matter. I suppose they could say you had an accomplice.

RD: They could and that is a great illustration of another point that we need to talk about. All of us, every single one of us, views the world and any particular set of facts through a set of starting axioms. That’s true for Christians and it’s true for non-Christians. And therefore when we present conclusions we very rarely simply present a set of sort-of bare facts. When we talk about conclusions we have almost always applied some level of analysis to a set of facts. We have filtered facts through our set of starting axioms, hopefully applied valid logical principles, and drawn a conclusion either deductively or inductively.

VK: Deductive reasoning is reasoning from the general to the specific. Inductive reasoning goes in the opposite direction – from the specific to the general. Inductive reasoning starts with specific observations or facts, looks for patterns, and then formulates a hypothesis or conclusion based on the determination of whether a pattern exists based on those specific observations. Someone who notices that every time they eat dairy products they have some unpleasant gastric experience might come to the conclusion they are lactose intolerant. They arrived at their conclusion inductively. Conversely, if a mother told her daughter that everyone in her family is lactose intolerant the daughter might test the idea that she is lactose intolerant by exposing herself to specific dairy products and then see if she has the same problems. The daughter started with a general premise that she was likely lactose intolerant and then confirmed that premise with specific observations. The daughter reasoned deductively.

RD: Yes. The point is that arriving at reasonable hypotheses or conclusions requires not just facts but also the application of valid logical processes. But we all begin that process with a set of starting axioms. So, we need to be aware of those starting axioms and we need to be sensitive to whether or not, as we evaluate facts and apply logic, whether those starting axioms are remaining valid.

VK: What you’re saying is that it is possible that as we gather evidence and apply logic we may come to realize that our starting axioms are themselves in jeopardy. And, unfortunately, we have examples of people who adhere to sets of starting axioms long past the point where those axioms have remained valid.

RD: Exactly. And that is particularly prevalent in the debates that swirl around the Bible and critical portions of the truth that the Bible presents. And there is no more glaring example of where some people adhere to starting axioms than when it comes to the history that is contained in the book of Genesis – which is why we started with the first two facts that we did in our “10 Facts” series.

VK: The first fact that we discussed that every Christian needs to know is that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old. The second fact that we covered was that the complexity of life makes it impossible that life could have arisen as a result of the random collision of atoms and molecules – even if you could explain the existence of the atoms and molecules to begin with. We started with those two facts because they get to the heart of whether the opening chapters of the book of Genesis – which are the opening chapters of the Bible – is, in fact, true.

RD: Yes. So, let’s take that first fact – that science provides solid evidence that the conventional idea that the universe is 14 Billion years old is untenable. So, when we did our episode on that fact, which was the first episode in this “10 Facts” series – we pointed out 3 lines of evidence that are a real problem for the conventional view on the age of the universe: the presence of soft tissue in dinosaur remnants, the faint young sun paradox, and lunar recession.

VK: And anyone who would like to get a more in-depth understanding of those lines of evidence can review the podcast version of that show which is available from most podcast apps or our website, crystalseabooks.com.

RD: So, in that show we cited three lines of evidence that the conventional supposed-age of the universe is wrong. But there are dozens of other lines of evidence as well such as the presence of carbon-14 in diamonds. Carbon-14 is a radioactive form of carbon and it decays very quickly. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years. That means that after 5,730 years the amount of carbon-14 present would decrease by half. After 11,460 years only a quarter of the original amount would be left. After 17,190 years only an eighth and so on and so on. If the entire earth had started out as carbon-14, which it didn’t, in less than a million years there wouldn’t be enough carbon-14 left to be detectable.

VK: This does not mean that the earth is a million years old. It is simply a way of putting an extreme upper limit on the age of the earth. Because we find trace amounts of carbon-14 in diamonds it means that the earth cannot be anywhere near a million years old.

RD: Right. Now we know that carbon-14 can be produced by cosmic rays entering the upper levels of the earth’s atmosphere but this would not account for the presence of detectable carbon-14 in diamonds. Diamonds are essentially a closed system so there is no way carbon-14 formed in the atmosphere today could penetrate a diamond so it would be detectable within one. But scientists have detected carbon-14 in diamonds. The point is that this is yet another line of evidence that the earth is nowhere near the 4.5 Billion years old that conventional science claims it to be. The presence of detectable carbon-14 in diamonds is evidence that the earth is thousands of years old not millions or billions. The presence of detectable carbon-14 in diamonds is devastating to the whole idea of a billions of years old earth and therefore devastating to the entire evolutionary hypothesis.

VK: In our last episode you said “Deep time is the root of the evolutionary weed.” Deep time is the idea that the universe is 14 Billion years old and the earth is 4.5 Billion years old. Evolution needs deep time because without it the whole idea that the random collision of unintelligent atoms and molecules could have produced life – let alone atomic physicists or molecular biologists – is ridiculous. So, what you are getting at is that the fact that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old is dispositive in the destruction of the evolutionary hypothesis. Without deep time evolution dies as an hypothesis even worthy of contemplation.

RD: Exactly. And that’s why in this episode of Anchored by Truth I wanted to take a break from the presentation of the 10 facts themselves and ensure that we were focusing listener attention on why these facts are so important to their faith. We are not doing this so much to provide an apologetic or evangelistic tool as we are to ensure that our listeners are able to be confident in their faith. Recently, I had a conversation with a young believer – much younger than me anyway – and he told me that before his conversion the one question that he kept asking himself was how can you be sure which faith is the true one? Well, properly understood and presented Christianity can answer that question clearly and comprehensively. And it’s the only faith that can with an answer that covers all of the various disciplines by which we discern truth.

VK: Your point is that Christianity, by means of the Bible, answers all of the big questions. Where did the universe come from? How did life begin? Where did man come from? Why is there pain and trouble in the world? Why can people still be hopeful in the midst of a troubled world? Why do people feel a compulsion to distinguish between right and wrong in such a way that they frame moral and ethical systems and standards by which they live and want others to live? And why does mankind have a near universal apprehension of the divine – the sense that has pervaded every culture regardless of location, time in history, or other traditions that there is a supernatural realm that lies outside our physical senses?

RD: Yes. Christianity can give meaningful, intelligent, and reasonable answers to those questions. And the answers that Christianity gives are consistent with what we know about the physical order in which we live (physics, chemistry, biology, geology) and the revealed history of humanity (history, archeology, sociology), and also provides verifiable evidence of the supernatural by means of fulfilled prophecy. But to be able to give those answers intelligently Christians must have a basic awareness of how facts, evidence, and logic are applied when sorting through competing truth claims.

VK: Our lives today are lived in a world where truth claims that compete with Christianity assault us on a daily basis. Supposedly science tells us that the universe started with a big bang billions of years ago and life arose randomly and chaotically by the undirected collision of inanimate particles. Supposedly human beings resulted from a lengthy series of genetic mutations that transformed carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sodium, and other non-living chemical elements into a being that can write sonnets, invent telescopes that can study galaxies billions of light years away, grieve over their failures and yet pursue future greatness. And even for those people who are willing to acknowledge that physics and chemistry alone cannot produce biology they must contend with hundreds of claims about how the supernatural world is ordered and what supernatural beings may or may not exist. And those messages come to us through just about every show that arrives on a television or computer screen, is playing at a local theater, or is transmitted through radio waves or the internet. When you think about it, it’s enough to almost make you want to stay in bed in the morning.

RD: But in the midst of all that Christians can turn to Deuteronomy 31:8 and hear God telling us “I will never leave you or forsake you.” And we can turn to the Gospel of John 16:33 Jesus tells us that “in this world we will have tribulation” but that we can remain at peace because he has overcome the world. Well, one of the biggest ways Jesus has overcome the world is because He has the truth on his side. He is, in fact, THE TRUTH. He made and sustains everything so truth is actually dependent on him and not He on the truth but that is a subject for a different day. For today, we need to focus on the fact that one of the reasons Christians can be confident that their faith is the true faith is because the Bible gives abundant evidence of being true.

VK: The Bible simultaneously proclaims the truth but in its unmatched reliability, fidelity, and accuracy it contains evidence of the truth of the claims. But to be able to use that truth we must understand the relationship of facts to sorting among competing truth claims. And one of the most interesting things I have heard you point out is that when we have dispositive facts at our disposal we may have one or many, but all we really need is one. Can you explain that a bit more as it applies to our principle concern about 10 facts every Christian needs.

RD: Sure. Let’s go back to the fact the General Theory of Evolution needs lots of time to even be worthy of attention. That’s why Charles Darwin’s views didn’t flourish until another Charles, Charles Lyell, popularized the idea of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the idea that “the present is the key to the past.” Lyell is often called a “Scottish geologist” but his actual training and educations was as a lawyer. Before Lyell most scientists subscribed to some form of catastrophism – the premise that most of the features we see on the earth’s surface were the result of previous catastrophes such as Noah’s flood. But Lyell postulated that rather than a Biblical flood carving features such as the Grand Canyon it was actually done by slow erosion over eons.

VK: And Darwin was well aware of Lyell wasn’t he?

RD: Yes. Darwin had a copy of Lyell’s book, Principles of Geology, with him in the infamous voyage of the British 10-gun brig named the Beagle under the command of a Captain FitzRoy. Lyell’s idea that there were eons of time available on the earth allowed Darwin to posit that biological changes may have occurred in the same way Lyell posited that geological change had occurred – slowly and gradually. But Darwin had no idea of, for instance, the complexity of a living cell. In Darwin’s day they knew about cells but cells were thought to be simple blobs of protoplasm.

VK: Darwin wrote long before the explosion in knowledge of molecular biochemistry which didn’t occur until the middle of the 20th century – about a 100 years after Darwin wrote The Origin of the Species. But today we are well aware that far from being simple structures living cells are, in fact, complex micro-systems. The complexity of the simplest living cell dwarfs the complexity of any mechanical device invented by man. The irreducible and specified complexity of living cells and creatures is dispositive evidence that such a system could have been produced by random and undirected activity.

RD: Yes. And we covered that in greater detail in our last episode of Anchored by Truth. But back to the point that we were covering – that the General Theory of Evolution needs billions of years to work. Well, we’ve now covered 4 lines of evidence, facts if you will, that demonstrate that the earth is more likely thousands of years old than billions. We’ve talked about lunar recession, the faint young sun paradox, the presence of soft tissue in dinosaur remains, and the decay rate of carbon-14. Any single one of those facts is dispositive evidence that evolution does not have billions of years to work with. Said differently, they do not all have to be true to show that the earth is only thousands of years old. Any one of those lines of evidence is sufficient to do the trick.

VK: I see what you’re saying. All of those lines of evidence demonstrate the same thing. But if one or two were somehow shown to be in error that doesn’t save the evolutionary time frame. All of them would have to be false to save the evolutionary time frame. And not just those 4 lines of evidence are available to show that the time needed for evolution to be conceivable isn’t available. Creation Ministries International has a single article that contains 101 lines of evidence that show that the earth is far more likely to be on the order of thousands of years old. But given that this is true why do most conventional scientists continue to support the idea that the earth and universe are billions of years old.

RD: That goes back to the compulsive power of a person’s starting set of axioms. Most scientists look at the age of the universe or earth from the starting point that it is billions of years old. That’s what their training and education have led them to believe. That’s what they had to believe to get their degrees, their funding, and their approval from colleagues. So, when they come to evidence that doesn’t agree with their starting axioms they start trying to find a suitable explanation for how their axioms can remain in place but account for the evidence that doesn’t fit. In the case of lunar recession they might say the moon has not always orbited the earth – that at some distant time in the past the earth “captured” the moon as it was flying by. In the case of the faint young sun paradox they say that the faint young sun could keep the earth warm enough for life because the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 1,000 times greater than it is now. To account for the problem the varying evidence presents they have to invent explanations.

VK: But if the moon was “captured” by the earth or the level of carbon dioxide was much higher in the past those ideas violate their presumption that all of the forces operating today have been operating in the same way in the past. In other words to save deep time they have to sacrifice the idea of uniformitarianism. Right?

RD: Right. And that’s the beautiful thing about the Bible and Christianity. The time frames that we learn from the Bible don’t require any of that. This is not to say that the Biblical time periods don’t have some challenges they must address with respect to dating. There are some and Christian scientists routinely work on solutions to those problems. But this all goes back to the basic point. There are facts, a great many of them, that help that young Christian get an answer to his basic question of “how can I know which religion is true?”

VK: And that includes the most widespread religion of our day which might be termed “secularism.” If belief in God is a “religious” viewpoint, then not believing in

God is also a “religious” viewpoint. It’s the opposite position on the same question. In our culture we like to label a belief in God as being religious but we don’t put that same label on not believing in God. And that has led to a lot of mischief hasn’t it.

RD: Yes. In our culture we have said that we must separate “church and state.” But when we interpret that phrase to mean we must expunge religion, especially Christianity from our public institutions, we have not become religiously neutral – we have become religiously hostile. We have replaced religious tolerance with secular coercion under the label of neutrality. But this is also a discussion for another day. For today, the point we need for people to remember is that not all facts, not all lines of evidence, are of equal value in arriving at valid conclusions. So, when we come to facts that apply to our faith we need to become aware of, even master, certain facts that are in conflict with the substructure for secularism in our culture. And that subculture is the theory of evolution. Without evolution the culture has no credible alternative to God as creator.

VK: The General Theory of Evolution has two Achilles heels: time and complexity. Without deep time no one contends that there would have been enough random activity to produce one fortuitous event of the first so-called “self replicating molecule.” But as we now know life consists of far more than just one molecule. Life consists of millions of molecules all working properly and all working together. The simplest cell will not work if its component parts don’t function properly individually and collectively. The same is true for body systems that those cells build. That’s irreducible complexity. The cells and body systems must be organized in very specific ways. They must exist as systems that have utility, function, and purpose so they must have been developed and must be maintained in very specific configurations. In other words, they are specified in their design and function. That’s specified complexity.

RD: Right. The first two facts we have covered in our “10 Facts” series are dispositive in demonstrating that the conventional view that God is not necessary to explain life has fatal flaws.

VK: Life is complex – irreducibly, specifically, and informationally. But let’s hasten to add that as complex as it is to us, it presents no challenge to an omniscient God. Today let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for our Creator God. The complexity of life tells us that only an omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite God could create it. And the fact that He gave us the ability to appreciate His creation tells us that He genuinely wants to have a personal relationship with each of us so that for all eternity we can enjoy fellowship with Him and proclaim His unmatched glory.

---- PRAYER OF ADORATION FOR THE CREATOR

VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”

(Opening Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation)

Psalm 139,verse 14, New Living Translation

Diamonds: a creationists best friend - creation.com

C14 dinos - creation.com

Cast doubt on God’s goodness

Deny God’s truth

Elevate self-importance

Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth