Jason Lisle & Hugh Ross: Young Earth vs. Old Earth Creationism

All right, welcome back to revealed apologetics and I say welcome back because we had a a test live stream

Yesterday where I took some Did some Q &A on the topic of apologetics and and those who were listening in had some excellent questions, but welcome back

I'm very excited about this Specific episode because this has been a very highly anticipated episode today.

I have two astrophysicist Christian apologist and Bible -believing

Christians who come on completely different ends on a very important question Of course, they do share a lot of common beliefs as well

But we're going to be talking about the creation debate the old earth creationist view and the young earth creationist view

And so I I figured that having someone like dr. Hugh Ross on and dr. Jason Lyle These are two excellent proponents of each respective position to be able to Lay out their

Explanations and defenses as to why they believe what they believe with regards to this question so I'm very much looking forward to this discussion now as Those who have followed my my channel before you've heard me say this in various contexts.

I am Agnostic with regards to this question. I'm totally not a theistic evolutionist

So so that's not on the table for me But but young earth and old earth those interpretations and those particular views that I kind of go back and forth

Let me see. I have I have Jason Lyle's books. I don't have Jason's book with me here So I do apologize, but I do have

Hughes book why the universe is the way that it is. That's not fair I'm there we go. Here's a

Jason Lyle. It's a Jason Lyle book excellent book on logic But of course he has his very well -known book the ultimate proof for creation where he goes into some presuppositional apologetics

And of course young earth creationism as well in there, and I think I have his creation

Something or other and beyond or something like that excellent book I'm sure you guys can check out their material on Amazon and their respective websites, but today

I want to welcome Dr. Ross and dr. Lyle. I'm gonna invite them on to share the screen with me right now and there they are and I'm super excited and I think we're gonna be very very

Educated in this episode as we're gonna learn From folks who obviously have done a lot of study in this area and have very strong views with respect to this topic

So why don't we take a brief a couple of moments here for dr. Lyle to briefly introduce himself

Dr. Ross to briefly introduce himself and then we'll get started. So dr. Lyle, why don't you say a little something to the audience listening?

Okay, I'm I'm Jason Lyle. I'm an astrophysicist I got my PhD from the University of Colorado in Boulder and In physics and astronomy astrophysics and then

I have now started the biblical science Institute Which is a Christian apologetics ministry that helps people to see that science is not antagonistic to the

Bible But that science when it's properly understood Confirms what the Bible teaches and I do have a heavy emphasis on defending

Genesis a literal historical Genesis that God really created in six days Supernaturally that that sin really entered the world through Adam and so on Well, thank you for that.

Dr. Ross. How about you share a little bit about yourself? Well, I'm an astrophysicist as well I got my

PhD at the University of Toronto and then did the postdoctoral research at Caltech for five years on galaxies and quasars and shortly after that Founded the organization reasons to believe for a group of research scientists

That study the frontiers of scientific research and develop new evidences for the truth of the

Bible and what the Bible says about creation, so All right, very good

Now, I guess my first question to kind of just open up the discussion is why don't you just lay out in summary form?

Dr. Lyle first and then dr. Ross. Why don't you summarize briefly just the gist of your position?

So Obviously people who are familiar with you are gonna know your positions but for our purposes here, why don't we just briefly lay out?

Here's my view. Here's my view and then we'll dive into some what I think are important questions And again, which are gonna get into some of the disagreements between between the both of you.

So dr. Lyle Why don't you share a brief summary of your position with regards to the question of? Young earth creationism.

Okay. I have a high view of Scripture I believe that Scripture is the inerrant Word of God in the original manuscripts people complain

We don't have the original manuscripts, but we have very very reliable copies. So that's not really an issue I do believe in the perspicuity of Scripture that the

Bible is basically clear in what it intends to communicate It's not a puzzle that we have to try and and solve and you know

Get all these different parts to really understand what it means. It's it's clear That's not to say there aren't any difficult sections

The Bible itself says there are some difficult sections But I think that's more in terms of accepting what it has to say than understanding what it has to say

There's a difference between those two and I believe in the grammatical historical approach to Interpretation to hermeneutics how we read the

Bible should be based on the grammar of the passage given the historical context and generally the historical context is given by the

Bible itself the Bible is primarily a history book and so it tells us the history of That while the beginning of the world it tells us right and it focuses in primarily on the history of Israel and so on as God's chosen people in the

Old Testament and so on and so I believe that when you when you combine those three things the inerrancy of Scripture the perspicuity of Scripture and the grammatical historical approach when you then read

Genesis you come to the conclusion that God really made in six days each of those defined as an earth rotation bound by an evening in a

Morning, and that is in fact the basis for our work week And so in Exodus 20 beginning in verse 8 where we remember remember the

Sabbath day to keep it And on six days you're doing your labor the seventh is the Lord's then God gives the explanation for why in verse 11 we work six days and rest one

We have a seven -day week because God worked in six days and rested one uses the same word for days there Y 'all mean which which always means days

Y 'all mean in the is the plural form of y 'all and so it's it's very clear that God created six ordinary days

He did that for our benefit. He could have created the universe in an instant. He had the power to do that He really slowed himself down to make in six days

Then he rested one again as a pattern for us and in my mind the importance of the issue is not so much about a specific date, you know, somebody says well,

I I think it's maybe 5 ,000 years instead of 4 ,000 because of the Whatever reason maybe they're using them at the

Septuagint instead of the Masoretic text. That's fine. There's there's there legitimate debates on those kind of issues, but in my mind the issue here is is the

Bible inerrant and Perspicuous and should and what is the Apologetic or the hermeneutical approach that we should use to Scripture and then the theology that follows from it

Namely, I would suggest that all Christian doctrines maybe we can go to this detail late in the more detail later

But I would suggest that all major Christian doctrines are based on the historical grammatical reading of Genesis where God really did make in six days death really did enter the world as a result of Adam's sin

There really was a global flood and that these are Foundational issues to the Christian worldview.

Mm -hmm. All right, very good. That's a good good summary there I think you covered a lot of ground there. Dr. Ross. Why don't you lay out your position for us, please?

well, I hold to all the affirmations and denials of the International Council of biblical inerrancy and likewise all our affirmations and denials on hermeneutics

So that's time to actually require all of our staff scholars at reasons to believe to sign And with respect to I believe that Genesis is historical it's chronological

You know, I'm not a theistic evolutionist and I don't believe that we should be taking those texts figuratively

I think there's plenty within the text that tells us they should be read literally historically and chronologically

However, I do believe that these creation days. I actually sign a statement I believe that God created in six literal days

But the Hebrew word for day has four distinct literal definitions One of which includes a long period of time and the thing that struck me when

I first looked at the Bible at age 17 Before I became a Christian is that this word day just in the first page is used with three different definitions

I mean creation day one is contrasting days and nights That's day for the daylight hours creation day force contrasting seasons days and years that's day for 24 hours

But Genesis 2 for uses the word day For a long period of time namely for all the creation activity that God performed

With the universe and the earth and just noticing that there's no evening of morning for the seventh day and that there's three texts in the

Bible that are Explicitly or implicitly tell us we're still in God's seventh day

Tells me at least the seventh day. There's a long period of time We're still in it and as a young scientist that said now understand why so many in the life sciences say we see no scientific evidence for God and Why so many of us in the physical sciences say we see evidence for God everywhere

For six days God creates and the seventh day stops creating so if you're doing your scientific research

The human era which is typical for most in the life sciences. All you're going to see is the natural process

But if you're looking before the human era, this is when God is actively creating So this explains why so many of us in the physical sciences

Believe in God as a creator and why you don't see quite as many in the life sciences

And in terms of a flood, I believe the flood was universal to all of humanity all the animals associated with him

I mean 2nd Peter 2 it's the world of the ungodly that God flooded

And 2nd Peter 3 6 the world that existed at that time The very fact that we see

Peter Qualifying the Greek word cosmos tells us he's not referring to the entire planet

He's referring to the entire region of the earth for human beings lived So I don't believe that God necessarily flooded

Antarctica But he certainly wiped out all the places on the earth for human beings lived

Okay, now you said something interesting here you said that there are multiple literal meanings for the word yom now when people talk about young earth creationism

They often associate young earth creationism with the literal Interpretation.

I'm sure you're familiar with that that kind of terminology my question I guess for dr Lyle with respect to what you just said, dr.

Lyle. Do you think dr. Ross's interpretation is? A legitimate not that you think it's true, but it's legitimate for him to say this is the literal interpretation

So that it's it's really an issue of one's literal interpretation Versus another person's literal interpretation of which the context is going to determine who's using the proper literal terminology.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I would say not I would say that literal the word literal means the ordinary

Everyday usage of a word and if you do a search in Scripture, you'll find that the ordinary everyday usage of the word yom is day

It's not it's not generally used to mean a long period of time It is occasionally but that is almost always in the poetic literature

Where we would expect non literal uses and so for example the day of the

Lord I think that does refer to a period of time longer than 24 hours, but it's it's qualified it's part of a figure of speech and it's primarily in the places like the

Psalms or the the The prophetic literature which tends to be written in a poetic fashion

It uses the Hebrew parallelism And so that's what you'll tend to find with that Whereas the literal meaning of day would be day and it's the same with our

English word for day Our English word for day can mean a period of time. And so you might say back in my father's day

Yeah, you know, I don't mean 24 hours. I mean a period of time longer than that. That's perfectly legitimate, but it's not literal

I'm using it somewhat metaphorically there and I don't think that and Hugh I don't think you should be ashamed to say that some sections of the

Bible are non -literal because I think we would both agree on That it's just we need to decide which parts are literal in which are not and even within historical narrative

You can't have occasional figures of speech So the question is is that what we find in Genesis and I would say no

I would say that the word young is actually very tightly constrained in Genesis Because God is using it specifically to mean either either the light portion of a day as you pointed out or a 24 -hour day

But it's never used as a period of time not in Genesis now in poetic literature Occasionally, how about Genesis 2 for it's definitely used there for a significant period of time

Well, not necessarily not necessarily because that could be referring to in the day that could be the day God created

It wouldn't have to be the period of time. It could be it could be referring to that first day, but But in the day, by the way, it's a little different there.

You don't know if you know It when you attach it's actually a different form of the word it's actually beyond Beyond and beyond is often used to mean when and so it's not just young it's beyond It's a little different and that can mean when so if you wanted to take

Genesis 2 for as Beyond it's not young. It's beyond as meaning when

I'm okay with that. That's fine And then I have a question based upon Dr.

Lyle's definition of the term literal and I want to see if you agree with that But why don't you speak to what he just said there and then we'll go from there

Well, I've actually consulted with a number of theologians that are very fluent in Hebrew Both young earth and old earth and all of them tell me that indeed a long period of time is a literal

Usage of the word Yom. I mean we need to understand I think it helps to understand that this is primarily an

English language debate as because you're dealing with translating from biblical

Hebrew a very small vocabulary language into an extremely large

Vocabulary language and isn't just the Hebrew word Yom Virtually every Hebrew noun has multiple literal definitions

The word arrests for earth in Genesis 1 has five distinct literal definitions

And this is typical of a language that has a very small vocabulary size

They words must have multiple literal definitions because they don't have millions of words like we have in English So that's why it's important to actually take advantage of lexical aids

But every Hebrew English lexicon I've ever looked at explicitly states there are four distinct literal definitions of the word

Yom and so it really is a literal interpretation versus a literal interpretation

Now real quick. So dr. Lau, can you define literal the way you defined it before if you remember your wording and I want to see if dr.

Ross agrees with your Your definition of what it means to interpret something literally literal is the ordinary everyday

Meaning of a term. All right, dr. Ross, would you agree that that's what literal means? And I would not because there's multiple words where we had several

Distinct definitions that we could use and this is even true in the English language Although to a much lesser degree than it is in biblical

Hebrew And so there could be more than one literal definition For words that's true in all languages

Well you I never said otherwise I didn't say there couldn't be more than one literal definition But they would all have to be ordinary everyday usage

And so the day is a period of daylight is that's we use that every day and day is a rotation of Earth's axis

We use that every day you say back in my father's day. That's a little less common and I'll grant that the line is blurry how how

Common does something have to be to be to fall into the literal category? But just because something has a definition doesn't make it a literal definition

There are many words in the English language that have common uses and they have more rare uses

The common uses I would call literal the rare uses I would call metaphoric. Yeah, but that's not how linguists treat language

I mean, it's not the most common Literal definitions. That's the only literal definition.

I don't know of any linguists that would accept that Well, Stephen Boyd, for example, his PhD is in Hebrew He would say that the long period of time definition of Yom is a non literal definition

I'm sure he would call that metaphoric or Jim Johnson He's Pete he's also got a PhD and he's a

Hebrew expert as well So those are those are a couple of examples of people who would disagree with you on that. But I think

I mean what we're having here is not a real debate It's a semantic debate about what the word literal means

And so the real issue is what does the word Yom mean in the context of Genesis?

And so if you want to use a non literal definition of the word literal, that's fine But we're gonna we're using different terminology there.

Yeah, see that's where we disagree I insist that why I'm using a literal reading and yeah

Many of your young earth colleagues totally agree with me on this and I've been to Dallas Theological Seminary All the young earth creationist theologians there

Except the fact that the OM and D could be taken as a literal definition of a long period of time

So I don't see this as a controversial issue Now it let's grant. Okay, so it's a possible literal interpretation now for me as I said before I'm agnostic with regards to this when

I was I grew up in church. I grew up since I was I was born My earliest memory has been in church and I've read a

Genesis countless times now I have to say without taking a position one way or the other I do have to admit that Without being influenced by others as well because my church really never talked about these these points in any detail when

I did read the creation account it did seem that what's being referred to there are just days as a

Average person would understand that well, how would you speak to that? Dr. Ross? It does I mean, I know that I've heard your story where when you've read it you knew

Automatically. No, there's more going on here It's not a 24 -hour day necessarily, but a lot of people who read it.

It seems that hey, yeah, it kind of seems straightforward How can you speak to the straight the apparent straightforwardness of it all?

Well, you know looking at the fact that we had the first six days bracketed by the evening in the morning

And likewise the Hebrew words there of multiple literal definitions But I knew at a minimum it was actually declaring each of these creation days as a definite start point and a definite endpoint and Excuse me.

I'm gonna disconnect that phone. Hang on. That better be Jesus calling. I'm just kidding All right, very interesting by the way while Dr.

Ross is doing that quick quick quick announcements on July 16th. I'll be having Frank Turek on to discuss

Issues related to his book stealing from God, which I hope he doesn't watch this But I love the book and I endorsed the book, but it sounds like like more from stealing from Bonson But he's almost presuppositional in that book and I think it's still very helpful to talk about also

Dr. James Anderson will be on tomorrow to talk about the key differences between presuppositional methodology and classical methodology

And then on July 29th, we have Greg Cokel on to talk a little bit about strategies and navigating conversations with unbelievers

So I definitely check those things out If you haven't already, please subscribe to the real apologetics YouTube channel and click the notification button so that you guys are up on these

Interviews and discussions when they come. All right, let's continue with our discussion there Okay, I forgot where I left off, but I did disconnect the landline.

So no Mandarin interference No worries. No worries. Well, let me let me move on to here is my question

I said something to the effect that When you read Genesis 1, I know that you read it and knew that this isn't this isn't speaking about literal

You know 24 -hour days But I was kind of asking along the lines of the average person that I mean

I've been in the church life I've been in the church game so to speak my entire life and Everyone that reads the

Genesis account that I've encountered Seem to think that yeah These are God created in six days and days seem to be talking about days as as we as we would know it

And so you kind of were speaking to that Yes. Well, I mean I was not raised in a

Christian home But at age 16 because of my astronomy I was persuaded that there had to be a

God and actually began a search of the world's different holy books So I'd open up the

Bible. I was quite prepared to say hey, you know, this isn't God's Word. In fact,

I didn't think God was communicating to his through writing But when I looked at the text

I was expecting that these days would be 24 hours But that there would be an evening in the morning for the seventh day

The fact that I didn't see an evening from the morning for the seventh day says, okay

These first six days have got a definite start point and a definite end point, but we don't see that for day seven

So obviously it began because God's resting So I went through the rest of the Bible and found passages that declared we're still in God's seventh day and Also as I looked at Genesis chapter 2

I noticed that there was a passage of time between God creating Adam and God creating

Eve I mean Adam went through three careers Before Eve shows up and yet when you go to Genesis 1

It says that God created both the human male and the human female on the sixth day

So I says that means the sixth day has to be a long period of time Just like the seventh day then looking at the grammatical structure of Genesis 1

It told me we're looking at six consecutive long periods of time for God creating

Now a question I guess for dr. Lyle you you mentioned dr Ross the the seventh day seems and again even as when

I was reading the scriptures at this point They did seem like 24 -hour days. I mean When I was reading it, but even back then the the seventh day did seem unique And when

I even study this issue now, I kind of as I'm not swayed one way or the other I kind of see that the seventh day seems to indicate and there's a little more going on How would you speak to the seventh day with regards to you know, there's no closure

It seems and then in the book of Hebrews there seems to be a suggestion that the seventh day is kind of still going on So that there's kind of a a broader theological

Understanding of the seventh day, how would you understand that? Dr. Lyle? Well, first of all, it is an argument from silence to argue

There's no evening and morning on the seventh day merely because they're not mentioned Just because something isn't mentioned in scripture doesn't mean it never happened

The Bible never mentions Adam going to the bathroom, but I think we can assume that he probably did from time to time

You get you get my drift I'm just gonna claim to the obvious but in any case So, of course, there was an evening and morning in seventh day, they're not mentioned why the seventh day is different It's special.

It's the day that God blessed and hallowed. It's not a day of creation It's a day of rest And so it is different qualitatively and God is allowed to select it out and make it qualitative And by the way, it seems a little bit

I don't know inconsistent to me to say well the seventh day could be long because it's it doesn't have that evening in the morning but the other days do which would implicitly imply that they that they are ordinary days they are bound by an evening in the

Morning and with regard to what Hebrews says about God's rest God's rest is continuing

It doesn't mean the day continues if I said I worked all day Wednesday all day Thursday all day

Friday And then I took a rest on Saturday and I'm still resting today. That doesn't mean that today is

Saturday My rest can continue beyond the day But the reason we know that the days in Genesis are ordinary is because God specifies what they mean

They're about they are defined in terms of having one evening in one morning. That's what makes one day

So Genesis is Genesis 1 is very clear about that and all the days of creation do have that evening in and morning

This it's just not mentioned for the seventh day But the numbers there and having a number with the day in in a narrative sequence like that is indicative of ordinary days

So you would say it's safe to assume that because days 1 through 6 had evening morning evening morning even morning in the morning that it's

To assume well, there's no reason to think the seventh day didn't have that just because it's not mentioned and you probably are thinking and maybe

Dr. Ross can respond. You're probably thinking that the old earth interpretation that wants to leave this possibility open is kind of looking for kind of a

Possible interpretive loophole to allow for a longer period of time. Is that what you think? Dr.

Lyle and maybe dr. Ross could respond to why that's not the case I do think that and and I'll say this is a vice that's common to all

Christians. I'm not immune from this We all have a tendency to have this worldview that we take to the Bible and then try to interpret the

Bible according to that worldview and it takes a great deal of work to Not do that and God gave us the church so that we could challenge each other and say look brother

Here's how I read the scripture How do you read it? so that we can challenge each other to make sure that we're not doing that and I would suggest with all respect to my brother

Hugh that because he had a Big Bang Philosophy before he ever read the Bible that he imported that into the

Bible And I think it's very hard to to not do that But it's something we all need to work as Christians to challenge each other to not do to read the

Bible Exegetically rather than isogenically. So is that what you're doing? Dr. Ross? Are you trying to squeeze

Big Bang cosmology into the Bible you sneaky man? You is that what you're trying to do? Well, I didn't see

Big Bang cosmology in the Bible But not in Genesis other than the fact that it speaks about the fact that there's a beginning to the universe

Okay, one of the components of Big Bang cosmology But I was looking at the text before it was a believer.

And so I didn't have any vested commitment in this I mean if it was 24 hours or a long period of time

I could go either way But reading the text that says it seems very clear these days are

Significant passages of time. I mean I looked at the evening and morning. It's simply reference to the fact

Okay, each day has a start point and an end point But we don't see an end point for creation day seven.

We don't find it anywhere in the Bible We do see it hinted at in revelation.

We come to the new creation God's rest will end he will create again But this is the period of time in which we're in and when

God is not creating and again as a young scientist I said, okay I think that explains why we see this demarcation between people in the physical sciences and those in the life sciences

They're looking at different periods of time You know now when we're talking about this, it's very difficult because we live in a very scientific age

Not that everyone is scientifically educated but science looms very large in the background and it has the potential to affect how we look at things as you both of you know that while both of you's will deny that you're trying to Squeeze scientific interpretation so as to kind of make it consistent with the

Bible There is that looming influence that's always creeping behind every shadow as we're trying to bring the

Bible It's a point of relevancy to what's going on in the modern world. So there's definitely a temptation there

But of course I you guys would deny that that's what you're trying to do But because science plays a large role as Moderns coming to the text.

What do you think and from both these maybe dr. Ross first and then dr. Lyle What role should science play when we're looking into these issues

Especially with the length of the days and how we interpret Genesis. What's the relationship there as you see it?

Dr. Ross? Well again, I came at the text before I was a believer. It's like okay what

I see in the universe There's a God where everything is harmonious Everything fits together.

I Don't see contradictions. I Said of all these different holy books.

I'm looking at I mean I was looking at the Vedas the Quran the Buddhist commentaries

Baha 'i, etc. I said which of these Actually matches the revelation

I see in the record of nature Which one gets the history right which one gets the science right which one gets the geography, right?

And I quickly recognized that was not the case for the Hindu Vedas. It's got it's still like this.

I mean Jason and I would agree on is That it doesn't match what we see in future history and science

This is what really impressed me about the Bible. I saw that it had predictive power

It had the power to predict with accuracy future historical events in terms of what was happening with human beings

It also had the power to predict future scientific discoveries and the fact that it did so without error

I said this can't just be inspired by human beings This has to be inspired by the one that actually did all the deeds

The one who actually has control over space and time and so after two years studying the

Bible I signed my name in the back of a Gideon Bible saying this is the Word of God and they gave my life to Jesus Christ Dr.

Lyle, do you have anything to say to that and then we're gonna move on to the issue of Well, I want to talk a little bit about these two books that you often talk about dr

Ross the the book of nature and the book of scripture and I want to see if you guys agree on that I want to see what your perspective is and that maybe we can move on to a little bit of your scientific

Reasons for affirming or at least not reasons for affirming but your scientific Evidences to support your position in a way that's consistent with your biblical interpretation as well.

So so dr Lyle, is there anything you want to say to what? Dr. Ross has just shared there with the with regards to the relationship between science and the

Bible and coming to this question I think it's very interesting the way Hugh that you that you came to to scripture because it basically it's in your mind science supported it and My approach is a little different because in my view we don't take the

Bible and then and say this is this is very likely the Word of God or maybe it is the Word of God because it lines up with all this scientific evidence.

I Would say the Bible is the foundation by which I have confidence in science See, that's that's the difference rather than science being the standard by which

I know the Bible is true I would say the Bible is the standard by which I can have some confidence in the scientific method and perhaps even some of the

Conclusions that scientists draw although although those are fallible worth regard to your original question

Eli I would say that I believe in the ministerial role of science in interpretation, but not a magisterial role

Which is to say that if there are issues where the Bible is genuinely silent Maybe some matters of history where the details are not recorded

It is appropriate for us to use science to make a guess providing we don't elevate that guess to the level of Scripture It's perfectly fine, but I would say it's not acceptable to use

Science or man's understanding I guess of the evidence, which is in which is one definition of science

To override the clear teaching of the Scripture And so for example, it is it is generally a very good scientific principle that dead men stay dead

That is something that we have repeated observations of and yet the Bible says there have been a few cases where that is not the case where people have been raised from The dead and I would say well in that case that scientific conclusion is wrong

Or at least it doesn't hold generally because the Bible tells me there are exceptions. And so the Bible is my standard my ultimate standard

I'm a presuppositional is and so then when I look at evidence I believe that we should interpret the evidence in light of the clear revelation that God's given us in Scripture Well, dr.

Ross if you would like to give a follow -up I did I did say we want to move on but I would imagine Perhaps you'd want to speak to something there

Well, I do agree with Jason that we should never allow science to trump the Bible I mean that's actually built into the statements at the

International Council of biblical inerrancy and You know my position

I think as you know, is that God has revealed himself through two books The book of Scripture in the book of nature and then you were commanded in the

Bible to put everything to the test So God wants our faith to be built on testable evidence

So yes, I am an evidentialist, but I also see the value of presuppositional ism

Namely that it's a great tool to show us. What is not true Evidentialism is a great tool for establishing.

What is true and I think proper apologetics. We need to use both tools and Incidentally, I think there are other apologetic approaches that likewise need to be taken into account

So I personally don't want to be pigeonholed into a particular apologetics approach

So I think scripture actually encourages us to combine the five or six different Apologetics models out there and keep in mind people need to hear the gospel in multiple different ways

So I think we should be encouraged to do that as apologists All right.

Well, thank you for that. Now. My next question has to do with these two books Do both of you hold to the two book? Model the book of nature the book of Scripture distinction.

Dr. Lyle Do you do you hold to that to book notion and if so, why don't you unpack that for us if not likewise

I Would say no, I would call it a fallacy to call nature a book because it's not propositional a book

This is a record of statements statements that have been recorded. I do believe in dual revelation.

Of course There's no doubt God's revealed himself through nature I think we all agree on that But I would say that the

Bible is God's special revelation and it because it's his special revelation because it's written in a human language it has a clarity to it, but nature does not have and Sometimes people will equivocate on this.

They'll say well, you know your interpretation of the Bible has the mature interpretation of nature But that's an equivocation fallacy on the word interpretation

Because when I'm interpreting scripture, what am I what am I doing? I'm understanding the meaning of the statements

When I'm interpreting nature, is that what I'm doing? No when I'm interpreting nature I'm creating statements that I think are true that apply to nature and then they have to be interpreted

Linguistically, and so there's a there's a second level there And so I would say that these statements that scientists make about nature are fallible

They're not on the same level of Scripture. And if those statements are contrary to the scripture We need to reject those statements in favor of what the

Bible says, so I'm all for for dual revelation But the Bible indicates itself that special revelation has a superiority, especially when it comes to the gospel

You don't get the gospel in general revelation You look at the world if you didn't have the

Bible you look at the world You'd say well the full of death and suffering God is an ogre if he exists at all You read the

Bible you say oh, wait a minute. It wasn't originally that way the Bible gives us the clarity of history to say wait a minute because a man's sin that death and all the suffering entered the world

Because God put man in charge of the world and as we all know when you have authority over something

So when someone is an authority over you and they make a bad decision it affects you well, think of the

Think of our current situation with with all the different politics that's going on these days People who are an authority over us when they sin it affects us and so Adam sin affected the world and it's the

Bible it Tells us that it's the Bible that gives us the lens through which we can correctly interpret the data in nature

Not that we'll always do that perfectly, but it's it's the foundational Basis on which we should be interpreting what we observe in nature.

Yeah How much do you disagree with that? Dr. Ross and how much do you agree with that? I'm sure there's some things in there that you would agree

What are the probably the most important part of our dialogue because yes, there are parts.

I agree Parts where I disagree and I think where we disagree is really gonna be quite helpful

I mean, I do agree with Jason that the Bible is the only propositional Revelation from God.

I do accept sola scriptura But that doesn't negate the fact that God has also revealed himself through nature

And so I agree with Jason while that the Rudy is a dual Revelation and we're commanded in Scripture to actually look at that revelation that reveals the attributes of God You know,

I think what concerns me about Jason's statements is his idea that somehow The record of nature is tainted by human sin so it doesn't reliably reveal

God's truth where a scripture does and What I see in Genesis 317 is that the ground is cursed because of you

It's because of our human sin that the ground doesn't produce the way that God intended

The laws of physics are intact scripture is clear in that there's been no change in the laws or constants of physics when

Adam fell And so the record of nature is still just as reliable today as it was before Adam fell

The difference is we now have fallen human beings trying to interpret the utterly trustworthy and reliable record of God revealed in nature and likewise the utterly trustworthy and Reliable record in nature and so human sin can cause us to misinterpret the record of nature

Human sin can also cause us to misinterpret the record of Scripture It applies both ways and so I look at them as being equally tainted by human sin

But what God has revealed is utterly trustworthy and reliable and where I probably also would disagree

It's not just that nature reveals the attributes of God and the existence of God It actually shows us the outline of how

God tends to redeem Us human means unto himself. I mean look at the book of Job I see that both

Job and Elihu Drawing from what they saw in the record of nature was able to get enough understanding of God's attributes

Enough understanding of the law written on their heart You know God has written his law in the heart of every human being that they recognize their need for Redeemer and we're convinced that God would provide that Redeemer and so we can get that Literally just from looking at the record of nature

I think that explains why the Bible says that every human being is without excuse before God We may not all have special revelation

But we all have God's revelation in Scripture and also I'm a real fan of the creeds

I mean my belief is that we Christians are free to dialogue and debate

Over issues that are not in the creeds, but I think Christians over the centuries have done a very good job

Actually pulling together the most crucial teachings in the Bible those that are

Perspicuous where God has clearly revealed himself and a codified them in these are creeds of the church

And this is where I think we need to be united But what you see in the Belgic confession

Article two is a God indeed has revealed himself to us through two Reliable books and a psalm 19 verse 4 that talks about how

God has written his revelation to us upon the heavens They're not literal letters of the alphabet but the fact that it uses that analogy tells us that this is something just as trustworthy and Reliable as what we see in the pages of Scripture and also it's a means by which we can bring people to faith in Christ Actually show them look everything the

Bible says about history nature of geography is accurate Even that which was centuries beyond the authors.

This is how we know these Bible authors were inspired And so we can appeal to God's revelation in nature to bring him to the revelation of Scripture Frankly, that's how

I get a lot of people to read the Bible Interesting.

All right. Well, let's let's shift here. I do I would imagine that Go back and forth on a lot of what's going on there.

I mean, I think Jason probably agrees with a lot of what I said so some of it And if you don't mind

Eli just I would say that I've never said that General revelation is tainted.

I just said it's not perspicuous Beyond the existence of God and God's moral law written on our hearts because the

Bible says that that God has done that But even think of even the moral law written on our hearts the

Bible talks about your conscious becoming seared you can get to the point Where you were you were you no longer you're suppressing that truth and unrighteousness.

This is what the Bible says in Romans 1 So I'm saying that the Bible has a clarity to it because it's propositional it has a clarity to it that you cannot get just from nature and Psalm 19 actually compares and contrasts the two revelations of God it begins with God's Natural revelation in nature and the advantage of that is it's universal

Everybody is aware of God's general revelation. Not everyone's aware of his special revelation But then it moves on to God's special revelation and boy that's that's extra special that restores the soul

And I like the way it ends too because it refers to God my rock and my Redeemer and so it's it's only the special revelation of God that can ultimately bring us knowledge of Salvation and so I think a lot of Job's statements

I don't think they were derived from nature when Job said I know that my Redeemer lives and in the end you will stand on The earth that's not something he drew from observing nature

That's something that God revealed to him as a special revelation that is now recorded in the Bible Which is the only remaining special revelation that we have

Yeah, oh good. Dr. Ross. Good. Sure. I mean the Bible is 66 books and this idea of clarity

Whatever truthfully reveals each book reveals different points with greater clarity than the other books

And likewise, I think that's true the record of nature I mean, I'm gonna go to Romans to try to get the specifics on how

I need to deal with a sin in my life And come to Christ But I'm gonna go to physics to figure out how

I should study microwaves And so there's a clarity in the record of nature that we don't see in Scripture There's a clarity in Scripture that we don't see in nature

They deal with different subject matter, but my point is where they overlap they concur

There's total concurrence where they overlap But I think people make a mistake in thinking that they totally overlap

No, I think that's me just like the 66 books of the Bible don't totally overlap

That's not the case But also I'm concerned about people who think that the overlap between nature and Scripture is like this where they barely touch one another

Very common view today. I'm sure Jason is aware of this and that's something we repudiate that reasons to believe we see

Significant overlap and where the overlap both are clear and what they reveal Well, you know,

I'm curious then I kind of resonate with what you just said there dr Ross obviously the

Bible can provide Foundations for science and tell us the way the world is in a general sense But you don't go to the

Bible to go into some of those more scientific details. What would you say to that? Dr. Lyle to his point that he made there.

It's not the Bible's purpose The Bible's purpose is to teach us about the history that was necessary for Understanding God's plan of redemption.

That's why I go to the Bible to understand how microwaves work But if the Bible spoke on microwaves, it would be right and would be clearer than anything else we could get in nature

Because it took a long time for human beings to figure out how microwaves work. So it's not something that's just immediately obvious It's not something that is propositional something that is perspicuous something that is immediately clear

It took a lot a great deal of experimentation to do that and I'm all for science I know I know you and we're on the same page there.

We like science, but I would say that that's not That there's a difference between science and general revelation.

There's a difference between general revelation special revelation Let's make sure we don't confuse those different issues The Bible is exceptionally clear in telling us the history of the universe and telling us the important things that we need to know in Order to be redeemed basically and it has a clarity beyond anything you could find in nature on those issues

On issues where the Bible doesn't speak Of course, it's fine to use science to make a good guess and sometimes we find out we're wrong and you know

New data comes along. That's the nature of the beast. That's the nature of science it's a fallible tool, but it's a good one that God gave us and it should be used not to Override the clear teachings of the scripture but to provide insights in other areas

Okay. Now suppose we're driving a car and we're all in a car together I'm gonna stop and we're gonna turn a completely different direction.

Dr Lyle, how old is the universe and what is your scientific evidence for that or Well, you know what let's keep it there

I was gonna add another but let's not conglomerate the question to make it more complicated I can do that. I'm a teacher. So I talk a lot.

So I'm gonna try to keep myself You know to a minimal Minimalized question.

So how old is the universe and What evidence do you have to support your conclusion?

Yeah, I think it's about 6 ,000 years old. I can't put an exact date on it Believe it's millions of billions of years old with regard to science

Actually when you ask about the age of something you're not asking a science question You're asking a history question because you're asking when something came into existence how long ago you're asking about the past and science

Is about the present it's about the current present operation of the universe And so now that's not to say that we can't use the tools of science to make some guesses about the past I think that's appropriate

But my point is if you have a history book, that's what you turn to first I believe we have a history book that gives us not the date of creation

But it gives us sufficient information that we can at least Approximate that in terms of God creating in six days and the genealogies and so on So that's where I get the 6 ,000 years.

Is there science that lines up with that? Absolutely and Maybe we should

I don't know how much depth to go into here because how do we make scientific age estimates? Usually the way it's done is there's some process that's going on in present that happens

Not necessarily at a constant rate but at a predictable rate like radioactive decay that it's not constant

It's an exponential decay and the assumption is that it's always been that way And so that's what you do when you make an age estimate you assume that the process has continued in the past as it is

Today, that's a uniformitarian assumption And if you do that for short periods of time it tends to work pretty well if you say the candle has burned

About an inch in the last hour. So I believe that an hour ago is an inch taller That's probably pretty good assumption if you extrapolate and back and say yeah

And therefore centuries ago is taller than Mount Everest Not such a good assumption because at some point those conditions changed at some point somebody lit the candle and so what we usually do with in terms of presenting evidence for a young universe is

We'll say let's let's take the secular time scale the billions of years and make their assumptions

They're uniformitarian standards and show that it leads to an inconsistency. So that's what we in logic call a reductio ad absurdum

It's refuting a worldview by assuming it and showing that it leads to an inconsistency take carbon dating For example c14 has a half -life of 5 ,700 years and it turns out if you had the entire earth

Made up of nothing but c14 with that short a half -life in 1 million years. You'd not have a single atom left all it would all disintegrated into Into nitrogen now if there's no new source of c14 now it's produced in the upper atmosphere as cosmic rays bombard nitrogen atoms converts them into c14 and Plants absorb it because they take in the carbon dioxide and then we eat the plants or animals eat the plants

We eat the animals either way we get new Carbon in us. That's where we get our carbon from and a small fraction of that is c14

So it's just it's like one in a trillion It's a very small fraction, which is which is good because we don't want to be glowing or anything like that So you're you're you're all unstable

Tell people that a little bit. You're all a little bit unstable And the rate at which that decays if something were buried deep in the earth and it were millions of years old

It shouldn't have any c14 left in it because c14 is produced in the upper atmosphere You can't really get it into fossils things like that They're buried deep down that are shielded from cosmic rays

You can get a little bit from radioactivity But not very much and so the fact that we when we dig up things when we dig up fossils and if we carbon date them

Lo and behold, you're gonna get ages that are consistent with the biblical timescale Maybe not exactly the same because again, the point is not to get the true age

The point is to show an inconsistency in the the secular the the deep time timescale. Dr.

Lyle, though But what about okay, so you're talking about carbon dating and I'm sure dr Ross can go into this more detail and once you're finished summarizing and I finished asking this question

Well, let dr. Ross lay out but you can continue on if you have a couple more points you want to go through but with regards to carbon dating suppose

Dr. Ross agreed with you like yeah, okay, we can't get an accurate reading necessarily through carbon dating But there are so many other indicators that point to an older universe

How would you bring that together with the different the other? Excuse me the other ways in which one can determine

Age so to speak what we're debating here is a worldview issue. It's so it's not about the evidence

It's about how the evidence should be interpreted and the only way to refute a worldview is with a reductio ad absurdum

You assume the worldview and show that it leads to an inconsistency And so the best way to disprove to show it see

I don't think there is any evidence for an old universe and that we can Talk about that, but I would say that what

I do when I present evidence for young Universe, I assume for the sake of argument uniformitarianism

I'll give you naturalism that the universe came in You know, it just there's no God everything happens at constant rates and so on and you still end up with in many cases

Ages that are much younger than the secular timescale would allow now the secularist if he's if he's gonna argue properly he should assume catastrophism and Supernatural creation and then argue that under those conditions

Nonetheless, there are some instances where you still get millions of years But the problem is that I'm not aware of any case where that happens

In other words all the arguments that are for the millions or billions of years assume to some extent uniformitarianism and to some extent

Naturalism things that I would reject you see and so it begs the question Because they're assuming their own worldview and then arguing that that demonstrates that my worldview is wrong

But they've already assumed that at the outset. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. Okay. Dr. Ross How old is the universe?

What's your evidence? And then we'll get into this issue of presuppositions I think that's a very important point in this debate Yeah, the age of the universe thirteen point seven nine billion plus or minus point zero five billion and you know listening to what

Jason is saying is It's not a debate between Catastrophism and uniformitarianism.

I mean people like myself believe in both is that according to the Bible? the laws of physics don't change and In astronomy, we can look back in time and see if they haven't changed

I think what impresses me about astronomy is that we human beings are living at the one time in the history of the universe

Or we can directly observe the entirety of the history of the universe Just like God gave us a

Bible so we can read all 66 books Not just a part of it, but the whole of it.

Likewise you put as human beings here at the optimal time I mean if we were placed in the universe five billion years earlier than what we what we are

We'd only be seeing the last two -thirds of the history of the universe There wouldn't be adequate time for life in the cosmic creation event to travel on the space surface of the universe and reach our

Telescope likewise we were placed here later Dark energy would be speeding that information away from us a greater than the velocity of light

So I think God loved us to such a degree. He wanted to make sure we could read a hundred percent of the history book of nature and you know, we're both astronomers as Astronomers we have no access to the present a hundred -percent of our data comes from the past It's because we're looking at distant objects and it takes light a finite amount of time to reach our telescopes

The farther away we look the farther back in time We see and what impresses me is

God placed us here at the one location the universe because that too is fine -tuned

Anywhere else in the universe they wouldn't have access to a hundred percent of the past history of the universe

So God has revealed himself through the words of Scripture about what he's done in the past But he's also revealed himself to us directly.

It's not indirect. It's the direct tool We can go back in time and verify the

Bible got it, right when it said no change in the laws of physics I mean every distant galaxy and star

I look at I measure the laws of physics and measure to be identical So we measure here in the lab

And I think this is crucial because every young earth creations model I've looked at critically depends on Dramatically altered laws of physics either at the fall of Adam or the flood or both or other times

Yet the Bible is explicit and the book of nature explicit that that did not happen

We got the measurements and the text of the Bible to show that Now isn't your interpretation from an older perspective?

I'm sorry. Isn't your interpretation of the data of science? Based upon your your presupposition of your particular interpretation of the biblical passages, right?

What role do your presuppositions play in all this in other words if you're misinterpreting the scriptures?

How is that going to affect and how you come to the data since you want to be a biblically informed Christian Especially when you're engaging in science, but what role do your presuppositions play in this you think?

Well again, I mentioned that you know, I'm multi -faceted my apologetics. Okay, it's an evidentialist

I'm also a presupposition list. I'm also I look at the historical method.

I like that I like the logic and there's different approaches and I think we already use all of them

And so I don't want to be pigeonholed here But as an evidentialist I say, okay

What does the scripture say and do we have any external proof that that is exactly the case?

I think that's true with the laws of physics One reason why we can trust the record of nature is that God has told us in the book of Scripture We can trust it.

I haven't changed the laws of physics. He says I'm an unchangeable God Jeremiah 33

You humans change, but I don't change I'm immutable as evidence look at the laws that govern the heavens and the earth as they don't change

I don't change that's one of several biblical texts that tell us about the constancy of physics

This is something unique to Christianity Christianity compared to the other major religions of the world

Actually tells us that we can trust the record of nature to reveal truth. It's not going to deceive us

It's impossible for God to lie or deceive in either revelation So I anticipate the fine consistency and so I read the text

I look at nature and say Okay, is the nature saying the same thing it is and saying it to me

That's one way I reach out to my fellow scientists, you know, look at these texts Unchanging physics look at these astronomical observations

These laws and constants of physics are reliable to 16 places a decimal over the history of the universe

So that's remarkable evidence that the Bible thousands of years ago predicted future scientific discoveries with a hundred percent accuracy

That's just one of hundreds of examples. I could give you I think God intended that we use those examples

To bring people to faith in Jesus Christ Okay, dr. Lyle, is there something you want to speak there?

yeah, I the temptation is I and people who know me I'm very interested in methodology and I Probably would take issue with the notion of using a little bit of presuppositional is an evidential

I don't think one could jump in and out. That's just my my view there I do think that when a presuppositional is for example appeals to evidence

He's not appealing to evidential ism and like fashion an evidentialist appeals to presuppositions. He's not necessarily adopting presuppositional ism

So I probably would take some some issue there, but without getting into the whole method of methodology debate

What do you have to say to what he said he said there? I kind of understand what he's saying Generally speaking. I'm contracting with him.

But what are some disagreements you have with dr Ross on what he said there if you have any well,

I thought he was supposed to be giving evidence for an old universe I didn't hear any I heard

That presupposed, but I didn't hear an argument for it And we can come back to it, I mean, that's fine the only thing that got close to it was the

Assumption that starlight takes a long period of time to reach the earth and that isn't it's actually not just an assumption.

It's a When you know something about the physics of Einstein You can't just say what takes a million years for light to get from here to there you can't say that because it depends on the reference frame and it depends on your synchrony convention and He Ross has assumed a particular synchrony convention and he's assumed a particular reference frame presumably

Earth But it wouldn't have to be from lights point of view. Every trip is instantaneous So from lights point of view, it takes no time at all to get from any distant galaxy to the earth

And that is a very well established physics And it turns out there are synchrony conventions that you can use that that even from Earth's reference frame get the starlight here

Instantly and this is well known in well It's well known among people who are who are familiar with Einstein's relativity who specialize in that It's not known.

I'm not I'm not trying to insult you by saying, you know, you're ignorant anything. It's this is something that's well known if to specialists on relativity

It's called it's called the conventionality thesis or the conventionality distant simultaneity

And so I would say that no, you're not really looking back in time But even if you wanted to use the Einstein synchrony convention say, okay

I'm looking at a light year out and looking a year in the past That still doesn't give me any data in terms of here in the past, right?

And so you're at the point is wherever you look in space You're looking at one point in time and therefore you don't you don't have history with regard to the laws of physics changing

I don't think they change Generally, but of course God can do a miracle God can temporarily suspend a lot of physics.

That's fine Promises like the passage in Jeremiah, I think was the passage you were sort of what paraphrasing which is fine

That there were ordinances of heaven and earth But those were enacted at some point those were created at some point at some point

God started ruling the universe in a particular way And you can't go back beyond that. You can't say well, though No, the laws of physics they go back to infinity back to eternity past no, because there's not an eternity past and so when

God created the universe and Even during the creation week. He's doing things that today we would say

Maybe violate laws of nature speaking into existence new forms of animals and so on Speaking stars into existence things that that he's not doing today because today he's resting.

He's still in that rest He's not in the seventh day, but he's still in the rest. And so There is a difference between looking at creation and perhaps the fall and then subsequent to that It's in Genesis 8 22 where God promises the cycles of nature will continue in the futures

They have in the past as long as the earth remains That's the other bookend and so you can't go you can't go indefinitely in the future and you can't go back past Creation which

I would say scripturally is a few thousand years ago If you do that You're gonna get an incorrect age estimate because you've you've gone past the initial conditions or the boundary conditions

That God has set forth in Scripture. All right, so let's lest we forget. Okay Dr.

Ross, why don't you give some evidence if you I want at this point of the discussion? I want to disappear ever so slightly and allow you guys to talk this out.

So what is the evidence for an old earth and Dr. Lyle, why don't you guys have a conversation interject when you think there's a point of like, well, wait a minute and Kind of have a conversation here and let's see where it goes because I think

I think this is an important thing Both of you guys have presuppositions and just like it was evident with dr.

Ross's assumption of the speed of light Dr. Lyle has his presuppositions. Why don't you have a little a conversation with regards to the scientific evidence?

So dr. Ross Why don't you lay out? Scientifically why you think the the universe the earth is much older than what dr.

Lyle thinks Well, both of you have brought up this idea of the synchrony convention on the velocity of light

This is a major part of the debate. We had last time that Jason I met and in that debate

I said this is testable. Well, the tests have since been done. I mean, for example, we have

Distance supernovae that have been gravitationally lensed by an intervening galaxy cluster And it basically shows that the velocity of light is the same in all directions

Jason was making the point in our previous debate that the velocity of light is infinite coming towards earth

Half the velocity of light going away. We now know that's incorrect by director I could jump in because I've already answered that and in fact,

I have an article on my website just a few you go back just a few issues back on the website and I deal with the idea of Supernova and the light coming from a supernova and it's perfectly consistent with the anisotropic synchrony convention and just so you don't

Agree with you Jason. Oh, they do it. In fact, I show the numbers I actually do the math in that in that article. So have a look at it and But just to give you that another thing too

I just just because you've slightly misrepresented my position and I want to I want to clarify that a little bit I'm not suggesting that the speed of light the one -way speed of light is this or that or the other

I'm not saying it's Instantaneous or it's the same as the round -trip speed. I'm saying it's a humanly stipulated convention

And so it's something that we get to choose and that tells us how to synchronize Distant clocks and you know where that idea comes from the idea that we're free to choose the one -way speed of light

It comes from Albert Einstein in his book on relativity his primer book. There's the basic relativity on page 22

He talks about this He says that light requires the same time to traverse the path a to b is for a to m is for b to m

Talking about opposite directions is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light but a

Stipulation which I can make of my own free will in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity and that's that might be slightly

Paraphrased but that's pretty close to what he says so this idea of Being able to test the one -way speed of light can't be done and you should you should read up on this just because it's interesting

Even if you just put the apologetics aside, it's just interesting your stuff I don't think you're interpreting it correctly

Jason and you know, the astronomy astronomical community is with me on this Natural published a paper in the secular literature that uses the anisotropic

Sanctuary convention and Sarkar is an adamant evolutionist. He believes in deep time He just sees that the one -way speed of light cannot be measured objectively

And by the way, if you're able to do it, you'll get a Nobel Prize if you can measure objectively One -way speed of light without first begging the question without assuming it at first a good paper.

You should read on This is John Winnie's paper special relativity without one -way velocity assumptions Make sure you've read that because if you haven't we're not going to be able to have a an intelligible conversation

Give dr. Roth an opportunity to kind of speak to that there. Go ahead. Dr. Ross. Well, okay You've been asked me all along to present some scientific evidence for an old earth

I mean I think one thing I find impressive is when you look at the deep ice cores and sediment cores

We can actually see the Milankovitch cycles In other words the cycles that are being driven by the gravitational perturbations on the

Earth's orbit This is Newton's laws of physics actually reflected in these deep ice cores and sediment cores

Basically showing us 40 cycles of the variation in the eccentricity variation of Earth's orbit

So that's evidence that you know We last four million years have actually seen these cycles in the deep ice cores

And I know the argument is that these ice cores are not annual layers, but we can actually prove that by finding volcanic dust signatures of volcanoes that erupted in recorded history and the very fact that we can see

These Milankovitch cycles I think is strong Evidence I would also argue that the quantity of biogenic

Marble and limestone 76 quadrillion tons of Biogenic limestone and marble in the crust of the earth that testifies of a huge abundance of light

Such an enormous abundance of light There's no way that the silver constant can explain that in just thousands of years

We're looking at a minimum of hundreds of millions of years to lay up that much

Biodeposits in the crust of the earth and then the solar luminosity stability I've just written an article on this making the point that Our Sun is more stable in its luminosity stability and splurring stability than any other known star that we see in our galaxy and Now, you know just as we and I'm sure that Jason Lyle has taken a course on the interior physics of stars and What we realize is there's only a certain time in the burning history of the star where it's possible to get that Extreme climate stability and it's something that's been verified by observations and neutrinos coming out of the

Sun Back to paper was just published a few weeks ago where they actually can see not only the neutrinos from the hydrogen

Helium fusion reaction, but the carbon nitrogen oxygen fusion reaction as well

And so this tells us that the Sun must be halfway through its nuclear burning cycle, which means it's 4 .5

Billion years of age and we've also talked about the light travel time problem.

I mean the fact is that we have trigonometric measurements of galaxies as far away as 470 million light -years and So just using plane geometry a direct distance measure and looking at the velocity of light how we know that the

You know that galaxies light has been traveling to us for 470 million years

And this is something that there was a major source of a debate We had a televised debate between me and Danny Faulkner that was reviewed by 13

Evangelical research astronomers they were part of this and a lot of the debate was just on you know

How compelling are the light travel times for a universe? It must be billions of years old the statements on our website

Just go to astronomer statement at reasons org and you'll see what the adjudicators of debate had to say

Okay, let me Okay with you Eli Go ahead What we heard in all those arguments and I knew this would happen.

We heard the assumptions of uniformitarianism and naturalism Uniformitarianism the idea that today we see cycles and today there there's good evidence that they're annual the assumption is they've always been annual

That's a uniformitarian assumption that it's linked in with Milankovic. Look the Milankovic theory.

That is a scandal and a half Dr. Jake Hebert at ICR has been researching the

Milankovic theory and he's blown it apart It's it's circular and it's circular inconsistent make sure you have a look at some of this paper

I'm not gonna go into details because frankly, it's incredibly boring, but Jake likes it. So but I'm sorry.

Did I talk over you Eli? That's okay. I you said something that I caught my attention here You said that he had the assumption of uniformitarianism, which

I kind of detected But again, he can expand on on that whether that's something he was doing or not

But you did say the assumption of naturalism and so I mean that I'm sure Dr.

Ross would would disagree with you're not I don't think you would think that you're assuming naturalism. Maybe uniformitarianism

Maybe if were you assuming that because you think that the uniformitarian principle is also supported in scripture.

Is that the case? Dr. Ross? Yes, I'm not a naturalist never have been so yeah,

I'm glad you brought that up because We're on the same page when you said that the

Sun has to be a certain age You assumed that God could not have supernaturally created it already with the right materials for it to be stable

And so you didn't you know, I'm sure you didn't intentionally mean to assume naturalism. That's a naturalistic assumption

Yeah, but that's an assumption that's testable. I mean I can actually look at the physics of stars and say

Okay Does it have the signature being? Created just 6 ,000 years ago, or does that have all the signs of having been

Using energy sure Could not create a star that you couldn't distinguish from an old star

That God couldn't supernaturally create a star in six days That would be just that that you would be unable to distinguish from a star

That's actually billions of years old that God cannot do that Well, you're putting yourself into a trap because I could use the same argument to say, you know

Everything that I've been experiencing in my brain, which makes me think I've been alive for 60 years

I was just placed there one second ago. I'm really not 70 years of age. I'm really just three days old

But the Bible explicitly Pardon me, how would you refute your own argument?

Well because the Bible it tells us we can actually trust What we see in nature we can trust the memories in our head

I mean, we're not being deceived. It's impossible for God to lie or deceive and so yeah

God could do all those things But now we're looking at a deceptive God and the Bible explicitly tells us it's impossible for God to lie or deceive

Therefore I'm willing to trust my memories. I'm willing to trust what I see in the record of nature

I'm willing to trust what I see in the Bible because the Bible tells me that's something I can trust and something

I can put To the test and so if indeed everything was just created instantly five seconds ago

There would be signatures that I could check to see if that indeed was true That's a priest up isn't it by the way you and I are on the same page obviously

We don't believe that God actually created six seconds ago But my point is he does have the power to have done that and with our memory

And so he could have created the universe in six days. He's got the power to do that The only thing would be deceptive is if he told us in his word that he didn't do it that way

Right because you can't see age you look at a star and you say here's what I think I think that it takes a certain amount of time for the star to come to this these conditions

But unless God told you that he's not being deceptive to make a star as it is What about the first trees that God made that were supernaturally made?

Do they have rings in them? I don't know, but if they did you'd say well God's deceptive.

No, it's just part of the structure of the tree You got to start somewhere and you you always can assume that that you know a particular structure like a tree came about from a sapling

But the first trees were not made that way. They were made bearing fruit already. Adam was made as an adult You might say well, it

God's deceptive making Adam as adult No, it's because you got to start somewhere and it wouldn't make sense for him to start as a baby

No, but God's not gonna put false signs of age on Adam. So no, he hasn't anywhere in the universe

There's no signs of age anywhere But if you look at me you'll see signs of age they're on my face just you liver spots

And I could argue well God just put that there to make you think that I'm really old when in fact I'm not and my argument is

God doesn't behave that way He's not going to put liver spots on Adam to make you think he's 30 years of age

I believe that if we were there on site, we would measure his cholesterol and his bloodstream would be 60 milligrams

Per liter that wouldn't be the hundred and twenty of an adult. We wouldn't see chipped teeth. It wouldn't see gray hair

He would been brand -new. I mean the difference is that Adam did not come from a from a woman since Created yes, that's my point

That's my point and don't confuse age with proxies for age things like liver spots and so on the only reason you associate that with age is because you've seen a lot of people and We all have and you know that certain people have certain ages and you say oh that's characteristic of that age

But if Adam had lived if hypothetically Adam had liver spots, it would not occur to him to think of that as an indicator of age

Right because it just you know, he has no experience with that He has no experience with how people age and so if you ask

Adam, how old do you think you look? He'd say well, apparently this is what a one -second year old looks like because he Do you think he had worn teeth?

Say again. Do you think Adam had scar tissue? Do you think he had worn teeth? I don't

Is We have experience today because we can compare lots of different people and we can see all here's certain things that are proxies for age

But you can't do that with the universe because we only got the one So it's not like you can say this universe looks About 13 billion years old because when

I compare it with all these other universes of various ages It looks most like this other one that's 13 billion years old You know, we got stars.

We got galaxies and astronomers Actually created those and I think that's the difference between us

You hold a kind of a naturalistic view when it comes to star formation. Do you not? Well, why do we see stars that appear to span an age range of 1 to 13 billion years?

They all look about 6 ,000 years old now. Okay, we can have a debate with that in front of it

You're confusing ages with proxy. You can't see age. You're making a presupposition That the secular evolutionary stellar evolution is right and therefore you look at the star

It's okay. It must be this far along its cycle, but I don't assume that I just assume that God created the stars Kind of like kind of like they are they've changed a little bit in 6 ,000 years.

Not too much. Some of them blown up Well, all the stars are in fact just 6 ,000 years old or younger.

Wouldn't they all look the same? No, they don't they don't they all have signatures of age it spans

If stars were made 6 ,000 year God make them different because God says one star differs from another in glory

All you know, the animals were all made at the same on the same day, but they don't look identical I mean that doesn't make any sense

Well, I could see you making all different colors, but why would he make them look like they all have different ages?

Perception position they don't look like they have different ages. Well every astronomer I know of says they do

So, I mean for example, we look on the earth and we see the isotopes of plutonium decay

But there's no plutonium on the face of the earth and we look at those isotopes They tell us that the rate of plutonium

K when plutonium was present on the earth is identical to what it is right now I mean, why would

God? Supernaturally just make it all look like that plutonium that disappeared billions of years ago

If in fact the earth is only thousands of years old again, you're arguing for a deceptive

God I would say that you are because The universe doesn't look old you're taking secular assumptions about how things age secular assumptions about radioactive decay assuming uniformitarianism

And you're saying it's and see we get it. We get a result that's older than the biblical age Well, of course you do you've assumed that the

Bible's wrong in terms of its time scale and then you conclude that the Bible That teaches a uniformitarian principle it tells us

Specifically argues against uniformitarianism in 2nd Peter chapter 3 says this already It's the scoffers that say all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.

They deny a global flood He's not referring to the law of gravity. For example, I Mean as you say, it's basically saying here.

We think things have been the same in terms of human history. They change Specifically is referring to the denial of the global flood

Which was a geologically catastrophic event where all the high hills under the whole heavens were covered with water as the

Bible says That's what Peter says people would deny in favor of uniformitarianism. All things continue as they were from beginning creation

All right. I'm gonna interrupt real quick because Dr. Ross has been giving his perspective on the evidence for the old earth

What is your again, I think it could be interpreted by some that dr.

Lyle is Critiquing dr. Ross's perspective, but hasn't really definitively laid out reasons to believe that the that the universe is younger

So, I mean perhaps you touched on it before but why don't why don't you? Give a little bit more of your positive case and and perhaps dr

Ross can can interject at points where he disagrees and give the reasons why Okay, and as I pointed out earlier

My primary reason for believing in a young universe is because we have the record of God's Word which I interpret grammatically historically exegetically

And I believe that when you do that you get about about 6 ,000 years You can't put an exact date on it, but you get something like that In order in terms of the science the kind of argument

I would make would tend to be a reductio ad absurdum I would assume for the sake of hypothesis naturalism and uniformitarianism and show that it leads to an inconsistent result

And if I could expand a little bit on a carbon dating which I mentioned earlier that that is mind -blowing to me that everything

We find in the fossil record no matter how far down it is if it's got carbon in it It's got c14 in it You can take chunks of coal coal beds are supposed to be a hundred million years old in the secular timeline

You you will find carbon in them c14 half -life 5700 years and there's zero c14

Go ahead uranium and thorium potassium in the crust of the earth So in the earth you get carbon -14 being made continuously

So you're gonna get a background level of carbon -14 no matter what you date No, no, no, and the reason for that but that's something that was looked into by the the rate research project

Look into that and they found that that by the way that in principle what you're saying could happen if we had about a hundred thousand times more radioactive elements on earth than we actually have and Just maybe for the layman out there that are watching this basically you can think of carbon the carbon decay c14 decay

Think of a milk carton and I and I cut a big hole in it and the milk's just gushing out it's got a fast decay rate and You can think of these other forms potassium argon rubidium strontium and so on as a milk and I poke a little hole in It and so that the milk just it just drips out.

Okay, it's got a slower decay rate And so the question is why do we still have milk jars that are you know?

Half -full if they've been gushing for millions of years It wouldn't make sense and and what he was suggested and it could work in principle if there were more radioactive elements

Is that well there there are so many milk jugs that have these little streams that they they fill in They fill into the the carbon one

So they replenish it and so it basically if you have a lot of very slow streams you can replenish one

Major stream and that would work if there were about a hundred thousand times more radioactive elements in the earth than are actually there Well 14 is in the upper atmosphere where it's produced by cosmic rays and the earth

Once you get down deep into the crust of the earth, it's totally shielded from cosmic rays Which is why they do the neutrinos experiments underwater.

Yeah, it's you live from the cosmic rays But you know, there's plenty of radioactive material there and the real point was the nitrogen

They now realize there's significant quantities of nitrogen in the crust of the earth So it's completely consistent with the interior of the earth being billions of years old

If there were a hundred thousand times more radioactive elements, we don't need a hundred thousand times more The earth as you probably are aware is super endowed with uranium thorium and potassium

We got about six hundred and thirty times as much thorium as other rocky planets

So there's plenty of radioactive material there The question is is it there in the right place the latest research papers tell us it is in the right place

The nitrogen is there and therefore getting a background level at fifty seven to fifty eight thousand year carbon -14 date

And incidentally, you only need a very miniscule amount of carbon -14 to get that kind of a date

So that explains why ancient diamonds ancient zircons all come up with the same carbon -14 date

It's simply the background radiation that we would anticipate given the interior of the earth you're trying to fill a

Mug that's gushing out with little dripping and it's not going to work The rate of radioactive decay of these heavier elements is very slow

And that's why I can't recharge the c14 amount in any significant amount that could be detected unless there were a lot more of it

Well, that's an assertion you're making but the scientific literature doesn't agree with you It's and it's published in the peer -reviewed the rape book.

Have a look at it I've read the rape book. You need to look at the latest research papers on the interior physics of the

Nuclear cross -section of these heavier elements is tiny compared to that of c14

And so you can't you can't recharge a fast decayer with slow decayers unless you had millions of times more of them

I mean, it's not going to change the physics I'm telling you there's plenty of that They've radioactive material to make it work that published literature supports that the rate study is quite old right now

Incidentally the rate study itself said if the radiometric decay rates don't

Dramatically change at the front or the fall or both then the earth and universe Must be billions of years old that concession is made repeatedly in the rate study

Well, we think it did change at the flutter at the fall and that doesn't mean the laws of physics had the change

But there are certain things, you know, the strong nuclear constantly change it just a little bit It has an enormous effect on the rate of radioactive decay.

That's in Eugene The radiometric decay rates in the past may refute, but the rate book says your stuff in the present

You can only measure stuff in the present. You can make some assumptions and make a guess about the past You can't measure the past you can't measure the past and astronomy can only measure the past.

I don't know the Convention and you're assuming that earth's the reference frame and I've already explained to you from lights point of view

Every trip is instantaneous. If you ask a photon, how long ago did you leave that galaxy? The answer would be zero

Are you aware of this? Well, let me ask you this when we look at the Sun do we see the

Sun as it is right now? Or do we see it as it was eight minutes ago? Well synchrony convention you use if you're using the anisotropic synchrony convention

We're seeing is that as is right now if you're using the Einstein synchrony convention It's eight minutes ago and Einstein would say those are both equally legitimate conventions

Yeah, but again these measurements of supernovae actually Established and I refuted that on the website.

You need to take a look at it you and I will Use your reputation and so do the astronomers who wrote the paper on that?

That's supernova again I saw three separate supernova eruptions from the same event over a three -year period of time

Let me bring up my website because I don't know I don't know what else to do here because this what you're saying has been refuted

And it's been refuted by me it's been refuted by others too But the fact is you cannot measure the one -way speed of light without circular assumptions

And this is well established in the physics literature. It's called the conventionality thesis a good book to read on It would be the one by Max jammer called what's it called conventions of simultaneity from antiquity to Einstein?

You need to read this literature here. We're not going to get anywhere. You're obviously not familiar I've shared this with you on the first debate.

We made namely that look Okay, if you want to have this kind of a technical debate, we need to do it in front of a trained audience

And so I'm willing to do with you what I did with Jason or with Danny Faulkner let's have a public debate in front of a panel of evangelical research astronomers and Get their judgment on the debate

What you said Audience, huh? What you've said is very revealing because you see it reveals our different standards your standard for what determines truth is

Minds of men my standards the Word of God that is the fundamental difference between our two perspectives No, it isn't because I believe in the authority of Scripture just as much as you do.

It's a difference of interpretation Experts to decide these things But And this is just coming for me.

I'm not taking sides moving But if we do appeal to scholars who agree with you

Isn't that going to be based upon the presuppositions that they bring to this issue?

So that if they agree with the presuppositions that you have which are related to how you interpret Genesis That's going to affect how they interpret the data.

So wouldn't the real debate be over the presuppositions? With which we bring to the data and which then lead to the the particular conclusions that we come to you

I what I'm bringing up is if you're gonna bring the level of debate to a technical area That's a bit on what lay people can comprehend

It needs to be done in front of the peer review. So I want to talk about you know

How do we interpret the physical Hebrew? Let's do that in front of people that are fluent in biblical

Hebrew if we want to talk about the astrophysics Let's do it in front of people actually have

PhDs in the discipline and like I did with Danny Faulkner We actually agreed upon the astronomers who would be part of the adjudicating council

And so I'm prepared to make the same offer to Jason Hugh the problem is what you're discussing has already been published in the secular literature

In fact, there's a rich history of debate on the sinker and the conventionality of distance simultaneity throughout the 20th century

If you want to see someone who tried to argue for it for the position you're advocating take a look at Malamud's paper But that was refuted in 1999 by Sarkar and Stachel so if we're gonna dialogue about this you're gonna have to you're gonna have to deal in you're gonna have to dive into the

Literature that's already been published in the peer -reviewed literature And if you want to publish a peer -reviewed article and debate online in a written format,

I will happily do it on this issue No, I I've looked at those papers and I agree with the comments that you're making there

What I'm saying is we now have observational evidence to put this to the test and so the fact that we see these

Supernovae coming to us with different light paths with different angles. They're not all coming directly towards the earth

This actually gives us a way to test these ideas and this again is in the published literature

Multiple papers have been written on the observation of the supernova eruption

Not Determining the one -way speed of light they cannot do that and even secularists will admit that secularists who are informed on this issue

Like Sarkar and Stachel you're gonna have to look at those papers you well I do agree. It can't be done in a lab and on planet

Earth But if you've got a distant supernova that's been gravitationally lens Has and the fact that they actually take different times to reach us

So one of the things you may be missing and by the way Have you read my article or I refute that just out of curiosity.

I've not read your latest article. I'll take the time to do that But I'm gonna have you read the articles on the supernova.

I have I have and that's why I know they read any of them One of the things just to get you thinking along the right lines you

I'm gonna give you the partial answer You might be assuming that in the anisotropic synchrony convention all light that's sort of directed toward us is instantaneous

That's not the anisotropic synchrony convention. It's angle dependent Okay, and so light that's aimed at a little bit of an angle to you does not travel instantaneously

It's still be faster than the round -trip speed under the anisotropic synchrony convention but it's not until it gets deflected by the galaxy that it's that it is now directed directly toward your line of sight and If you calculate and I and I give the the mathematical angle so you can calculate this yourself to see how long will it take?

for the light from this Start to reach this angle There's it's about a year different between the two angles based on the anisotropic synchrony convention

And by the way, that would have to be the case because the anisotropic synchrony convention is a coordinate system and in general relativity

Tensor equations are not affected by coordinate systems the tensor that's valid one coordinate system is valid in all coordinate systems

And so that's why it will be impossible to refute the the synchrony The the conventionality distance simultaneity and that's going over the heads of a lot of people

But I hope you'll take a look at that article and if you have a reputation Text me.

I'll respond to it. Okay. All right. I do apologize We have reached the hour and a half mark and this is the point of the show where we take questions from those who have been

Listening in so again both of these gentlemen have written a lot in this area and of course, they're referencing some of the scientific material that Where can people access these articles that you're like these peer -reviewed articles?

Well, you can go to the NASA website and you can because they actually have an archive of all the published research papers in the physical sciences my colleague

Jeffrey's as wearing is also an astrophysicist. He's written about this on our website

So you can get that at reasons org and incidentally any watcher viewer can get three chapters of my books at reasons org slash

Ross Including the book. I wrote a matter of days on how the

Bible if you read it consistently and literally Rudy does sustain an old earth interpretation

All right Just the articles that I mentioned you can find them online But a book that summarizes all of them.

It's written by Max jammer and it's called conventions of simultaneity or Concepts concepts of simultaneity

From antiquity to Einstein something like that So it's by Max jammer and it actually summarizes a lot of the technical articles which you can then look up A very foundational one was written by John Winnie in the 19.

I think is 1970 It's a two -part technical paper and it's called special relativity without one -way velocity assumptions

It's a it's a great paper And then there's there's another one written by Wesley Salmon.

I Don't know how to pronounce it. It's like it's spelled like the fish. So I'm assuming that's how it's pronounced He kind of summarizes some of these things as well

The Sarkar and Stachel paper is interesting because they use the same convention that I use where the the inward directed light is instantaneous

So they're using the the the past light cone as the surface of simultaneity and they they're not creationist

They just do it because it has certain interesting conveniences So a Sarkar and Stachel and that was published in 1999

And they're and they also refute Malamud who thought that he could measure the one -way speed of light Just real quick before we get into this.

Go ahead before we get into the audience questions I just have a quick question for you guys. That might be helpful for people a dr.

Ross and then dr. Lyle could answer what is the for someone who wants to pursue this in more detail, but perhaps perhaps it's not an academic

What is the best book on the defense of old earth creationism as you understand it? And it could be one of your own books as well

That you would suggest for people who want to get a fuller grasp of your position Paul would be navigating

Genesis and a matter of days a second edition for offering free chapters of both

Reasons dot org slash Ross they can get a free chapter of each book. Okay. All right. What about you?

Dr. Lyle? What is the Positionalist to so I with regards to apologetic methodology.

I do side with dr. Lyle. So I'm very I Know very well the joke. What's the best book?

And of course the preceptor always looks like he's got the upper hand because he holds up the Bible But I understand that you you hold to the

Bible as your ultimate authority as well We could all appreciate that even though we have these differences here But with respect to the defense of the young earth perspective what book other than the

Bible, which of course obviously Would be a good place for people to go it can be your own book where the young earth perspective is defended

Biblically and scientifically. Yeah, there's several good ones. I would like to push my own book. It's called understanding

Genesis And I in this book it's big it's it's basically presuppositional hermeneutics

That's what the book is if we take a high view of Scripture if we if we let Scripture be its own best interpreter, how do we

Interpret Scripture and it's more than just Genesis But I do I do focus in on Genesis and I also respond to some of the chapters that you wrote to you in your navigating

Genesis, which I've read so I'd encourage people to get both get I'm giving you free publicity He'll get get Hughes book navigating

Genesis and then get understanding Genesis and and go to the Bible and see which one matches up best

But by the way, dr. Lyle, it's not as though I don't own a bunch of your books. I really do They're just not in this office.

They're in there in my bedroom. I have another shelf All right, okay,

I think you guys did an excellent job Hopefully you guys are doing good because this is where a lot of the questions come in and for a lot of people.

This is Many people's favorite part of these interviews So if you guys are good to go if you want to take a nice quick gulp of water

There you go, and we'll run through some of these. Okay? All right.

Let's see here Okay Okay, let's see

This is a completely unrelated Eli, what are the cups in the background? They're just cups leave me alone.

Okay Let's get let's get people ask all sorts of weird questions. I want to get to I'm sorry

I have to scroll through some of these Let's see here.

Whoops Let's see here You guys can still see me, can you hear me

I can hear you but Camera died. It's okay. You don't need to see my people didn't need don't need to see my face

Let's see here. Wow, they're all the questions were pushed down. I do apologize. Let me Let's see here

I someone had a question on your okay. Here's a question for dr. Lyle How does dr.

Lyle demonstrate that his hermeneutical principle to be correct the correct way to interpret scripture?

that's actually Not to be too self -promoting, but that's what the books all about. Okay, the book is about if if we want to get to the

Authors intention. What are the rules that we would have to follow to get to the author's intention and it's

Some of them are pretty obvious But you know, should we should we take outside information? Do we look at the author's own words do you know because there are some views that are just ridiculous.

There's the view the What is it the the view that every reading of a text is a misreading and so you can never get to the author's intention

And people that hold this view write books about it, but why would they bother? If you could never get to the the meaning of the the author

Why would you bother writing a book where you assume that people can can understand what you're saying? So that's what that's what the book is all about It's about establishing the rules of hermeneutics that would be logically necessary in order for communication between two people to be possible

And so for example when words have multiple meanings What do we do? Because most words even in English most words have more than one meaning and so how do we determine which one's the correct one?

And you know and obviously context is going to have something to do with that and the book gives many examples as well but that's basically and also the other thing too we can look at scriptural examples of where the

Apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Interpreted Old Testament passages and we know they're gonna do it right because the

Holy Spirit inspired the original passages in the first place So that's really what the book is about. It's about How to how to read the

Bible to get to the intention of the author Okay. All right Did you want to speak to that at all?

Dr. Ross? well There's 300 theologians who spent a decade

Trying to codify the appropriate hermeneutical principles to apply to Scripture It was the

International Council of Biblical Inerrancy Incidentally, all of their deliberations are archived at Dallas Theological Seminary They wrote about a thousand pages on this and we had reasons to believe wholeheartedly endorse all their affirmations

And denials with respect to the hermeneutic approach of Scripture and that's actually up on our website people can see the principles that we hold and Again, I think the

International Council of Biblical Inerrancy did an outstanding job researching together as to what the appropriate hermeneutics is

Actually, they get into this whole idea of evidentialism and presuppositional ism

I think you both would really enjoy that and a couple years ago I participated in a four views book on creation evolution and intelligent design

And I was the only one of the four authors that endorsed the International Council of Biblical Inerrancy Ken Ham, for example defended the

Younger's position Refused to endorse that those statements, but that's something we've always held that there are reasons to believe

Okay. All right. Thank you Dr. Ross, how can the planets in our solar system have?

Magnetism when some don't have molten cores therefore they can't recharge. How can they be billions of years old?

well, not all the planets have magnetism the earth does the Jupiter does and Yeah, what

I see in young earth creationism is this idea that there's a linear decay in the magnetic field of the earth

And that is incorrect. It's more of a sinusoidal effect The field will decay but that builds up again

And this is well understood with the interior physics of the Sun. I'm actually writing a book on this right now

Basically, and by the way, I would agree or argue that the magnetism that we see in the earth is something that testifies a supernatural design to have a planet as small as earth with such a

Strong and steady magnetic field is nothing short of miraculous So I'm arguing that that's a part of the supernatural evidence we have for God designing the earth for our benefit

And a lot of people think that when a minute field reverses, it's another catastrophe

Papers have just been published saying The field will get weaker, but it doesn't disappear

You basically go from a dipole field to a multipole field But even the multipole phase that you get in a minute reversal

The field is plenty strong enough to protect us from solar radiation and cosmic radiation

But without it, we wouldn't be having this dialogue that we're having right now So as to get to more questions,

I am gonna just go you guys if the questions are directed to you You can just give an answer. I do apologize. We won't have time to get it back and forth there

We would but I don't want to I want to respect your time as well because I suppose we could stay here forever Okay, I can dr.

Lyle expound more on the distant light travel issue with the Big Bang naturalist model. Oh Okay Yeah, the the

Big Bang has a light travel time issue It's it's not a starlight issue per se but it's called the horizon problem and you can read about this in any good secular textbook

They're generally very honest about it Some of them think it's solved by inflation if you've heard of inflationary models

That's an attempt to assault to solve the horizon problem But the idea is just to summarize the issue when the universe is very very small it's supposed to have hot spots and cold spots and that's caused by the

Heisenberg uncertainty principle and then the universe balloons out and in a credible rate faster than the speed of light and and yes space is allowed to expand faster than light according to Einstein and Today when we look at space and we see these cosmic microwaves a cosmic microwave background there's a characteristic temperature associated with those microwaves the wavelength tells you something about the temperature and They they're all very similar in temperature.

And so the question is how did how did the you know? Initially they started with enormous differences How did how did they come to the same temperature?

When obviously they had to dump some energy from the hot spot to the cold spot to even out the temperatures, right?

I mean you put your ice cube in your hot coffee. Eventually you'll end up with Sort of room -temperature coffee because things come to the same temperature over time and yet there hasn't been enough time in the secular view even given the thirteen point eight billion years for light to travel from the hot spot to the cold spot even once because they could be on opposite sides of the visible universe and the lights just now

Getting here and assuming the secular model and if you've heard of inflationary models, that's an attempt to say well the universe

Expanded a faster rate and then it slowed down Somehow maybe symmetry breaking or something and then there that has issues of its own such as the graceful exit problem and so on so that's the inflation is attempt to solve the horizon problem most

Secular astronomers would hold to an inflationary view, but not all of them. Some of them see that it has problems of its own So that's basically a summary of what's called the horizon problem.

All right. Here's a comment by Sentinel apologetics Lyles AC ASC requires a strong geocentric gravitational field independent of Earth's mass

Astronomers measurements definitively rule out the possible existence of such a field. How would you respond to that? Yeah, it doesn't it

I'm not sure where I saw one article years ago post on the internet And of course if it's on the internet, it's got to be true

That said that you know, my you know, if you if you measure things by this coordinate system, it'll introduce a gravitational field

No, it doesn't that's ridiculous. Anybody who knows anything about GR knows better. You can use different coordinate systems in general relativity

In fact, that's really what general relativity is all about. It's about transforming coordinate systems from an inertial frame to a non -inertial frame

So no, there's no there's no gravity changing coordinate systems. That's that's all an isotropic synchrony convention is it's a change in coordinate systems

Back to what they were before Einstein Einstein tended to prefer what's called an isotropic synchrony convention people didn't use that much before Einstein where the speed of light is defined to be the same in all directions and you can do

That and the physics works out and as John Winnie proved you can you can do it any other way as well You can make the speed of light instantaneous in one direction

It has absolutely nothing to do with gravity changing a coordinate system will not create a gravitational field

Perhaps some of you have done this in your in your even in high school You plot you plot something in rectangular coordinates and then you plot it in polar coordinates.

It doesn't create gravity It doesn't make like a black hole and your paper gets sucked into it changing coordinate systems has no influence on gravity whatsoever

Okay, dr. Ross this person says Ross thinks Adam Neve were our 90 ,000 years old with no history supports that what were they doing for 85 ,000 years?

No history. No archaeology, etc Well, we don't have accurate dates scientifically for the origin of Adam and Eve I just wrote an article on this that you'll see at reasons org

Basically saying that once we get Beyond the limits of carbon -14. All we have are indirect methods until you get to a quarter of a million years ago

So there's this gray area where we don't have Good scientific dating tools.

And so we're looking at error bars as large as 2 ,000 % on those dating methods.

However when we go to scripture We see that God created Adam and Eve at a time when four known rivers come together

Those rivers are named We're told where they flow from and we can look at a map and we can see the two are still flowing today the

Tigris and Euphrates we can look at Satellite imagery and see the dry riverbeds of the

Gihon the Pishon They do come together at one locale, but that locale today is more than 200 feet below sea level

But during the last ice age it was above sea level and so it gives us a rough date somewhere between a hundred and thirty thousand years ago and 15 ,000 years ago

God created Adam and Eve and it's in terms of history to support that humans have been here

We do have carbon -14 dating that shows that humans were engaged in sophisticated bakery technology

That goes back 36 ,000 years we got a 36 ,000 year date a 23 ,500 year date and we also have a 17 ,000 year date basically showing that yes during the last ice age

We'd extreme climate instability that made it very challenging to launch any kind of wide -scale

Civilization, but in spite of that because of what God endowed in human beings There were these births these temporary births where they are demonstrating sophisticated technology

That's something you actually see in Genesis chapter of four that even the earliest humans were involved in cultivation and the harvesting of those cultivated products

And now we got scientific evidence to establish that as early as we can work with the carbon -14

And there's evidence that goes back earlier or that evidence that goes back earlier Is based on dating tools that have huge systematic effects.

So I again You're looking at plus or minus a hundred percent some cases plus or minus two hundred percent

I think that's important because a lot of people will quote scientific papers Saying that humans have been here for three hundred thousand years when you actually look at the paper and check out the systematics

It's a hundred and fifty thousand years ago plus or minus 150 ,000 years the error bars are literally that big from a scientific perspective

But I think what's interesting based on Genesis 2 we actually get a more accurate date than we can with the scientific tools

Thank you for that Chris date asks Dr. Lyle, I'm a young earth creationist and I don't find the scientific evidence to support an old earth except seemingly distant starlight

I don't have a satisfying answer for that Can you explain what you see is the best young earth explanations of seemingly distant starlight?

Yes, I can. I just can't do it succinctly. That's the issue Basically The the speed of light in one direction is not something that is measurable it is actually stipulated and that is and I know that's counterintuitive, but God is under no obligation to make the universe intuitive and after you've had a course in quantum mechanics

You'll realize he didn't make the universe intuitive But it's interesting And so in fact the one -way speed of light can be as much as infinity in which case it takes no time at all

For the light from those stars to reach the earth Within the biblical timescale. It's not a problem.

They get here instantly and it's not that it's not that the Alternative view that light travels one

Light year in one year. It's not that that's wrong It's just a different convention. And so the question then is what convention is the scripture using?

Is it using the modern? Einstein convention or is it using the more ancient? Well, we would what they would call a visual synchrony convention

And I think it's the more ancient convention and if you realize that there is no starlight problem the the difficulty in explaining this is it to really understand it you have to know something about the physics of Einstein and That's that's

I've always loved the physics of Einstein. I just find relatively fascinating. It's one of my favorite branches of physics

I'm published in that field and What I did is I wrote a book called the physics of Einstein that go that gives you enough

Understanding of the physics of Einstein in order to see that the distant starlight problem is not really an issue

So take a look at my book the physics of Einstein It it's in -depth enough the neat thing about Einstein physics

It most of its provable and that's very unusual in science in science Usually it's inductive and we make some observations

We draw some conclusions and a future observation could overturn those conclusions. But with the physics of Einstein, it's based on just two

Premises that the round -trip speed of light is constant and that what's called the relativity principle that the physics is sort of the same in Any inertial reference frame and based on those two you can derive all the rest of relativity

It's absolutely amazing and I actually show in that book how to do it for the adventurous student I put I even put the math there and for those who are a little bath phobic

I put the math in boxes so you can skip you can skip the math and just get the the gist of Relativity and you'll see that there is no starlight issue.

If you understand if you understand physics, okay Here's a question from Daniel in terms of debates over the

Hebrew of Genesis How can you determine who has the right interpretation if you yourself are not a scholar with so many differing views?

Why don't doctor? Why don't you dr. Ross? Address that since the last question was for Jason Yeah, again, you can go to any seminary and I get together a group of Hebrew theologians

Bible scholars who are fluent in Hebrew and basically ask them this question And I've done that and they all make the point that hey, there's a variety of ways.

You can look at the Interpretation of the Hebrew word for day. There's a variety of ways and how to interpret the creation days

I personally take the point of view that let's use the scientific method Since what

I discovered is that the scientific method is derived from the Bible if you do that establish the frame of reference spirit of God in the surface of the earth and Then the initial conditions.

I think you get a very compelling interpretation of the days of creation That is perfectly consistent with God is revealed in the record of nature

But if you read the theological literature, I've counted 15 different Viable ways of interpreting those early chapters of Genesis and so this is widely

Debated and agreed upon in the theological community So again, where you got issues of concern like this

Get together the people that are experts in the field and make sure you get a diversity

Of people that are experts in the field. So you're not just hearing one opinion Here's another follow -up here

How does Ross's perspective not reduce down to it looks like I can't think God would do that therefore

God did not do that Well there again, you go to things that you can measure and test

I mean just to pick up an example, we have all this theoretical discussion about the synchrony convention

But the truth is when light travels through space We see that the continuum radiation is a reddened the spectral lines are broadened

In direct proportion to the distance it travels. So that's another indication. We're looking at a passage of time for that light

It's not something that's just Instantaneous, that's just one of multiple examples.

Okay. This is an interpretation How can we put this interpretation of the test?

Good theology and good science never rests even things that we think are very well established

We continue to find ways to put it to the test and so for example

My colleagues in physics are not satisfied that we've proven the constancy of the laws of physics to 16 places the decimal they want to push it to 19 places the decimal and Actually, they're already at the 17th and 18th decimal place, but they want to go a little further

Let's continue to test these biblical principles because the more we put them to the test the more evidence we find and that's going to be additions to our tool chest to bring people to faith in Christ and Actually, I love the

Evangelistic hermeneutic, you know, the Bible was given to us as a tool to bring people to faith in Christ I think that actually helps us to determine the correct interpretation

Given that that's God motivation How can we actually? See what's in the record of nature and the record of Scripture and reap there what we find in order to be more effective

And completing the Great Commission because I think that's one of God's goals and placing us here on earth right now

Here's a comment here, dr. Lyle, perhaps you could respond to this dr Lyle's ultimate standard isn't the Word of God, but it is his interpretation

I mean, it's not a question But I think it's an important point because we really do have a difference of interpretations which affects a lot of other things

So why don't you address that? In my view the Bible is its best self -interpreter. The Bible is self -interpreting

It tells us it gives us the criterion by which it should be interpreted. And so this idea. Well, that's your interpretation.

That's my interpretation What does the author mean? That's what I want to get at. That's what

I want to get at and you'd say well There's you know, how many legitimate interpretations of Scripture are there? Well, if we define legitimate as getting to the meaning of the author, there's there's one

There's one primary thing the author intended to convey now There might be secondary issues there.

That's fine. But script that's the thing to remember There are infinite number of interpretations of any passage of Scripture.

There's one meaning and How do we get to that meaning? Well, I wrote a book on it understanding

Genesis is What it does is it shows you presupposition Lee Trent transcendentally that unless you adopt the

Particular rules that are laid out in that book Communication between human to human beings would not be possible because there are certain things that that are presupposed

That are biblical principles that that allow us to Understand each other and so things like using grammar and using the history of the time figures of speech and so on Those are things that are important, but I would agree that it's

God's Word That is the ultimate standard not my interpretation of it But and if you want to challenge my interpretation, that's fine

But do it on the basis of the scriptures and say here's why Here's why you're wrong about this particular passage and so on and so forth

But I really do believe in the perspicuity of Scripture And so I don't believe the Bible is particularly difficult to interpret

God didn't make it as a puzzle where this actually means that and so on and so forth It really is pretty easy to understand.

I'll give you that there are a few difficult passages, but for the most part It's just telling us about God our relationship with God the events of history that made salvation necessary and God's plan of redemption

Which he carried out at the cross Dr. Ross Dr. Ross has made the claim that generations are missing which generations.

How do you know? How do you refute Jude 14 which says Enoch is the seventh from Adam? well

Again, this is something where we can go to the experts those who are fluent in Hebrew as I've talked to them they would claim that every biblical genealogy is incomplete and Actually, if you look at the genealogies,

I think it's quite important to discern Okay, why are these individuals being selected and as I've compared the biblical genealogies?

I noticed that some make a special point of mentioning women as opposed to men

Basically making a point the gospel is both for male and female Others make it a point to single out certain very, you know

People have really committed significant sin and have repented that's basically making a theological point

Yes, we're all sinners. Some of us are horrible sinners, but God can deal with that He can redeem even the most simple individual and so I think there's actually a theological message

Being given to us in these genealogies when it comes to Genesis 5 and 11

One of the things I've noticed is that you know I really do believe that people lived at the capacity to live eight nine hundred years in the days before the flood this would generate under normal circumstances a

Huge population explosion and it didn't happen Genesis 4 explains why?

Murder began to run out of control and you see that in the early verses of Genesis 6

So it's possible what we have in Genesis 5 is actually a list of the patriarchs that died a normal death

Or like Enoch were taken by God while he was still alive The ones that managed to survive being murdered by their fellow man

Because you know as I look at these those early chapters of Genesis the murder rate had to be north of 95 %

And so I think it really gives us a whole new perspective on why God judged humanity with a flood

Humanity was literally in under the threat of self extermination So in that sense,

I look at the flood as an expression of God's mercy But I think the genealogies actually give us some insight into that But again just recognizing that it is in Hebrew Hebrew makes no distinction between father grandfather and great -grandfather and As you look at the other genealogies, we see they overlap that every one of them has missing names

And you know, there's a name we see in Luke that we don't see in Genesis 5 All right, thank you for that.

Can dr Explain the echo chambers tendency of peer -reviewed articles and how philosophical assumptions influence scientific conclusions

Yeah, I mean you'd think scientists would be above that sort of thing but the fact is we're you know, we're site we scientists are human beings too and we have beliefs about how the world works and The fact is the evolutionary worldview has really become pretty entrenched in Sort of mainstream scientific circles, not not completely but it's there and there are some journal editors that would not even allow a

Say a young earth article. It doesn't matter that the science is good They would say well that can't be right obviously because you've drawn the wrong conclusion somewhere

You've gone you've gone crazy here and we get that. I mean we understand that if somebody gave you an article

Well, I used to be able to use this as an analogy It's it's it's not as much it's not as good anymore But I used to be able to say, you know, if somebody presented you an argument for a flat earth

You might be inclined to dismiss that and you probably should Because there is good evidence that the world's around and so on and I think secularists

Because they're so convinced that evolution in the billions of years is true that if an article comes across their their desk

They're thinking this is a waste of time for me to even even review this and so you'll tend to find that It's most most scientific publications not all of them, but most of them are antagonistic to any kind of biblical creation publication and so we do have our own we do have our own journals that we publish in that are peer -reviewed by by Christians who

Have a worldview that we think is basically right and so you can you can always go to those as an alternative

But yeah, hey, it's a common tendency We tend to think we tend to think a certain way and we tend to hang out with people that think kind of the way

We think and we just got to be careful about that All right. Well, we just reached two hours in one minute and we've agreed that we would go two hours

So I do want to respect that I could listen to you guys all day long There are a lot more questions, but I do want to respect your time

You guys have been very very generous and I think you've given everyone a lot to think about I'm definitely going to read through your book.

Dr. Ross and I'm going to revisit I do have understanding Genesis as well I'll revisit your book as well.

Dr. Lyle I think both of you guys did an excellent job Perfect examples of Christian gentlemen interacting.

Dr. Lyle got a little animated at one point It's all good, though. I'm sure

You know both of you guys are very passionate about this topic Are there any final words that you'd like to say before before we close this episode?

How about you? Dr. Ross first? Well just study to so yourself approved.

I mean we're encouraged to do that And you know, I like the analogy about the echo chambers make sure you get outside your echo chamber

Get that kind of critique Listen to one believers. They have a lot to share with us

I believe that God gives us grace to both Christians and non -christians. So I think it's important.

I can't tell you how often God has spoken to me and corrected me through words that he's

Communicated to me through people who are not yet believers and incidentally, I think that's a great evangelistic tool

We treat these unbelievers with that kind of respect They're going to start listening to us and so take advantage of those opportunities first Peter 3 15

Always be prepared to give good reasons for the hope you have in Jesus Christ with gentleness

Respect and a clear conscience and Always be cognizant that unbelievers are going to listen more to your demeanor than you are your words or your arguments or your evidence

Okay, thank you, dr. Lyle Well, thanks for having me on good to see you

Eli. Good to see you Hugh I actually you and I we get along pretty well, really we adamantly disagree on theology

But he's a nice guy and very personable. I appreciate that By all means read his book then read understanding

Genesis and let the Bible be the final arbitrator. That's the key The Bible is the inerrant Word of God.

That's what we want to I think that's what I want to end with because that's something That's that's the most important things. The Bible is the ultimate infallible

Word of God Look, I won't put you know what I was gonna ask you a question. Dr Lyle, but I'm gonna wait until we're off air because I don't want to put you on the spot

So I'll be respectful of that. But guys again, if you have not already, please subscribe to the revealed apologetics

YouTube channel And press the notification button for some really interesting and I think important and useful

Interviews and discussions that we're going to be having in the future So if you haven't done that already, please do so and of course check out reasons to believe and what what was the name of your?

Website again, dr. Lyle biblical science Institute Institute so please check them out.

You can purchase their books either on their website or on Amazon, which I'd highly recommend Well, thank you so much everyone for listening in.

Thank you so much for sending in your questions. Thank you. Dr. Ross Giving of your time and dr. Lyle again for coming on and give a both you guys came for the second time

So I do appreciate that. Thank you so much, and I hope I was a good enough host moderator to Facilitate this discussion.