Barker Debate Review

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence

Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed

Baptist Church This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with dr.

White call now It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll -free across the

United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five three Three three four one and now with today's topic.

Here is James white And good morning, welcome to the dividing line good to be back here in Phoenix, Arizona it really wasn't gone for a whole long time really, but Very very appreciative to everyone who participated in making the debate

Thursday evening so successful Especially those who were there who pitched in and gave of their time and their effort there people like well,

I already put everybody on the on the website, but especially Eric Nielsen who had to receive the camera that we shipped back there and Dale and Brigham's and I'll go and all the guys that were there and assisted in getting the

Recording done as you will see here in a few moments. The recording sounds great and Lord willing later today.

You should see something on the blog announcing the availability of the high -quality mp3 recording of the debate and then hopefully not too far beyond that we'll be able to put the

DVDs together and What was the mp4 come before the DVD maybe or sound around the same time something like that, okay and Since we did the recording in fact if you want to add something to your list of things to pray about I haven't been able to say much about this yet, but You may notice that the last about eight debates that I did other than the urban debate we've never made them available because we've never received them and I discovered this past week that that's because The folks who record them can't pay to get them from the videographers and so we may need to put up an item and maybe do it somewhere along the lines of Presales of them to try to raise some funds and make it more than normal, you know

I don't know what we'll have to do, but we'll have to find some way of being of assistance to get As I count them eight because I forgot about the the ones nine the ones from California We've also never received either like with the debate with Farhan Qureshi, so I think there are nine videos of debates

That are just sort of in limbo right now because the folks record them cannot pay to get them back from the videographer and so we're gonna have to do something to help out there because you don't do nine debates and let them just disappear because People don't have money to pay for them.

So we got a got to find some way of working that out But anyway, we did the recording in this one. So we have the tapes and so they'll be available

Tootsuite as they say and very high quality as you will see so thanks to all those folks and of course

Great amount of thanks those who made it possible we We footed the bill for me on this one that is we paid for the hotel and the airport the airline tickets and the rental car and etc, etc, so you

Contributed to making that happen and it was a real honor to meet a number of you who were there at the debate

I heard a number of people say how come you don't come to the Midwest more often Well, I come

I go where I'm invited, you know You know, I mean this whole debate just came about because and I don't remember

Excuse me. Now what I? Don't know what caused me to go looking for the

Barker Wilson debate. I don't remember what prompted that why I put that on my iPod and was listening to it

I don't I don't recall now, but I I did and it was after that that Eni Olson and channel said

Hey, I just got I was just contacted Some students at the University of Illinois are looking for some of the debate

Dan Barker Anybody know anybody around here could do that and I remember saying I will You will yeah,

I think that'd be great. So that's how that all ended up working out anyway, and So we are so thankful when folks help us to do those things.

It's extremely Encouraging when folks stand with us and as a result of the evening was that was a great evening

Obviously I continue looking forward to that grand day When I will debate someone who comes from a liberal perspective and that person from the liberal perspective will have the attitude that says, you know

Maybe I had to do some homework for this debate. Maybe I had to find out what James White actually believes

Maybe I'd like to read one of his books. Maybe just one not all of them, but just one maybe some it's relevant

Maybe I ought to listen to some of his debates maybe that he's done with other people Do something other than just show up and repeat the exact same presentation.

I've made over and over and over again Now don't get me wrong. I hope that I'm consistent in the presentations that I make and You're gonna hear similarities.

I mean if I debated another atheist next year I would probably use many of the same elements of my presentation, but When you use the exact same notes

When you're debating Kyle Butts, and I don't know what Kyle Butts his background is But I it sounded to me like he was at a

Church of Christ. Okay something along those lines. I could be wrong I haven't looked it up but very clearly

Mr. Butts's presentation his perspective is very different than my own. He's not reformed as far as I could tell and So when you use the exact same notes the exact same texts in the exact same order

For people who are coming from very different perspectives, what do you expect and In this particular debate, even if let's just say for the sake of argument that Dan and I are equivalent speakers with equivalent experience in debate and Dan does not even

Google my name when I talked to him before the debate said oh you are the same James White So I hadn't even hadn't even looked me

I had no idea where I was coming from if I had published anything if what I'd taught anything like that What did

I do? Well, if you listen to the dividing line, you know over the past month and a half You've probably gotten sick and tired of Dan Barker, but I've played numerous debates.

We've gone through his points point by point I've gotten his books I've let not only listen to his debates once probably more than once a number of them

I know I listened to the Paul Minard and Doug Wilson debates at least three times each maybe more and And So if you've got two equivalent people one does their homework and one does not

What do you expect is going to be the outcome of that particular encounter? well, I think that was the the outcome of that particular encounter and I Look at that.

See London truth just said Kyle Butts is with apologetics press a publishing arm the Church Christ So he used the exact same argumentation with a

Church of Christ Defender as he does with the Reformed Baptist Now maybe to Dan it just doesn't matter and and in fact

Let me give you an insight from what you don't see on the video or here on the video The navigators there at the

University of Illinois took me out to lunch The day of the debate and I met with a group of them and and did a lot of talking.

That's at least I did get to eat frequently when that happens, I don't get to eat and Be because there are too many questions being asked but I did get to have some of that yummy Chicago style pizza at a rather famous pizzeria just down the road and so I was just going through what

I expected debate to be about and I I was telling them about Dan and In essence

I Said well, you know, here's some of his favorite arguments. He's got this list of contradictions.

Here's some of the contradictions I talked about John the the John alleged contradiction. My testimony is not true.

My testimony is true I went through that they sort of laughed like people actually that's a contradiction. I said, yeah, I bet you know

He's said it many times. Well, okay, and Then I talked about his one

I only believe in one less God than you do And I said, you know what today is Thursday.

I said I have a feeling that he will use his Thursday Illustration today, you know people used to worship the

God Thor they heard thunder blah blah so I went all through all through this stuff with the with the students, so when

Dan gets up for his opening presentation and Says well, you know today today is it's a

Thursday and that's the God Thor and a lot of a lot of a lot and then he he goes through the

Christian the triune God does not exist because And then he goes to the exact same

Contradictions in the exact same order that we've dealt with him here on the program and that he did in the Kyle Butts debate

I'm just looking out at the Navigators who are sitting I don't know six rows back or so on the right hand side and they're all just sitting there

Smiling broadly because they're like wow. It reminded me of the first time I debated

Jerry Matitix on Long Island and Chris Arnz and I who you know,

Chris and I just met for the first time and we're sitting at dinner and He says what do you expect this evening?

So I started going through and I started saying well You know Jerry likes to show up and he likes to talk about how those books are in boxes and he he's rushed to get here and and all he's done is had, you know a coca -cola and in a

Cupcake or something and that all he had time to do is scribble some notes on a yellow pad while he was driving here and blah blah blah blah blah and I remember

Chris looking at me like really? Come on, you know and then I remember the expression on Chris's face when

Jerry started his opening statement and it was like I'd written it for him and He knew from that point on that it was gonna get it was gonna be fine

He was so nervous before that but he knew from that point I was gonna be fine because I Had predicted exactly what Jerry Matitix would say in his opening statement and you know, that doesn't make me right but it does demonstrate that I do my homework if I'm gonna be debating someone and I can do homework on them if they've

Published something recorded something I'm I I take the time to find these things out for some reason my opponents do not return that favor

And that's their disadvantage, you know someday someone's actually gonna You know debate me and actually have read what

I had to say and and that'll that'll be fine. That'll be wonderful. But anyhow, I Thought the debate went very very well

I have queued up for me just to give you an idea of the quality of the sound I have queued up for me For me and for you the the closing statement that I made where I attempted to make some application and Again, I just I don't feel like my position was seriously

Interacted with or or criticized by mr. Barker because he he just Again I'm sorry, but a one -size -fits -all presentation of atheism naturalistic materialism

Versus a presuppositional approach that also in this instance presented evidence

Not as a neutral fact and I blogged about this yesterday Not as a neutral fact from which we derive the existence of God But as an evidence of mr.

Barker's inability to deal with the reality around him because of his Dogmatic assertion of materialism

I had presented evidence from from design and As I expected mr.

Barker's responses were insufficient to deal with the realities of the facts that the facts of science point us beyond the natural realm and as long as you just sit there and say

I Nothing outside the materialistic realm exists, and I'm not going to even even consider these things

Well, you can see the circularity into which that kind of denial forces the naturalistic materialists, so here's

And before I play this I did want to mention one other thing is I'm probably forget it because I've got a million things Going through my mind. I've got a

I've got my Kindle over here. I wanted to read just something I wanted to talk about some other issues. I want to get to here so a bunch of stuff flying through flying through the mind this morning, but As I was heading out to Illinois, I think it's as I got there

Another illustration here of just how thankful I am to just be one little small part of the body of Christ across the world and I have mentioned before and I don't want to embarrass my brother, but There are there are just people in this world that you just You get just get along you just there's a connection you know

I was talking to a visitor at church on Sunday, and I was talking to him about the ministry

And he's followed the ministry for about six years, and I was very thankful for it and things like that He was just visiting because he's doing some work in Phoenix And so we had a nice a nice visit, and I was talking about well

I said yeah, I pointed over and and brother Rich was holding forth About what five ten feet away from me you all were talking about something politics as I recall

I forget what it was about but rich was Holding forth to a group of about four or five folks and So I pointed over to Rich.

I said well. You've got the entire staff of the ministry Ten feet of each other here And I could tell he was a little bit surprised at how small the church is

I? People I think come and expect some big megachurch and reform Baptist churches do not fit into the megachurch mold very well

They did just not don't fit their room anyway, and I was discussing

I was talking about how I was just so thankful that I There are people that you know you just get along with you have harmony with I had talked about pastor

Frye and how Interestingly enough Pastor Frye, and I said a lot of the exact same thing

Sunday morning, but we never talked about it It just so happened in the synoptic study that we were in Luke chapter 12

About to contentment and so I had sort of just done a little mini sermonette basically without much in the way of preparation on it

About contentment and covetousness and so on so over in Sunday school And then pastor Frye was is in the

Sermon on the Mount, and he was in the same section And About how the

Lord will take care of us and worry can't add to our stature and things like that and we ended up saying Almost the exact same things

But we had no communication beforehand about that has happened many many times And that's a great blessing to me, and then

I said you know look at rich here And I were like an old married couple. You know we just he does his thing. I do my thing We know exactly what our jobs are there's no

Egos involved and all the rest of stuff, and we've been doing that for 20 years and I couldn't do what

I do without him, and it's just it's just how it works and The same thing is true about my brother

Roger Brazier in London Roger and I don't get to talk as much as we probably I think I certainly would enjoy doing

That's probably because he's in London and there's a eight -hour difference between us now and so He had sent me an email

I think right as I got the University of Illinois says I'm sure you've got everything ready to go and say that but I I Thought you might find this interesting.

He sent me a PDF of A portion of a book called why us by James Lafonneau And I hadn't seen the book it's brand -new book, and I read the

PDFs, and I was just blown away because Lafonneau is not some fundamentalist

Christianism. I don't even get the feeling he's a Christian at all but in essence what he's expressing is that naturalistic materialism is getting beaten about the head and shoulders by the

The Scientific advances are taking place in our day specifically focus upon The genome the human genome studies well actually not just the human genome studies, but the genome studies of you know the fly and various other animals that have been done the mapping of the the genome of these living creatures and the year of the brain the the explosion of neuroscience study that actually

I Have been more in introduced to that Because the guests

I had on a week before last that was visiting Jamin Huebner graduate of Dort has really gotten into studying that particular area, and so he's also one of our channel regulars and has

Talked about that a good bit in channel and so on so forth and via other means

I have been aware of his study of that particular field anyway That's what the books about and so I actually was

So taken by what I read that and this is another thing to be thankful for I have an

Amazon Kindle to Kindle 2 and So I found out that it's available in that format and voila boom got it in an amazing today

The technology that we have that I purchased I think three books In one day on my

Kindle that I was using for finishing up my presentation for the University of Illinois debate and I'm gonna read some sections from that and you'll hear that in the debate as well when you get it, but it was just So encouraging to me that my brother

Roger in in London When I first went there within five minutes it felt like we had known each other all of our lives and we just had that connection as as Christians and We think along the same lines and for some reason he will not take credit for my

English accent I that's the one thing I don't understand. I just I've Tried to model it off of him and for some reason he just recoils from that But other than that we get along really well and obviously think along the same lines

And so I ended up incorporating a whole section into my opening presentation

From that book once I had on my Kindle and I could decode it directly And I think when

I read some that section you'll you'll see that but again just another one of those Very encouraging things the the group of people that met me after the debate

Some of whom have helped in in getting me those resources that I can use very very encouraging all all the way around the line, so It's it's it's great to to see the

Lord working in that way. Let me go ahead and play this this section here So you can see some of the quality that we were able to get again, thanks to Enielson and Brigand and Dale and and I'll go and everybody making sure that We had the right

Sound equipment connected to the camera and all the rest that stuff Here's after I gave

Dan. I gave Dan a couple of gifts I gave him the ermine DVD and I gave him a chess book which he said he already had so he could give to a friend of his but again, just demonstrating

I knew I Read his book, and I know what he's interested in and was just trying to demonstrate some kind of I know

Calvinists aren't supposed to do this but human compassion and nice and Bring those resources for him.

Then after doing that we picked up with the closing statement, which was this the

New Testament presents to us a absolutely unique message

All of the pagan religions had no concept of what the New Testament says to us That's why it was such an amazing and startling message in its context

As a monotheistic religion Christianity teaches that there is one God who is timeless

Who by the exercise of his will created all things time space and matter? But he is not subject to these things

He is not connected to these things in the sense that he is dependent upon them that monotheistic

God for his purposes Chose to glorify himself in a triune fashion dance that I didn't connect the dots for you

Well, I made it as part of my opening presentation. He never challenged any of it Specifically the fact that God is triune

Demonstrates that the personal relationships of father son and spirit have always been there. God has always been love

He did not become love in creation. He was the creation was not necessary to him without the

Trinity. You have all sorts of issues regarding necessity in the being of God but as I pointed out the

Bible reveals this about God and It reveals to us that the Trinity as a whole chose to bring about the drama of redemption

It was not the father who became incarnate. It was the son. It's not this the son who dwells in the people today

It's the son by the spirit that does so these are biblical teachings The New Testament is very clear on and it is absolutely amazing what the

Christian is actually saying. Yes, we are saying That the one who created all things who literally holds all things together

Became a carpenter in Galilee amazing stupid foolish. It's exactly what the New Testament says those who are perishing believe

It's foolishness. It's foolish. It's a scandal to the Jew who is seeking after signs It's a scandal the

Gentile who is seeking after wisdom But God has chosen the foolishness of the message that is preached to be the means by which he saves those who believe now

When I look at creation around me and I was a science major I was a double major in college Bible and biology as department fellow in anatomy and physiology as a senior

I raised over 35 ,000 drosophila melanogaster fruit flies anybody raised fruit flies in here

Are they still as there's a fly nap still stink as bad as it used to does. Okay. All right

I studied genetics and I was fascinated by it and When I look at what happens in our bodies when

I look at the complexity I am NOT sitting here going. Oh That complexity must mean

God is there. I'm not talking about trying to fill God into the gaps. I Am recognizing that the complexity that is there is not a snowflake complexity

It is not a crystal complexity It is the same complexity that is containing in the hard drive of that MacBook Pro over there the keynote

Presentation that I made at the beginning of this presentation and if I fire keynote up again, guess what it's going to give the same presentation the data has order it contains information and it's repetitive and That's what we see in the design around us

You know who really introduced me to intelligent design was Dawkins.

You see I graduated in 1985 Completed my major in biology and then

I read the blind watchmaker now, I had gone to a Christian school, but I was the only non Evolutionist in the biology department.

So I had fought this battle for a long time I've read the best evolution has to offer and I read the blind watchmaker and it was in reading that that I came to the realization that single -step

Micromutation cannot create Complex systems, it just can't do it because every single mutation has to give some type of reproductive

Help to the being in which it's contained and you can't do that when the most minimal system will require 10 15 20 steps, by the way, the word

I was searching for there was advantage. It just That's what caused

I had never even heard of the term intelligent design never even read anything about it It was reading the blind watchmaker that forced me to recognize that now

Dan Barker's a very bright man You still remember the Prometheus Society? 99 .997

is that the is that what it has to be? They haven't kicked you out yet. Okay, 99 IQ of in the 99 .997th

percentile that makes Dan a very intelligent man. No one's questioning that this evening I I questioned his exegesis and I can give good grounds of that, but that's a different issue

How can he and I look at the same data and come to such different conclusions He would say well, it's because you're religious and I say to Dan.

Oh, so are you? My you have demonstrated that this evening There is such a strong commitment on his part.

He said I was once a fundamentalist. I think Dan still is he's just switched gods he has

Fundamentalistically clung to his naturalistic materialism and anything that would point beyond the borders of that materialism must be denied and I simply say to you who has borrowed whose worldview this evening

Why should Dan as Doug Wilson put it complain that God's pro -choice in Psalm 137?

If that's what he was complaining about if that's what God is Why should he raise those issues?

Why does he tell us this evening? That there is no Transcendent meaning and purpose to life.

You know what my hope this evening is Very quickly. I met with a young man a number of years ago to University Hill here in Illinois up to the north

We had a long conversation about his atheism and when he left I said to him, you know I think you're gonna take that jacket with you when you leave he had denied whether that jacket really existed or not

I think you're gonna take that jacket with you leave because it's cold outside I think you're gonna drive down the right -hand side of the road and I think you're gonna live a life where you're going to every single day have to borrow from my worldview to make yours work and Dan Barker is a brilliant man, and I'm gonna hold him to sending me one of your

CDs I want I want to hear your piano playing because I'm sure it's beautiful but my hope and prayer is that when

Dan Barker sits down to the keyboard and He produces that which is objectively and transcendentally beautiful He's going to realize that he's doing it

That he's not going to cheapen it by saying. Oh, well, this is only beautiful because the certain Reactions in my brain that that beauty is real beauty

Meaning is real meaning Purpose is real purpose and after you and I are gone

Those things will still be true valid beautiful and right

I submit to you that no society will last long that doesn't believe those things and no person will ever find true fulfillment

Until they know those things. Thank you very much for being here this evening And I should note that as I checked out of the

Union Hotel the next morning to come home There at the front desk was

Dan Barker's CD which he had left for me as he had promised to do and If you were listening to the pre -feed before the program, that's what you were listening to was

Dan Barker and yes, he's very good as I expected him to be and That story that I told about the young man that was from Bradley University I've told that story on the dividing line before I think

I talked about when I got back Was a young atheist with whom I had a lengthy conversation and and once again,

I I with him Demonstrated the nature of the presuppositional commitments

He was making and how he would not live in accord with them That he could not live in accord with him and it bothered him to no end and I hope it continues to bother him to this day unless the

Lord's had mercy upon his soul and has drawn him to his son since then and so there was the the end of of the debate and I again, very thankful for everyone who made it possible for us to do that as I haven't heard anything from these folks for a couple days, but There is a

Real probability possibility anyways that I'll be debating Dan again in September and what

I have suggested to the the folks who are doing putting the material together the conference together

And to Dan at this debate was that we go through his list that list that he has put in print

He's put it. I put he's put it in multiple debates. He's put it in print. Let's go through that list Let's give him a certain amount of time to present the alleged contradictions

Give me more time to respond because obviously on any rational level It takes more time to respond to an accusation of error than it does to make an accusation of error

But let him present his best shots and I'll respond to them that's what

I would like to see done because He said actually he did that with somebody once I've never heard it

I've not heard that particular debate. He said it took three days or something like that, but I would

Obviously from my perspective I have never heard Dan Barker present a meaningful alleged contradiction. I just haven't

He you have to use a very simplistic surface level form of Eisegesis to make his alleged contradictions work and I don't believe they do and I would be willing to demonstrate that So we'll see if that if that comes up Got more to say good to get to the

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The history of the Christian Church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith Once the core of the

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Thank you And welcome back to the dividing line before we get back to the fun new and a few things like that just real quickly

I had a quite a privilege of Saturday evening

Saturday evening to Meet and listen to speak father.

Zechariah buttress now some of you know who he is Some of you do not if you get world magazine you saw that he was the 2008

Daniel of the year He is basically known as father Zechariah in the

Arabic speaking world. He is one of the most Recognized faces and names in Middle Eastern countries he has a television program on the life satellite channel and He certainly has the largest

Muslim audience of anybody in the world why because as a

Christian he knows the Quran and the Hadith like the back of his hand and he speaks in Arabic and He drives the

Muslims crazy I Understand there is

I Think the world magazine article set as high as a 60 million dollar bounty on his head provided by al -qaeda mainly

Saudi oil money and Even though al -qaeda and Saudi don't seem to go together, but things are always mixed up over there

They can all get together in their detestation of Zechariah buttress.

He is an elderly Coptic priest and Because of the bounty on his head there has to be a great

Care taken in where he goes and where he speaks in the security We had to have tickets to this event.

There wasn't a bunch of discussion of it beforehand and I was very

Thankful that when I got there most of the people who were putting on the program knew who I was that always surprises me

They were aware of what we've been doing in regards to Islam That was very exciting and I had brought a few things to give to him or at least have given to him

I didn't know how things were working that evening the entire evening was in Arabic and I didn't pick up one of the little translation thingies.

I just used it as an opportunity to practice So I had mentioned that I had the two books.

I had my book in the Trinity and but my book on justification I had the ermine debate and one of the Shabir Ali debates on DVD and so while the singing was going on and I was

Transfixed on the digital projection because I was trying to read the Arabic And what wasn't doing half bad job?

I didn't know what half the words meant But since people were singing I was able to go.

Okay there. There's that you know and so I'm just following on I'm just doing lots of Arabic practice is what I'm doing and While that was happening one of the leaders came up and said you have your books the things you have with you yet grab them

And they took me back alone into a into a back room where I had a few moments to talk with father

Zechariah and I gave him the materials explained what they were and I was

Again rather surprised that he had any idea who in the world I was maybe they just told him But I didn't get that feeling I thought he actually had heard of what we were doing

And he specifically said we need many more people in the West who are doing what you're doing exposing

Islam And in debating these issues and providing the the kind of debates and so on so forth so we had a nice conversation before he then came out and spoke in Arabic and That was without something to look at very obviously for me

My reading is much better than my listening Oh, I could pick stuff up especially when he's talking about a biblical text because the biblical text we put up there

And so I knew where he was quoting from so I had some idea what's going on But especially when I could tell he was going off into telling a story

Until I couldn't get a context all it was just like whatever So that was that was very interesting to get a chance to meet him and to listen to him speak and to watch the people he's he's really a beloved figure in the in the amongst

Arabic Christians certainly not amongst Muslims, but anyway, and then a completely different topic and That is if I was not teaching the

During this very same period of time and I could swing it There is going to be the Midwest Center for Theological Studies their

June term 2009 for those of you that are in the area June 1st through 6 2009 the

Midwest Center for Theological Studies in Owensboro, Kentucky For those who can get it it's $250 for MCTS students $100 for auditors the registration deadlines

Friday May 22nd 2009 and that is a Course on preaching preaching to a course on biblical preaching will be taught by Tom Askell June 1st through 6 2009 if you're in that area or you'd like to get some real good teaching on biblical preaching

Then Tom Askell will be doing that like I said if I wasn't teaching myself that would be something that would be tempting to me simple because Tom is is a great speaker a great preacher, and I think you would all enjoy that so if you have an opportunity you might want to sign up for that now as I was saying

I was looking at the Le Fanu book called why us and Let me just read you just a section here.

I think you'll you'll see why it's It is a book

I would recommend to you. It's not written by a Christian But I I've actually bought two copies for some young people.

I know to read I Can't give you page numbers that is one of the disadvantages to the

Kindle is that the electronic version is different This is locations 21 26 through 21 29 if you have a

Kindle About 41 % through the text of the book you can't do that with a paper book any anyways he is comparing and contrasting a pebble at the bottom of a stream with a fly that is on the surface of the stream and Just this section really really struck me as I was reading it by this car but this contrast between the outer physical appearance of fly and pebble is

Merely the beginning is the differences between them for the fly or any form of life is fashioned from successively more fundamental organizational levels or layers of increasing complexity

I Didn't think about this when I was reading it But I just heard donkey talking about an onion for some reason for those of you know what

I'm referring to there anyway First the organs such as the heart brain and gut Those organs in turn are fashioned from the unique arrangement of nerves muscles and glands that make up the tissues

The tissues themselves are fashioned from the most fundamental union unit of life the cell at which point if we were to step inside we would

Find ourselves in a world of supreme technology We would see endless corridors branching in every direction along which a huge range of products proteins enzymes and raw materials

Chemicals shuffle in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants writes biologist

Michael Denton We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects all in perfect unison

We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines has its analog in The cell memory banks for information storage and retrieval elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts proofreading devices utilized for quality control

Assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction This automated factory carries out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth

But with one capacity not equaled in any of our most advanced machines it is capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours and Yet the cell this remarkable piece of machinery that possesses the capacity to construct every living thing that has ever existed is

Several thousand million million million times smaller than the smallest piece of functional machinery ever constructed by man

Nor does it stop there for the properties of the humble fly on the surface of his pawn belong in a dimension that has no

Parallel with the inanimate pebble the capacity to transform the nutrients on which it feeds into its own tissues

To repair its parts and reproduce its kind The humble fly is in short billions upon billions upon billions of times more complex than the pebble the history of biology over the last 400 years is essentially the progressive and purpose purposes unraveling in successive ways of discovery of the ever more

Fundamental layers the complexity of life from the descriptive anatomy of the whole organism in the 17th century through the physiology histology embryology and biochemistry of the 18th and 19th centuries culminating in the penetration over the last 60 years of the mysteries of the cell and The instructions determining the form of all living things strung out along the double helix that is

DNA There is nowhere further for biology to go This is the end of the line and just the fly is so vastly more complex than the pebble

So the directive force the genetic instructions the double helix must when compared to Newton's physical laws of matter

Be billions upon billions upon billions of times more potent The deciphering of those genetic instructions would be biology's last great task.

How do they impose form on living things? How do they replicate themselves to be transmitted from one generation to the next?

How might they change so that one form of life is transformed into another? There is no profounder question

There are no profounder questions their elucidation of the past 150 years has come in three major installments began as already touched on With Mendel's famous pea experiments which revealed how the characteristic traits of living things are passed down from one generation to the next in the form of Genes for the most part fixed and unchanging ensuring that the offspring of cats will always be kittens

Except for the occasional usually harmful mutation The second installment began in 1953 when

Francis Crick and James Watson discovered that those genes are strung out along those the two

Intertwining strands of the double helix each strand a sequence of just four chemicals that so far we have portrayed as colored disks

But which commonly designated by the first letters their names C for cytosine G for guanine a for adenine and T for thiamine

Christopher Wills professor of biology the University of California draws an appropriate analogy. I Have just with some difficulty hefted

Webster's third new international dictionary onto my lap This is the one that you see in libraries sitting proudly on its own little lectern

I find that there are about 60 letters to a line 150 lines to a column and three columns to a page

This works out at 27 ,000 different letters to a page the dictionary has roughly 2 ,600 pages adding up to 70

Million letters in all since there are about 3 billion letters in the human genome

It would take 43 volumes the size of this enormous dictionary filling a shelf 12 feet long

To list the information that they carry in reality, of course those CGA and T chemical molecules are minuscule compared with the letters

Representing them. So when strung together along the double helix, they produce a continuous strand of approximately three inches or 75 millimeters long

But those 75 millimeters must be packed in the nucleus of the cell, which is about one five hundredth of a millimeter across The double helix and achieving this extraordinary feat packs over a hundred trillion times as much information by volume as The most sophisticated computerized information system ever devised

Let me just stop there for a moment. Maybe you're like me if you're you're near my age You are amazed at What we can do today.

You're amazed at the SD card or now with my BlackBerry storm the micro SD card I've got a micro

SD card in my BlackBerry storm has eight gigs on it That still ain't nothing compared to what's in every single cell of your body

This is how it works We start by straightening the helix to form a ladder Whose outer banisters as it were are formed from two continuous strands of sugar molecules known as deoxyribose

From each is suspended the sequence of CGA T chemicals known as nucleic acids They grip together in the middle to form the ladder steps three billion in all the initials of deoxyribose sugar banisters and a nucleic acid

Chemicals of the steps give the technical term DNA and then he has a really nice pretty little version of this this memorably simple and elegant structure is perfectly suited to the necessity of Replicating the trillion times compressed information every time the cell divides to form two daughter cells

First the double helix splits down the middle and the stubs of the half steps on either side each now form a complementary sequence of letters

These stubs then form the template on which the cell builds a further complementary strand So one double helix becomes two or as Crick and Watson described it in the most important scientific paper in the history of biology

We imagine that prior to duplication the bonds connecting the two half steps are broken and the two chains

Unwind and separate the latter as it were splits down the middle each chain then acts as a template for the formation onto itself of A new companion chain so that eventually we shall have two pairs of chains where we only had one before However, the sequence the pairs will have been duplicated exactly

Crick and Watson's economical prose does not begin to do justice to the staggering logistics of this process

With up to four million new cells being created in the body every second a

Thousand enzymes swarm down the double helix like a team of readers systematically plowing through the volumes of Webster's Dictionary Copying each of the three billion cgat chemicals in precisely the right sequence and then stringing them all together again

Think about that When you think about the wonder of what is taking place inside your body at any point in time this is wonder that Darwin never had any idea of and This is wonder that that captured my mind when

I was a biology student And I completed that major fact one of the dumbest things ever done

I've done lots of dumb things in life And here's one of the dumbest things that ever happened and maybe if I can help somebody else to avoid this

I Was just at home one day my senior year in college and the phone rang and it was the registrar's department and The registrar wanted to know whether I wanted a

BA in Bible or a BS in biology Because I had completed the work required for both I Had passed my senior boards as a biology major That was quite an experience

I remember I and one of my fellow students as we sat outside waiting for our turn Took our heart rates, and I think

I was doing about 140 beats per minute, and I wasn't doing anything That's how nervous we were ought to be young again

But I passed my boards I was department fellow anatomy and physiology I was a good biology student and I was also a good

Bible student, and I completed both majors and the next year finished my minor in Greek and I did something dumb because I wasn't given any time to think about it

Graduation is coming up. They needed to know whether I wanted to be a or the BS They just called me on the phone. They didn't say come in let's talk about it

Let's consider what your future plans are what would be better. Just which one do you want and I chose the wrong one?

I chose BA in Bible I should have taken that BS in biology with a major in Bible because going in the seminary

It didn't matter what the by the bachelors was in that didn't do anything whatsoever and So that was that was a dumb thing

If if you're getting ready to graduate, and you've done something like that take some time to think I have wished so many times

I could have gone back and and changed that but I couldn't so I took the took the

BA instead of the BS but even but I still completed all the work for it and I just don't have anything to show for it along those lines anyway

In that senior year I had as I mentioned my closing statement. I raised 35 ,000 drosophila melanogaster fruit flies studying the white eye gene

There are four chromosome pairs well there's the fourth one sort of irrelevant, but in in drosophila, and I remember right where the white locus was and It was extensive work.

It took many many hours to do it, but I obviously knew something about genetics and And in fact had fought that battle for for many many years

In in public high school. I remember my sophomore year in high school I wrote a 52 page paper in my biology class and the subject of of creationism and evolution

I'd had a biology teacher in high school that I was good friends with in fact my daughter got to have him his

Last year of teaching and I got to have him in his first year of teaching which I found ironic But I was given the best

Arguments from the Evolutionary perspective and even in a Christian College I was the only non evolutionist in that group and so we would go out on limnology

Expeditions we I remember once paddling around in Montezuma as well Up in the

Montezuma National Monument it's what about it's halfway between here and Flagstaff approximately that that general area and I Was always arguing the issues with everybody including my professors even though I was at a

Christian school all the professors were Theistic evolutionist or just evolutionist with a little bit of theism slapped on the top basically and So when

I graduated I knew what the arguments were and that's what I was trying to talk about my closing statement was

I? Had taken the time to read Dawkins book, and I knew enough about genetics to realize that this

Can't he kept pounding away that Mutation has to give a greater advantage

To the one carrying the mutation than the regular genotype would or you're just messing things up, and it wouldn't work so this is the small step small step small step micro mutation

I Realized then before and I didn't read any books about this from the other perspective

That doesn't work And it today it works even less than it did when

I read that first in 1985 because now we've realized especially since the genome project that the whole idea of small micro mutations just doesn't work

The the the big news Because I remember when they started the genome project and everybody's going.

Oh, we're gonna We're gonna unravel the very secrets of life. You know what they found out A house fly has about 17 ,000 genes we have about 25 ,000

Most of them are the same They have not we've mapped the entire human genome and We found out that you know the 43 volumes of Webster's dictionary.

I just read about 42 volumes I'm don't code for anything and so you've got one volume worth of pretty much the same genes and yet When they're in a fly they create a fly when they're in a human they create a human when they're in a dog they create a dog and we don't really know why and The big mystery has only gotten more mysterious the more we've learned

Evidently there has to be some kind of massive intercontextuality Between all these genes to make a man a man and a fly a fly

Hmm wonder where that comes from and that the book that I was talking about why us goes into the decade of the brain and the burgeoning of neuroscience and the mapping of the brain and and the fact that We don't get why

You know when you look at a chair they can sit there now and map your brain and then when they ask you to think about what a chair looks like they can map your brain and Basically, they haven't really

I mean they can they know where the sight areas are and the hearing areas are and stuff like that But the idea of the sensation of a chair

I'm sitting in chair right now, and I'm sort of swinging back and forth a little bit It's a little annoying to people if we putting this on the web, but we won't be so it doesn't matter

But I happen to know this particular chair is my old office chair and so it wobbles some it's a little worn out You know it's not as good as it once was

But I also I put my hands down here And there's places where I could have put we could have put arms on this I can feel the spots here

We never did because it would run into the thing But you know I just I know what this chair feels like and when you scan someone's brain while they're thinking about the sensation of a chair the feel of a chair the whole brain lights up They can't figure out how that works

And they can't figure out how just neurons firing and firing in a certain way in different places creates the sensation of a chair

The sensation of a smell of an experience of a memory in other words

They didn't find the human mind by mapping the human brain Just like they didn't find the answer to why?

Mankind is mankind and why? Stuff develops where it develops the more we learn about this stuff

The more we recognize the less we know in essence and What I was emphasizing with with Dan is that it must be so difficult to be a naturalistic materialist and look at this stuff and You can see its order you can see its design you can see that it had that these structures have a particular purpose

But you have to you must Dogmatically separate that from there being any intelligent design you have to have stupid design

Which doesn't make any sense there's a this thing is stupid design. Oh well. Yes, you have in crystals No, we're not talking about that kind of random design.

We're talking about informational purposeful design We can see it there.

It's it's natural for us to see it there And it's it's glorious to the person who isn't suppressing the knowledge of God within them

But of those who are it must be a royal bummer. It truly must be so There's so much

More we could talk about there But those are some of the things that came up in in the debate which you'll get to listen to In just a matter of time right rich in mp3 format and then watch in mp4 formats down the road and the

DVDs and things like that and I again extremely thankful for the opportunity of Engaging these kinds of subjects, and I really hope that people will be blessed

By that that material for a long time to come it truly is a privilege to do it Thank you for listening to the dividing line today.

Oh Lord willing. We will be back on Thursday afternoon Maybe by then you some of you may have been able to pick up some of the mp3s might have some comments some questions maybe some of you that were there would like to call in and discuss it a week after it took place or Whatever else maybe something will happen between now and then willing to talk about who knows that's the way the dividing line goes

We'll see on Thursday. God bless The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega ministries

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