September 6, 2021 Show with Dr. Jason Lisle on “The Current U.F.O. Controversy: A Christian Astrophysicist Responds” AND “Fractals: The Secret Code of Creation”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Labor Day on this sixth day of September 2021.

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And as many of you know, especially if you watch Tucker Carlson on Fox News, the

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Office of the Director of National Intelligence finally released their declassified report on unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, back in June, which has attracted the serious attention of those who are not a part of the fringe groups normally associated with UFO enthusiasts.

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And we're going to have, today, a Christian astrophysicist respond to this.

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He is one of my favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If Dr. James R.

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White of Alpha Omega Ministries calls somebody brilliant, I think that warrants serious attention be given to that individual.

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His name is Dr. Jason Lyle, and he is a Christian astrophysicist, a popular speaker, an author, and founder of Biblical Science Institute, also known as BSI.

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Later on in the program, we're also going to be addressing Dr. Lyle's brand new book, Fractals, The Secret Code of Creation.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Jason Lyle. Well, thank you.

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Thanks for having me on. Oh, it's a thrill to have you on, brother. And tell our listeners, for those of my listeners who missed your previous interviews here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, or perhaps they are among the minority in my audience who are brand new believers, and they might not even be

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Christians, and they may be unfamiliar with Biblical Science Institute. So why don't you tell our listeners about that?

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Well, there's this modern philosophy that to be a Christian is to be anti -science, and nothing could be further from the truth.

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Most of the founding fathers of science were Christians. They expected to find order in the universe because God has imposed order on the universe.

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And so what we do at the Biblical Science Institute is we show people that science, when you understand it, is consistent with what the

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Bible teaches. The Bible is true. It's the Word of God. It's infallible. It's inerrant. And therefore, when the

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Bible touches on matters of science, which it occasionally does, it's certainly right. And I, in particular, specialize in defending the

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Genesis account of creation as literal history, which is what it is, and how science confirms that God really did create the way he says he did in six days.

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And modern organisms are descended from those originals, but they're the same kinds. They've remained the same kinds throughout history.

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And I must say, being a young -earth creationist myself, that it is a breath of fresh air hearing from someone such as yourself, who is an actual scientist, who is holding firm to the young -earth explanation of a literal six -day creation.

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And I do have quite a number of friends who are old earthers. I've even interviewed some.

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Disagree with them on this issue, obviously. But one thing has troubled me greatly is when some of the old -earth creationists that I am personally familiar with really disparage the integrity of those scientists who are young earthers, sometimes even stooping to the level of mockery and so on.

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And that really grieves me deeply. And it's so refreshing, as I said, to have somebody, especially somebody of your caliber, speaking out in defense of the young -earth account that is spelled out there in the

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Scriptures. If anybody wants more details on Biblical Science Institute, you can go to their website, which is

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BiblicalScienceInstitute .com. That's easy enough to remember. BiblicalScienceInstitute .com.

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And I know, Dr. Lyle, that you do accept invitations to speak at churches and schools and other places like that.

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Care to share any information, in case we forget to mention this later on, how anyone can get in touch with you to set up a speaking engagement?

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Yes. If they just go through our website, there's a contact. Contact us. Go down to the bottom there and put in your e -mail address and send us a message saying you'd like to have me out there to speak.

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I'm happy to do that. We are booked through the rest of this year. But 2022 is mostly open.

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We do have some potential events in the works.

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Give us a contact there and we'll try to get back with you and talk about how we might set that up.

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I am assuming that when you speak at places, you have visuals, especially if you're going to be talking about something like fractals, which are absolutely breathtaking phenomena of nature.

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So that's good to know. Yes, indeed. I do talks on astronomy, on fractals, and I have a

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PowerPoint that goes with it. I think that it really helps people if they can visually see something to go along with the presentation.

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I think it's very helpful. Great. Well, I'm going to give our listeners our e -mail address right away.

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So if they have questions, either on the UFO phenomenon or on your new book on fractals or anything else related to science and Christianity and the

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Bible, our e -mail address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

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If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves some kind of a personal and private matter.

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Let's say you are fully convinced that unidentified flying objects are spacecrafts from other planets and so on.

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And you don't want to identify yourself publicly in regard to that belief or anything else that would be a personal and private issue.

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You disagree with your own pastors on certain issues we're discussing, or you're a pastor yourself. You disagree with your fellow elders.

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You disagree with your denomination. Well, we would understand that those things would compel you to desire to remain anonymous.

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But please, if it's just a general question, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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Well, I don't know if you are as big of a Tucker Carlson fan as I am.

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I don't believe in everything Tucker says. I have some disagreements with him from time to time.

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But he has been really, in the media, seemingly in the forefront of covering this whole issue of the releasing by the

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Office of the Director of National Intelligence, this declassified report on unidentified flying objects.

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And when you watch these television reports on this, gone are the days when it's just Bubba and Earl and a swamp in Louisiana who are claiming to see these unidentified flying objects.

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You have more frequently the testimonies of eyewitnesses that include pilots and people involved in the aerospace industry and so on, scientists who are very familiar with the whole controversy.

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And the things that you hear repeated time and time again is that whatever these objects are, they are not, they say these things with certainty, they are not crafts or objects that have been created by any earthly scientific community from any country.

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They will rule out China and Russia. They will rule out the United States as well, of course.

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They will say that a human being manning a craft, making the maneuvers that these crafts make and going at the speed that these crafts make could never survive.

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They will say all types of things that would lend one, especially after getting their imaginations set ablaze, that would lend one to start thinking, well, maybe there are aliens.

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There is life, intelligent life, perhaps far more intelligent than human life that exists in other planets.

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So tell us how you are reacting to this. In my view, honestly, and I know people are going to get mad at me for this, but in my view, it's much ado about nothing.

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Because as an astronomer, I have a lot of experience with the sky. I spend a lot of time outside at night looking up.

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I've seen a lot of cool stuff. And frankly, I know what it is because I'm an astronomer. But if somebody was next to me and they didn't know what they were looking at, they'd say, what is that?

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I have a good friend of mine, I was with him just a few months back. I said, Jason, what is that?

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He pointed it out and I said, oh, that's from the Starlink project. That's Elon Musk's string of satellites that are up there.

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That's a bug crawling across your eyeglass lens. That can happen too.

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You know, when people are, especially if you're looking through a window, if you're looking through a window, I would immediately discount anything you see because you can get internal reflection.

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You can see something that you think is way out there when in fact it's a light behind you, you know, in your own home.

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Or maybe in a car, you're riding in a car and you see something as you're turning, you see this light go across the dashboard and it's actually a reflection of Venus.

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So if you're looking through a window, then there are all kinds of possibilities for things that you can see that you think you're seeing that are far away that are in fact close.

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So that's just something to keep in mind. And I'm aware of a lot of this phenomenon because I study physics. But if people were not aware of that, then to them it would be a

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UFO. And I guess that's the thing I want to emphasize is that a UFO is something that you see in the sky or you think you see in the sky that you don't know what it is.

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That's all. It doesn't mean aliens. It just means you don't know what it is. Well, you just said that you knew what these things were.

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So I'm dying to hear what your answer is. Well, it depends on what people are looking at.

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The most commonly reported UFO is Venus, the planet Venus. A lot of times when it's low in the sky, it'll shimmer.

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It'll look like it's moving rapidly, changing colors perhaps because of atmospheric turbulence. I used to work at an observatory.

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We'd get phone calls, what is that in the west? And I'd say, well, man, that's planet Venus. You'll see it again tomorrow night. It'll be in the same spot at the same time.

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It'll be out for another 15 minutes and then it's going to set. So there are things like that. There are car lights that are seen.

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There are some places in the southwest where people see these lights that are doing these crazy things. They found that it happens only during temperature inversions.

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And when there's a lot of traffic on the highway, the way that the air moves causes the lights to dance around.

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But you don't get it when there's no temperature inversions. So it has to do with the way light refracts in the atmosphere.

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So those are two examples right there of things that if you didn't know what they were, to you they'd be UFOs. But I know what they are because I've studied this field.

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So that's just two examples right there. Or the Starlink project for that, Matt. You see a string of bright stars moving along.

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You'd think we're being invaded by battleships. No, it's just Elon Musk setting up for your new

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Internet connection. That's all it is. But I know what that is because I've seen them and I can even calculate when they're going to go over and so on.

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What about the film that they keep repeatedly showing over and over and over again on Tucker Carlson and other programs?

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It clearly appears to be some kind of a craft. I mean, it stops in midair. It does a 180. And some of these pilots and other people who have seen these things and captured them on film, they have said that some of them even plunge into the water and so on.

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So that couldn't be Venus if it's actually plunging into the sea. Right.

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Some of them we know are mylar balloons. Because it turns out that when you're moving in a jet and you see something, it's very hard.

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See, unless you know the distance to that object, you don't know what its true speed is. You don't know if it's a fly inside your canopy, as a facetious example, or something that's very far away that's moving very quickly.

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You can't tell. And there have been instances where pilots have seen things that look sort of silvery, like a silver craft.

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They think they're moving at high speed, but in fact it's due to the parallax of the jet. And they tend to be associated with cruise ships.

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And cruise ships will have parties, and they'll release mylar balloons, and then these reflect. And so that's one example of something that pilots have seen, and we know what it is now.

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I've seen another one where there was a video, and it looked like this thing was rotating and turning, and it looked kind of saucer -shaped.

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I don't know what the object is. It could be a balloon. But I can tell you that the saucer shape comes from the way images are processed in CDs, CCDs, pardon me.

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We have these charged -couple devices, which is what astronomers use to take pictures of stars. And military, they use the same type of equipment.

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And if you oversaturate the object, if it's too bright, it'll bleed into the surrounding pixels, and it looks like a little saucer, like a little planet

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Saturn. And I know that because I've taken pictures like that with my own telescope, and I've seen that effect.

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And if you reduce the exposure, it goes away. So I've seen one where it looks like that's rotating, and that's because the camera's rotating, and it flips the image right side up so that the pilots can see it.

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But from their perspective, it looks like the thing's rotating. So those are just two examples right there of something where we know what it is.

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I've got experience with optics, so I can tell you how some of these things are produced. But if you weren't knowledgeable of that, and there's no shame in that.

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We can't know everything about everything. But to you, it would be an unidentified flying object. Right.

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The term ignorance does not necessitate stupidity in the description because everyone is ignorant in some realm of study.

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We are all ignorant about much of what is found in the scriptures because to claim that we knew every single thing with perfection in the scriptures would claim to be

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God. So obviously the unsearchable riches of the word of God can never be completely understood with perfection, and that would go with everything else.

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One of the things that's frustrating about all of this is, why is it that we are in the 21st century, and the films of these flying objects still look like they're from 1952 or something?

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Why is it that we are unable to capture in brilliant, vivid, crystal clear detail these objects and other things, for that matter, when they're being filmed from an aircraft?

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I just don't understand the lack of development of technology at this stage of the game in history.

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I think that's an example of what's called selection bias. You see, if we did have a high -resolution image of this, you'd say, oh, that's clearly a

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Marlboro balloon, and it wouldn't be classified as UFO, it would be an IFO. I know what that is. So obviously it's only the ones that are low -quality that remain unidentified, at least to the person who's looking at it.

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So I think it makes perfect sense, in my view, that UFOs are simply based on what people don't know about the sky, and therefore if you had a high -resolution, very high -quality image, you would know exactly what it is.

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Now, does technology exist where they can film things from aircraft that are much more vividly clear than what we are seeing?

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Well, sure, if it's close enough. I mean, I've taken pictures of airplane windows with my iPhone.

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You can get pretty good quality stuff depending on how close it is and that nature. So that's my point, though.

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If it were something that was very nearby and you could take a good, clear picture of it, you'd know what it is, you could identify it, and then it wouldn't be classified as UFO.

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It's only the fuzzy ones where it's far enough away, you can't quite tell what it is, that it opens up the possibility that I don't know what it is, and therefore it's a

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UFO. So I guess my main point is, if people would study more about optics and astronomy, and granted, you're not required to do that, but I'm saying if you did, a lot more

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UFOs would become IFOs that would be identified flying objects. People would know what they are. So the thing that irritates me as an astronomer who has some experience with the sky and with optics and taking pictures and so on, astrophotography, is people jump to this strange conclusion,

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I don't know what that is, therefore aliens. And that's not a logical conclusion.

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That is a leap. I mean, there are things on the ground. I don't know what that is.

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You say, therefore it's underground creatures that have popped up. No, it doesn't follow logically.

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It just means you don't know what it is because you don't have a clear enough perception, perhaps. So it's the same way with things that we see in the sky.

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If we studied a little bit more about meteorology, and there are certain cloud formations that can look really remarkable if you don't know what they are.

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To you, it's an unidentified flying object, or an unidentified aerial phenomenon, they're now calling them, perhaps to distance themselves from some of the implications, perhaps.

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Now, I'm assuming then that you are open to the idea, in the realm of possibility, that these are crafts that have been designed and created by some of our enemies, like the

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Chinese, like the Russians, or whoever, probably not the Russians, but explain, is that something that you consider seriously as a reason for our grave concern?

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Well, yes. I mean, we can build aircraft that can do some amazing things, and under certain conditions they can be stealthy, they can absorb radar, or reflect in a way that doesn't identify the craft itself.

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Human beings can build stuff that flies and does some amazing things, and we know that other nations do that, and they don't always tell us their latest research, and we don't always tell them our latest research.

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We want to keep certain military secrets secret, so that's perfectly sensible. But I have to tell you, most of the ones that I've seen video footage of,

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I think, have a much more mundane explanation, just balloons or things like that, that people don't really know what they are, because they're not familiar with the way most camera systems work, and so that generates these artifacts that I have some familiarity with.

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One example is, if something is slightly out of focus, then it will appear to have the same shape as the aperture of the device that is taking the image.

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So, for example, a lot of infrared goggles have a triangular aperture, and if you look at something that's out of focus, it'll look like little triangles.

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And that doesn't mean it's actual machines, that just means it just looks that way because of the device that you're looking at them with.

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But nonetheless, I do believe that there are aircraft out there, and some of them are classified. That just stands to reason.

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Now, a lot of people will say, and this is obviously, since I brought it up, something that I'm puzzled about myself, why is it that these, or this phenomenon, is baffling even experienced seasoned pilots and other people, even in the scientific realm?

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Perhaps, I'll throw in there, is there some within the scientific community who are in the forefront of titillating our imagination with these things?

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Do you think that they're being dishonest, just like many are in regard to COVID, in regard to masks, in regard to the vaccines, in regard to abortion, in regard to transgenderism?

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Is this just another thing that some in the scientific community are being dishonest about, just either to gain popularity, and obviously,

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I know you're not a mind reader, but perhaps you even know where this might be the case.

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You know, you have a lot of connections in the scientific community, I'm not asking you to name names, but it just seems really strange that there are a number of people that should not be surprised by these things if they were as mundane as you're describing them, who are baffled.

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Yeah, well, just statistically, there's a lot of people on the planet, and a good fraction of them are dishonest, so I'm sure that's a possibility, but I'm not pinning anyone down on that issue.

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I can tell you that, as far as I know, none of the other creation scientists, and of course, we try to be biblical, we try to be honest, because we serve the

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Lord. I'm not aware of any of them that have experienced anything like a

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UFO, where they would get details that would seem to indicate something like an alien craft, or something like that.

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Nor anyone that I know, even at the University of Colorado, most of them were not Christians, but most of them, I think, tried to be honest, and I think they had a sense of integrity, and I'm not aware of any of them that have ever seen anything like that.

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So it seems to me that people who are experts, especially in astronomy and optics, tend to not see UFOs, because we know what they are, they're

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IFOs to us. I've seen a lot of stuff, you can see satellites, I've seen the International Space Station go over,

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I've seen chemical release experiments, that's kind of fascinating, I've seen falling satellites,

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I've seen a lot of cool stuff in the sky, but because I'm an astronomer, that's what I study, I know what it is.

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And so, again, I would just encourage people, if they see something that they don't understand in the night sky, don't jump to a conclusion and say, therefore, aliens.

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It probably has a very mundane explanation. So, you're saying that those in the scientific community, who seem to be saying, or not even seem to be, who are saying with absolute assurance that they can tell the speed at which these objects that are being filmed are traveling, you are saying that they are way off, when they are saying things that defy physics, as we know it, and that defy any human craft that has ever been created.

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Well, I'm saying I don't know any experts who have made that kind of claim. Now, there may be some, I just don't know them personally, and so I can't evaluate their claim.

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But I can tell you, it's very easy to fool yourself. The eyes are easily fooled, and there are certain things you can see that you think you're seeing at a certain distance, when in fact it's at a different distance.

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Distance is very hard for us to calculate beyond about 30 feet or so. Our eyes, using parallax, can figure out the distance because we have stereoscopic vision.

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That's a gift the Lord's given us. But beyond about 30 feet, we use other clues to try and figure out the distance for things.

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And if you're not very careful, you can see things that, it looks like it's moving in the wrong direction.

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I remember, because I fly a lot, a lot of times from a jet, you can see another plane, and due to parallax, it might look like it's moving the wrong way.

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It might look like it's going backwards. Just because of the parallax effect, it's really interesting.

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And so unless you really have studied that kind of phenomenon, it's very easy to be fooled into thinking you're seeing something you're not really seeing.

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It helps to know something about how our eyes process information and something about geometry and parallax, things like that.

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And I think there would be a lot less UFOs and a lot more IFOs, again, if people were more familiar with this stuff.

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Yeah, well, isn't there a difference, though, between something that we're seeing with our naked eye and something that's been captured on film and be able to take to a laboratory and so on?

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Absolutely. But even with things like film and CCDs, there are certain effects that can happen on those things where you'll see something that's not there.

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I'll give you one quick example. I've taken a lot of photos of planets, and you take a photo of something that's very bright, sometimes we call it a ghost image, and it looks like an upside -down, backwards version of the original that's kind of opposite the center of the field of view, and it moves the opposite way that the object does.

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And it has to do with the internal reflections of the camera. So even things like film, which we think of as infallible, it has to be processed, too.

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Whether it's digital or the old -fashioned stuff, it goes through a process. You're not getting an exact replica of what you're seeing.

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It is processed, and there are certain artifacts that can creep in. So I know that's kind of a boring explanation, and people would love it if there was a more fantastic sci -fi explanation, but I have to be honest.

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In my experience, those are the kinds of things that people see that they call UFOs if they don't have experience in these fields.

27:53

On the other hand, I've heard that you actually have captured a living Bigfoot. I'm going to read a question from a listener and then have you answer it when we return from our first break.

28:08

We have a first -time listener, and I'm assuming this may be a nickname, Jam Mac.

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He is from Santee, California, San Diego County.

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He asks, What do you think about the Tic -Tac

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UFO seen by the

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U .S. Navy off the coast of California? We'll have you answer that when we return. Again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. If you would like to join us with a question of your own, give us your first name, at least, city and state of residence and country of residence.

28:54

We'll be right back with Jason Long. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

29:04

My friend Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I are headed down to Atlanta, Georgia once again for the

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G3 Conference. This year's G3 will be held Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd on the theme,

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Christ is Supreme Over All. I'll be joined by over 20 other speakers and musicians to lead in the worship of God through preaching, teaching, and singing, including

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John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Conrad M. Bayway, Daryl Bernard Harrison, and Virgil Walker.

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For details, visit g3conference .com, that's g3conference .com.

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Chris Arnson and I hope to see you September 30th through October 2nd at G321. This is

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire two hours is

38:33

Dr. Jason Lyle who is the founder of the Biblical Science Institute known as BSI and he is also an astrophysicist and an author and we are discussing the current

38:47

UFO controversy and we are also going to be entering into a discussion on fractals in the second half of the program.

38:56

If you have a question, send it to chrisarnzen at gmail .com chrisarnzen at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

39:05

As you likely remember, Dr. Lyle, before the break, Jim Mack from Santee, California asked what your thoughts are on the

39:14

Tic Tac UFO caught on camera. I've heard of that one, what I've not seen is good video footage where I can see something moving that has sufficiently high quality for me to be able to identify it.

39:29

So I'm going to hang loose and say I don't know what that is. And that bothers folks because in our society, people tend to prefer certainty to truth.

39:39

They'd rather have an answer than hang back and say, wait a minute, I don't have enough information to give you an answer for that one.

39:45

But in science, we're trained to kind of hang back and wait until the data are in. So I'm going to hold back on that one,

39:52

I don't know what that one is for sure. It's interesting that you say that because when it comes to the holy scriptures, the vast majority of the public have the exact opposite preference.

40:03

They want it to be open to all kinds of interpretation. Yes. Well, the scriptures are both true and certain.

40:10

So that's because they come from God, they come from God. But when it comes to data that we don't have enough information, it's tempting for us to jump on an explanation just so we'll have one.

40:21

And that's not the right thing to do, really. Biblically or scientifically, we need to hang loose when we don't have enough information.

40:27

Say, well, I don't have enough information yet, give me some more data, and maybe I can make an assessment. It's very hard for me when somebody, especially if they're describing something, they say, okay, you know, or their friend, that makes it even further removed.

40:39

You know, my friend saw this happen, and what do you think that is? Well, I don't have the information. Now, if you're standing there next to me, we're both looking at something you pointed out.

40:47

If it's in the night sky and you say, what's that? If I don't have an explanation, shame on me, because I should as an astronomer.

40:54

But when it's so far removed, I often can't give an answer if people don't give enough details or if the details they give are inconsistent.

41:02

Yes, so I'm assuming, then, the tic -tac UFO, as it has been nicknamed, is another one of those instances of a

41:14

UFO caught on film that is claimed to be traveling at speeds higher than any known craft of human origin and traveling at speeds and making maneuvers that would kill a human pilot.

41:31

You're saying that there is not enough information from those films to ever come close to making those kinds of determinations.

41:39

Correct. Distance, in particular, it's very tricky to get distance to something. If you look at these drones, people fly drones now.

41:46

I've got some airplanes, remote -controlled airplanes that I fly from time to time. Drones can do things that are very, very quick.

41:54

And if you assumed that it was actually much larger than it is and therefore much further away, you would assume that it's throwing

42:00

G -forces that are impossible when, in fact, it's relatively small and nearby. There's a company you can hire, by the way, that has...

42:08

They'll do drone performances at night. They have little lights on their drones. It's quite spectacular. And if you didn't know what it is, you'd say, well, wow, that's a bunch of UFOs.

42:17

It's clearly man -made. It's not natural. Well, yeah, it's man -made. I know the company that makes them. And you can hire them.

42:24

So there's nothing nefarious here. There's nothing that suggests any kind of otherworldly component.

42:31

Well, Jim Mack, please email me your full name and full address because guess what?

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You have won a free copy of the book that we are going to be addressing in the second hour,

42:45

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We want to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service as well, CVBBS .com, who will be shipping that book and Bible out to you.

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And, of course, we want to thank our friends at Master Books for publishing this latest work by Dr.

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Jason Lyle. We thank Master Books for always providing excellent resources, especially in the realm of science from a

43:33

Christian perspective. Let's see here. We have

43:39

John and Banger Maine who says, I have heard

43:44

Chris Arnzen interview in the past some guests who are familiar with the

43:51

UFO phenomenon who believe that these could be explained in some of the occasions as demonic manifestations, just as some of the apparitions of Mary have been over the centuries.

44:09

What is your reaction to those claims? Okay. Well, I'll give you my thoughts on that, are that when

44:16

I read the Scriptures, demons, the Bible tells us that they're spirits, they're evil spirits, they serve

44:23

Satan. We know that from the Scriptures. And spirits are normally invisible. Now, God is a spirit, but he's unique because he can do what he wants.

44:33

Once he's God, he can create a body for himself, which he did at the Incarnation. Angels are spirits, and occasionally they appear as human beings, but I would argue that's by the decree of God.

44:44

God can create a temporary body for an angel to manifest and to do what they need to do to interact with human beings.

44:50

We see that a lot in the Old Testament, especially in some of the New Testament. But do angels have the ability in and of themselves to manifest physically, and therefore do demons, if they're fallen angels?

45:04

And I would argue no. And one of the reasons I would say that is because, you remember when Jesus appeared to the disciples, and at one point they said it's a spirit.

45:12

And Jesus' counterargument was, a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.

45:18

That was Christ's response, is that they could know that he's not a manifestation of a spirit because he has flesh and bones.

45:25

They could touch him, they could feel him. He was visible to them. And now if demons could do that, if they could mimic that, if they could appear and have flesh and bones, then it means

45:36

Jesus made a bad argument. But Jesus is God, and therefore he's not going to make a bad argument. And so that tells me that demons cannot by their own power manifest physically.

45:45

That being said, we know that demons can, they're spirits, they can tempt us. Satan tempted

45:50

Christ in the wilderness unsuccessfully, of course. But we know that they have that power.

45:56

And so in terms of being able to influence our thinking, if you're under the influence of a drug or something like that, a friend of mine, before he became

46:03

Christian, he experimented with drugs, and he says, I'll tell you,

46:09

Jason, I think that opens you up to demonic activity. So you can see all kinds of things when you're under the influence.

46:14

But I don't believe that demons can manifest physically. And so I don't think they're responsible for UFO sightings.

46:22

As I mentioned earlier, I think that most of these UFO claims have a very mundane explanation. I know that's not exciting.

46:28

I know that's not the science fiction answer. But, you know, people want to believe. It's kind of like, you remember that show,

46:34

The X -Files, back in the 90s, and Mulder had the picture of the UFO on his office.

46:40

He says, I want to believe. And I think that's the attitude that most people have. They want to believe, and so they see what they want to see.

46:47

But I don't buy it. Well, how would you exegete, just out of curiosity in relation to this, 2

46:56

Thessalonians 2, 9, you know, the man of evil will come by the power of Satan.

47:04

He will have great power, and he will do many different false miracles, signs, and wonders.

47:11

Signs require something that you could see. So why would this not be something that could possibly fit in the realm of the demonic manifesting somehow, an aerial phenomenon that has come to be believed by many, in fact, maybe someday the majority of humans, as extraterrestrial life, when it is nothing more than an illusion of some kind?

47:42

From a demonic source, I mean. Yeah, well, again, in my view, Satan's power is limited to what

47:49

God says he can do, and there are some things that demons can do that would seem impressive to us, because they're spirits, and so they have access to different kinds of information.

48:00

There's even a passage in the Bible that talks about a woman having a spirit of divination, and so she was able to maybe say things, perhaps things that were true even, that could not be known merely by a human being due to the influence of the spirit.

48:13

But that doesn't mean that they can make physical things, because I would argue that biblically,

48:19

God alone has the power of creation. That's something that he reserves to himself. Now, in terms of influencing our thinking, yes, there's evidence for that.

48:28

Now, of course, those of us who are Christians, God puts limitations on that. We can't, for example, be demon -possessed.

48:34

Unbelievers, under certain circumstances, can be demon -possessed, where the demon can kind of control their behavior, but that doesn't mean that they can make things appear in the sky, things of that nature.

48:45

So not all signs and wonders are the same. Some things that seem very spectacular may be something

48:53

Satan can do, but it's not related to something physical. And so I'm of the opinion that UFOs are not demons, they're not things that are manifesting in that nature, and again, all the ones that I've seen where I have enough details to form a good opinion on it have a very normal, a very ordinary explanation, either a natural phenomenon or a man -made phenomenon.

49:17

Well, thank you, John in Bangor, Maine, and guess what? You've also won a free copy of Fractals by our guest,

49:25

Jason Lyle. Make sure we have your full mailing address there in Bangor, Maine. Well, going back to the explanation of the demonic realm, and forgive me if I'm asking you to repeat something that you already said, but somehow missed it.

49:45

You're saying then that somebody would be in complete error saying that the demonic realm can manifest something that the human eye can see, but doesn't actually exist in the physical realm.

50:02

You're saying that that does not happen. Well, I guess I'm thinking in terms of something that's also tangible, because we know that demons can't manifest physically, because then

50:12

Christ would be making a bad argument. Whether they can influence our perceptions of the world, well,

50:18

I think they can under certain circumstances, but again, that would be something that unbelievers would be more prone to.

50:24

Those of us who are involved by the Holy Spirit, God puts a leash on what

50:30

Satan can do. He still allows us to be tempted, but he gives us the power to resist that temptation.

50:36

And there doesn't seem to be, to be honest, a lot of motivation for that, for Satan to go out and try to convince people that there are

50:42

UFOs. Well, there are UFOs, but they're not aliens. So I don't think that's the best explanation.

50:49

Some Christians would disagree with me on that, but I have to give you my view as an astronomer that most of the things that people think are

50:56

UFOs that are UFOs to them, to me, are IFOs. They're perfectly identifiable. We have

51:04

Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, why does it require a belief in the inerrancy of Scripture to therefore mean that the one believing that rejects life on other planets?

51:23

The Bible has never been claimed by those throughout history who embrace and proclaim sola scriptura to insinuate that the

51:34

Bible contains all information. It just contains all the information we need to know.

51:41

And if the Bible does not exhaustively describe and explain even every form of life on this planet, why couldn't there be a possibility of life existing on other planets?

51:54

Well, that's a very good point, and I suppose there could be. God can do what he wants. He could create life on other planets.

52:00

That being said, I don't see any scriptural indication that he did, and there are some hints in Scripture that he didn't.

52:07

For one thing, we find that Earth is very unique in the biblical, not only in the timescale,

52:12

Earth is made on day one. Everything else in the universe is made on day four. That's interesting to me. That means the other planets are made on day four.

52:20

Because the Hebrew word kokab, which would mean stars, when it says the stars also, that would include planets.

52:26

Planets are stars, they're wandering stars. So Earth is unique, and God says in Isaiah 45, 18 that he formed the

52:34

Earth to be inhabited, and so it's specially designed for life. And so I would argue that, yeah, you can't say dogmatically just from Scripture that God didn't make life in space.

52:44

But you sure wouldn't get that impression from Scripture. We know from Scripture that God made life on the

52:49

Earth. He made plants on day three, which are not living by the biblical criteria.

52:55

He made things that swim in the oceans. He made aquatic life on day five.

53:01

He made life to fly in the sky on day five. And he made life to walk across the surface of the

53:07

Earth on day six. There's no indication of him making life on the little points of light that we see out in space.

53:14

And again, it doesn't say he didn't. I'll grant that. But if you have intelligent life out in space, then you have some theological problems that come up.

53:22

Because it turns out that if you have things like Vulcans and Klingons out there, they can't be saved because they're not related to Jesus.

53:32

They're not descended from Adam. In fact, let me pick right up on that.

53:38

We will, for the most part, talk about your fractal book in the second half, but I just want to pick up on that very briefly when we return from our midway break.

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This is a longer break than normal, folks. Please be patient with us, but Grace Life Radio requires of us the longer break in the middle because the

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FCC requires it of them so that they can air their own public service announcements while we air our

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know

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That's PTLBibleRebinding .com For the

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G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd.

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The theme this year is Christ is Supreme over all. My friend Chris Arnzen and I will be joined by several of our other friends, including

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Votie Baucom, Justin Peters, Daryl Bernard Harrison, Virgil Walker, and James White.

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More than 20 other speakers will be joining us, and the lineup this year includes my pastor, John MacArthur.

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For details, visit G3Conference .com That's G3Conference .com

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Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you September 30th through October 2nd at G3 2021.

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This is Phil Johnson reminding you that Christ is Supreme over all. When Iron Trump and Zion Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

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Lord, God, Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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Hi, this is John Sampson, Pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

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Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider

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This is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com Hello, my name is

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Anthony Eugenio and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. With an aim to glorify

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01:06:34

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

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For more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Go to Solid -Ground -Books .com and see for yourself today. Before we return to our fascinating discussion with Dr.

01:11:11

Jason Lyle, we have been discussing UFOs and we're going to be momentarily entering into a discussion on his new book on fractals.

01:11:21

But before we return to him, I just have a couple of important announcements to make. First of all, if you are a man in ministry leadership,

01:11:27

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01:11:34

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01:11:47

Everything is free of charge, which will start off with a profound,

01:11:52

I'm sure, message from a man I believe to be the most powerful preacher alive on the planet

01:11:58

Earth, Dr. Conrad Mbewe of Kibwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and also the founding chancellor of African Christian University.

01:12:08

This man, if you've never heard him preach, go to Sermon Audio and check him out, or just type in his name in YouTube.

01:12:16

The last name is M as in Michael, B as in boy, E -W -E, Conrad Mbewe.

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He is absolutely extraordinary. Well, he is my guest speaker, so not only will you be hearing him for free and eating lunch for free served by the

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01:12:46

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She started these pastor's luncheons in the 1990s, and I've been continuing them after her home going to the

01:13:03

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01:13:14

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01:13:47

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01:15:57

I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches and I have helped many people in our audience all over the planet

01:16:05

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Earth, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line and I may be able to help you.

01:16:25

And that's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr. Jason Lyle on either

01:16:31

UFOs or on fractals or anything else in the realm of science and the scriptures. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:16:38

Give us a first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And Dr. Lyle, as you likely recall before the break, you were just getting into a theological dilemma for those

01:16:51

Christians who believe in the inerrancy of scripture, they believe in sola scriptura, and yet they believe in the possibility of intelligent life on other planets and if you could begin to answer that again and I just have one thought on that and then we can enter into your discussion on fractals.

01:17:10

Okay, well I was just mentioning if you have civilizations out there like Vulcans and Klingons like you have on Star Trek, and of course

01:17:18

I enjoy science fiction, but I don't think the real universe is that way. The real universe is the biblical universe where God is made of one blood or one man, all nations, according to Acts 17.

01:17:28

So all nations are descended from Adam. And so that precludes the idea of civilizations out in space and if they were out there they couldn't be saved because you have to be a descendant of Adam in order to be related to Jesus Christ in order for his blood to count for yours on the cross because we're all of one blood.

01:17:45

It's because we're related to Jesus that we are eligible for salvation. That's why he can take our place on the cross.

01:17:53

He's our kinsman redeemer. He's our blood relative. But Lieutenant Worf is out of luck because he's a

01:17:58

Klingon and therefore he can't be saved. And the problem, people say well maybe the

01:18:04

Klingons did sin, well then they're suffering the effects of the curse because all creation grows under that bondage of corruption.

01:18:11

And they say well maybe Jesus went to the Klingon home world and became one of them and died for them. No, because the Bible says he died once for all.

01:18:17

So the real universe, the biblical universe, really does select out human beings as those creatures that are uniquely made in God's image.

01:18:25

I wouldn't have a huge problem if they found moss or something like that on some other planet, but I don't expect to find intelligent life out there.

01:18:32

Well you don't expect to, but this is just one more question on this issue that I have.

01:18:38

Being someone who is a Calvinist, as they nickname us, I believe in something that is called limited atonement.

01:18:48

It's also known as definite atonement, in particular redemption. I believe that Christ did not die for even all humans on this planet and pay for their sins because I believe that if he did, logically every human would be saved as the

01:19:06

Universalists believe. So therefore, since right on this planet we have people that Christ did not die to save, and there's also the demons and the angels that Christ did not die to save, why couldn't there be life on other planets, even intelligent life, that are not a part of God's redemptive plan?

01:19:29

Well, that's a good point, but I would just point out, though, that if that's the case, then they can't be saved.

01:19:35

There's a whole civilization that is reprobate and will be cast into hell.

01:19:41

But I do think that's a challenge to Act 17, where God has made of one blood all nations.

01:19:47

So that tells me there cannot be nations out in space, because they would not be descended from Adam. That would violate the principle of Act 17.

01:19:55

Okay. Well, thank you very much for that explanation. Now, we have been giving away, if you've been listening, a brand new book by Dr.

01:20:07

Jason Lyle titled Fractals, The Secret Code of Creation. This is a beautiful book that has gorgeous photographs of fractals that defy the ability of a human artist,

01:20:27

I think, to create. These are just really breathtaking. If you could, the fractal images in your latest book are, as I just said, stunning works of art.

01:20:40

So please explain what the fractal images are, and how they were discovered.

01:20:47

So a fractal is a shape that, when you zoom in on it, you find a smaller version of the overall shape built into itself.

01:20:55

And often, if you zoom in on that smaller one, you'll find even smaller ones built in. It's got sort of baby versions of itself built into it.

01:21:02

And these, the particular type of fractal that this book is talking about, these were discovered really in the 1980s.

01:21:10

The very first one was plotted in 1978, but then the rest of them were found in the 80s. And what it is is it's actually, it's a graph of which numbers, a plot of which numbers belong to a little formula.

01:21:25

And there are certain formulas that mathematicians like to play with that are called recursive algorithms, and that basically means you're doing a procedure over and over again.

01:21:33

It's the same procedure. So you pick a number 2, and you put it into this little formula, and you get out another number, 4.

01:21:40

You take that 4, you put it back into the same formula, and you get another number. Maybe you get 8, you put it back in. 16, you put it back in, you get 32, and so on.

01:21:48

And you see what happens. And one of two things will happen. Either the output will get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, or it won't.

01:21:55

In some cases, it will get smaller, and sometimes peter off to zero, whatever. And mathematicians were playing with these recursive algorithms in the early 20th century, and they wanted to find out, is there a pattern?

01:22:07

Because there are certain formulas that you can't tell just by looking at a number. When you put it in that formula, if it's going to get big or stay small, you can't tell.

01:22:15

But by the 1980s, computers were getting to the point where they were fast enough to check lots of different numbers to see if they belonged or not, and it occurred to somebody to make a map to see if there was any pattern to which numbers belonged to what we call the

01:22:28

Mandelbrot set. It's named after Benoit Mandelbrot. He was a programmer at IBM, and the little formula is z squared plus c.

01:22:36

Very simple little formula, and c is the number you're checking to see if it belongs, and z is the number that changes when you put in one and you get out a different one.

01:22:46

And lo and behold, when he made a plot of which numbers belonged to the Mandelbrot set, he got a shape that no one was expecting.

01:22:53

It's a really weird -looking shape. It has kind of a heart structure on the right side, and it's got circles that are budding off of it, and it's got these little lightning -bolt -type dendrites that are streaking away from it.

01:23:05

It's a really fascinating -looking shape, and no one was expecting that. No one was expecting that when you made a plot of which numbers belonged to the

01:23:12

Mandelbrot set, it would be so wonderful and complex. And it's also fractal.

01:23:18

It turns out that there's a little bump on the tail of this thing that if you zoom in on it, sure enough, it's a baby version of the entire set.

01:23:26

And it's got a little bump on its tail. You zoom in on it, it's a baby version of the entire set as well. And one of the tragedies of trying to explain this over the radio is it's really very visually stunning, and so I'm hoping people will pick up the book and see these beautiful shapes.

01:23:41

But here's the key, here's the point. The shapes that are in this book, and they're beautiful, because the more you zoom in on the

01:23:47

Mandelbrot set, you get these incredibly beautiful structures like seahorses or double spirals. They are stunningly beautiful.

01:23:54

And the key is, though, no human being created those shapes. That's the key. Those shapes are built into numbers by the creator of numbers.

01:24:03

And that's something that is mind -blowing. We tend to think about God creating physical things, like animals and mountains and oceans, but God's also responsible for mathematical truths.

01:24:16

The reason math works is because it stems from the mind of God, and God has built beauty into numbers.

01:24:22

And I will say, you don't have to know anything about math to pick up this book and read through it and understand what's going on and appreciate this new universe.

01:24:30

It's an abstract universe that exists in the realm of numbers. You can't touch it, but it's there, and it's stunningly beautiful, and it was something that was completely unknown to our ancestors.

01:24:40

It is indeed a secret code that God has built into the world of numbers, and it's just stunning.

01:24:46

It's absolutely stunning. So the first half of the book is just exploring this wonderful new universe, and seeing the implications of this artwork that God has built into numbers.

01:24:56

So you have actually revealed that the study of mathematics should now even be considered a sacred study.

01:25:07

A field or a course in school that I always hated and failed miserably at.

01:25:16

Not actually failed with an F, but came close to it. Except when I was in junior high.

01:25:22

I did very well. But anyway, this is actually something that we should view very seriously, even more so than before.

01:25:32

I mean, of course, if people don't follow math closely, buildings would collapse and all other kinds of catastrophes that happen every day, multiple times a day.

01:25:44

But in addition to that, we should actually view this as a holy issue now. That's right.

01:25:50

Math is the way God thinks about numbers. When you're studying math, you're learning something about the mind of God.

01:25:57

And I think if students were taught it from that perspective, they might have a little different appreciation for the subject, rather than just being this hard thing that we're never going to use.

01:26:06

And, wait a minute, you're learning about how God thinks about things. And the reason why it works in the physical universe, the reason why you need to use math if you're going to build a building that works, is because God's mind is also responsible for upholding the physical universe.

01:26:19

And so if you want a life that works, if you want to build things that work, you better know something about how God thinks about numbers.

01:26:25

You better know something about math. And because it stems from the mind of God, it does have beauty in it.

01:26:31

Math has beauty to it. It's something that people find surprising. I've had folks that have either read the book, or I do a talk on this subject as well, and I've even had students say, you know,

01:26:41

I used to hate math, but now I love it, because I see it as an aspect of God's thinking. And praise

01:26:46

God for that. That's really what I want the book to convey. One of the things I want the book to convey. Now, can human beings be responsible for the beauty of fractals?

01:26:57

That's one of the things, the questions I raise in one of the chapters in the book, I discuss alternative views. And the answer is no, because human beings are not responsible for mathematical truths.

01:27:07

We discover them. Human beings discovered that, sure enough, 2 plus 2 equals 4, but we didn't make it that way.

01:27:13

It's not like somebody sat down and said, you know what, I think 2 plus 2 should equal 4. Because if it was something human beings invented, we could have invented it differently.

01:27:21

Now, we invented the notation, that's fine, and so you have different notations. You can use Roman numerals or Arabic numerals, but the mathematical truths, we don't determine those.

01:27:30

If we did, different cultures would have different maps, and you could go to India and you could say, okay, here, 2 plus 2 equals 7.

01:27:37

Well, that's not going to work. I mean, if you want to build a building in India, you have to use the same formula that we've used here in the

01:27:43

United States or in Europe, where 2 plus 2 equals 4. Human beings discovered mathematical truths. We didn't invent them.

01:27:49

One great example of this would be the Greeks, who were the first to discover the so -called irrational numbers, those numbers that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers, a over b.

01:28:00

Like pi, 3 .141592, it goes on forever. That's an example of an irrational number. The Greeks discovered those, and they hated them, because the

01:28:08

Greeks liked rational numbers. They liked things to be divisible, you know, everything evenly divisible by integers, and the irrational numbers aren't.

01:28:15

But they needed those numbers in order to solve, for example, the Pythagorean theorem, for all but just a few cases that you need irrational numbers.

01:28:23

And so that was the first time in the history of mathematics that human beings had discovered something that was neither expected nor desired, and that proves that mathematics is not something that human beings invented, otherwise we'd invent it in ways that we'd like.

01:28:37

Rather, we're discovering truths, whether we like them or not, that reflect the thinking of the

01:28:43

Biblical God. We have C .J. in Lyndonhurst, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:28:49

How can you assuage the fear and apprehension of those listening when they hear the subtitle of your book,

01:28:57

The Secret Code of Creation? Every time I'm aware of the terms code and anything connected with God and the

01:29:05

Bible come to the public attention, it turns out to be some kind of a scam or really bizarre theory.

01:29:13

How can you differentiate yourself from these scam artists who come up with secret codes?

01:29:19

Well, yeah, it's a different category, because the code I'm talking about is not a code that's built into the

01:29:24

Bible, because the Bible was meant to be understood by human beings. I believe in the principle of the perspicuity of Scripture, that the

01:29:32

Bible is clear, it's meant to be understood, it doesn't have secret messages in it that you run it through a computer and you check every fifth letter and whatever.

01:29:39

I've heard those claims before, I think they're bunk. You can do that with any book, and you'll get a few words occasionally that make sense, but that's what happens when you run a sufficiently large number of random numbers through a generator like that.

01:29:54

This is a code that is built into numbers, and I would argue that it's literally true, it's really there.

01:29:59

It's not like a message that tells you to do something, or it's not a message in words, it's a message of art.

01:30:07

It's an artistic message, it's an artistic code that really has been built into numbers by the creator of numbers.

01:30:13

It's not something you need for salvation, but it sure is something that is enjoyable that the Lord has built into nature.

01:30:20

Kind of like the genetic code. For a long time, the genetic code was a secret, but now we know what it is. That secret's been revealed, and I would argue that that glorifies

01:30:29

God. So I'm not talking about a code in the Bible, I'm talking about a code that God has built into creation. And there are lots of things like that, like the genetic code, that illustrate the ingeniousness of the

01:30:40

Lord God, that we... I feel very blessed to live in a time where we have discovered many of these things, and it makes me wonder what is yet to be discovered.

01:30:49

So this is not some kind of Gnostic thing, where only a certain group of super -intelligent people can really figure out what the

01:30:59

Bible is teaching, or anything like that? Right, right. This is a code that God has built into math, and it's something that anyone can discover.

01:31:08

Do I need to know a lot about math? No, you don't need to know a lot about math. If you know that 3 x 3 equals 9, you can read this book and understand it, and you can discover for yourself this secret code.

01:31:19

In fact, in the book I've included software where you can explore this shape for yourself.

01:31:26

So it's not Gnosticism, which is just secret knowledge revealed to just a few people. I want everybody to know about this, because it's something that the

01:31:33

Lord has put into His abstract world of mathematics that is beautiful, it illustrates

01:31:39

His glory, and it's something that I want to share with everybody. Now, hold on a minute, you lost me there for a second.

01:31:46

3 x 3 equals 9? I'm only kidding. Thank you,

01:31:53

CJ, and give us your full mailing address in Lindenhurst, New York, so that you can receive a free copy of the book.

01:32:00

We are talking about Fractals, the Secret Code of Creation.

01:32:08

Can any religion other than Christianity make sense of fractals? No. It has to be the biblical

01:32:16

God that's responsible for these shapes, and that's something else that I discussed in one of the chapters in this book.

01:32:22

Because, let's take for example the Hindu faith system. The Hindus believe that all is one. They're a monistic religion, all is one.

01:32:30

But math calls for distinctions. Math says one is not two. One is equal to one, but one is not equal to two, so it calls for distinctions.

01:32:38

So you can't really have laws of mathematics in a Hindu worldview. That's not to say

01:32:44

Hindus can't do math, but if they do it, they're doing it inconsistently with what they profess to believe, that all is one.

01:32:51

Math calls for distinctions. You can eliminate any kind of polytheistic religion, because if you say, well, math reflects the thinking of different gods,

01:33:02

Zeus and Hera and so on, that rule different areas, well then you'd have different maps in different parts of the world, depending on which god you serve.

01:33:09

But the biblical God is sovereign over the entire universe, which is why mathematics has a universal quality to it.

01:33:15

It works the same way on the Moon as it does on Earth, which is why the astronauts were able to go to the Moon and come back to the

01:33:21

Earth, because they used the same rules of mathematics and laws of nature that apply here on Earth, because the same

01:33:26

God upholds the Moon that upholds the Earth. So it really has to be the Christian God, no other God will do.

01:33:32

And, of course, the Christian God is infinite in His thinking, and one of the things you'll find about these fractals in mathematics is that they go on forever.

01:33:40

There's an infinite number of them. And you can zoom in on the baby version of the Mandelbrot set, and it has a baby version, you can zoom in on that, you could do that the rest of your life, and you would never exhaust the riches of the beauty of this set, and that reflects the thinking of the infinite

01:33:54

God of Scripture, a God whose understanding is without limit. Now, what about monotheistic religions that are false religions, they're not

01:34:04

Christian? Sure, and that narrows it down to, really, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

01:34:10

And Judaism, I would argue, it really is just, if it's taken consistently, you get

01:34:16

Christianity, really, because Christ is the fulfillment of those Old Testament principles. So those, if Judaism is done properly, it's the same as Christianity.

01:34:24

Christianity is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Whereas Islam, I would say, is a false religion, and with Islam you don't have a triune

01:34:32

God. See, I can have mathematics. Mathematics calls for both unity and distinction. So I can say 2 plus 2 equals 4.

01:34:40

I mean, those are the same things. 2 plus 2 and 4, same thing. And yet 2 is different from 4. I can have similarity and distinction, because I serve a triune

01:34:48

God, a God who is one in being, and yet three in person. And so mathematics is built into the nature of the biblical

01:34:54

God. It's not built into the nature of Allah. It's one in persons and one in being.

01:35:00

And so you can't explain mathematical truths from an Islamic worldview. So that's something else that's mentioned in the book as well.

01:35:08

But I would argue it makes sense only in the Christian worldview. It certainly doesn't make sense in an atheistic worldview where you have no gods, because then how do you account for laws of mathematics at all?

01:35:18

As I pointed out earlier, it's not something human beings came up with. We discovered these principles. We didn't create them.

01:35:24

We were surprised when we discovered the Mandelbrot set. It wasn't something human beings created. And so it really is a reflection of the way

01:35:32

God thinks. And in fact, somebody asked me, who designed the cover of the book? The cover of the book has a fractal on it, and it's beautiful.

01:35:39

And somebody said, who designed the cover? And I said, well, I have to be honest with you, the cover was designed by God. No human being created that shape.

01:35:45

Somebody put the word on the front, but that's about it. In terms of our contribution, the shape is purely from the mind of God.

01:35:55

Let's see here. I was just looking at a question. Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania asks, the patterns of fractals are indeed utterly mind -blowing and fascinating and breathtaking.

01:36:11

But isn't it true that those such as yourselves who display these images in books and films are adding the color?

01:36:22

Yes, that's true. And I discussed that in chapter I think it's in chapter 8. But what I do in chapter 8 too is

01:36:28

I plot a section of the Mandelbrot set with no color at all, grayscale, and it's still beautiful.

01:36:34

And so I would argue in the book that the beauty that's built into these shapes is something that human beings are not responsible for.

01:36:41

We can pick the colors, but even there, even when we pick the colors, we're assigning a color to a particular mathematical value, and we're consistent.

01:36:50

And even the colors we pick are colors that God created anyway. So really, God is 100 % responsible for the beauty in this book.

01:36:57

But it is true that you can pick different color schemes, but no matter what you pick, you get something that's absolutely stunningly beautiful, because the shape is something that's built into math, and the shape is something that's determined solely by the mind of God.

01:37:10

Now, I remember a couple of years ago, I think, our mutual friend

01:37:16

Dr. James R. White, when he was displaying on a regular basis at some point, really stunning images of fractals.

01:37:26

He had displayed something that looked a lot like a seahorse. And in one of your chapters, you talk about Seahorse Valley, which is,

01:37:35

I'm assuming, about the same thing. Tell us what this is, and how it relates to seeing the

01:37:40

Creator in mathematics. Yeah, so it turns out that various sections of the

01:37:45

Mandelbrot set have certain beautiful features. I've found that if you zoom in on the cusp of any area of a

01:37:52

Mandelbrot set where one shape is sort of budding off of another, you get, those are the prettiest areas. Those are where you get really interesting shapes.

01:37:59

And the first valley that we explore in the book, really beginning in Chapter 2, is the

01:38:04

Valley of the Seahorses. And this is in the cusp between the main cardioid, that's the big part of the

01:38:10

Mandelbrot set, and the largest circle that's growing off of it. You go in the cusp in between those two, and there's a valley that looks like, sure enough, it looks like seahorses, one on top of another, where they have kind of the curled head and the curled up tail, just like a seahorse you'd see in the ocean, except the spiral goes on forever when you zoom in on it.

01:38:30

So, there are different sections of the Mandelbrot set. Mathematicians have named them after certain features.

01:38:36

There's the Valley of the Double Spirals, there's the Valley of the Elephants, there's the Valley of the Scepters, and so on and so forth.

01:38:42

And they're all beautiful. They're all amazing. We haven't named every feature of the Mandelbrot set, because there's an infinite number of them.

01:38:48

But there are certain trends that tend to occur when you take a look in these valleys. And so that's one of the things that the book does, is we just explore the beauty of these shapes, and then only later do we come and talk about, okay, what does this mean in terms of the

01:39:02

Christian worldview? But the book is beautiful, because it's plotting, it's giving you graphs of the beauty that is built into numbers by the creator of numbers.

01:39:14

Now, skeptics might argue that an atheist could use computers that created the beauty in a fractal image.

01:39:24

What is your response to that? Well, we discussed that too in the book, the idea that computers created the beauty, and the answer is we can now disprove that.

01:39:32

When these were first discovered, people thought perhaps there was a glitch in the computer that's causing them to produce these amazing shapes that are actually just artifacts.

01:39:41

We now know that's false. Mathematicians have demonstrated that at least that the main regions of the Mandelbrot set are true.

01:39:47

You could plot them by hand, because I know the formula for the Mandelbrot set, it's simple, it's z squared plus c.

01:39:53

I could take a number and run it through that formula by hand, or with a calculator, and I could plot the same,

01:39:59

I'd get the same shape. I'd get exactly the same shape the computer does. So the computer is just doing what

01:40:05

I'm doing, it's just doing it very quickly. So it's not creating these shapes, it's just allowing us to discover them quickly.

01:40:11

I would say a computer no more creates the Mandelbrot set than a microscope creates bacteria.

01:40:18

A microscope simply allows us to see bacteria in the same way the computer allows us to see the shape of the

01:40:24

Mandelbrot set quickly. But you could theoretically plot the whole thing by hand. Well, we're going to our final break.

01:40:31

It's going to be a lot briefer than the other ones. If you have a question, send it in immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:40:37

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com ChrisArnzen at gmail .com has always given us your first name at least.

01:40:42

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Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org, that's lindbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program has been and will continue to be

01:49:44

Dr. Jason Lyle. Well, we have been talking about UFOs, and now we're talking about fractals.

01:49:51

But Dr. Lyle, we do have a listener question who wants to go back to the UFO issue.

01:49:58

Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina, very faithful listener and financial supporter of this program.

01:50:03

Greetings, brothers. I may have missed this through the years, but I don't recall other nations reporting any

01:50:11

UFOs. Is it possible our government is trying to frighten people so that in the future they can't put greater fear in our citizens to gain greater control by saying they were being invaded by aliens?

01:50:24

From what I understand, the broadcast of the early 20th century by, I believe, H .G.

01:50:30

Wells put fear into people thinking we were being invaded.

01:50:35

Well, I'm pretty sure that this is a global phenomenon, isn't it? Yeah, it is reported in other nations.

01:50:42

I think one of the reasons we hear more about it here, I think we do have more reports here in the

01:50:47

United States, is because we have access to more Hollywood fiction. I mean, the number of UFO reporting that occurred went up astronomically after Spielberg's movie

01:50:59

Close Encounters of the Third Kind aired. And that's just a fact. People see these things in movies, and then they start thinking they're seeing them in the real sky.

01:51:06

So I think it has more to do with that than anything nefarious going on in our government.

01:51:13

I mean, there's a lot of nonsense going on in our government right now. But I think that's probably not one of them. It's just people, again,

01:51:20

I think most of these have mundane explanations. It's just people don't know what they are. Well, guess what,

01:51:26

Grady? You have also won a free copy of the book On Fractals. We are discussing it by our guest,

01:51:32

Dr. Jason Lyle. And we thank Master Books for bringing this wonderful book into print.

01:51:38

And we thank CVBBS .com for shipping the books out to our listeners.

01:51:44

In fact, isn't, or should I say, wasn't it the theory of the late

01:51:52

Stephen Hawking, the atheist scientist that life began here on the planet

01:52:00

Earth when it was transported here by aliens or something like that? Yeah, panspermia.

01:52:06

Richard Dawkins holds to that view now, I believe. And I don't know if Hawking held to that or not.

01:52:12

But it just pushes the problem back. People realize that it's essentially impossible to get life to evolve on Earth.

01:52:19

So they try to push it out into space. But that doesn't really solve the problem. Right. It's amazing what people will search for and cling to in their desperate attempt to reject the

01:52:32

Scriptures. Yeah. It's just utterly frustrating, obviously. Well, how does the limited mind of humanity help to refute a non -biblical worldview of fractals?

01:52:46

Say that one more time, please. How does the limited mind of humanity help to refute a non -biblical worldview of fractals?

01:52:57

Oh, well, yeah. The idea that we could possibly produce a fractal that's infinite.

01:53:03

I mean, it's laughable on the face of it because we are finite. We are finite creatures. We have limited mind. But the fractals that we discuss in this book are infinite.

01:53:12

You can zoom on them infinitely. I've provided software. You can experiment for yourself and zoom in on it forever.

01:53:18

And it continues to exhibit beauty at all scales. You continue to zoom in and it actually gets prettier as you zoom in.

01:53:25

It's more complicated. And man -made machines don't do that. Man -made machines, you zoom in and eventually they get simpler to the point where we can't really engineer things on that small of a scale.

01:53:34

We certainly can't engineer anything that's infinite. So that precludes the possibility of a finite mind.

01:53:40

A finite mind cannot be responsible for fractals because they're infinite. And the interesting thing is they're not only infinite, they're infinitely infinite.

01:53:48

Because when you zoom in on one of these smaller versions that you could zoom in on forever, each one of those has an infinite number of babies built into it.

01:53:55

So it's an infinity times an infinity, if you will. It's an infinity of infinities. Now think about the mind that would have to be responsible for that.

01:54:01

It's certainly not going to be a human mind. We can barely comprehend something like a Google, one with 100 zeros after it.

01:54:08

There's no way we can do things that are infinite. We have Christopher from Amityville, Long Island, New York, my hometown, or my former hometown.

01:54:20

Christopher says, I tuned in late and heard you saying something about a

01:54:25

Mandelbrot set. Forgive me for asking you to repeat it, but where does that name come from and what is it?

01:54:33

Yeah, the Mandelbrot set, the name comes from the man, Benoit Mandelbrot. He was a programmer at IBM, and he was one of the first to run those little formulas, u squared plus c, through a computer and make a map of which points are bound.

01:54:48

That is, when you run them through the formula, they stay small. And you plot those in black. And then the ones that don't stay small, the ones that get big, you plot them in some other color.

01:54:56

And you get a remarkable, remarkable structure. And that's really what the first half of the book is about. It's about the Mandelbrot set.

01:55:02

And then the rest of the book is about what about other shapes that are similar when you plot other equations and you see which points are bound.

01:55:09

So it's quite beautiful. And it was discovered really only in the 1980s. So it's a relatively new discovery in the history of mathematics.

01:55:17

And it happens to also be a delicious menu item at my favorite German restaurant in Lindenhurst, Long Island.

01:55:26

Thanks a lot. And guess what? You've also, this is Christopher, you've also won a free copy of the book.

01:55:33

We are addressing Fractals, the Secret Code of Creation by our guest, Dr. Jason Lyle.

01:55:39

Make sure we have your full mailing address there in Amityville, Long Island, New York. Johannes Kepler, as quoted within your book, is saying, to do math is to think

01:55:50

God's thoughts after him. Who is Kepler? And has your research proved his statement to be true?

01:55:57

Oh, yeah. I love Kepler. He was one of the early astronomers who discovered the three laws of planetary motion.

01:56:03

He was a Christian, a biblical creationist. He even calculated the date of creation based on the biblical time scale.

01:56:09

So he was a young earth creationist, as were most scientists at the time, actually. But he was a very faithful Christian.

01:56:16

He wanted to, he trained to go to the ministry, but he was so good at math. And he realized later in, well, as he was going through his training, he realized that the glory of God is revealed in mathematics as well.

01:56:27

And that's something that this book, I think, certainly exhibits, is that it shows that, indeed, the glory of God is built into numbers, it's built into math, the relationship between numbers.

01:56:37

So, indeed, when you plot these fractals, you're looking into the way

01:56:42

God thinks about numbers, and it's beautiful. We are really thinking God's thoughts after him on a limited level, and as much as we can do on a creaturely level.

01:56:50

But it gives us a little window into the infinite mind of God. Well, I want you to have two minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about fractals.

01:57:04

Well, first of all, it's a new universe, really, that we discovered in the 1980s.

01:57:09

It's not a universe made of atoms, it's a universe made of numbers. And it's something that I wanted to share with you, because this new universe is incredibly beautiful, something that was unknown to our ancestors, something that we now have access to.

01:57:23

If you read the book, you'll see a lot, you know, I'm just exploring this new universe, kind of seeing where it leads, and enjoying the beauty of it.

01:57:31

And I would argue, then, as we go through the book, I would argue that only the Christian worldview can make sense of this universe, that there is no sexual explanation for it, there's no non -Christian religious explanation for it, either.

01:57:44

It's only in the biblical worldview that these shapes make sense, because they reflect the thinking of the infinite mind of God, the

01:57:51

God of Scripture and no other. And that God has a sense of beauty. He's built it into the physical universe, and apparently he's also built it into the abstract world of mathematics.

01:58:01

You're literally thinking God's thoughts after him when you do math, and that is a wonderful thing. I'm hoping that people will pick up this book.

01:58:08

It's a beautiful book. It's a coffee table -style book. Yes, it is. It really is easy to read. It's easy to read, and there's lots of pictures in it.

01:58:15

And my hope and prayer is people will pick it up because of its beauty, read it, and realize that only the biblical worldview can make sense of this.

01:58:22

And my prayer is that they'll repent and trust in Christ. I pray that this book will lead to salvation. What a great way to strike up conversations about eternal matters when you have non -Christian friends over your house, and you've got that sitting on your coffee table.

01:58:36

Yes, great conversation starter, I think it will be. Well, folks, remember the website for the

01:58:42

Biblical Science Institute, which was founded by our guest, Dr. Jason Lyle. The website is

01:58:48

BiblicalScienceInstitute .com, BiblicalScienceInstitute .com.

01:58:53

And don't forget about our friends at Master Books, who published this book, Fractals, The Secret Code of Creation.

01:59:00

MasterBooks .com, MasterBooks .com. But I would ask you please to order it from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, since they are a sponsor of this program.

01:59:09

CVBBS .com, CVBBS .com. Thank you, Dr. Lyle, for being such an extraordinary guest as I knew you would be.

01:59:17

Thank everybody who listened. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:24

Savior than you are a sinner. And by the way, folks, one of Dr. Lyle's friends, who we've been mentioning throughout this program,

01:59:32

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, is going to be our guest again this

01:59:38

Wednesday, 4 -6 p .m. Eastern Time, to discuss Romans Chapter 13, very controversial texts that involve our very conflicts with the authorities above us in the government.