The Galapagos, a new perspective with Dr. Georgia Purdom

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Okay, so, there we go. And I am

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Terry Camerizella here with Creation Fellowship, we're a group of friends bound by our common agreement that the creation account, as told in Genesis, is a true depiction of how

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God created the earth and all life in just six days, about 6000 years ago.

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We met for about 10 years in person at the Creation Earth History Museum in Santee, California, but took to this online platform in June of 2020 and haven't looked back.

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You can now find links to most of our past presentations by typing in tinyurl .com

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forward slash CF Santee, that's C like creation, F like fellowship, and Santee is spelled

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to get on our email list so you don't miss any of our upcoming speakers and we never spam.

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Joe and Stacey Gaona have been our friends and members for many years and since Joe's homegoing last year, we always want to honor his memory by mentioning the continuing work of his ministry throughout all ages.

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Throughout all ages ministries focuses on reaching people with the gospel, contending for the faith, and stirring the body to love and good works.

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Although they enjoy street witnessing and other evangelistic opportunities, God has blessed them with the unique privilege of being able to go into public schools and speak to young people on relevant topics.

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You can learn more about throughout all ages ministries by visiting throughoutallages .com.

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Joe was one of our past speakers and God has blessed us with a number of great speakers from scientists, doctors, authors, pastors, prophecy speakers, and all around smarty pants people who love the

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Lord and have a message to share. In fact, one of our past presentations was by a cartoonist,

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Dan Letha, and he's going to introduce our speaker tonight. But before that, I just want to mention if you're here with us in Zoom or if you're following along on the

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Facebook live stream and you have questions during the presentation, you can put them into the chat or comments and we'll ask them to our speaker during the live

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Q &A at the end. Okay, with that, Dan, I'll turn it over to you. All right, our speaker,

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Dr. Georgia Purdom, holds a PhD in molecular genetics from the Ohio State University, the

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Ohio State University. She gained her degree in the year 2000. Her specialty is cellular and molecular biology.

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Dr. Purdom served as an associate professor in biology for six years at Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Ohio before coming to Answers in Genesis.

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Dr. Purdom joined AIG in 2008, is that right? 2006.

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And is the director of education content and actively speaks and writes for Answers in Genesis. Dr.

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Purdom's expertise in natural selection was crucial in her design of the Natural Selection is

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Not Evolution exhibit at the Creation Museum. She also has research interest in speciation of animals after nose flood and design features in DNA.

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Dr. Purdom describes herself as a teacher at heart, and this is clearly displayed in her presentations.

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Dr. Purdom also heads up the annual Answers for Women conference in April, and offers a variety of speakers on the topics relevant to women.

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And it is one of the largest and best conferences hosted by Answers in Genesis. Dr. Purdom is a wife to her husband,

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Chris, and a mother to their daughter, Elizabeth. She is an excellent speaker, writer, scientist, wife, mother, and friend.

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I present to you, Dr. Georgia Purdom. Well, thank you, Dan. That was an awesome introduction.

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How very nice. So, well, when Dan and Terry had asked me about coming to speak to you,

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I said, well, what topic would you like? Because a lot of times when I go and speak at churches and things, it's a large group with a wide variety of backgrounds.

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And so I have to kind of start with the basics and really help people understand things. But it's not often that I get to talk to an actual creation group that has a lot of background and knowledge in this area.

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And so Terry said, well, we'd really love to hear about the Galapagos. And so I was like, oh,

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I would love to be able to share about that. I don't get to do that very often. And so it was really fun to be able, it's really fun to be able to present that to you.

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So I'm going to share my screen so that hopefully this works. I'm going to share that with you.

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And so just give me a minute here to do this, because this is not something I do a lot of.

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There we go. OK, let's see if I can do this. OK, hold on one minute here.

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Dr. Georgia, so you're not too worried. We had a speaker where I had to call him on the phone and kind of tell him how to get on his laptop.

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Well, I know how to get, let's see. I'm down in the bottom there.

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Yeah, do you see screen share? Well, I know how to share the screen. The problem is it's not sharing like the whole slide, like it's sharing just like.

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OK, I know what I want. And so when you click on share screen, does it give you a like a white page that gives you a couple of different options?

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Like are there little squares or something? Yeah, it does that. That's not the issue so much.

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The problem is I know what I wanted to do. It's just not doing it. Terry, can you double check that it's set for her to share?

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Yeah, it's not for me to share. I can definitely do that. So that's not the problem. So give me a minute here.

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Oh, sure. Not a problem. Problem is it's not letting me share.

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That's not what I want to share. Well, maybe I can. Hold on. Let me see if I can do it now. Oh, there we go.

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I got it. Cool. OK, ready to go. So we're going to be talking about Galapagos, a different view.

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And the reason that I call it a different view is because this is I'm going to be sharing the biblical creation view of the

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Galapagos Islands, not the typical evolutionary view that people hear about the

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Galapagos. And so I have a book. So after I went to the Galapagos, I actually wrote a book with a lot of other different people contributing to it.

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And it has the same title, Galapagos, a different view. So I traveled there back.

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It's been a long time ago now, back in 2011. And and so it's been a while, but I really enjoy telling people about all the experiences that I had there and really helping people understand that what we're seeing there really is a result of things like natural selection, speciation, the islands formed post -flood.

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A lot of those things that we're going to be talking about and really understanding them from a different view.

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And so Charles Darwin, obviously, he's one of the people that's most associated with the

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Galapagos Island. He had a very different starting point when he looked at the Galapagos, and he actually stated in his

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Beagle diary, he said this. He said, I am glad we have visited these islands. Such formations surely rank high amongst the wonderful objects of this world.

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It is not a wonder which at first strikes the body, but rather after reflection, the eye of reason.

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And so who for Darwin, whose reason, right, because he's not starting with a biblical worldview.

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For him, it was really man apart from God. And so he went on to say, he said, through the whole throughout the whole group of islands, every single atom, even from the most minute particle to large fragments of rocks, bear the stamp of ones having been subjected to the power of organic arrangement.

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And so again, for him, it was the power of organic arrangement, the power of nature, right, versus really the power of God.

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And biographers of Darwin said, gradually during the voyage and not by any eureka revelation,

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Darwin synthesized all that he had seen with what he had read and discussed with others.

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And out of this mix began to see a natural explanation for the otherwise mysterious birth or appearance of new species.

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And so obviously, again, they're saying a natural explanation. This is what

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Darwin was seeing for how these things appeared. And so one of the conclusions that Darwin drew from what he observed is that actually speciation was occurring on the

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Galapagos Islands. He said, when I recollect the fact that from the form of the body shape of the scales in general size, the

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Spaniards can at once pronounce from which island any tortoise may have been brought. When I see these islands in sight of each other and possessed of, but a scanty rock of sight animals tenanted by these birds, but slightly differing structures and filling the same place in nature,

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I must suspect they are only varieties. OK, so I would agree they're varieties.

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You know, that's exactly what he is seeing. He's really here talking about speciation, the different species of tortoises, the different species of mockingbirds, the different species of finches.

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But that's speciation really that he's talking about, not one animal becoming a different kind of animal.

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And so I would agree to an extent with Darwin that it is natural, so to speak.

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Obviously, God designed animals to be able to speciate, to adapt and change in some way.

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So God set those processes in place, obviously. And so the organisms then fill the earth and speciate and do those things, doing what

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God does. They're doing what God designed them to do. And so we have to and so but again, the problem was is that Darwin did not start with God's word, right?

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He started with man's word. He started with his own ideas about the past and apart from God.

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And so the conclusions that he drew from what he observed in the present speciation, which is true, like I said, that's something that we observe, led to false ideas about the unobservable past, which is molecules demand evolution.

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So he's going to say, well, look at the and we're going to see and I'm going to show you some quotes is, you know, look at these different species of organisms.

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Well, what could happen if you leave it over long periods of time, right? Maybe you get more than just different species.

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And so that's the problem with what he is doing. And so this is another quote that he shared.

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He said, let a pair be introduced to an area and increase slowly for many enemies. So it's often to intermarry.

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Who will dare say what the result? According to this view, animals on separate islands ought to become different if kept long enough apart with slightly different circumstances.

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And so then he gives some examples of some of some of the animals. So again, they're going to be different.

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Yes, speciation. I would agree with that. But Darwin didn't stop there, right? Because he says, who dare, who will dare say what the result if they're kept long enough apart, right?

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What happens if you give it enough time? And Darwin's biographer said this. And 30 pages later, after he wrote that exact quote in the notebook, he drew his historic branching diagram showing how different species might be linked to each other by common descent.

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And I actually checked that out to make sure they were legit and what they were saying on that. And they are. And so this is the very famous diagram that he wrote called

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I think at the top. And the idea that you start out with a common ancestor, the common evolutionary tree, and then you branch into all these other organisms.

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And so he believed with enough time, you know, and he was reading geology books from people like Charles Lyell that gave him the millions of years that he needed that he could get these large scale changes, not just a tortoise becoming different species of tortoise, but becoming a non -tortoise, becoming something completely different.

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And so one kind could change into a completely different kind of animal.

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And so that's far beyond what he ever observed, right? So he crossed the line, he crossed over from observational science where he could see to what we would call historical science.

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And historical science is very dependent on starting points. Again, do we start with God's word or do we start with man's word?

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And that's what we, that's what he was doing. And so when we start with the history in Genesis, though, we know these views, these ideas are false, right?

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Because we know that God created animals according to their kind. And while they can speciate and change into different species, they can't change into a completely different kind of animal.

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And we don't have the molecules to man evolution. There's no basis for that in scripture. So we are going to look at the

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Galapagos starting with God's word. So like I said, I ended up in the

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Galapagos back in 2010, and it all started with this lovely couple, Penny and Lance Davis.

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And so they are with the Living Science Home Study Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

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And what they do is they partner with homeschool parents to offer hands -on science classes with labs there in Atlanta and field trips.

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So this is obviously a very cool field trip. And when I first met them, actually, even a few years before we left for the trip, they were looking for an answers in Genesis scientists to come with them.

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And it's kind of every biologist's dream to go to the Galapagos Islands. It's sort of like a pilgrimage.

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And so I was really excited to do that. My daughter was very young at the time. And so that's what kind of stopped me from doing it a few years prior.

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But she was, I think, about six years old when we when I finally did go. And so I felt a little more comfortable doing that.

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But this is the group of students that we own. So these were junior high to actually college age student there.

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And we actually had a videographer they brought along. So we got to take some amazing footage. So I'll show you some of that as we go.

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One of the ways that we could film actually in the Galapagos was we had to agree to get a film produced for the

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Galapagos National Park so they could see that we were legitimate in what we were doing. And of course, in that one, we couldn't have that biblical worldview.

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But we did produce another video that did have that information in it. So this next clip

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I'm going to show you is sort of an intro that we did to that video. And so I'm just going to show you a short clip.

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And hopefully this sound plays and this works OK. Discover one of the world's most fascinating and beautiful places.

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Experience an exotic wonderland of adventure. Join living science students as they explore the

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Galapagos Islands. Hear intriguing facts from our naturalist.

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The excitement of our students and knowledge from our scientists. Prepare to be amazed by this incredible adventure.

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Experience what it's like to island hop by pango, climb steep stairs, and hike through dramatic wilderness trails.

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Take in the spectacular vistas of giant lava fields and the breathtaking beauty of recent volcanic activity.

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Living science takes pleasure in bringing you a unique look at students who are searching for landscapes, plants, and wildlife like never before.

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Up close and personal. So that just gives you a little bit of a taste of some of the things that we're going to talk about and the amazing things that we got to see there in the

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Galapagos. So the Galapagos Islands, let's see, start right here again. There we go.

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The Galapagos Islands is a group of islands of volcanic origin located about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador near the equator.

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And so that little circle there that appeared, they're really, really tiny there, but they're just off the coast of Ecuador. Here's another picture where you can see a little bit better.

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So we actually flew into Quito, and then we flew to a coastal city, Guayaquil, and then we flew to the

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Galapagos. And it first basically appeared on the maps in the late 1500s.

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And in following years, it was visited a lot by pirates and whalers. They used it for hideouts.

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They would use it to store supplies on. So it was kind of a great area, basically, for that.

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And all of the islands now are considered to be part of the Galapagos National Park. There's only about five of the islands.

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There's quite a few of the islands. Some of them are really tiny, but only about five of the islands actually have human populations on them, and about 30 ,000 people live there now in the islands.

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So let's talk a little bit about the geology of the islands. OK, so I may not be a geologist, but it is important to understand these because, obviously, these aren't millions of years old, like you would hear if you would go there or you study them at all.

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But really, they're much younger than that. These have been formed post -flight. And so what

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I'm showing you here is there's several oceanic plates that all meet right in the area where Galapagos is.

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And so that creates hot spots because of the movement of the plates and the magma underneath coming up.

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And so where these hot spots are create these volcanic islands.

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And what it actually is, and I'll show you this in the next one, is sort of a conveyor belt. So as the plates move, these volcanoes will form over the hot spots.

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And then that volcano sort of moves down a little bit further away from the hot spot as it kind of spreads as the plates move.

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And then you get another volcano forming, and that continues to move. And so the further east that you go, the older the islands are.

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The further west that you go, the newer the islands are because the hot spot is sort of over where those western islands are now.

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Some of the islands, if you go far enough east, are actually completely submerged. So it looks like they used to be above ground, but they're not above ground anymore because, again, they kind of went off the hot spot, so there's no more active volcanoes.

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So the further east you are, the more the landscape is very lush and very green.

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The further west you go, it's much more volcanic looking, a lot of, again, a lot of lava, obviously not, well, it is active at some times, but not while we were there.

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But you can see that. Now, again, all this is conventionally dated to be millions of years old, but we know from biblical history that these islands can't be more than about 4 ,000 years old.

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We don't know exactly when they started to form, but it was definitely in a post -flood world.

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So this is a volcano map. So this shows the little triangles all indicate the different volcanoes.

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And on Isabela, which is the biggest island that you see there, a wolf volcano actually just erupted earlier this year.

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So this is, these are active volcanoes, and so you get a lot. So the further east you go, you don't have as many volcanoes because, like San Cristobal, because, again, those are the older islands and they just don't have any.

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They do have only about two seasons there. So it's either wet or it's dry season. Wet season, we were there during the end of that, which is

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December through May. Dry is June through November. And it's a very interesting climate in the

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Galapagos Islands because of all these different ocean currents that are basically meeting there. There are cold currents as well as warm currents that all kind of meet together.

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It's not a characteristic equatorial climate. So you would expect it maybe to be very jungle -like, but it isn't because of the mixing of the hot and the cold water.

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It actually brings in very nutrient -rich water to that area. And that's really important because there isn't a lot of vegetation on especially the bigger islands because they're more recent.

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And so a lot of the wildlife there depends on the water for their nutrition.

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Basically, that's where they get their food from. And so that's an important thing. They also then become greatly affected by El Niño and La Niña events because of that confluence of those currents there.

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It also makes the waters very rough, which can be really interesting when you're living on a small cruise ship on the islands.

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We didn't actually stay in any hotels. We just stayed on a ship. So that can be kind of interesting. So let's start our journey kind of around the island.

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So I was actually there for two weeks, and I'm not going to go through every little thing that we saw. But I want to point out some of the major things that we saw while we were there that are just,

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I think, very interesting. So we started in San Cristobal, which is one of the furthest east islands that we visited.

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And this is Jamie. So Jamie was our naturalist. So the deal was when you go to the Galapagos, you have to have a naturalist with you.

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You can bring your own naturalist, but you have to have one of their naturalists as well. He had been there 22 years, and he was considered literally one of the best that the park service had to offer.

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He was fantastic. Now, he was not a Christian, but I don't remember him even saying, or he didn't say it very often, that the islands were millions of years old.

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He focused on what he could see and observe. And he was very smart.

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He had read a lot as far as the biology goes. The animals on the islands.

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And he offered a lot of insights. I had studied a lot before I went. So I knew he was really up to date on a lot of things.

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And so that was really neat to do that and have that experience with him.

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And so soon after we arrived on the boat, we actually, that's our cruise ship there.

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So it's a small cruise ship. We got to go to see, start seeing some of the wildlife there.

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And one of the first things we saw were the Sally Lightfoot crabs. And these are the gorgeous red blue crabs that you see in a lot of places.

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They really stand out against the dark lava terrain. The darker crabs, you can kind of see it in the bottom picture there.

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It kind of blends in a little more. Those are the males and the brighter ones are actually the females. And then one of the things we saw a lot of was the

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Galapagos sea lion. So I call sea lions the cats of the sea because they sleep a lot.

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They play a lot. And they're very friendly except for some of the males that I'll talk a little bit about later.

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But they were on this particular island, they were all over the place. And we even saw some young ones being nursed.

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They actually, the one on the bottom picture, that is a very young sea lion because it still has the fur on that.

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They lose the fur after five months and they suckle for about one to two years. They recognize each other by smell actually because they have super poor eyesight.

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But they talk to each other a lot too. And so this next picture is the blue -footed booby.

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This is a very common bird on the island. Now I have never done any wildlife photography before coming on this particular event.

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And these animals make it super, super easy because they literally just like stand there and let you take their pictures.

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They don't really have a fear of man because most of the islands, again, are not inhabited. And so they just don't, they're not scared of you.

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So you can kind of walk up to them and take pictures. You have to be a little careful, obviously, but that was really cool.

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And so we actually saw this couple doing a sort of a courtship dance to each other.

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So it involves a lot of, you saw it in the video a little bit, a lot of honking, a lot of whistling, a lot of flaring of their wings kind of up.

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And it's really actually fun to watch. I have some other pictures later. So this is the quote -unquote happy couple there.

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Their blue feet, the reason they're, it comes actually from their diet. So they consume things that have carotenoids in them.

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And they actually divert it to their integument or their skin. The bluer the feet, the more attractive they are to the females.

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At least when we're talking about the males, it's a sign of health, the bluer the feet are. And so they like to obviously have that to attract the females.

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And we'll talk about that also happens a little bit with the frigate bird. This is the lava lizard.

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Now this guy, I would draw a circle around him because he blends in really, really well. I don't know how many times

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I almost stepped on these guys because they're literally everywhere. And they do blend in very well with their environment.

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Here's another picture. So the male is larger and duller. And the female tends to be smaller and more colorful.

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So you can see, I believe, and I'm not an expert, but that's a male and a female there in that picture.

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So the female is smaller, one off to the side. And there's actually only one species of these on the central and western islands.

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But on the eastern islands, which are older, there's actually six different species. And so again, they're older islands.

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And so they've had more time for that speciation to occur. So then we went from San Cristóbal to Española.

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Española was actually probably my favorite island because it's really covered in vegetation.

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It has these beautiful cliffs that you're seeing here. It has serene sandy beaches, just lush vegetation.

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Like I said, it was one of my favorites. So this is actually our group that is getting ready to film a segment for the

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DVD. So you can see the beach there, again, and some sea lions. It was just a very beautiful setting.

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And some more sea lion pictures because I think they're incredibly cute and they're fun to take pictures of.

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And they really do sort of pose for you. Now, it's really interesting. There are some really large males that will patrol the coastline and they fight off the other males to be leaders of the harem because they have a lot of females, obviously, there that they want to be the lead on.

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And so that can get kind of interesting at times. There's another one. This guy was so cute and he was very little.

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And we thought he couldn't find his mom. Like he'd been abandoned. What was wrong there?

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But our naturalist assured us, don't worry, he'll find mom. Mom will find him. It'll be okay. But he would actually stay right with us the whole time we were filming.

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It was kind of fun. We actually got to see the hawk, the Galapagos hawk. And again, the reason I'm not just calling it the

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Galapagos hawk, that is the species that it is on the island. So they have their own versions.

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Just like we'll see they have the Galapagos penguin. They are unique from other species around the world.

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This is a rather elusive bird. So it is kind of hard to get a picture of it. It's the top of the food chain there.

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It has no predators. But it is considered one species, the Galapagos hawk.

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But genetic studies have shown there are large differences, actually, in the genetic makeup of the hawks on different islands.

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And they have slightly different appearances and behaviors. And what's interesting is when they go to an island, they just stay on that island.

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They don't tend to fly to other islands. So once that population has been established there, they tend to inbreed a lot.

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And so they're one of the most inbred species of a bird in the world. And so we'll see.

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They may be in the early stages of speciation. Eventually, each island will have its own species of hawk.

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This is the hood mockingbird. This is the only species of mockingbird that Darwin actually did not see or collect.

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He collected other ones, but not this one. This is on an island that has a lot of later.

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And they actually have a symbiotic relationship with them. So they eat parasites off the iguanas.

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And they actually make noises to help warn the iguanas of danger. So iguanas don't make any sound.

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And so they will actually kind of help them out. And they get food from them as well. So it works out well for both of them.

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These are the Nazca boobies. So these are different types than the blue -footed boobies. They're just a different species.

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Even though they look kind of really different, they are both in the same grouping, same genus.

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And it really just shows that I think the amazing difference is that God is designed to be possible within a particular kind or even with a particular genus.

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They have actually a different courtship ritual. So they don't dance and flare their wings as much.

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But they'll clack with their beaks. And we saw some of that behavior while we were there.

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This is the waved albatross. This is one of my favorite birds. This is the only place in the world where it reproduces.

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And we saw a lot of their nests there on the ground, even in A. They have a six to seven foot wingspan.

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It's kind of hard to appreciate that from the picture. They can only take off. They can't take off from the ground.

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He's just stretching his wings there. But they actually have to fly off the cliff to get airborne because their wings are so long, the wingspan.

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And so we saw a lot of them. They will fly out to the ocean for months at a time. They'll just remain in the air.

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I mean, they'll go down and get something to eat, but they'll eat it in the air. And then they'll actually float back on the water, back to Española to mate again.

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So this is actually a group of them coming back in from being out for months at a time. This is the marine iguana.

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Okay, so I never want to call something that God made ugly. So I will just say they're very unique looking animals.

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They're the only known species of iguana to actually feed in water.

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They do eat algae. So they will dive for the algae. And I'll show some pictures later of them. They are cold blooded, just like all other lizards.

32:45

So this is a very atypical behavior because it is so cold. I mean, it's going to be cold in the water, but yet this is how they work.

32:55

Again, vegetation is usually very sparse on the island, especially during the dry seasons.

33:00

But it's very plentiful, at least as far as vegetation goes in the water.

33:06

And so they've adapted to these conditions. God has designed them to be able to do that. It's not through the gain of new features.

33:13

They haven't done any of that. But they have very long, sharp claws. And you can see that there in the picture.

33:18

And I'll show their sisters, the land iguanas later. Their claws are much shorter than that and not as sharp.

33:24

They also have salt glands. So they can get rid of excess salt from the salt water that they take in.

33:30

But it's just really an enhancement of features that they already had. Like I said, the land iguanas, their claws aren't as long or sharp.

33:39

And they just don't have as well developed salt glands because they don't eat in the water. They eat on the land.

33:44

Like their name says. So it may be an example of what creationists term mediated design.

33:49

And I co -authored an article on this subject in Answers magazine several years ago. So I just put that up there.

33:55

If you want to check it out, it's free on the Answers in Genesis website. And again, God created these animals with a lot of genetic diversity.

34:03

And then as they diversified and fill the earth, we see that certain creatures have been able, it's kind of like a

34:10

Swiss army knife, we say. They've been able to use those features. And some of those features get enhanced over time.

34:15

But again, they were already there. They're just being enhanced. The claws grow longer. The salt glands become more well developed.

34:23

And they're able to use that to be able to take advantage of the nutrients and the food that's in the water there.

34:30

All right. So they're mostly black. Depends on what island you're on, exactly what color combination they have.

34:38

But they also have some red in them because they have a type of algae that they feed on basically there.

34:48

They blend in well with the volcanic terrain. And the black color actually helps them absorb the heat better.

34:54

They tend to congregate a lot in groups, which you see because it just helps them keep warmer. And this is a whole bunch of them.

35:02

And that may not look like anything, but that's actually really, really high up on a cliff. But they can do that because of their really long claws.

35:10

They can climb up there. Okay. So next we went to Floriana from Española.

35:17

And so this island has a lot of different dormant volcanoes.

35:23

They're no longer active. Every peak you see there represents a volcano. It has a very lush landscape, again, because it's one of the older islands.

35:32

So on this island is the famous post office box. And this was actually first set up by Willers in the 1700s.

35:39

So it's been around a long time to get messages back home because obviously they didn't have the internet. They didn't have phones.

35:45

They didn't have postal, not much in the way of postal delivery. So you would put a letter in a barrel with your name on it and the location.

35:52

And then if someone else came along and they lived in close proximity to where that letter needed to go, they would take it back with them as they went back home.

36:01

The tradition still continues today. So you can take a postcard or a letter. You can put a stamp on it.

36:06

And then somebody else will take it out and hopefully mail it for you. So that's kind of neat. These, something else that we have to deal with in the island is invasive species.

36:16

So even though only five of the islands are populated, obviously there's a lot of travelers to the island.

36:22

And people visiting have either intentionally or unintentionally put things there that are problematic.

36:30

So the Smoothbilled Annie is one of those. It was actually first introduced to control cattle ticks.

36:36

And cattle obviously were something that was also introduced to the islands. It's not native. And so now the

36:42

Annies eat insects. And that actually threatens sort of the food chain and some of the things that, again, the insects are involved in on the island.

36:51

And the other one is the Blackberry. So Blackberry, if we have that on our property, it does tend to overgrow.

36:59

But it is not native to the island. And basically, it's very hard to kill it because it tends to take over other vegetation.

37:09

The seeds can actually live up to 12 years in the ground. So it's very hard to eradicate it. But they're trying.

37:17

But again, that's why they won't actually let you take food onto the islands. You can take water, but you can't take any food because they don't want trash left behind.

37:26

They don't want anything like the berries or anything like that left there to create problems.

37:32

And so, for example, tortoises used to exist on Floriana, but they don't anymore because whalers and pirates would take them as a food source.

37:41

So that may sound kind of strange, but they live. They don't need much water or vegetation to actually live.

37:46

So they're great to take on a ship. At least that's what they thought. And then they could, over time, you know, when they got the food supply was getting low, they could kill them and eat them.

37:55

But again, they did it so much that now they don't even exist there. Darwin collected mockingbirds on this island that no longer exists there.

38:03

And so the Charles Darwin Research Station that I'll show you later is actually very active in, first of all, trying to preserve these species.

38:10

They're also trying to get rid of these invasive species to these islands.

38:15

They're trying to reintroduce tortoises, reintroduce mockingbirds, try to get it back to the way it was. This is a cactus.

38:21

It is very common in the Galapagos Island called the prickly pear. So they grow, they normally grow very close to the ground.

38:28

But in Galapagos, they actually can grow in tree -like form. Which again, you know, they're being able to speciate.

38:35

And these aren't necessarily different species, but they're able to take different forms depending on where they're at.

38:41

Sometimes islands will have very unique versions of different species. Some of them are absolutely enormous.

38:47

I cannot even get the whole picture of this. I couldn't even fit the whole thing into a picture, so to speak, and get the people in there as well.

38:54

So they're very big. Penguins are just kind of how we got around from place to place. And this is actually in Post Office Bay in Floriana.

39:04

And it was a sea lion nursery. So you'll kind of see, some of these don't have the sounds on here, but you'll see some of these sea lions.

39:12

These are very young sea lions actually coming all around the boat. And the reason that the moms like to have them there is because this bay is very protected from sharks.

39:21

And so they tend to be very safe in there. When they get older, then they can actually get out of that area, get up on the land some and then cross over into the ocean.

39:33

But it's a very protected area. So it was really fun to watch them there. They're very, very playful. They want to follow you around.

39:40

It's hard to stay away from them because they like to go near you. All right. So next we went... Can you hear me?

40:33

Yes, we can hear you. Okay. I can't hear you. So I'm just asking. Okay.

40:38

I'll try to share screen again. Not sure what happened. It just totally kicked me out of it. So anyway, we'll start.

40:45

I'll start again there with the cactus finch. All right. Let me share my screen. That little sea lion nursery looked amazing.

41:01

I forgot she can't hear me. Okay. Here we go again.

41:22

Okay. There we go again. Can you hear me again? Okay. Sorry about that. Okay. So you can see a picture of the cactus finch there and he's hanging out and there's actually a nest.

41:35

It's kind of in between those two cactus leaves right there. So it's pretty amazing how they live there.

41:42

The next is one of my favorite birds. There he is on the island.

41:47

Whoops. The swallowtail gull. And they're very docile. You actually have to be careful not to step on them.

41:53

But they're absolutely beautiful. And with their gray color and that real red ring around their eye, it's the only gull that actually hunts at night.

42:03

And they think that red eye ring actually helps with their vision to be able to see. They feed on bioluminescent sea creatures.

42:11

And so this helps them see. It's kind of like they see fish. They see squid. They think it may also be a type of sonar.

42:17

They really don't know what the purpose of the eye ring is. But there's actually a heron on the island that actually has eye rings as well that feeds at night.

42:26

And so we don't really know. That's still something that, again, biologists are trying to figure out.

42:34

And the white parts on their beak, though, we do know that they think that it helps the young see the parents at night so that they know where to feed.

42:42

Because if they're feeding the young at night, obviously the young birds have to be able to see it. So it's kind of a cool design feature.

42:49

So this island also has a land iguana. And so they are much bigger than the marine iguanas.

42:56

Probably because their food source is a little more plentiful. They actually eat cactus.

43:02

They eat the prickly pear cactus. They just kind of wait for the pads to fall off the cactus. And they eat them.

43:08

You'll see them right below the cactus just kind of waiting on that. They're slow moving. They don't necessarily need to eat a lot.

43:17

But they're large. And they just live on the land. And they do pretty good hanging out there.

43:22

They're usually kind of this yellowish grayish color. But they can be pretty different. So this is a pink one.

43:29

It has to do with some of what they eat. But this is on Volcano Wolf, which is actually the one that just erupted.

43:37

But they can look very pink. Just depends on their diet. Here's some other pictures of them as well.

43:43

They don't congregate like the marine ones do just because they don't need to do that for warmth.

43:49

They actually have the opposite problem of the marine iguanas. They need to try to stay cool. So they tend to be lighter in color.

43:56

And they don't... You can see that their claws are not as long and sharp. So they just don't...

44:03

Again, they don't have to kind of go under the water and hold on to something and eat algae. You know, they're just right there on the land.

44:10

It's pretty easy for them. They can actually mate with the marine iguanas. You can have hybrid iguanas that will feed on both the land and the water.

44:19

So they can do that. So again, they're just different species within this same group.

44:26

And that they can be able to do that, form hybrids. So this next video, and there's no sound with this, but this is a male sea lion.

44:37

And you can see that bump on his head. The bigger the bump, the basically more aggressive they are.

44:43

We actually had trouble getting onto this island because this male was not happy with us. They weigh over 500 pounds.

44:49

And so when you're in that little boat out there, it can be pretty scary to see this big thing coming at you and being afraid it's actually going to tip it over.

44:59

Their eyesight isn't the greatest, but still when it's coming at you, it's pretty scary. So we got up those steps there, thanks to our naturalist basically trying to get it away with a life jacket, which worked.

45:11

And so we ran onto the land and got away, but he's just protecting the harem there.

45:17

He wants to be the dominant male. And so the other side of the island actually has the loser males.

45:23

So they will fight for the day and then they'll go back and they'll rest up and then go back to try to fight again to be the winner there.

45:31

So it's kind of neat to see. The next island we went to is Santa Cruz. So that's a bigger island.

45:37

This is actually an inhabited island. There's about 12 ,000 people that live there. But the big thing on this island is the

45:43

Charles Darwin Research Station. And it is dedicated to conserve the plant and animal life on the island.

45:49

Again, they try to eradicate the plant and the insect species and feral animals that have been brought there, like even goats and pigs, and then reintroduce the species that have been lost to the islands due to those invasive species, trying to reintroduce land iguanas and tortoises.

46:09

And so of course, the signage makes it clear there. The Darwin is very important. And then the

46:14

Galapagos are an evolutionary wonder, even though, as we've said, that's really not true.

46:20

They even have this, and you see that there twice. And then they have this signage, which says Darwin's finches evolution in progress.

46:27

Okay, no, this isn't evolution. This is natural selection and other processes leading to different finch species, right?

46:34

The finches are still finches. They're not becoming non -finches. There's about 15 or 16 different species of finches on the islands.

46:42

There's actually even a brand new one that they call Big Bird that has just started developing. So it's kind of neat to see that.

46:48

They do have a breeding program because of the feral animals. They do try to breed the tortoises. They're on the islands.

46:55

The eggs tend to be eaten by the feral animals and so by the goats and the pigs. And so this is really the only way that they can reproduce because the feral animal situation has gotten so bad.

47:07

Several species of tortoises have went extinct, but before the conservation efforts, but now they're really, really trying hard to bring as many of them back as they can.

47:20

Now, when I went there, so we actually got up close to these. You can get in a pen and get up pretty close to them.

47:26

It's pretty amazing. These things can live for 100 to 200 years. So it's very possible that some of the tortoises, possible, maybe not so much in the research station, but some of the other ones, it's possible that they were there when

47:39

Darwin was there. I mean, that's pretty neat to think about. Now, when I was there, Lonesome George was still there. He was the last basically survivor of the ones from the

47:49

Pinta Island. And so he died though. He did die in 2012.

47:55

They did try to mate him with some other ones, but it didn't work. And so that species, the

48:01

Pinta species has now become extinct as a result. These are some other ones that we saw. Now, these are more in the wild.

48:07

These are on Santa Cruz tortoises. They're actually bigger than the ones in the research station because they're in the wild.

48:15

They can grow up to be 500 pounds. So they have to eat a lot of vegetation. They basically spend six months traveling from higher locations to lower locations in search of food and water.

48:25

And then they spend six months traveling back up to do the exact same. So they just go where the vegetation and where the food is.

48:32

Then we went to Isabella. Now, Isabella is obviously a very large island. It has five active volcanoes.

48:39

And we spent the first day mainly near Sierra Negra. Now, this island's where you're going to start to see a big difference because the other islands were very lush and had a lot of vegetation.

48:51

And now we're going further west. And so the lava is much newer there. It's very black. It's somewhat stark.

48:58

And so this is actually called A 'a lava. And it's called

49:05

A 'a. And I'm just going to take just a really quick little break here. And I will be right back.

49:11

Sorry to interrupt, but I'm going to take a quick break. I'm going to, let me just... So they call it

49:28

A 'a. That's sort of a Hawaiian name basically because it's just painful when you step on it.

49:33

It's very sharp. It's very jagged. And the white crusty substance that you see there is the lichens.

49:40

And so they're usually the first colonizers to come and get this stuff ready basically for making soil.

49:47

And so other plants can live there. All right, these are some lava fields. It looks kind of like broken up asphalt.

49:54

You can see some houses there. They actually are pretty close to those lava fields.

49:59

And again, this volcano, they do have active volcanoes on this island. So it's kind of surprising to me how close they'll build.

50:07

These lava fields are a few hundred years old. So granted the one that they're pretty close to hasn't erupted in a while, or at least not to that extent.

50:15

But personally being from Midwest, that would scare me. This is the Galapagos penguin.

50:20

So this was the only time that we actually got to see these birds there. They are the only penguin that lives north of the equator.

50:27

And they can do this because of the cold nutrient -rich water and upwelling that occurs there in the

50:34

Galapagos. There was a bad El Nino in 8283 that caused 77 % loss of the population of Galapagos penguins.

50:43

And so that caused a bottleneck. So the population got really small and they don't have a lot of genetic diversity when they look at them today because of that.

50:53

So they are concerned that disease could rapidly spread through the population and would actually wipe them out because our population is so small.

51:00

So they're working on ways to try to help them. This is the flamingo. This is the American flamingo.

51:06

You find this a lot on brackish inland lakes on the insides of the islands where that forms somewhat.

51:15

This is a marine iguana kindergarten. So that's what they called it. So there's lots of young marine iguanas there which really blend in very, very well.

51:24

As you can see with the lava that's there and it's very, very black. And it's interesting fact about marine iguanas because they are a very unusual reptile.

51:34

Most, again, because they're cold -blooded but yet they go in the water which is cold to be able to get food.

51:42

During El Nino years, survival is very difficult due to the overgrowth of brown algae and they don't eat brown algae.

51:49

It's toxic to them. So it's interesting because during El Nino years when that happens, they actually reduce their body size by 20%.

51:58

So they get smaller and that's good because food is less available. And it's speculated that even some of their bones actually will shorten.

52:06

But no one really knows if that's genetic, if it's hormonal or how that's being done. Because after El Nino, they return to normal size.

52:14

So it's pretty cool, again, how God has designed them to be able to adapt and deal with these situations or that particular kind that they belong to to be able to do that.

52:23

So this is Sierra Negra which is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. And it's the second largest caldera in the world at just a little over five miles.

52:33

I actually hiked to the top of this one which sounds really cool, but it was really hard.

52:41

It was very muddy. It took an hour to climb to the top. And we thought we were gonna be going on horseback up the side of this volcano, which sounded really cool.

52:51

But they said the horses were breaking their legs too much. So we were gonna have to walk it which did not really instill in me a lot of enthusiasm.

53:00

But we made it to the top. So that was good. So this is kind of hard to see because there's a lot of mist but you can sort of see the lava field there.

53:07

That's like inside the caldera. And they talk about it a little there. And then they said the last time it erupted when

53:13

I was there in 2010, the last time it erupted was in 2005. Now it has since erupted in 2018 though.

53:22

So it has erupted fairly, not that long ago. So it was a little scary.

53:27

I thought, oh my goodness, what happened to this volcano starts erupting while we're up here. So, cause it's a long way down, but anyways, it didn't.

53:35

So that's good. So then we went to another part of Isabella and we went to Elizabeth Bay.

53:42

And so it's more inland on the other side of the island. And we're really surrounded by active volcanoes at this point, which is kind of interesting.

53:50

So these are a few of them that we could see in the distance. Elizabeth Bay is a beautiful place with lots of mangroves.

53:57

It has the four different types, black, white, red, and button all exist there. The roots are really long and you can see that in the bottom picture.

54:05

So when the tide is low, they're still in the water. You know, that's fine. You know, they don't have to worry about it.

54:12

And so 90 to 97 % of the salt is to be typically excluded at the root.

54:18

So they'll still be able to take in fresh water. And the white mangrove will actually put the salt out on their leaves.

54:24

They'll just get rid of it that way. And it was really interesting that particular night in Elizabeth Bay, we actually did some stargazing because there's no light pollution out there or very little light pollution because you're 600 miles from Ecuador and you're really kind of in the middle of the

54:41

Pacific Ocean. And it's just beautiful. I have never seen a sky like that.

54:48

The Milky Way is clearly seen. You can see Saturn. You can see the Southern Cross because obviously what hemisphere we're in.

54:55

I even saw a shooting star. I don't think I've ever seen that. They're not as clearly here in the Midwest. And so it was really, really cool to be able to do that.

55:03

It was a little bit eerie too because like there was no one. Like you're just, you're there on a boat in the

55:09

Pacific Ocean and both Isabella and the other island that's near that for Nandina, they are not inhabited.

55:16

So you are just literally there. It's just you. And it's really a kind of a neat feeling but it made me think of this verse in Genesis.

55:24

You know, then God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.

55:31

And wow, did he make the stars? I mean, there are a lot of stars out there that are much easier to see when you don't have the light pollution.

55:40

Then we went to Fernandina, they're just beside Isabella and we saw some more marine iguanas.

55:48

And there was at that point, when we had got to the island, there was like a mass exodus of them coming in.

55:54

So as the tide comes in, they tend to feed, they're gonna feed when the tide is low because the water is shallower and they don't have to go as deeply, so to speak.

56:04

So they'll feed somewhat on these tidal flats, which is what you're seeing them on there because it's easier for them to get to.

56:11

They don't have to actually go dive for it and like try to hold onto a rock and eat it. And so they don't get as cold then.

56:21

But they really do arrive on shore exhausted because it is hard. I mean, they're reptiles and so they don't normally live in water and they have to rest and really warm up.

56:31

Now, they actually don't drink any fresh water. They only drink salt water.

56:37

So how do they get rid of the excess salt? Well, they sneeze it out. They actually have salt glands located above their eyes that will filter the salt out of their blood and they sneeze out this salty fluid.

56:50

And then the spray falls back on their head, which is why the water evaporates. That's why they look like they have this white crusty substance there all the time.

56:58

It just comes from the salt that they are sneezing out.

57:06

So here's just a short video of that. There he goes.

57:16

That's always kind of cool. I thought that was neat that we actually got to see it. This is a lava lizard on top of a iguana, on top of a marine iguana.

57:26

They also have a symbiotic relationship where they'll eat insects and parasites off each other. So that's kind of cool.

57:32

This is the cacti. This is a different type of cacti than the prickly pear. This is lava cacti named because it grows like literally directly on the lava.

57:40

It is not lifeless. Lava definitely has a lot of different plants and we'll see some more of those later. This is the flightless cormorant.

57:48

It's the only species of flightless cormorant in the world. Their wings are only about a third of the size that they really would need to fly.

57:57

And so they get their food from the water. They actually swim in the water, which you can see there to get their food.

58:02

Now their feathers are not waterproof like a penguin. So they actually have to spend a lot of time drying off in the sun.

58:08

So you'll see them like you see them here kind of spread out. And it's not known whether their flightlessness was directly selected for because of the advantages it provides.

58:19

It lets them be more streamlined in the water or if it wasn't selected against because flight wasn't really needed where they're at because the food's abundant in the water.

58:28

They don't need to fly to get it. They actually need to swim to get it. And so they're able either way, they're able to do that.

58:34

But again, it's not a gain of a feature. If anything, it's a loss of something but it's allowed them to be able to deal well with that particular environment.

58:41

And they have gorgeous blue eyes, these sort of turquoise blue eyes that you can see there. So then we went from Fernandina to Santiago.

58:49

So we're going to go around. So that was a big trip there. And there's beautiful rock formations on this island.

58:56

They have these coffee colored beaches and you can really see some of these layers here.

59:01

You know, we're formed from multiple volcanic eruptions probably on these islands and then get eroded away by the ocean.

59:11

Now on this island, I love to stay in this type of lava. It's Pahoehoe lava, which is

59:17

Hawaiian for ropey. And so it looks very, very different. And the waves here are extremely powerful.

59:23

And so like I say, they have eroded away parts of the island and one place, and I don't know why they call it this,

59:30

I'm just saying the name, it's called Darwin's Toilet. So you get a lot of mileage out of that one but basically the water will come in and then go back out again.

59:39

So kind of like a toilet flushing which I think is why it's been given that particular name.

59:44

And you'll see like lava bridges there and you'll see areas where the water rises and then goes back out like the toilet, so to speak.

59:52

And it's just a really, really beautiful place that was different from other islands that we had been on.

59:59

The water is crystal clear here. We actually saw finally a green sea turtle and they nest on this particular, it's the only turtle that actually nest in the

01:00:08

Galapagos. So this is, you can see where they've actually left. These are the eggshells there.

01:00:14

They actually like this coffee colored sand because it's important for maintaining the right temperature for the eggs and the closeness of the nesting places to the water.

01:00:25

And there's no sea lions. So there's no sea lions to dig up the eggs and eat them. So that's probably why they like it there.

01:00:31

And then we also saw the fur seal. So this is not a seal, it's a type of sea lion but it's not, it's different from the

01:00:38

Galapagos sea lion. They tend to stay in the water more. They actually aren't on the land like the sea lions are.

01:00:46

We also saw the finches here. So obviously the islands are well known for their finches and there are a lot there.

01:00:52

Like I said, there's somewhere between 14 and 16 different species of finches. You can see them,

01:00:58

I mean, you can hear them before you can see them. And our naturalist, he can make finch calls and they just fly down at our feet and so we get to see them.

01:01:06

And it's been said that only God and Peter Grant can tell this species apart because they do look pretty similar.

01:01:13

And Peter Grant and his wife, Rosemary are the ones that have done a lot of work on the Galapagos finches and published actually a lot of papers on them.

01:01:22

And he, now our naturalist said, and I have no reason to doubt this but he said that the females can somehow sense when

01:01:30

El Ninos or La Ninas are coming. They will actually mate with a different finch species.

01:01:36

So one finch mates with a different finch species and they form hybrids and hybrids in this case but the finches have more vigor and so they survive the events better.

01:01:46

So I thought that was kind of cool that somehow, some way God has designed these animals to be able to do that.

01:01:53

So then we went to Santa Cruz and Santiago which is there. So we're kind of making a circle here and we got to see these beautiful blue -footed boobies again.

01:02:02

And you can even see the difference in the blue how it can be very turquoise or much bluer. And what's really neat on this particular event is we turned a corner as we were in the boat and we saw hundreds of blue -footed boobies like floating in the water.

01:02:17

And within moments, like literally as if responding to some unknown signal they all take flight.

01:02:23

They flew a short circle in the air and then they dive bomb back into the water capturing their prey.

01:02:29

And so I'm gonna play for you just a short video here of that. Oh, yes, beautiful.

01:02:52

You can do that one more time. They're gonna do it again. Did you get that,

01:02:57

Nyssa? We were asking the videographer if he got that. And so this is kind of a slow motion of one of them.

01:03:04

So they will fly a hundred feet in the air, dive at 60 miles an hour and then dive 80 feet into the water.

01:03:12

And they go under, they go under the fish basically get them and then come pop back out again.

01:03:18

And so this island, which is very close to there, Santiago is Daphne Major.

01:03:23

And this is where Rosemary and Peter Grant spend three months a year basically studying

01:03:29

Darwin's finches. So they're very, very dedicated to this. This is not an easy island to work on.

01:03:36

Obviously it's very small. It has very steep incline. And so, but their research has actually been very important in developing our understanding of natural selection in regard to finches.

01:03:46

And, but they often use the word evolution, right? To describe what they're studying, but it isn't. I mean, they have changes in beak sizes, maybe changes in color, changes in overall sizes, but not going from one kind of organism to another.

01:04:00

This little, see that little like cave -like area? That's where the grants actually stay.

01:04:05

So they stay for one to three months a year tagging these birds and trying to understand these birds better.

01:04:11

We also see a lot of prickly pear on this island. It actually grows on the ground, not on a tree. So it can take different forms depending on where you're at.

01:04:19

There it is. We visited a lava field of a volcano here, which is really, really cool looking.

01:04:26

It almost feels like you're in another world. This lava field was formed in 1890 and that lava flowed for three months straight and was about seven feet in depth and covers about 15 miles.

01:04:39

So it takes you about a boat, about two hours to go around the island to see the entire lava field.

01:04:45

It's really, really big. Had some really cool lava formations on this island. You see more of the

01:04:51

Pohoihoe lava. And you do see even some plants here, like the Molugo plant.

01:04:57

This is a pioneer plant. So this plant's going to come in. It grows there. It breaks down the lava and starts to form soil.

01:05:04

And here's some other amazing rope structures. Again, a lava that flows for three months, that's a lot of lava.

01:05:11

And we even saw the short -eared owl, which is one of the only owl species that's actually on the island.

01:05:17

It hunts at night like a lot of owls because it doesn't have to compete with the hawks then. And then we went to Bartolome, which is another little tiny island which you can't see very well there.

01:05:29

This is a very famous picture, so to speak. When you see Galapagos, you will see what's called pinnacle rock, which is that rock over structure over to the right side there kind of sticking up.

01:05:39

It's a very stark landscape in Bartolome. Again, it's sort of between the east -west line there.

01:05:47

And it has a lot of the little fields, a lot of little hills, which you see there in the distance. And so it has had a lot of volcanic activity in the past.

01:05:59

It's one of the further north islands. And these are cinder cones. So basically, even though you have a main caldera for a volcano, sometimes it will not erupt, but the gas and the magma comes out from the sides.

01:06:14

And so you get these little cinder cones formed as a result of that. And they sort of have a sandy brown appearance.

01:06:20

And then you also have what are called splatter cones, which is what these are. So they're not rounded like the cinder cones, but they're open.

01:06:27

And that's when the magma and the gas push through the surface, actually making an explosion kind of like a little mini volcano at the top.

01:06:35

And again, they do have some pioneer plants like malugo and tequila that form there, which are, again, it's not lifeless.

01:06:41

So they're breaking it down and getting ready for that. This is a hawk. So our naturalist imitated this hawk sound.

01:06:49

And this hawk came flying down, which I thought was pretty cool because they're very hard to get pictures of because they're just kind of elusive.

01:06:57

And so that was kind of neat that we got to see that. We also got to see a, this is a collapsed caldera.

01:07:04

So this, after all the magma left leaves, it just kind of collapses in on itself. There's a lake in there, which actually has a whole flamingo population.

01:07:12

So that was kind of neat and beautiful, beautiful area there they are.

01:07:18

So then we went to North Seymour Island. And again, that's another small island, which is a birder's paradise.

01:07:25

And we got to see the blue -footed boobies. So I'll kind of play these in motion here. They're just stills, but you can kind of see the blue -footed booby dance there for his partner.

01:07:35

He was actually doing that when another blue -footed booby came along. Another male was trying to impress the female.

01:07:42

And so they kind of have the battle of the, battle of the dances there to see who she would pick.

01:07:49

And then we saw the frigate's birds. And so you see that there, there are two species of those in the

01:07:54

Galapagos. And the males will form a neck pouch. They'll inflate that. It takes about 20 minutes to fully inflate.

01:08:02

And the male frigate actually makes the nest. And then he inflates his neck pouch and the females will soar above and actually figure out who's the best, right?

01:08:12

Who has the biggest pouch, the reddest pouch, the best nest. That's what they kind of do.

01:08:17

Both females and males will take care of the single chick, which you see a picture of there, kind of white looking.

01:08:24

They just have one chick. And the chicks will actually stay with parents for around a year because frigates are what we call kleptoparasitic birds.

01:08:34

So they steal food from other birds. So if another bird, we actually would see this sometimes, a bird would have a fish, they go up and they try to take the fish from it.

01:08:42

So they just steal. And so, and we, this is a picture of the sunset because I'm almost at the end of my presentation.

01:08:50

So I think that's kind of neat to have. And we had sunsets like this almost every night. It was truly, truly fascinating and beautiful.

01:08:58

And so, when I think about all of these things that we saw, I think about some of the verses in Job.

01:09:04

And when Job was questioning God because of all these bad things that were happening to him. And then God responds to Job and he says, who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

01:09:15

Now prepare yourself like a man. I will question you and you shall answer me.

01:09:20

Do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young? Or can you mark when a deer gives birth? Can you number the months that they fulfill?

01:09:27

Or do you know the time when they bear young? Have you given a horse strength? Have you closed his neck with thunder?

01:09:33

Can you frighten him like a Lois? His majestic snorting strikes terror. And so, it's kind of like over and over.

01:09:42

Let's see, I think I got one more here. Yeah, does the hawk fly by your wisdom, which we saw, and spread its wings toward the south?

01:09:47

Does the eagle mount up at your command and make its nest on high? You know, do you know this Job? Do you know that?

01:09:53

You know, this is, and it's all about nature and the universe. And I thought, you know, so much about what

01:09:59

I learned and saw when I saw all these amazing creatures in the Galapagos Islands. And I think about this verse, so what does

01:10:06

Job say? Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which

01:10:13

I did not know. And as I thought about the last part of verse three here, I think about this in relation to the first quote

01:10:19

I shared with you when Darwin was talking about these islands. And he talked about the eye of reason and the power of organic arrangement.

01:10:27

And, you know, Darwin is looking at basically the exact same thing I looked at. And he said, everything but God. You know, this is all due to natural thing.

01:10:36

But whereas Job says to be saying, everything because of God, right? I know you can do everything.

01:10:43

And, you know, Job's response should be our own. Therefore, I pour myself and repent in dust and ashes.

01:10:48

You know, so may we like Darwin realize that we can know nothing apart from God.

01:10:54

And that truth about the truth about the past, the present and the future can only be found when we begin with God's word and he as the ultimate authority.

01:11:04

All right, so that is all I have. And there we go.

01:11:10

Okay, well, thank you for that. That was a really great presentation. Okay, and can you hear me okay?

01:11:18

I can. Okay, I'm back. Can you hear us? Dan, can you text her and ask if she can hear us?

01:11:31

I can hear you now. Okay. Okay, perfect. Okay, that was really great. That was very lots of information and interesting information.

01:11:40

So we do have some questions. First, Dan would like to give you an applause there. And then, so I just want to clarify in the time that you were there, you never saw any animals evolve from one kind to another?

01:11:56

Nope. And to the best of your knowledge, those turtles that were there that were probably there when

01:12:02

Darwin was there and are still there, they've never seen any animals evolve from one kind to another?

01:12:08

Nope, nope. Okay. It doesn't happen. Well, the evolutionists would say, well, you need millions of years for that to happen.

01:12:17

So of course you're not going to see it, right? So yeah. But the thing that I can say as a geneticist is there's no mechanism to do it.

01:12:25

So even if you could have all that time, you don't have a way to do it. That's the problem. Yeah.

01:12:33

Okay. Now the tour that you went on, like it has been a little while.

01:12:39

So do you know if they're still doing tours and do they do tours for ordinary people who just want to go on a tour like that?

01:12:48

They have not done any tours since that time that we went. They're getting older. So they're definitely in their 70s now because I think they were in the 60s when we went on the trip.

01:13:00

So they're not doing any more. And they just did it for that particular group.

01:13:05

But I will give you a little bit of a preview. We are thinking about doing a

01:13:12

Galapagos trip with answers in Genesis. But we are currently investigating that. So I don't have any dates.

01:13:19

I don't have any information, but let's just say we are investigating that possibility of doing a trip.

01:13:25

That's interesting because some of our members, they love to do creation tour trips like that.

01:13:31

So I think you'll have some sign up maybe from our group here.

01:13:39

You mentioned that you're not a geologist, but we do have a resident geologist and he just wanted to put in a little note that it's not above ground, it's above sea level.

01:13:52

Great. So now Robin has several questions about the blue footed boobies.

01:14:02

First of all, she wants to know what she can eat to get blue feet. I have nothing.

01:14:11

So they have a system and I don't know biologically how this works, but they convert what they eat in their food.

01:14:18

And my understanding, I think as far as I know, because they eat fish, so it must be something in the fish that they're eating.

01:14:28

The carotenoids, the pigments that are in the fish that they are then converting to their skin basically in their feet.

01:14:37

I don't know how that happens biologically speaking. I don't know the physiology behind it, but they just have a way to be able to take the pigments that are in the food they eat and push it out to their skin.

01:14:48

So is that kind of like how flamingos get their pink color from eating shrimp?

01:14:55

Yeah, same idea. Well, Robin says that's not going to work because she does not like seafood. And she'd also like to know what makes a boobie a boobie.

01:15:09

Is there something specific about that kind of bird? Yeah, is it a species of some?

01:15:16

I mean, you have your hawks and your red -winged blackbird and your robins.

01:15:25

Why boobie? I mean, do they do goofy things? Why? Yeah, because, yes.

01:15:30

Okay, so I was just trying to understand the question. Yeah, because they just look silly when they kind of do their dances.

01:15:36

Clown, I think the boobie word comes, I think it, I don't know. Okay, well, I don't know my Spanish super well, but it may have something to do with that.

01:15:45

So it just means like clown, you know, like they just, they are, they're very funny to watch, so.

01:15:51

Robin actually does know Spanish. Does that bring anything up? I'm thinking, yeah, baboso. Yeah, yeah, it does.

01:15:57

Okay, well, and so then she also wants to know, is the Galapagos the only place where the blue -footed boobies are?

01:16:06

Now, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I know that they have a large population of them there, but I don't know if that's the only place they reside for that one.

01:16:17

And the iguanas, oh, first, the water iguana that you mentioned.

01:16:23

So we did talk about some of the land iguanas that sneeze out the salt, but do water iguanas do the same thing?

01:16:31

So only the marine iguanas sneeze out the salt. The land iguanas don't because they will, they don't actually drink salt water.

01:16:40

Because they don't go into the water, the land iguanas. So how they get water is mainly from the cactus.

01:16:45

So there isn't a lot of fresh water on the islands at any time of the,

01:16:50

I mean, when it rains, obviously there is, but they mainly get their water from the cactus that they eat.

01:16:57

So they don't have to, they do have the salt glands, but they're not very well -developed and they don't sneeze out salt because they just don't take it in.

01:17:05

Yeah, you had answered that question. I mean, that your video or your talk answered the question because I'd asked that quite a while ago because when you had the close -up picture of the iguana, it looked like he had like a salt black on his head.

01:17:18

So I was wondering if he excreted it through his skin, but it's from the sneezing. It's from the sneezing, yeah.

01:17:24

Okay. And then she also noticed that in your kindergarten picture that there were a lot of young iguanas, iguana babies.

01:17:32

Do they have predators there? They do. So hawks, owls, you know, the bigger birds will eat them.

01:17:41

And you were saying about some of the imported, the animals or plants that have been brought in.

01:17:50

Did I understand correctly that some birds have been brought in? Yeah, the

01:17:55

Annie, A -N -I, that bird. They brought it in to control cattle ticks because they brought in cattle.

01:18:03

See, one thing leads to another. So that's been a problem. They actually had, when we were there, goats have become a huge problem.

01:18:12

And so they got rid of goats, like on this one island, they actually, it was some kind of, like they did it by helicopter or something where they drop poison in certain areas.

01:18:24

And then I have a friend whose daughter went to the Galapagos this past summer.

01:18:31

And like, it's like, they have goat hunting. Like they go out and they kill goats.

01:18:37

Like we do maybe deer hunting here. They do goat hunting because they're feral. And so they want to get rid of them.

01:18:44

So you're allowed to shoot them. And so she went out with the family she was with and they went out and hunted goats.

01:18:49

So it's like a thing. That sounds like fun. Yeah. Yeah, goat is eaten in the, well, in every culture eats goats.

01:19:00

It's actually not, it's called Orego. Barbacoa, a goat meat in Mexico.

01:19:15

Back to the blue footed boobies, our geologist says that he has seen that he, that they are in many places.

01:19:22

He has seen them himself in Alaska. So just to clarify that one. There you go.

01:19:28

So, well, that seems to be all of the questions that we have for now on both

01:19:34

Zoom or Facebook. So I had a couple. Oh, go ahead, Dan. Go ahead and ask your questions.

01:19:40

All right. Well, the first one is the couple that's researching the finches.

01:19:45

Would you call them cave people? But I called them what? Would you call them cave people?

01:19:52

Ha ha ha. Yeah. Well, they lived in caves for a short time, right? For during the year. They do. That's true.

01:19:58

Okay. And then a serious question. Did you have communication with home while you were in the

01:20:04

Galapagos? Very rarely. There are not a lot of...

01:20:10

No, it could be different now. But when I was there, there was really a lot of cell phone towers. And so we had...

01:20:20

I did have a phone that they said was going to work, but it did not work. And so one person on the trip had a phone that we could actually call out on.

01:20:27

And I think I got to go home maybe twice the entire time I was there, which was really hard for this mama when

01:20:34

I've got a six -year -old at home. But my mother -in -law did an amazing job. She was with her the whole time.

01:20:40

And of course my husband was here too. And so she was treated very, very well during that time.

01:20:46

I think I missed her way more than she missed me. Okay. That's it.

01:20:53

One more question did just come through. Do you know why evolutionists should be concerned about endangered species?

01:21:04

Oh, okay. So in some ways I understand that because like, well, that's just natural selection and that's just the way things are, right?

01:21:12

So why should you care about them? I think they would probably say because some of them are endangered because of what we've done.

01:21:19

They're not endangered for natural reasons. They're endangered for unnatural reasons. And so they would probably say, well, we should try to preserve these animals because we're the ones that are harming them.

01:21:31

And so we need to preserve them for that reason. That makes sense.

01:21:38

I understand what he was asking. Isn't the nature of nature is that things go extinct and then new things come out?

01:21:49

Like in the Galapagos Islands, I understand previously they were hunted back in the 17, 1800s, but it's very protected now and species are dying off.

01:22:02

How is that just blamed on humans? Well, they would say that the humans took them off the islands in the first place and decreased their populations greatly.

01:22:14

So they would say it's because of human activity that the tortoises have disappeared from different places. The feral animals eat their eggs.

01:22:22

So that's a human thing that's being done that's decreasing them. As a creationist, what is your take on this?

01:22:33

You know, I mean, and that's always an interesting question I think because it's like, well, how much do you save?

01:22:40

And I think it can depend on the organism and the environment that it's in, because I think some species are what we call keystone species and they are really, really important to a particular area.

01:22:54

So if that animal dies or that species died, it affects the whole food chain. It affects the whole environment for whatever reason it might be.

01:23:03

And so I think we need to evaluate, you know, I think we can go overboard with it.

01:23:09

So I think we have to have a balanced view and we've got to evaluate what is the reason to save this animal?

01:23:15

How important is this animal? You know, those kinds of things. And I think we have to just look at it from a balanced perspective, especially if there's humans involved, you know, because, well, should we not, should we, you know, should we get rid of this species because it's affecting humans, you know, and how it's impacting them.

01:23:38

And so I think you have to look at a lot of those different factors too. I don't think there can be just a one answer for that.

01:23:45

Okay. Or depopulate the world by 6 .5 billion. Sorry, I don't understand the question.

01:23:53

And it wasn't, I was being, I was making a snarky comment about the globalists that want to depopulate the earth for, to save mother nature.

01:24:06

Right. Yeah. So people, yeah, that, and I've been hearing a lot recently about the birth rates, you know, they're falling below.

01:24:15

Yeah, we can't contain ourselves. Yeah, they are. I mean, what I hear South Korea is like at 0 .8.

01:24:22

I mean, they're, I mean, 2 .2 is what you need to maintain a population. And so a lot of the

01:24:29

Asian countries are falling below that, but even America, even the U S is below too. So yeah, it's, it, that's a real thing.

01:24:38

In some ways, I suppose that there's some consistency in the evolutionary view there, because if evolution is true and humans, we're just another kind of animal, then they're not prioritizing humans over other animals.

01:24:54

I mean, whereas obviously we know that, that that's not how God designed it. And so, right, well, so that brings us to the end of our live time.

01:25:05

And so what we'd like to do, Dr. Purdim, if you'd like to pray to close us and then we'll stop the recording and stop the live stream.

01:25:12

And then, and then maybe for just a few minutes, if you don't mind hanging back, in case anybody would like to ask you a question off camera.

01:25:21

So before we pray, let's just remind everybody first for us, we're

01:25:27

Creation Fellowship Santee. And people can find us by going to tinyurl .com

01:25:34

forward slash CF Santee. And then we can also, you can also email us at creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com.

01:25:43

And we'd like to also thank Dan Letha, who helped connect us with Dr.

01:25:48

Purdim. And Dan, do you want to say something about your ministry? Yeah, I work for Reasons for Hope and you can find us online at rforh .com.

01:26:01

And I draw a cartoon called Truth Jabbed every week. And also a feature online called

01:26:07

Draw It and Know It. It's kind of a drawing lesson and a creation lesson all in one for young artists that want to think biblically, so.

01:26:17

Okay. And then Dr. Purdim, if you want to share about your ministry and products that people can find about your talk tonight or about other things that might be of interest.

01:26:28

Yeah, sure. So the best place to go is Answers in Genesis .org

01:26:38

is our main website. And we have a great store there. And really for whatever topic that you're interested in that I shared tonight, like talk about natural selection or speciation.

01:26:51

We have a lot of great products, articles and things like that on it. Also would encourage,

01:26:57

I know y 'all are out in Washington, but it's worth the trip to come to the Creation Museum and the

01:27:02

ARC Encounter. And so this time of year is just beautiful here. It's a little cooler and great time to enjoy those things that are going on here at both those locations.

01:27:14

And so we also, if you're wanting to move to the area, we always have a lot of job opening.

01:27:21

We're always growing. And so just make sure to check out both the Creation Museum, the ARC Encounter and Answers in Genesis.

01:27:28

Scroll to the bottom, see jobs, click on that. And we'd be more than happy to have you check it out.

01:27:34

Check out, we always say, whatever your ability is, we probably have need for it. So in some way, shape or form.

01:27:41

I applied for the IT engineer and I filled out the statement of faith.

01:27:49

And I just wonder if maybe I was too forceful. I'm very creation oriented.

01:27:55

I'm a very conservative Christian. So I'm wondering if they thought maybe I was like spoofing or something, but I did fill out an application for the

01:28:03

IT engineer. Okay. And it was about three weeks ago. Oh, great, great.

01:28:11

Okay. So with that, Dr. Purnim, if you'd like to pray to close our on -air time, that would be great.

01:28:18

Sure. Loretta, just thank you for this group tonight. And thank you for me being able to get on and talk to them and just interact with them.

01:28:29

It's been a great time. And we just thank you for the beautiful creation that you've given us and that we get to experience.

01:28:35

And just for standing, continuing to stand for your word and the authority of your word and ever changing culture that challenges us.

01:28:44

And pray that this will be used to challenge and change the hearts of many. And just to see that your word is true from the very first verse.

01:28:52

In your name I pray. Amen. Amen. Okay. So I'm going to stop the live.