Old Earth Creationism (Re-visted)

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today we have

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Dr. Hugh Ross from Reasons to Believe back on. If you guys remember a couple of episodes ago, we had

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Dr. Ross on with Dr. Jason Lyle to discuss kind of the young earth creationist, old earth creationist debate.

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And that was a very lively and informative discussion. I got a lot of positive feedback.

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As a matter of fact, out of all my videos so far, that has been the most viewed. I think right now we're somewhere around 3 ,100 views or something like that and growing.

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And I constantly get comments and people referencing that video. It was very, very useful and helpful to see both sides laid out within the context of kind of an informal discussion, which was very good.

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But the original plan, you guys might not know this, but the original plan was to have Dr. Ross on to field some questions that I had with regards to old earth creationism.

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And so it just happened to work out that Jason Lyle was able to join us. But today we're gonna be sticking with the original plan and we have

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Dr. Hugh Ross with us to discuss a little bit more in detail his own personal views.

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And I know that people have been asking me, I made a big deal about, I'm agnostic when it comes to these views, who convinced you?

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Maybe I'll let you know in a couple of minutes who swayed me a little bit in the discussion.

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But still, these are things that you don't just listen to something for an hour or two and then make a decision.

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Both gentlemen, Dr. Ross, Dr. Lyle, they are very, very informative, faithful,

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I think biblically based Christians. They, I think very much with Dr. Ross and Dr. Lyle, they are both trying to be consistent with what they think the scripture is saying.

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And so I wanna encourage people to be able to think about this topic in a balanced way, okay?

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Don't always think that the person who doesn't hold your view is holding to some nefarious intentions or trying to twist the

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Bible. Like, listen, there's a wide variety of views out there. And this is an important topic, but it is an in -house discussion.

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And so for that reason, I very much appreciate hearing the different views and it really brings us, it should, bring us back to the text of scripture, back to how we incorporate the broader things within our worldview, our understanding of science and how we interpret data, bringing those all into conformity to a biblically grounded understanding of the world.

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And so I think we should really try to listen with that in mind, with that heart behind this particular discussion.

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So without further ado, I will introduce Dr. Ross and then we will start.

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Just real quick. Thank you very much. I believe that is Braxton Hunter from Trinity Radio.

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Thank you for your $5 Super Chat. If you guys are willing to help out financially,

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Super Chats are a helpful ways to do it. So if you have a question and you send in the Super Chat, your question will go right to the top and we'll stop and ask the question or answer the question rather on the spot.

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So I do very much appreciate that. But without further ado, let me introduce to everyone, Dr. Hugh Ross.

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Why don't you take a few seconds to say hello to everyone? Hello. Okay, very good.

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That was really good. Okay, so the reason why

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I'm happy that you're on again, is because it was expressed to me through the contact.

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Her name is Anastasia, very sweet lady. And she expressed to me that you just genuinely wanted to listen to my heart with regards to this topic.

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I mean, and I very much appreciate that spirit because for me, this has been a very difficult topic, not emotionally, not spiritually, but looking at the topic and saying,

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I see what this person is saying, the young earth perspective. I see that there seems to be strength in the exegesis.

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It looks like when you read through the Genesis account, yes, I understand it's not far fetched to think why someone would think that this might be teaching a young earth perspective.

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But on the other hand, I mean, for crying out loud, I'm in the world of apologetics and theology. I look up the name

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Hugh Ross, I order this book and I'm looking through this book and I'm like, darn, this makes it more complicated because that looks plausible.

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So I'm always going back and forth on these issues. So I wanna ask you some of my questions.

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They may be elementary to people who are listening. They're saying, well, it's not a question I would ask. Well, get your own

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YouTube channel and get your guests and ask the questions you want. I'm gonna ask the questions that I want, okay?

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So just throwing that out there. So let me stop blabbing and let me actually ask my question and then we can take it from there, okay?

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All right, so I'm very much concerned with the biblical text.

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If I'm gonna hold to a position, I wanna make sure that it is because that is what the Bible is teaching.

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And I know you would agree with that, okay? So for many young earth creationists, young earth creationism seems to take the

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Genesis text at face value, while many look at the old earth interpretation as being an interpretation based upon the desire to adopt an understanding that allows believers to affirm certain scientific conclusions also, right?

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So how can you speak to this? Cause this is important to me. There seems to be people who are looking at your side as you guys are compromisers, man.

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You're just trying to match things up with science and you're not being governed by what the Bible says.

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You're trying to put these other issues into the discussion. How would you speak to that?

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Well, you know, I was not raised in a Christian home. I didn't really know Christians. I came at the Bible once I realized because of my astronomy universe at the beginning.

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And so I was looking at all these different holy books saying, I wonder if any of them actually pertains to anything that's true.

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And so I really didn't get to meet anyone who believed in a young earth position until nine years after I'd become a

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Christian. It happened when I left Canada and came to the United States. So when

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I first picked up the Bible, began to go through Genesis one, and it seemed clear to me, these days have to be long periods of time.

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And this is before I knew anything about biblical Hebrew. And the reason why I drew that conclusion, it was clear to me just reading through the first page that this word day is used in three different ways.

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I mean, in creation day one, you've got the word day being contrasted with nights. So it says that's the word day referring to the daylight hours.

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Then when I got to Genesis the fourth creation day, that's where it's contrasting seasons, days, and years.

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And so that's day for 24 hours. And I was reading King James and actually it's quite well translated in Genesis two.

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Genesis two, four uses the same word day to refer to the entirety of creation history.

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So I said, that's a day that's more than 24 hours. So, and then

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I noticed that it's set up as a chronology. It seemed to me that Moses was going to extra pains to communicate.

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This is an actual chronology of historical events. Not only are the days numbered, you've got them bracketed by evening and morning.

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You've got the repeated phrase, it was so. You've got the repeated phrase, it was good. So these are all clues that this is a chronology of real events.

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But I noticed that the first six creation days are bracketed by an evening and a morning.

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And realizing that the word days got multiple literal definitions, I felt was probably also true the words evening and morning.

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Later on, I found out that evening can refer to the ending, morning can refer to the beginning.

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But what I noticed was there is no evening and morning for day seven. So I says, okay, we got closure on each of the first six creation days.

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There is no closure on day seven. And that's the text tells us that's when

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God stops his works of creation. And as I read through the rest of the Bible, I found three texts,

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Psalm 95, John five, and Hebrews four that state we're still in God's seventh day.

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Scientists have said that actually fits because when we look at science in the human era, we only see natural process.

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We see no evidence for supernatural intervention. But as an astronomer, our data comes from the past.

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It takes time for the velocity of light to bring the information from distant stars and galaxies to our telescope.

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So we're predominantly looking at what happened before the human era. And we see evidence for supernatural intervention everywhere.

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For six days, God creates on the seventh day he stops. The other thing

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I noted is Genesis one tells us that God created both the human male and the human female on day six.

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But when you get to chapter two, Adam's created first and he goes through three careers.

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I mean, he tends the garden that God had given him. The text tells us he watched the trees grow in the garden.

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Then God says, there's more to life than gardening. I mean, it's wonderful working this garden and he introduces the soulish animals to him.

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And basically he tells Adam to relate to each of these species of soulish animals and give them an appropriate name.

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And then finally, he takes something from the side. He recovers from the surgery.

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And when he wakes up from the surgery and sees Eve that God created for him, the word you see in the

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Hebrew is hapaham. It's used about 20 times in the Old Testament, most frequently translated at long last.

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And so I drew the conclusion again at age 17 that there is a significant passage of time between God creating

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Adam and God creating Eve. I would recognize probably at least nine months, but several months in order for all that to be able to go by.

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It also explains the phrase at long last, also explains where God says of Adam, he's alone.

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And it takes time for us men to feel like we're alone more than a few minutes. So at least for me anyway.

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Those are the reasons I said, these must be six consecutive long periods of time.

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And literally it took me nine more years after I became a Christian to actually meet anybody that took it any other way.

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You know, when I was sharing my faith and taking people through the Bible while I was at the University of Toronto, they all saw it the same way

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I did. And I know younger creationists say, well, the simplest reading of the text is 24 hours, but I've done this experiment, not just with the students and professors, but with people with zero science background, people with only a junior high education in science.

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They look at the text and just like me, they draw the conclusion, these can't possibly be 24 hour periods.

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They have to be long periods of time. Okay, right there. And I know some people that are a couple of things that I wanna talk about, but let me just pick up on what you just said.

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You said that you asked people with kind of a junior high background education. I know some people have pointed out, well, that's the problem,

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Hugh, right? They went through the secular school system, right? These secular assumptions are already part of kind of their framework.

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And so when they approach the Bible, when you present, you do this experiment, it's not as though they're coming to the question neutrally with literally no background and saying, oh, because one could argue, and maybe

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I'm wrong here, I don't know. But most people who've approached the Genesis account have understood it to be teaching 24 hour days.

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Is that true or am I off there? That's where I would dispute that conclusion because as I've traveled to other nations of the world,

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I do see that this young earth, old earth debate seems to be a focus on people who speak

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English. You know, when I go to places where they speak a language, it's got a small vocabulary size like biblical

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Hebrew, they immediately recognize words are gonna have multiple literal definitions.

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The thing about, I mean, you get the biggest difference between biblical Hebrew and English.

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Biblical Hebrew, if you don't count the names of people in cities, only has 3000 words,

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English, millions of words. I mean, just to be fluent in English, you have to know over 100 ,000 words.

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And so those of us who speak English typically draw their conclusion, any word has only one definition, only one literal definition, maybe lots of figurative definitions, but any small vocabulary language, the nouns, especially the nouns always have multiple literal definitions.

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Another example you see in the Old Testament is the word for earth, arrest.

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It's got five distinct literal definitions. Almost every Hebrew noun has multiple literal definitions.

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So this is why when I engage people like Jason Weil, I said, you're not the only one who takes the

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Bible and there's a word yom as being literal, I do too. There's four distinct literal definitions for the

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Hebrew word yom. And so I'm reading the text just as literally as you're reading the text, but we're using different literal definitions.

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And so, yeah, once you get outside the English speaking world, this is nowhere near the controversy that it is with us because of that understanding.

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Now, when we, I mean, again, the term literal, I think is one of those hot button terms because it can be a, and I'm not saying that Dr.

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Lyle does this. I think the discussion you guys had was excellent and no one was really trying to use any rhetorical tricks or anything like that.

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But the word literal can be used as a rhetorical tool. I'm interpreting the

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Bible literally, but you're not. You see what I'm saying? You're doing the metaphorical thing.

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And if you follow that, you can make the Bible mean whatever it means. You know how this stuff goes. You've been accused of all sorts of stuff, which what

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I appreciate, you did do a discussion. I won't mention the person's name, but you did do a discussion where this person kept on referring to, well, my

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God doesn't, assuming that his God was not your God, and you kept your cool. And that's one thing

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I appreciate about you is whether someone agrees or disagrees, we're brothers and we need to try to be patient and understanding as 1

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Peter 3, verse 15 says that we need to be ready to give an answer with gentleness and respect. And I think you exemplify that very well.

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However, this word literal can be used as kind of this tool.

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But when we kind of get into the details, when you say a word has multiple literal definitions, of course, the definition that we choose is going to be based upon the context in which it's going to be used.

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So in your understanding, because there's a difference between asking a modern reader with their background to understand a text, and then to ask the question of how would an ancient interpreter, a

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Jew, a Hebrew from those Old Testament times, how they would have understood it. Are you suggesting that the average

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Jew in Moses time would have understood day in Genesis as allowing for this long period of time as you're suggesting?

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Well, this is why I think it's helpful to read the writings of the early church fathers. They wrote on the first chapter of Genesis more than they did any other texts of the

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Bible. I mean, even though we have a lot of lost texts from the early church fathers, over 2000 pages of commentary exist to this day, written by people writing before the council of Nicaea.

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And so I've read all of their writings. And what I noticed is different from the modern day debate is that they had their disagreements on what this word day means and how it should be interpreted, and what are the timescales for creation, but they were charitable towards one another.

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And they realize, you know what, we need to basically wait and see how this plays out.

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And so, but I've also noticed that when I've debated younger creationists, they always interpret the early church fathers as being young earth.

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And I noticed older creation is always interpret the early church fathers as being older.

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But this is why I wrote on it, my book, A Matter of Days, being basically saying, if you actually look at what they've written, number one, of those 2000 pages of commentary, yeah, it's in there, only two pages deal with the timescale issue.

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So one of the things you learn is that the early church fathers didn't see this as a crucial doctrinal issue.

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When they were looking at Genesis one, their main point is who creates and how he creates.

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When he creates, they saw very much as a side issue. As I said, barely two pages out of 2000.

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And you look at those two pages, they were not making definitive statements. I mean, what they write, in my opinion, is vague enough that you could take it any way you want.

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And proof of that is, you got old earth creationists citing the same people as the young earth creationists cite, even the same text.

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And the point is, I think it's so easy to interpret the early church fathers in the context of the 21st century.

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If we interpret it in their historical context, they're basically saying, this is an issue that could go either way.

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I mean, you've got Augustine saying, that's a mistake to interpret these days as 24 hours, but he also says that he believed that God created instantaneously.

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But I think what Augustine was basically saying is, we've got God performing multiple miraculous creations, and each one is instantaneous, but they're not all simultaneous.

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I mean, he made it very clear. Just the chronology you see in Genesis one tells us they're not simultaneous, but he was the one that said explicitly, it would be a big mistake to interpret these as only 24 hour periods.

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Yeah. Dr. Ross though, I guess my question is, say

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I'm Moses, I write Genesis, I write the creation account, and I read it to the children of Israel.

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How do you think the children of Israel would have understood it? And I'm asking that as an open -ended question.

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I'm not trying to assume like they would understand it this way as opposed... Do you think the understanding of the ancient

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Jew would have been like, yeah, he's not talking about days, or do you think they're not even asking the question?

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Well, I think that's the correct point. I mean, again, when I would look at it, they would probably interpret it the way the early church fathers interpreted it.

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99 .9 % of the content is focusing on who creates and how he creates and why he creates.

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So they would see the when issue as being entirely trivial to the main communication of the text.

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Moreover, there's nothing in their culture that would warrant them making a big deal about this.

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This is long before we measured the expansion rate of the universe, long before we discovered galaxies, long before we were even recognizing that the stars were as far away as aware.

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Although it is true, the ancient Egyptians knew that the stars had to be bodies just like the sun because they tried to measure the distance and with a naked eye, they couldn't do it, but that was enough to tell them they're very far away and given how bright they are, they must be bodies just like the sun.

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And so, I mean, they did know something about astronomy, but it's nothing compared to what we understand.

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So I can see why someone in the 21st century would be very interested in the when issue where someone living 4 ,000 years ago, it's like, hey, this is not even on my radar screen because I'm dealing with a culture that's denying the

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God that created actually is worshiping multiple gods. They got all these idols.

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And so, religion isn't the same today as it was 4 ,000 years ago. So you would say that, so to answer the question, how would an

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Old Testament Jew understand this? It's the wrong question to ask. They're not asking those questions because it's not on their radar.

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I think that if they were focusing on it like the early church fathers did, they're 0 .1 % of their commentary.

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It's like, you notice what they came to was something that was very vaguely written and very brief, which means they could go either way on it.

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However, you do have a certain Old Testament texts that these people do cite where David, for example, speaks about the age -old hills or refers to the ancient river

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Kidron flowing through the Jezreel Valley. And then

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God comparing his eternal existence to how long the mountains have been around.

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So those Old Testament texts that could communicate that the ancient peoples had some idea that the earth has been here for a very long period of time.

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You've got David writing a Psalm in the wilderness and he talks about the ancient hills.

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And my wife and I have actually visited that part of Israel. These are mountains that are about 2000 feet high, but at the bottom, you see a huge pile of boulders and rubble and sand.

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And if you sit there for maybe a week, maybe a couple of rocks fall off the mountain, but that's all.

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And so when you look at the huge pile at the bottom, you realize, wow, this mountain must have been here a long time for that pile to be that big and for that much erosion to be showing up on the mountain.

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So it's basically making the point that I think we in the 21st century tend to think that ancient peoples were much more ignorant to science than they really were.

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I mean, you read Joe, for example, he's talking about science all over the place.

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Matter of fact, sometimes I've worked with my Caltech buddies and said, you know, in many respects, people living 4 ,000 years ago knew more about science than we do because they were actually in intimate contact with these wild birds and wild mammals.

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And as Joba said, examine these creatures. They'll teach you important spiritual lessons.

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The problem with PhD scientists today, they're in these huge cities, in these laboratories, cut off from any contact with wild birds and wild mammals.

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They've never seen the Milky Way because they're living in cities where there's way too much light pollution. And so maybe you live in Beijing or Shanghai, the heavens aren't declaring a thing because you look up at the night sky, you can't see a single star.

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The heavens declare, wait, let's get the smog out of the way. The heavens declare something. We gotta get that stuff out of the way to see it.

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All right, I still have some more questions, but we do have, last guest that I had, some of the questions disappeared.

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So I know we're gonna do main questions towards the backend, but those who have given a super chat,

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I do wanna give preference to their questions. So some of the questions that I will ask throughout, which

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I'm gonna ask right now, a question you're sending in, some of them may or may not have to do anything with what we're talking about.

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I hope you don't mind that. So here is a question from Spartan Theology who gave $4 .99.

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I'd love to know what Dr. Ross thinks about his debate with Tom Jump yesterday. Yeah, I did have a good, friendly discussion with Tom Jump.

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I've been on with him before, not a Christian. He identifies himself as an atheist.

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And we were talking about UFOs, extraterrestrials and aliens. Okay. We did agree that physical aliens like us that are constrained by the laws of physics could not traverse interstellar space.

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Okay. The main debate was what is reported as a UFO phenomena.

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Is it simply people's delusions, people misinterpreting natural phenomena, or are we really dealing with intelligent beings from another dimension, another dimensional realm that are actually causing physical things to happen here on earth?

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And so I was basically citing the evidence because I think he was of the opinion that there's only a small database of a credible evidence.

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And I agreed with him, yeah, 99%. Cause I've been dealing with UFO reports since I was 16.

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I was always a guy that had to feel the reports at the different universities where I served. And 99 % of what people report as UFOs do have natural explanations or can be attributed to hoaxes or military aircraft.

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But I was arguing that that 1 % residual is not a tiny database, that there are over 2000 documented cases where a

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UFO has been observed coming through the atmosphere where you've got multiple observers where you can actually track the trajectory and where it actually crashes into the ground and you go to the crash site, you see a crater.

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You actually see if there's snow there, the snow is melted, the vegetation is damaged and the damage looks like some kind of radiation effect.

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But there's not a single artifact or debris there which tells me we're dealing with something that is real, but not physical.

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If it was physical, we would get a sonic boom. We would get heat friction as it comes through the atmosphere at a calculated velocity of over 18 ,000 miles an hour.

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You're gonna get heat and you're gonna get a sonic boom. None of that was ever recorded.

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You go to the crash site, you can see evidence that there was energy released but there's no physical artifacts.

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Nothing Tom's position was, if you don't have physical artifacts, it's not real which is the same position that a professor

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I had many decades ago, Carl Sagan said when he commented on UFOs.

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But my comment was, well, Carl Sagan doesn't believe in non -physical reality.

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So of course he did miss us at all. But we're already talking about over a hundred million reports of UFOs.

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This is not a small database. And again, what I was saying with Tom is that I can understand his skepticism because he's an

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American. And here in America, not that many people are having UFO encounters which is something

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I wrote about my book, ''Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men.'' There's a one -to -one correlation between the degree of UFO experiences in the population that fall in that 1 % residual and the degree of occult activity going on.

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And I referred to in my book that this is a testable hypothesis. If you eliminate the occult in your life, you'll no longer have these

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UFO encounters. But if you begin to pursue the occult, you may have multiple encounters.

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Moreover, 100 % of these encounters are deleterious. None of them are beneficial or favorable.

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The best you're gonna come away with is terrifying, repeating nightmares. Tom was asking, well,

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I wanna have real physical evidence. And I says, well, if you look at the database, there are cases where humans have had a close encounter with a

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UFO and the animals, the dogs and cows that are associated with that person, they get killed on the spot.

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And it's like, okay, you can't claim that the animal is having some kind of delusion, but it's something we do see in demonology that the animals are emotionally bonded to the human that's involved in the occult can also be impacted by these beings from another dimension.

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So in a nutshell, that was kind of where our debate was. It was a friendly debate. Yeah. It did get recorded.

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It's not up yet, but within a day or two people will watch it. And we took questions from the audience.

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So that was kind of fun. Well, very good. I had a debate with Tom before and we had a good discussion and he's got a couple of good discussions with some scholars and things on his channel.

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So I think we'll check that one. One more question from Super Chat and then we're going to go back to my line of questioning and then we'll continue.

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So Slam RN gives $2. Thank you so much for that. He says, can you go into the starlight problem?

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Thanks. Why don't you briefly tell us what the problem is and perhaps what is your view on it and why you think the young earth understanding of the whole starlight issue is.

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You know, when Jason and I were on with you, I mean,

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I kind of felt sorry for you because you're trying to moderate this debate. I knew you had questions of your own, but you never got to ask them.

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And I knew you were struggling too trying to follow the dialogue we're having because both of us are astronomers and I think we lost the audience in a few places.

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And I could see you struggling trying to bring it back. By the way, I thought you did great. So I really do appreciate all of your attempts to try to bring it back to a lay level.

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Thank you. Starlight problem is the fact that if we're dealing with a universe that's less than 10 ,000 years old, how do you explain the fact that we can see light from distant stars and galaxies?

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And what Jason was trying to claim, well, that's because the velocity of light indeed is 186 ,000 miles per second, but that's a round trip calculation.

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And he's basically saying, what if the velocity of light were infinite coming towards us and half the velocity of light going away from us?

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And years ago, as I read what he was writing, I thought he was making the point that the center of the earth is a unique favored location in the universe where light comes to the center of the earth at infinite velocity.

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But one of the things I learned from the discussion we had in your show is I don't think that's Jason's position.

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He believes it doesn't matter where the observer is. The velocity of light is infinite coming in from distant stars and galaxies.

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But this causes a problem if you've got two observers at two different locations observing at the same time.

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But part of our discussion was he's a presuppositionalist and therefore the fact that we see objects of different ages throughout the universe, he doesn't see that as a factor.

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It's like he holds up the Bible and says, this is the young earth book. It doesn't matter what

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I see in the universe. But as I read the Bible, we had a little bit of a discussion on this, how the

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Bible actually declares that God reveals himself truthfully through two books, not just one book, but two books, the record of nature and the record of scripture.

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And therefore you really can't dismiss all this evidence astronomers have that the farther away we look, the younger objects seem to be.

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And that would make sense if indeed the light is taking a lot of time to reach your telescopes.

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I mean, the fact that a galaxy 12 billion light years away appears to have all the measurements that indicate that is 12 billion years younger than galaxies we see up close is evidence that the light really is traveling towards us at 186 ,000 miles per second.

33:18

But as I understand Jason, it's like he would deny that those distant objects actually appear to be younger.

33:26

But again, I'm not the only astronomer that's called him on this, is that we really do see burnt out stars.

33:35

We see these burnt out stars are cooling. And as we look at different distances, we really do see that the universe appears to be younger and younger as you look farther and farther away.

33:48

But again, if you're a hyper presuppositionalist, it's basically easy to say none of that evidence counts because evidence really isn't a factor in determining my worldview.

33:58

I'm basically putting words in Jason's mouth, but I think I'm being accurate in portraying his position.

34:04

I don't know if you would agree. I don't know if you would agree with that. I don't wanna put words in his mouth, but I don't think that it doesn't matter about the evidence, what evidence is presented.

34:16

I think he understands that evidence is interpreted in light of one's presupposition. So if his presupposition is that the

34:23

Bible is the word of God and that when he approaches the Bible with regards to this question, it teaches a young earth as he sees it, then that will, to be consistent, that will inform how he interprets the data.

34:35

I'm not sure, it would be that he doesn't, no amount of evidence would convince him out of his position.

34:41

He's really understanding that evidence always is interpreted within a framework. And you guys are operating on different frameworks with regards to how you understand how

34:49

Genesis 1 and 2. I'm not the only astronomer, let's call them on this, basically saying the only evidence you'll look at is evidence that fits his presupposition.

34:58

He ignores a huge amount of evidence that contradicts his position. Well, I mean, evidence that contradicts his position is going to be based upon other presuppositions.

35:08

So the presuppositions inform the interpretation of the data. I think the difference between you and Dr. Lyle is that you guys have different presuppositions with regards to how to understand the creation account.

35:20

You think that it's teaching one thing, he thinks that it's teaching another, and those presuppositions are actually going to be affecting how we interpret the data.

35:30

So I don't think he or you would dismiss any evidence contrary. It's the issue of evidence is interpreted in light of presuppositions.

35:38

So I think that would be a fundamental difference between how you guys might approach that in my estimation.

35:45

Are you still there, Hugh? You might, you're actually, I don't know if you can still hear me, but you're actually pixelating.

35:51

And if you wanna sign out and then come back in and follow that link, that might work, okay?

35:56

So I'm gonna remove you from the stream real quick and we'll invite him back on.

36:03

Guys, if you have questions, please send them in towards the back end. We're going to be taking questions.

36:08

Of course, Super Chat questions, I'll stop and kind of ask them right away. I had a guest on a couple of days ago and some of the questions disappeared.

36:17

So we don't want that to happen. So if you send in a Super Chat and we stop and address the question, I'm doing that because I don't want it to kind of disappear.

36:25

I don't know what happened last time. So hopefully no one else's questions will disappear mysteriously. But so far,

36:31

I hope you guys are enjoying this conversation. There's some interesting comments on the side.

36:37

I won't get to all the comments, but we'll try to address many of the questions. But this is, for me, our presuppositions really are going to affect how we interpret the scientific data.

36:51

So I do understand what Dr. Ross is saying, that, you know, well, this evidence seems to contradict your position.

36:57

But again, we understand evidence in light of our presuppositions. I think the key difference between Dr. Lyle and Dr.

37:02

Ross is that they're operating under different presuppositions, which in turn is affecting how they're interpreting the data.

37:08

And of course, I could accumulate people who share my presuppositions and point to the person and say, hey, look, you're rejecting the evidence.

37:15

I don't think that's the issue. But again, this is why we have these sorts of discussions and it's important to kind of bring these things out.

37:24

Okay. Again, we're still waiting for Dr. Ross to come back in. Hopefully he does. Otherwise you'll be looking at my face and I'm not the expert in this specific area.

37:34

There we go. You made it. Good. Yeah, my internet dropped out. I'm sorry.

37:39

We thought you got wrapped up. We thought you got wrapped up. That's fine. Which is actually bad because that means

37:46

I got left behind. What's up with that? Yeah, that could be a problem. All right.

37:52

So again, so that was the super chat question. I wanna move back to my original line of questioning.

37:59

And you said something towards the beginning where I think you alluded to something to the effect that this conversation is a conversation between brothers.

38:08

And throughout the church history, people have been ambiguous on this point so that it was an open sort of discussion.

38:14

But I understand that some young earth creationists, Jason Lyle to be specific, and a lot of those folks over at Answers in Genesis see this as yes, an in -house discussion, but very much a topic that touches upon the nature of the gospel.

38:29

And so there's a big hullabaloo that people have with the old earth creationist perspective allowing death before the fall.

38:38

So why don't you touch on that? How do you respond to that key verse that's often brought up that through one man, sin came in, death came to all.

38:49

And so they kind of use that verse as a way to show that your position is actually compromising on what they think is a clear biblical concept.

39:00

Well, this is important because I think this is a much more divisive issue than the age of the earth and the universe.

39:07

What we think about death before Adam. And as you pointed out, a number of young earth creationists see this as a salvation issue.

39:17

And again, it's basically what does Romans 5, 12 through 19 actually state?

39:24

And I've been critical of young earth creationists because they only quote part of Romans 5, 12.

39:31

If you look at the entirety of the verse, Romans 5, 12, it says death through sin was visited upon all people.

39:39

And what you need to note there is that Paul is being very careful to qualify what kind of death he's speaking about.

39:47

And this is Romans. The book of Romans deals with four distinct kinds of death. And so it's appropriate that Paul would explain it's this kind of death

39:58

I'm speaking about, not this, this or this. And so he says, death through sin was visited upon all people.

40:05

Well, the only species of life on planet earth that can experience sin are human beings.

40:12

And notice he says death to all people, not death to all life. And if you read down to verse 19, he repeats that three more times.

40:22

So again, he's going overboard to tell you that when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, that brought death to humanity for the first time.

40:32

He's being very careful to exclude the plants and the animals. And I've had weekend long debates with a younger theologians on this.

40:42

And they do agree that nowhere in the Bible does it ever rule out the death of plants and animals before Adam sinned.

40:51

The Bible is silent on that issue. It doesn't say that it didn't happen. It doesn't say that it did happen.

40:57

It's completely silent. But the fact that Paul is being exclusive to human beings, and again, he does it in 1

41:06

Corinthians 15, 20 to 22, you see the same qualifications. And on that basis, we

41:13

Christians should not make a big deal about plants and animals dying before sin because the

41:19

Bible doesn't make a big deal about it. It's not explicit one way or the other. On the other hand,

41:25

I think we need to appreciate it's thanks to God bringing the death of plants and animals before Adam that we human beings can have global high technology civilization.

41:38

The civilization and the population that we have would be impossible without coal, oil, natural gas, limestone, marble, gypsum, concentrated metals in the crust of the earth.

41:52

That's what made it possible for us to launch civilization and build up a big population.

41:58

I actually cite a verse in Revelation 7, verse nine, where it talks about the host of the redeemed human beings and says it's an uncountable number.

42:11

And the Greeks in the first century could count up to a billion. So that tells me God's intent all along is that billions of human beings would be saved.

42:21

And for billions to be saved, we need billions of years of death of plants and animals predating

42:29

Adam and Eve in order to make all that possible. I think what's happening in the young earth perspective is they look at carnivores killing and eating herbivores as somehow besmirching

42:43

God's character. I mean, I've heard them say a loving God would never allow carnivorous activity.

42:50

That carnivorous activity must be a consequence of human sin. But then you've got passages in Psalm and Job where it says that God shows his love to the lion, his love to the raven and the eagle by providing them with prey.

43:06

And again, I think this is a problem of how many of us live in big cities. I mean, again, if you look at the early church fathers, they recognize that carnivorous activity is an essential ingredient to maintain the health and the population of the herbivores.

43:24

And so often I remind my young earth friends, you go back 50 years in Australia, they had a huge problem with rabbits.

43:32

They brought rabbits to Australia, but there were no carnivores there that were killing them. And therefore what happened is that these rabbits spread disease, not only in their own population, but the other herbivores.

43:45

And so they quickly had to find a way to bring the rabbit population under control. And actually, if you don't have carnivores, you actually increase the death rate of the herbivores.

43:57

So the carnivores actually benefit the herbivores in enhancing their population level and maintaining their health.

44:06

And again, I think it's because we human beings are the ultimate carnivore. We can kill any animal we want, the lion can't.

44:15

The lion can only kill the weak, the injured and the diseased and the dying. Whereas we go out and hunt and we kill the primary male in the herd because we can do it.

44:27

But if you look at the wolves or the lions or the leopards, that's not how they hunt.

44:33

They do not have the capability of killing the prime animals. They have to kill the ones that are suffering from disease.

44:40

In fact, what's really interesting, you can watch a National Geographic video clip and it shows these

44:47

Alaskan brown bears coming down to the beach where there's about a thousand walruses on the beach.

44:55

And what the bear does is he hugs these walruses one at a time, goes down the line of the walruses, hugs the walruses.

45:04

That bear is looking for a sick walrus. And when it finds a sick walrus, it kills the walrus and eats it.

45:12

But what's interesting, those walruses could easily take on that bear and kill a bear, but they don't.

45:19

It seems like they know that having that sick member of their herd preyed upon by that bear is gonna be good for them.

45:27

So they actually allow the bears to come down the line and hug all of them because they know if they show that they're strong, the bear's not gonna touch them.

45:36

Okay. Now, a couple of things here. So Romans 5 .12, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin.

45:48

You would say that it's an illegitimate verse to use as combating the notion of death before the fall.

45:55

Even if the Bible taught there was no death before the fall, you would argue that you can't use that verse to demonstrate it.

46:02

Well, basically that verse is saying that's what brought death to humans for the first time. Use that verse to say that's the first time that death came to rabbits and cockroaches and horses.

46:15

That's a mistake. Because it says death to all people. That does not say death to all life.

46:22

What interests me as well is, I remember listening to a talk by Jason Lyle on dinosaurs.

46:31

And he said, look at these large teeth, these sharp teeth that are made to rip and tear through fruit and vegetables.

46:41

And so there's the common notion that the young earth creationist believes that animals that we think are,

46:47

I mean, just tailor made for tearing through flesh actually ate plants at some point.

46:54

How would you respond to that passage? I don't remember the exact text, but that passage in Genesis where it seems to suggest that God has given all of the plants to the animals to eat.

47:03

So they try to argue from the text that the Bible teaches that animals were primarily or exclusively herbivores before the fall.

47:12

Well, I think they're misreading that text. This is where God is giving a command not to Adam and Eve and human beings.

47:19

I'm putting you in charge of the planet. You're to manage the planet's resources for the benefit of all life.

47:26

And you need to especially take care of the green vegetation. It uses the noun desher, which is basically referring to photosynthetic life.

47:36

And what God is basically communicating to human beings, if you don't primarily take care of the photosynthetic life, nobody gets to eat.

47:45

All life, whether they're carnivores or herbivores or parasites or detritivores, they all depend on photosynthetic life.

47:54

And so we need to make sure as we manage the planet that we take care of the base of the food chain.

48:00

And again, if you look at the book of Job, the command to manage the planet for the benefit of all life is not just a verse or two.

48:09

You get a couple of chapters where Job 38, 37, 38 and 39.

48:16

All right, very good. We have one more Super Chat question and then I'm going to rev up for my last question and then we'll take some questions.

48:23

Obviously I would imagine there are so many questions that we could ask. Hopefully, here's my hope in this particular episode is that these talking points provide a platform for folks to dig in a little deeper.

48:35

And if you listen to what Dr. Ross says and you completely disagree with him, dig deep, have good reasons for your position and be able to defend them.

48:44

And that's how healthy debate and dialogue happens, okay? So I'm going to put up the

48:51

Super Chat question and then we'll jump into my last question which is going to be dealing with the nature of presuppositions and interpretation of data and then we'll move into some of the overall questions, okay?

49:01

So here's another question. Thank you so much for the $5 Slam RN. I hope I'm saying that right, Slam RN. Can you talk about the definitive evidence against anisotropy of light with the supernova behind the galaxy cluster?

49:14

Thank you very much, Dr. Ross. Well, this is part of the discussion we had with Jason Lyle and I'm not sure the audience is following us but there's a supernova in a very distant galaxy where you've got a galaxy cluster in front of that galaxy.

49:32

Gravitational lenses in that galaxy that are bending the light. And so the light from that supernova eruption is taking different paths and different angles to come to the earth.

49:45

And what astronomers have noticed is a single supernova eruption, we've seen it at three different times over the course of three years.

49:54

And the reason why is that you get one, picture of the supernova where the path is almost directly towards us.

50:04

And so there's no angle cut. And so you've got a shorter light travel path. And so we see that light earlier than we do one where the light travel path is much longer.

50:16

But as I heard Jason's responses, he's basically saying, I'm not arguing for a favorite position, like somehow the earth is a favorite position where the velocity of light is coming in an infinite towards us.

50:30

Because the number of astronomers have pointed out that's refuted because here you got the light taking a bend away from the earth and then towards the earth as a result of the gravitational lens.

50:42

But I think the way Jason's defending his position says none of that matters. If the velocity of light is coming in at an infinite velocity towards the reservoir regardless of the path length and regardless of where that observer is.

50:57

And so I'm planning to actually write an email to Jason basically saying, I mean, do you actually extend that to the point of view that if you've got the

51:05

James Webb telescope making an observation and observers on earth making the observation, how they're both gonna see the event at the same time and basically see what's going on.

51:17

And I don't have to cite old earth creationists. There's another young earth creation is

51:22

Danny Faulkner who's basically made the point that if you make that argument, you do deal with inconsistencies in trying to explain the features of the universe that we observe.

51:34

We were talking about that earlier. This idea that the velocity of light actually is coming at us at 186 ,000 miles per second given the different angles that we're seeing is consistent with the fact as you look far away, galaxies look a lot younger than galaxies that are up close.

51:53

And we see more burnt out stars we're looking at galaxies up close than we do galaxies far away.

52:00

Why would there be more of these burnt out stars? And why can we actually see these burnt out stars cooling?

52:07

I mean, think of an ember on a fire. We've got a log on the fire, it runs out of fuel, it becomes an ember.

52:14

So it's no longer burning, but it takes time to cool off and become a black ember. While the universe is not yet old enough that we have black dwarfs, we have white dwarfs that are still cooling off.

52:27

But white dwarfs are different from other white dwarfs. Some white dwarfs exhibit a lot more cooling than other black or white dwarfs do.

52:34

And the cooling we see is consistent with universe being approximately 14 billion years old.

52:41

So it's those kinds of evidences that we never really got to discuss with Jason. And a number of astronomers contacted me and said, why didn't you press him on those issues?

52:51

Well, I mean, there was a limited amount of time that we were talking about other issues. Let me ask you, if you could have

52:59

Jason, if Jason was like, hey, let's get together and do something else, what would be the specific topic that you would really wanna focus on?

53:09

Okay, this goes back more than a decade ago, about 15 years ago. Okay.

53:14

It was the first debate I had with Jason where he was claiming, yeah, we young earth creations can answer the light travel time problem.

53:22

The light can get here quickly. And he brought up all these technical issues. And I said,

53:28

Jason, the lay audience isn't gonna follow us on this. Would you be willing to have a dialogue with me where we have a panel of evangelical

53:37

Christian astronomers actually evaluate our debate? And he said, yes.

53:44

But then when I pressed him on it repeatedly over the next four years, he basically said, I can't do it now,

53:50

I have to do it later. Well, after four years, I realized he wasn't gonna do it. But I did a debate with Danny Faulkner, another young earth creations astronomer, and people in the audience were aware that I had challenged

54:05

Jason on this. And they said, well, Danny, how about you?

54:10

Are you willing to defend this view in front of an audience that actually understands the technicalities?

54:15

And he said, yes. And to Danny's credit, he followed through. We actually had that debate.

54:22

It was a two hour debate in front of a panel of 13 evangelical Christian astronomers that both

54:29

Danny and I agreed upon were good selections for evaluating our debate.

54:35

The whole thing got video recorded, it was shown on national television, and including a statement from the 13 astronomers, plus three of those astronomers went on camera to verbally express their evaluation of the debate.

54:51

And you heard me say it when I was on with you, basically saying, Jason, we've been over this over the past 15 years, would you be willing to have this kind of dialogue?

55:01

And so that actually happened in the discussion we had that you moderated.

55:07

And so I would say the same thing. Jason wants to do this, let's actually do it in front of an audience that understands the technicalities where the lay audience isn't gonna be lost.

55:19

And when we did in that debate with Danny Faulkner, the moderator said, we're gonna make this a long debate so that we don't lose.

55:28

He says, if I don't understand it, I'm gonna stop you. And because it was a two hour debate, lay people could understand what we were saying.

55:38

15 minute debate. I listened to it. How did Danny Faulkner, was it Faulkner?

55:44

It was Danny Faulkner, yeah. How did he do? Did he give an answer to the point you wanted to know and you found it insufficient?

55:52

What was your estimation of what he had to give? Well, you can actually read, because what we put on our website at reasons .org

56:01

is a statement from those 13 astronomers. This is amazing, because we said, look, it's great that you made a verbal set of comments, but only three of you were part of that.

56:13

Let's get a statement from all 13 of you. And they submitted a statement that was 43 pages long with several hundred end notes to the scientific literature.

56:23

And we said, lay people aren't gonna read that. Can you condense it to one page? It took him a year to condense it to one page.

56:31

43 pages to one page. Oh my goodness. Well, I basically said, look, we have an example in the

56:37

New Testament where there's a debate between the circumcision party and Paul and Barnabas.

56:43

And said, they had the Jerusalem elders adjudicate the debate between Paul and Barnabas and the people thought you had to be circumcised to be saved.

56:54

And so they produced a statement that was just two sentences long. So I challenged these astronomers and said, hey, they reduced it to two sentences.

57:02

Can you reduce it to one page? Well, it took them a year, but their statement is beautifully written, very well written.

57:09

It's up on our website. All you need to do is put an astronomer statement. It'll pop up the names of all the astronomers there and where they do the research.

57:19

You're welcome to contact them. But in my opinion, I saw

57:25

Danny basically ducking the issues. And he really tried to turn it into a biblical debate.

57:32

And so I went with him on that. And I made a lot of biblical statements, but the astronomers basically stuck with the book of nature evidence.

57:43

Because they said, that's what we're here for. And this is what this debate is all about. That's where we're going to focus.

57:48

Okay. All right, here's my last question. And then we're going to get into the audience question and then we'll wrap things up.

57:54

There are quite a bit of questions, but I think they're all manageable. They're not anything that would violate your time.

58:00

I think we can go through them rather quickly. But my question is, actually, that's not my question.

58:07

Here we go. Okay. So, and again, I'm not asking this to cause contention or anything like that.

58:15

It's just based on a comment that you made. And then I want to go into the issue of presuppositions and interpretation.

58:21

Okay. So you had a debate years ago with Dr. Lyle. You said in the past, in this past debate, that it is easier to defend a flat earth than it is to defend a young universe.

58:33

Okay. Well, here's my cursory question. Do you still believe that that's true?

58:41

Well, it's, yes. In fact, that actually came up in the Supreme Court on young earth creationism.

58:48

I think that was in 1987, where a geophysicist came in front of the Supreme, the nine

58:55

Supreme Court people, and basically said, yes, the amount of scientific evidence supporting a young earth is actually weaker than the evidence supporting a flat earth.

59:07

Okay. As an astronomer, there's hardly anything in my discipline that would remain if you adopt a young earth position.

59:16

Actually, I've seen this in a number of young earth textbooks on astronomy. They stop at the solar system.

59:23

Once you get past the solar system, the astronomical evidence is utterly overwhelming against a young earth paradigm.

59:30

And yeah, I do still hold to that position that as an astronomer and a physicist, it'd be easier to defend a flat earth than it would be to defend a young earth.

59:40

I think the reason why this debate rages here in America, not that many Americans have taken a university level course in physics or astronomy.

59:49

So they simply aren't aware of the evidence. Whereas in Europe, where I've spoken on this subject, many more, a much larger percentage of the population has the educational background to appreciate that.

01:00:03

All right. So let me finish the question here. So you said in a past debate that it's easier to defend flat earth than it is to defend a young universe.

01:00:11

But isn't it the case though that, and again, I'm asking this from a, people will laugh because as a presuppositionalist,

01:00:18

I always say there's no neutrality, but we both believe in the Bible. So we, in one sense, we believe there's no neutrality.

01:00:26

We agree with this, but with regards to this in -house discussion, I think I'm trying to be as neutral as possible.

01:00:33

So I'm coming, this question comes from a, as best as I can, neutral position where I don't know where I land.

01:00:39

And so my, let me finish the question here. Where did

01:00:44

I leave it off here? I'm so sorry. Okay, so isn't it the case though that the interpretation of the scientific data is very much dependent upon one's presuppositions that are brought to the investigation?

01:00:56

So if a young earth creationist interpretation affects the interpretation of the scientific data, isn't it also the case that the presupposition of an old earth understanding affects the interpretation of the data as well?

01:01:08

So it seems to me that what one considers a more plausible interpretation of the scientific data is going to be based upon one's presuppositions.

01:01:18

So why don't you, because this is my issue. I don't care if the earth is six to 10 ,000 years old.

01:01:26

If the Bible teaches that, I'm completely confident that God is able to do it and that's completely fine with me.

01:01:33

So I, so in one sense, there's a way in which I don't care which view is correct because if the

01:01:39

Bible teaches one view, I affirm that. Okay, but our presuppositions govern the way we come to the data.

01:01:46

So if Lyle's presuppositions of his understanding and interpretation of Genesis affects his interpretation and your understanding of the text affects your interpretation, then how can we say one view is more plausible than the other since the way we're interpreting is based on the presuppositions.

01:02:05

Does that make sense? It does. And the way you state it is something I very much appreciate because what

01:02:10

I'm hearing from a number of young earth leaders is that the age of the earth is a matter of biblical authority.

01:02:16

That if you deny the age of the universe being less than 10 ,000 years of age, you're basically saying the

01:02:23

Bible has no authority. The way you're stating it, I like. It's a matter of biblical interpretation.

01:02:30

It's not a matter of biblical authority. I believe in the authority of scripture just as much as any young earth creationist.

01:02:37

I mean, you had my colleague on, Ken Samples, who talks about how all of us have reasons to believe upholds sola scriptura.

01:02:46

So the authority of the Bible is not the issue. It's the interpretation of the Bible. But let me talk about what

01:02:52

I think is the most important presupposition. One we actually discussed when Jason and I were on with you is that from a younger perspective, they have the presupposition that the laws of physics changed in very dramatic ways at the fall of Adam, the flood of Noah, and most of them believe it took place at both instances.

01:03:13

Whereas those of us from an older perspective hold that the laws of physics have not changed.

01:03:19

And that's why I made the comment in our dialogue with you that it's the Bible that states that the laws of physics are immutable.

01:03:28

Jeremiah 33 and Romans eight, how God basically talks about how the

01:03:34

Jews changed their mind all the time. And he says, I'm a God that doesn't change. You want evidence?

01:03:39

Look at the laws that govern the heavens and the earth. As they don't change, I don't change.

01:03:45

But that's a major presupposition separating old earth and young earth creationists. I take the position, the laws of physics haven't changed.

01:03:54

Jason and other young earth creationists take the position it's changed radically. Where I do appreciate my friends in the young earth community they put in writing in the rate books that indeed, if the laws of physics have not changed the earth and the universe must be billions of years old.

01:04:11

So they're conceding that point. So they're basically making that as a very explicit statement.

01:04:19

What really separates us is what happens to the laws of physics. But the fact that the Bible explicitly says there's no change in the laws of physics.

01:04:28

And again, as an astronomer, I can look at a galaxy a million light years away and measure the laws of physics when the light left that galaxy.

01:04:38

And we've done that with galaxies as far back as 12 and a half billion light years. The laws of physics measure to be identical to what we measure in the lab.

01:04:47

In fact, I've actually cited that as a piece of evidence that the Bible predicted future scientific discoveries.

01:04:54

Because thousands of years ago, the Bible said no change in the laws of physics. We couldn't put that to the test until the 20th century.

01:05:03

When we did, it proved that the Bible got it right. So I actually use that when

01:05:08

I share my Christian faith with scientists saying, here's evidence that the Bible predicted a future scientific discovery and got it right.

01:05:16

And guess what? It always gets it right. Whether it's talking about the expansion of the universe, whether it's talking about the events and creation in Genesis chapter one, it always gets the science right thousands of years ahead of the time we scientists prove that it got it right.

01:05:35

And it's the only holy book that can say that. That's not true of the Quran, it's not true of the

01:05:40

Vedas or the Buddhist commentaries. It's only true of the Bible. That's one reason why

01:05:45

I think it's important to be an evidentialist. Because as an evidentialist, I can point to the book of nature and say, this proves that this words of the

01:05:54

Bible are inspired and inerrant. Okay, I'm gonna throw this out if you're willing to do it, because you just made mention about the

01:06:05

Bible always getting it right. I would love to have you back on to address the issue of the language in scripture, four corners, on the pillars, these kinds of things that people point to the

01:06:18

Bible as being scientifically like horrendous, like, look how they understood. I would love to have you on to discuss just that topic.

01:06:26

I think that's an important topic. And I think you'd be a great person to - I'll be happy to do it, I've written on it.

01:06:32

But I'll just tell you this, there are astrophysicists at Caltech that still talk about the four corners of the earth.

01:06:39

So, I mean, it's your speech. So we will work that out.

01:06:46

I'd really appreciate it. I think that's a really important topic because not for people who are in the apologetics game, but for kind of a lot of a lay people who are defending their faith against common objections.

01:06:56

I think a lot of people hear those sorts of things and they don't understand. A lot of public atheists. I mean, I see it all over the internet.

01:07:01

Atheists are saying, here is proof that the Bible got it wrong. Right. Or they try to claim that the

01:07:07

Bible is a flat earth book and things like that. All right, well, that's great. Well, let's go to the questions and if you can just answer them as distinctly as you're able to.

01:07:16

Of course, obviously say whatever you need to say, but we'll try to move to these rather quickly and that'll be the rest of our show.

01:07:24

So we've got quite a few here and I think they're pretty much softballs for you, but for someone else, you might be making their day by answering their questions.

01:07:32

So here's a question from CDTV. So glad to see you're talking about this again.

01:07:37

If days are long periods of time, how did the plants survive without sunlight or was the sun there already?

01:07:44

Why not theological evolution? Yeah, I think he meant theistic evolution.

01:07:50

That's what I think he is. Okay. Yeah, and this would be an issue no matter what you think of the age of the universe.

01:07:56

I mean, if we're talking a few thousand years, you still got a problem. You got plants on day three and the text doesn't mention the sun until day four.

01:08:07

However, when I looked at the text at age 17, picking up the Bible for a serious read for the first time,

01:08:14

I noted that Genesis 1 -2 states the spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the waters of planet earth and it's dark on the surface of the earth.

01:08:26

And you've got God creating the universe in Genesis 1 -1. When God creates the universe, there's gonna be light flooding the universe, but it's dark on the surface of the waters.

01:08:37

And I tell people it's not enough just to look at Genesis 1. You wanna look at least three parallel accounts.

01:08:45

And one of them is in Psalm 104. Another one is Proverbs 8. The lengthiest one is

01:08:51

Job 37, 38, and 39. You actually get way more science content in Job on the creation days than you do in Genesis 1.

01:09:01

And in Job 38, 38, and 39, it tells us why it's dark on the waters. It said

01:09:07

God blanketed the earth with clouds that kept the seas dark. So the reason it was dark is because the clouds would not let any light pass through.

01:09:18

If you want a modern day analogy, think of Venus. Venus is an atmosphere about 90 times thicker than that of the earth.

01:09:26

It's so thick that the only light that makes it to the surface is in the very reddest part of the physical spectrum.

01:09:35

You don't see any orange light, yellow light, green or blue light because of how thick the atmosphere is.

01:09:43

And I can tell you as an astronomer, earth started off with an atmosphere 200 times thicker than what it has today.

01:09:49

It would be completely dark on the surface of the waters. And so when it says, let there be light on creation day one,

01:09:58

I believe that's referring to God transforming the atmosphere from opaque to translucent.

01:10:05

Very hazy, but light can make it to the surface of the earth but not until day four does the haze dissipate sufficiently that creatures on the surface of the earth can actually see the objects that are responsible for the light.

01:10:21

So day four is the first time the sun becomes visible as a distinct object in the sky.

01:10:27

And if you actually look at the rest of verse 14, it makes it clear. You know, let there be the great lights so that they may serve as signs to mark seasons, days and years.

01:10:39

Who needs those signs? It's the animals on the surface of the earth. Notice not until day five does

01:10:45

God create animals. Animals are creatures that need to know the position of the sun, moon and stars to regulate their biological clocks.

01:10:55

And so the answer is the sun was there before God even created the earth.

01:11:02

So the sun was there, but it didn't become visible to creatures on the surface of the earth until day four as a distinct object in the sky.

01:11:10

The sunlight came through on day one, but there was way too much haze. And actually

01:11:15

I've got an article on our reasons .org website. If you simply put fourth day into the search engine, it will pop up a recent experiment done by.

01:11:30

Oh no, he froze up again. I'm not sure if you could hear me,

01:11:35

Dr. Ross, but you are frozen. All right. How about we'll remove you and see if you could sign back in.

01:11:46

We'll try doing that. And just real quick, I guess while, while Dr. Ross is trying to reconnect some free advertisement by our friends over at Trinity Radio, Braxton, I think it's

01:11:57

Braxton says, give Eli some thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe. It costs nothing and helps a channel you're enjoying right now.

01:12:03

That's true. Yeah, thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't, share the videos. Even if you're not a

01:12:09

Christian, you don't agree with what we're saying. You think what we're saying is silly or whatever, share the videos.

01:12:15

You know, let's broaden the dialogue and learn each other's perspectives and have more,

01:12:21

I think, enriching discussions when we understand each other's sides more. So I encourage subscribe, share, and real quick, just,

01:12:29

I guess, I might as well take a couple of moments to make some quick announcements. I have been planning a debate with Chris Date, who is a

01:12:37

Calvinist and Eric Hernandez, who is a Molinist and holds to libertarian free will. So we've actually have the date set and the time set.

01:12:46

They're gonna be doing two different debates, okay? So Chris Date and Eric Hernandez will be debating over libertarian free will versus compatibilistic free will.

01:12:57

So a Calvinism, you know, Molinist understanding of the will. And then a week or two later, they're going to be arguing over the existence of the soul.

01:13:06

Chris Date, while a Calvinist, he holds to some interesting view with regards to the makeup of man.

01:13:12

He's a physicalist, which is an interesting position to hold for someone who believes the Bible. It's not generally the popular view there.

01:13:18

But of course, if you follow Eric Hernandez, apologetic ministry, he does very much focus on arguing for the existence of an immaterial soul.

01:13:26

So he'll be defending that position. So we have two debates, Chris Date versus Eric Hernandez, two debates, one on Calvinism, and I guess, compatibilism and libertarian free will, and the other one on the nature of the soul or lack thereof.

01:13:40

So that will be the topic. That's going to be in November, okay?

01:13:46

Do I have the dates with me? Maybe I have the dates with me. They're somewhere. All right, but I will keep you guys updated.

01:13:52

Also, I'll be doing a debate on the gospel truth. That's Marlon Wilson's channel. I think he's here.

01:13:59

Maybe he kind of dipped out, I'm not sure. But I'll be doing a debate in September. And again,

01:14:04

I'm trying to plan on doing some unique stuff. I'm also gonna be planning an online school for folks who are interested in learning presuppositional apologetics and how it's applied to a wide range of issues.

01:14:15

So again, I'm not sure if Dr. Ross is still having some difficulty coming on, which would be very unfortunate because there are some really good questions.

01:14:26

Let's see here. Oh man, let's see here. I don't know if I can answer a lot of these questions.

01:14:33

This is not my specific area of expertise. So I do apologize. Let's see here.

01:14:41

We'll just wait to see if he is coming on.

01:14:46

Let me see if I could, let's see here. There we go.

01:15:02

There we go. He made it. My apologies. No, you don't have to apologize.

01:15:09

That's the nature of the beast, man. It's okay. All right, well, let's continue to jump in. I was just doing some free advertising for the channel here.

01:15:18

Okay, so let's move on. There was a question here. Okay, question. Why does

01:15:24

Dr. Ross believe animals did not die inside the Garden of Eden? Well, human beings weren't in the garden that long.

01:15:34

And also the text tells us that the animals that God was asking Adam to name were the net fish animals.

01:15:42

So he wasn't being asked to come up with names for ants and termites or microbes.

01:15:47

It was the soulish animals, namely the birds and mammals. And so given that they're birds and mammals and given how short a time

01:15:56

Adam would have been there, I wouldn't anticipate any of them that would be dying. Now, is it possible they were dying?

01:16:03

Again, this text is silent on that. Maybe they were. We just don't know. There's nothing in the text to say either way.

01:16:09

But I could easily believe that there were no birds and mammals dying while Adam and Eve were in the

01:16:15

Garden of Eden. Okay, very good. Here's a question by our local atheist agnostic.

01:16:21

He kind of pops in and asks some good questions. I like some of the questions he asks. He says, question for Dr. Ross. Imagine you go in a time machine to the first century and find

01:16:29

Jesus. You ask him, how old is the earth? What do you think Jesus' answer would be? Well, he'd probably say it was 13 .79

01:16:38

billion years ago. Yeah, that's right. Well, it depends. If he's functioning in his divine nature, maybe that's the answer he'll give.

01:16:46

No, but I think what he would really say is why are you asking this question? That's not the purpose for which

01:16:52

I came. Because that's how he responded. That's how Jesus responded. It's like, why are you asking me these questions?

01:17:00

Not that he doesn't know the answer. But again, if you were trying to say, look, I'm an astrophysicist from the 21st century.

01:17:08

I'd like to know what your answer to this is. Being God, I think he would give the answer since he's the one that created the universe.

01:17:15

He would know. Okay, all right. That was good. Your answer did sound very

01:17:22

Jesus -ish. So I suppose, probably not in English though. I probably spoke like King James English.

01:17:28

So you got it wrong there. But anyway, here's another question. Does Hugh Ross think that some aliens are demons?

01:17:34

That's a fun one. Yeah, that's what happened in the debate we had yesterday. Basically talking about these

01:17:41

UFO encounters and how 99 % of what people report as UFOs have natural explanations or can be attributed to human activity.

01:17:51

But there's a 1 % where we actually have hard evidence that they're violating the laws of physics, but equally hard evidence that these are real phenomena we're observing.

01:18:03

So we're engaging non -physical reality. And the reason why I conclude, by the way,

01:18:09

I'm not alone. As I mentioned in my debate yesterday, every physicist who spent at least 10 years studying the

01:18:16

UFO phenomena, and I'm the only one of them that's a Christian, have all drawn the same conclusion that whatever is behind these residual

01:18:25

UFOs is the same thing that's behind the occult and demonology. And the reason they draw that conclusion is that when humans have these close encounters with these

01:18:36

UFOs and UFO beings, it's always a harmful experience. I mean, they either wind up with recurring terrifying nightmares, their animals get killed, they get injured themselves, they get killed, they wind up having huge psychological problems for the rest of their lives, or they're having anxiety issues of the extreme.

01:18:58

So it's never beneficial. As a Christian, I would add one more piece of evidence.

01:19:04

When we look at the automatic writing, these are where these creatures put a human into a trance.

01:19:10

And when the human is in a trance, they begin typing on a computer or writing out with a pen.

01:19:15

And that's the origin of the Urantia book, which is kind of the Bible of the UFO cults.

01:19:21

It's a very thick book, about 4 ,000 pages. But what's interesting is you go through that Urantia book, a third of the content is denying the deity of Jesus Christ.

01:19:33

That right away should tell you these are not physical beings from another planet. These are actually creatures that have a very strong motivation to deny the deity of Jesus Christ and to get people to have their lives terminated before they give their lives to Jesus Christ.

01:19:50

So I believe indeed demons are behind this, fallen angels. But I find what's interesting, atheists and agnostic physicists who've given significant study draw exactly the same conclusions

01:20:02

I do. All right, thank you very much for that. Here's another question. Will there be animal death on the new earth?

01:20:09

I think Revelation 21 five is specific. There'll be no decay in the new creation and the new earth, and there'll be no death.

01:20:19

Nothing will die, nothing will decay. There's no need for death and decay because evil won't exist there.

01:20:26

I mean, one reason why we have death and decay in this creation is God is using physical death and decay as tools to permanently eradicate evil and suffering.

01:20:38

In the new creation, there is no evil and suffering, therefore no need for physical death, no need for thermodynamics, no need for gravity or electromagnetism.

01:20:49

Okay, let me keep scrolling down. Here's another question. Okay, I'm kind of going in order.

01:20:57

This is my last question by Pine Creek, and then I'll move on to other ones he's asked a couple. But he asked, is there anything at all that Dr.

01:21:04

Ross thinks the Bible got wrong scientifically? Well, that's part of my conversion story.

01:21:09

I spent 18 months spending an hour or more a day going through the Bible, searching for a provable error or contradiction, because I felt, you know, this is really from the

01:21:20

God that created the universe. There won't be any of these errors. And so I searched diligently for them.

01:21:27

Now, to be honest, I found many passages in the Bible I didn't understand. Not able to find a single provable error or contradiction.

01:21:36

And I've been involved in a number of debates with atheists where they think they've found some, and almost all of them are basically where they fail to appreciate that the

01:21:46

Bible rounds numbers off. Yes. So for example, they'll say in one text that the children of Israel were wandering in Egypt for 400 years.

01:21:56

Another one will say 440. The real answer might've been 438. One case you're getting a round off to one place of the decimal, other case you're getting a round off to two places of the decimal.

01:22:08

All right, very good. J .D. Martin asks, if the laws of physics don't change, then how do you explain miracles?

01:22:16

Well, God has the power to operate outside the laws of physics, but he's doing it from his trans -dimensional realm.

01:22:25

Those of us that are constrained by the space -time dimensions of the universe, we are subject to the laws of physics.

01:22:32

So one of the ways Jesus proved his deity is he walked on water. Any being that's constrained by the space -time dimensions of the universe won't be able to do that, except of course where Jesus was able to assist

01:22:45

Peter to do the same thing. But notice it took God to make it happen. And then when we look at the miracles in the

01:22:52

Bible, the vast majority of divine miracles are God working within the laws of physics, not outside the laws of physics.

01:23:01

I mean, I would argue the most dramatic miracle we can see in science is the creation of the universe.

01:23:07

The universe of matter, energy, space, and time comes into existence from something that has nothing to do with matter, energy, space, and time.

01:23:15

That's the most spectacular miracle any scientist can hope to uncover. But notice, only a being that's got the power to operate outside of space and time can do that.

01:23:26

But yet the vast majority of miracles in the Bible, it's God working within the laws of physics, but in a manner that would be akin to us taking iron and aluminum ore to the earth and making an airplane out of it.

01:23:39

A hurricane's not gonna do it. A tornado is not gonna do it. It's gonna take intelligent agency to make that happen.

01:23:46

All right, I'm gonna keep going down. People might be seeing a dying battery on the screen.

01:23:52

That is okay. It'll just switch my camera to my kind of ghetto laptop camera, but that's fine.

01:23:59

Here's another question by J .D. I think it's a good one. Does Jeremiah really teach, the book of Jeremiah, that is, does Jeremiah really teach that the laws of physics have never changed, or is it simply saying the world is stable, which would be observable to all people, not just future peoples?

01:24:14

Well, it does say that the laws that govern in the heavens and the earth are fixed, which means that they haven't changed.

01:24:21

Now, there've been physicists who've looked at that text who are Christians and says, well, maybe it's just fixed for the perspective of people living at that time.

01:24:30

Maybe we measure that law to 30 places a decimal, we'll see some difference. But I think what's interesting, we've actually put that biblical statement to the test to 18 places a decimal, and it still stands.

01:24:44

So I think it's more than just saying that these laws are stable and constant in the context of what people living 2 ,600 years ago would have the capability of measuring.

01:24:55

I think what's really interesting, it stands even in the context of 21st century instrumentation.

01:25:02

And my position as a physicist is, when we get to the 30th place of the decimal, that may mean that we are actually able to discover a fifth law of physics.

01:25:14

So that's something that a lot of scientists are looking for. They're really trying to find if there's undiscovered laws of physics, but the fact that we've actually made those tests to 18 places a decimal says, if we do find another law of physics, it's gonna be making very subtle effects on the universe.

01:25:35

Simon Larson says, Dr. Ross, we met at the European Leadership Forum and SOPRAN, I think that's it,

01:25:40

SOPRAN, Hungary. No, you claim that Noah's flood was local, but if the flood was global, it can be used as evidence for a young earth.

01:25:48

Is that why you cannot accept the flood as global? Well, I don't accept the flood as global because the

01:25:55

Bible tells us it was not global. I mean, I tell my young earth friends, you really need to look at all the texts of the

01:26:03

Bible that deal with the flood, not just those in Genesis 6, 7, and 8. If you look at what

01:26:09

Peter says, he says, a world of the ungodly people were flooded.

01:26:15

He doesn't say the whole world, he doesn't use the word cosmos by itself, he qualifies it and says it's the world of the ungodly.

01:26:23

He does it twice. In 2 Peter 3, he says, cosmos totae, the world that existed at that time.

01:26:31

And I think what he's doing is distinguishing the world of Noah with the world of Rome. I mean, we speak about the

01:26:38

Roman world, we speak about Noah's world, but the most explicit statements are in the

01:26:44

Psalms and Proverbs and Job, texts that deal with creation day three, where God, for the first time, has continents coexisting with oceans.

01:26:54

And what you see in Psalm 104, verses six through eight, speaks about God bringing these continents into existence.

01:27:04

But what does it say in verse nine? Never again will water cover the whole face of the earth.

01:27:10

That's repeated five times in Job, Psalms, and Proverbs.

01:27:15

And I had a debate with this with a number of global flood proponents, and the response was, well, that's

01:27:21

Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry can't be taken literally. But my response to that is, what do you say to Isaiah when he's making specific statements about the triune

01:27:32

God? That's all done in Hebrew poetry. And I think we, in the English language, fail to realize what a powerful tool

01:27:40

Hebrew poetry is to communicate explicit didactic truths.

01:27:46

So I do think that we have statements in the Bible that rule out the possibility of a global flood.

01:27:52

Nevertheless, the entire world of human beings was wiped out and the entire world of the animals associated with human beings, the soulish animals, was wiped out.

01:28:04

But that wouldn't require God flooding Antarctica or Greenland, because humans weren't living there and they didn't have cows associated with them living there either.

01:28:13

Okay, very good. Here's a question by Steven Riverd. After talking to Dr. Josh Swamadas, has he changed his mind on people outside the garden from evolution instead of incest as God's plan for humans to populate?

01:28:28

Yeah, I'll deal with the incest issue. Okay. Because we noticed that Abraham was married to his half -sister, and we really don't see a prohibition against brothers marrying sisters until the book of Exodus.

01:28:44

And it's something we learned from animal husbandry that you don't run the risk of propagating a genetic defect if you're dealing with wild genomes, you can actually breed brother and sister together for several consecutive generations without running the risk of a genetic defect.

01:29:03

But after you do it for 20 generations, the risk is significant. And so what you see in Exodus is

01:29:09

God says, Moses says to the Jews, we're not gonna do these things so we will not experience the diseases of the

01:29:17

Egyptians. And one of those diseases was hemophilia because in the Egyptian royal court, the

01:29:25

Pharaoh could only marry a sister. And that went on for consecutive generations and the

01:29:31

Pharaohs wound up getting hemophilia as a result. So we can claim that it's impossible for Adam and Eve to be the progenitors of the whole human population.

01:29:46

God could have easily created Eve with sufficiently distinct DNA. And it's our scholar,

01:29:53

A .J. Roberts, who pointed out that Eve would have been created with all of her reproductive eggs intact and God could have easily made each of her eggs genetically distinct.

01:30:06

And therefore trying to explain the genetic diversity of the present day human population is not an issue.

01:30:13

And that's something that Josh Swamidoss has basically done to challenge our model is to say, how do you explain the genetics in the human population today?

01:30:22

And we're basically saying, we don't think that's a scientific problem at all. And therefore we stand with what we think are explicit statements in the

01:30:31

Bible that all humans indeed are descended from one man and one woman that God specially created.

01:30:38

We also take the position, God did the same thing with the bipedal primates that preceded us.

01:30:44

Why? Because we got field experiments that tell us if you've got mammals that have an adult body size bigger than three kilograms, they will go extinct before they can evolve in any distinct way.

01:30:58

And in Neanderthals and Homo erectus, they were a lot bigger than three kilograms. Yeah, very good.

01:31:05

This is the last question and then we'll wrap things up. You're doing an excellent job. Thank you so much. I do appreciate it.

01:31:11

You're doing good going through these questions. Here's a question. Is there any reason you cannot accept theistic evolution? Isn't there a lot of evidence for it in the book of nature?

01:31:20

Well, there is evidence for it in the book of nature, but we argue that common design can just as well explain the morphological similarities and the genetic similarities as naturalistic evolution or common descent.

01:31:36

And that's something that was brought out in Britain more than 150 years ago before Darwin showed up is that a creator is going to use repeated optimal designs.

01:31:49

And so it's no accident, for example, that 26 % of your DNA is identical to daffodil

01:31:56

DNA. What's optimal for daffodils in many respects is also gonna be optimal for you.

01:32:01

And we see that in the motor industry, people who manufacture automobiles will repeat chassis designs that they've optimized for their line of cars.

01:32:11

We think God does the same thing. Now, on the other hand, I have lots of friends in the

01:32:16

Christian community that are theistic evolutionists. And I think we need to understand there's a broad spectrum within the theistic evolutionary community.

01:32:26

Some of them are physicalists, some of them are dualists, in that they believe that we have a physical nature and a spiritual nature, not just a physical nature.

01:32:36

So you can't put all theistic evolutionists into one lump. That's a very broad spectrum. And I'm of the opinion that most people who identify themselves as theistic evolutionists are indeed

01:32:49

Christians who have a relationship with Jesus Christ. So I think it's a mistake to brand them all as non -Christians.

01:32:56

I think some of them may indeed be outside the Christian camp, but the majority are not.

01:33:02

And again, I think the Bible gives us some freedom to dialogue on this issue. I mean, Genesis is explicit on the fact that God created life, but he does allow,

01:33:13

I mean, we see this in nature, is that the species of life have built within them the capacity to adapt.

01:33:21

And the question is how much microevolution are we going to accept based on what the

01:33:27

Bible says and we see the scientific record? And it's not a question we can answer with great precision at this point.

01:33:35

So I think we need to be careful not to divide our fellowship over this issue. Yeah, very good.

01:33:41

There was one more question, if it's okay. Yeah, one more. Okay, thank you. And here's the question.

01:33:47

What happened to other civilizations during the flood? As I thought the flood wiped out all of the ungodly, but if the flood was only regional, what happened to the others like the

01:33:57

Egyptians? Well, we notice in Genesis, we do not see mention of regions beyond the

01:34:05

Persian Gulf area until Genesis 10. This is when humanity begins to become global.

01:34:13

And we actually see that in the DNA of humans that somewhere in the neighborhood of about 45 ,000 years ago, we see genetic evidence for aggressive migration.

01:34:24

This is what's interesting. When you look at the genetic evidence, we see that there is a short period of time when humans aggressively migrated out of Eastern Africa and the

01:34:34

Persian Gulf region into all the locations of the world. And keep in mind during the last ice age, there is a land bridge joining the

01:34:44

Persian Gulf to Africa. And it was an easy migration route. So I'm not at all surprised that the earliest evidence we have for humans shows up in both locations.

01:34:55

And incidentally, our flood model reasons to believe is a much larger flood than just God flooding the

01:35:02

Mesopotamian plain. We're arguing based on Genesis chapter eight,

01:35:07

Noah's flood took place during the last ice age when sea levels were about 300 feet lower.

01:35:13

And therefore our flood model is a good four or five times bigger in how much of the earth was flooded than what you get in what are called traditional old earth creationist models.

01:35:25

So it was a big flood, but did not encompass the whole planet, but it was big enough to wipe out 100 % of the human beings that were not on board

01:35:34

Noah's Ark and 100 % of the domesticated animals that were associated with people outside the

01:35:42

Ark. It was no survivors. All right, very good. I think you did an excellent job.

01:35:48

Again, I tell people this all the time, I'm the kind of guy who listens to my own stuff. So I'm gonna go back and listen to this discussion and see if I can glean anything more than anything

01:35:58

I forget. Hopefully I can listen to this and glean more from that. Once again, thank you so much,

01:36:04

Dr. Ross, for giving me so much of your time. Coming back on again, I'd love to have you back on again to cover that topic we mentioned before.

01:36:11

And for anyone else who has not yet subscribed to the Revealed Apologetics podcast and YouTube channel, do so.

01:36:18

I mean, if you're enjoying the content and you're being blessed by it and you find it useful and helpful, it would be greatly appreciated to have your support in that way.

01:36:26

Well, that's it for today. Once again, thank you so much for the super chats as well. And I wish everyone a good evening.