Episode 46 – The Truth in Genesis

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: (Bible quotes from the New Living Translation)

Then the LORD said to Job, “Do you still want to argue with the Almighty?

You are God’s critic, but do you have the answers?” … Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind: “Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them!

Job, Chapter 40, verses 1 and 2 and verses 6 and 7, New Living Translation

I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,”says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One”… Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.”

Revelation, Chapter 1, verse 8 and verses 17 and 18, New Living Translation

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VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author, founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time mechanical engineer. He changes the air filter in the air conditioner. And speaking of changing things, today we are closing out the series that we’ve been presenting for several episodes that we’ve been calling The Truth in Genesis. So today we’re going to be doing a bit of a recap of all the subjects that we’ve covered and hit the highlights of some of the major things that we’ve learned. RD, would you like to say a brief word of introduction about today’s show?

RD: I would. Our “The Truth in Genesis” series was designed to allow listeners to hear a sample of the scientific evidence that is relevant to two of the most important topics that affect Biblical inspiration and infallibility: the age of the earth and universe and the origin and diversity of life. One of the biggest challenges facing most Christians is right at the beginning of the Bible in Chapter 1 where the Bible tells us that God created the heavens, the earth, and everything that exists on the earth including all living creatures and most especially, us. Supposedly, that claim is at odds with what contemporary science tells us about the universe and life. So, for a Christian to maintain their faith in the Bible today culture they must immediately confront the cultural challenge to the Bible’s proclamation about creation. In effect, our culture demands that we either surrender our faith in the Bible or our acceptance of science as a source of truth. I believe that we’ve shown through the episodes in this series that conscientious Christians don’t need to make that kind of a false choice.

VK: Your contention is that we have illustrated through the episodes in The Truth in Genesis series there is substantial scientific evidence that absolutely supports, the belief that the plain language of Genesis may be accepted as literal, historical fact. And today we want to review and summarize just a few snippets of what we’ve learned. But before we get too far into our discussion about the serious stuff, we’d like to start by just listening to a poetic summary of the state of this debate. To do that we want to play a portion of Crystal Seas’ upcoming poetic series called the Genesis Saga. For today, let’s listen to Part 5 of the Genesis Saga which – aptly enough - we call The Truth in Genesis.

---- TRUTH IN GENESIS

VK: That is a pretty amazing summary - and it rhymes. So let’s go back and cover briefly some of the main points of evidence that we’ve learned about from Truth in Genesis that support the fact that the universe and earth aren’t nearly as old as is commonly believed. Let’s also talk about how it would be impossible for the random, chaotic action of inanimate atoms and molecules to spontaneously give rise to life.

RD: Well, to start let’s be clear about the competing truth claims that we are examining. The Bible clearly claims that God created the heavens and earth and all the life that exists on the earth, whether plant or animal. And, according to most traditional interpretations, God performed His creative activity on the order of several thousands of years ago. Also, when it comes to animal life the Bible created all the “kinds” of animals that exist today. Contrary to the strawman version of Biblical creation that critics like to shoot at, “kinds” does not refer to the species that are extant today. Nor does the Biblical term “kind” refer to any particular taxonomic level such as an order or genus. It primarily refers to the ability of any two animals to reproduce regardless of how those animals might be classified according to current taxonomy.

By contrast the dominant view among most scientists today is that the universe is 14 billion, or so, years old and that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Also, most conventional biologists believe that life on earth evolved from primitive forms to more complex forms, likely starting with some sort of a self-replicating molecule that over time spontaneously aggregated into a single cell, and that from that cell all the amazing biodiversity we see around the globe today emerged – without direction or instruction from any intelligent source. As our guest for most of our shows, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, puts it – a “goo to you” form of evolution.

VK: Those are two very clearly contrasting views. But isn’t there sort of a middle ground that some have termed “theistic evolution?” This is the view that God created everything but then used evolution as a sort of intermediate mechanism to allow life to progress from simple forms to more complex ones and that over time many different forms of plants and animals emerged from the process that God originated.

RD: You are absolutely correct that there have been various attempts to bridge the gaps between Biblical creationism and a materialist, secularist form of evolution. The problem is that most of these “middle ground” approaches suffer from the same faults as the ones that afflict a purely materialistic evolution plus they create additional theological or Christological problems for Christians who hold them. For instance, any approach that presumes that God used evolution to produce man from some lower form of pre-human hominid requires that death preceded Adam and Eve’s fall – and that’s if they accept the fall as being a historical event. Yet various scriptures, such as Romans 5:17, tie death directly to Adam’s sin. Further, if Adam’s fall wasn’t a literal event that introduced death into a creation that God had deemed “very good,” then why was it necessary for Christ to die on the cross to undo the effects of sin.

VK: So, you’re saying the middle ground approaches really don’t bridge the gap and allow both sides to be right. But are you also saying that the middle grounds are subject to the same criticisms scientifically as a purely secularistic evolutionism.

RD: Yes. For instance, one of the problems we learned about insofar as evolution is concerned is the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, a fact that even Charles Darwin noted and lamented. When you study the fossil record species appear suddenly and fully formed with very few specimens that can even be offered up as being transitional. Despite the fact over 90% of the fossils that have been discovered were discovered after Darwin wrote the Origin of Species there aren’t any more convincing transitional examples known to today than when Darwin lamented their absence. This absence of transitional fossils would be a problem for any form of evolutionary hypothesis whether theistic or not.

VK: What are a couple of other examples of problems that cast doubt on evolution regardless of which form is being discussed?

RD: Well, there’s what’s been called by one writer “the failure of homology.” Homology is the idea that certain structures present in different species have a structural or other biological resemblance to each other. The classic example is the pattern in the bones of vertebrate limbs. In a wide variety of mammal species, example, from bats to whales to horses to people, there’s a consistent pattern of having one bone in the upper part of the limb (our arms or legs), connected to two bones, that are then connected to a series of five bones that have 2 segments in the large bone (thumb, big toe) and 3 segments in the other four. Such so-called “homologous” structures are thought to be evidence of “common descent.” In other words some ancient ancestor of all mammals had this pattern of bones so all the mammals in the world today that are descended from the ancestor inherited this pattern.

VK: Certainly, at least on the surface, that makes sense. So what’s the problem?

RD: The problem is that when Darwin wrote about the support that homology provided for his theory science knew very little about embryology – the study of how life develops following conception. Today, we know a lot more and we now know that the seeming homologous structures in adult animals don’t arise from similar embryological processes or from identical or similar genes. In other words while the adult features seem to be similar they come about from significantly varying developmental processes. This directly conflicts with the notion that the supposedly homologous structures came from a common ancestor because if all the common features were inherited from a common ancestor that ancestor would have passed along its embryological features not just the adult result. There’s a good discussion of this problem in Michael Denton’s book entitled Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Chapter 7 for those who want to study further.

VK: So just like with the fossil record, evidence that is often used to demonstrate the truth of evolution actually has significant scientific problems. Are there any other illustrations of scientific problems with the “particles to people” view of evolution?

RD: There are actually lots of them and Dr. Sarfati discussed a number of them during his time in the Anchored by Truth studio.

VK: For instance?

RD: For instance, just about every proposed mechanism for how life could have arisen from non-living chemicals involves some variation on Darwin’s musings about a “warm little pond” – in other words the notion that the primordial oceans contained a nutrient rich broth that is sometimes termed “pre-biotic soup.” The chemicals necessary for life were supposed to have been present in this soup in such densities that random collision between the right molecules produced abiotic organic compounds that were then used to assemble the first cell or at least the cell’s precursor, whatever that would have been. The existence of these abiotically produced organic compounds is absolutely essential for the scheme to have worked. The problem is that rocks of purportedly great antiquity, by conventional dating, methods have extensively examined and none contain any evidence of these abiotically produced organic compound even the so-called “dawn rocks” of Western Greenland that were supposedly laid down within 3 or 4 hundred million years of the earth’s formation. The same thing is true of all the other rocks of similar antiquity.

VK: So the rocks contain no evidence of this pre-biotic soup and without it the whole origin hypothesis falls apart. But some scientists now believe that the earliest life was formed underwater near these heating vents in the deep ocean.

RD: Yes. That hypothesis is frequently mentioned in ocean exploration programs on one or another science channel. The problem with this theory is that all life depends on very lengthy chains of amino acids that are called polypeptides. Well, polypeptides won’t form in the presence of excess water. Even if the requisite amino acids were present they wouldn’t combine into the lengthy polypeptides so again there’s an absolute chemical barrier to life starting underwater hypothesis.

VK: In other words the difficulties against life having arisen spontaneously from non-living chemicals are starting to stack up like a bricks in a brick wall. Are there any other bricks that are problematic? How about the famous experiments by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey? Didn’t they create the chemicals needed by life when they stimulated a chemical medium with methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water using electric discharges?

RD: Urey and Miller were successful at creating organic compounds. That much is true. But the good news pretty much ends there.

VK: How so?

RD: First, there is no evidence that the conditions Urey and Miller used in their lab were present in the primordial earth. At a minimum, they used an oxygen free atmosphere because oxidation would quickly break down any organic chemicals that formed. Think rust. But there is evidence of oxidation in supposedly ancient rocks so it’s more likely that the early atmosphere contained oxygen than that it didn’t. Next, amino acids come in two varieties: levorotary and dextrorotary. The amino acids that support life are all levorotary. Dextrorotary forms are lethal. The combination of the two is called a racemate. Miller’s experiments and others since only produce racemates, never pure levorotary amino acids. Third, the amino acids they produced were captured in special traps. If those traps hadn’t been there the amino acids would have broken down before they could be determined to be present. Moreover, Urey and Miller’s experiment where they produced the amino acids wasn’t the first experiment they conducted. They had done others where they didn’t get anything. So, even when they got a result it involved the application of a considerable amount of intelligence. It was the exact opposite of the operation of blind chance.

VK: Wow. That last thought really forces you to think doesn’t it? Even if a team of scientists today were successful at producing life in a test tube or laboratory beaker that wouldn’t demonstrate that life could have formed randomly or chaotically. Because - presumably - the scientists would have been applying intelligent guidance and decision making at every step within their process. And, of course, that’s assuming they had duplicated exactly the conditions on the earth at the time life is supposed to have formed and that is, and always will remain, unknowable. Well, this truly has been a remarkable series and yet we really have only skimmed the surface of all these topics. But the takeaway for the series and as well as from each episode is that faithful, committed Christians can believe in the truth of Genesis without having to give up their confidence in real science. As you would expect of an almighty and all-knowing Creator, He has provided His special revelation in a way that is entirely consistent with the way that He created and sustains the universe. Sounds like a great time to praise our Creator in prayer.

---- PRAYER OF ADORATION FOR THE CREATOR (radio version)

VK: 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 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 famous but our Boss is!”

(Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation)

The Book of Job, chapter 38, verses 4 through 7

The epistle to the Colossians, chapter 15 verses 1 through 17

https://creation.com/right-perspective-interpreting-data