Is Evolution Viable? W/ Dr. Jason Lisle

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

I have my guest, Dr. Jason Lyle, who's going to be joining me in just a moment.

Those who are familiar with Dr. Lyle, he has the wonderful website,

Biblical Science Institute, where he really comes at the whole enterprise of science from a biblical perspective.

He is very intentional about grounding what he does within the context of a

Christian world and life view. And I think it's very important when we're talking about things like science and how to apply biblical principles to that enterprise.

So folks, if you're interested in those sorts of things, especially coming from a presuppositional perspective, you will very much appreciate

Dr. Lyle's website and the many articles that he has there as well. He also has many, many videos on YouTube, whether he puts them up himself in his own site or he does interviews like this.

He's got a lot of material out there that I'm sure folks will find very useful. As you know, his focus tends to be on astrophysics and things like that and Big Bang cosmology and how he comes at that topic from his perspective.

You know, you have the whole old earth, young earth debates and things like that. He's very much conversant in that. But I actually invited

Dr. Lyle on to talk about a different yet related topic and that's the topic of evolution.

And we will be sure to have him in just a few moments kind of define the categories for us so that we can talk about this in a meaningful and clear way.

Because it is a very important topic, especially when we're dealing with issues of our origins, where we come from, it really is very much related to where we are going and the importance of living the life and making sure that we're intentional, standing on top of the authority of God's word.

These are all very important and related issues. So I'm very much looking forward to hearing what Dr. Lyle has to say. But before we get there,

I just want to remind folks that we had Revealed Apologetics just recently reached 5 ,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Thank you so much for those who have supported, whether financially, doing the thumbs up or putting a nice comment,

I very much appreciate it. Whether you're a believer and you're eating all this stuff up and using it in your own context, or you're an interested unbeliever who's been following along and respectfully interacting in the comments,

I thank all of you guys for your support. So in celebration of the 5 ,000 subscribers,

I have gathered together a very random and mixed crowd of apologists that will actually be on a live stream with me together to do a huge Q &A.

It's gonna be an entire Q &A, and it is comprised of both presuppositional apologists, classical apologists, and I thought it would be interesting to get people who you don't expect on the same screen together.

And of course, as questions come in, you'll see some of the unique apologetic methods kind of come out in how we answer those questions.

So we're not debating each other, but I thought it'd be a great opportunity for people to see how people from within different apologetic methods address some apologetic questions.

So I hope you guys are excited about that. That's going to be on July 20th at 9 p .m.

Eastern. Also, part two of the study question series on Greg Bonson's book, Against All Opposition.

I'll be making that video. All of my notes are set up there, my PowerPoint slides, and I will be putting out part two for folks to follow that along.

That is this book right here, Against All Opposition by Greg Bonson, chapter two.

There are 11 chapters. So my goal is to do an 11 -part series on the, pardon, on the study questions in this book.

So please, you don't wanna miss those. Lastly, I've been writing an apologetics devotional series.

Day two is available on revealedapologetics .com. If you are looking for just an easy to read devotional with some apologetic and biblical application, both of those, day one and day two, are available on the website.

All right, well, without further ado, I would like to introduce Dr. Lyle on the screen with me.

How are you doing, Dr. Lyle? I'm very well, thanks. How about you? I'm doing well, thank you.

And I just want to thank you again for coming on. Every time you come on, Dr. Lyle, everyone always says, when is

Dr. Lyle gonna be back on? So people really enjoy what you have to say. I don't know, maybe it's your cool shirts or the background, the books in the background.

People like you, man. Good to hear. All righty. Well, we're talking about an interesting topic, evolution.

I was just telling you before we went live that I had an interesting reaction by people on Twitter and various other platforms.

People surprised that this is still an issue, right? Is evolution creation still a thing? I think there are even Christians who affirm evolution.

And as you know, it definitely is an issue that is still very much important and apologetically relevant.

So I just want to, before I get into my questions, why don't you share a little bit about your background, even though it's not specifically on evolution, and then maybe explain to us some of your experience in dealing with evolution within your own apologetic context.

Okay, well, fortunately, I'm blessed to have been brought up in a Christian home.

My parents are believers, and most of my extended family really are Christians.

And I feel very, very, I don't take that for granted. I know not everybody has that. And so I was introduced to Christ when

I was very young. I received him as my Lord and Savior when I was about six or seven years old. And I didn't know as much about theology as I know now, but I knew enough to know that I was a wicked sinner and that Jesus had taken my place on the cross.

If I would repent of my sin and trust in him, he would save me. So I believe I was saved at that point, and I grew in my faith.

I was also very interested in science. That's just something that the Lord put in me, astronomy in particular, but some scientists, they really like their field and they just ignore all others.

I'm not like that. I like them all. I think they're all fascinating. Biology and geology, it's all amazing to me.

And so I love science. And when I was then in probably middle school, well, certainly by the time

I was in high school, I was introduced to evolution. And I was taught that that was the scientific view of how humans came about.

And I knew that was contrary to God's word. And so that was my first clash there. I knew

I had to deal with this because if I was gonna be a scientist, I had to deal with these claims that evolution is scientific, that creation isn't.

I came to find that that's not a defensible position. And so, but that's where my interest began.

And then it was really in college where I really started getting into it. And I really started researching the science that lines up with creation, which all science does when you understand it, when you have the proper presuppositions.

And so that's when I really got serious about it. And I started sharing this with others as well.

I started sharing it with my Christian friends, how the evidence really does line up with a literal historical

Genesis, the Genesis flood, the fossils and things like that. It just made sense. And I saw them get excited about it.

And that blesses me to see other Christians get really excited about the faith and how our faith, it's not a blind faith.

It's a faith that makes sense of the universe around us and makes sense of the science. Very good. Now, you said something about science makes sense when you have the proper presuppositions.

Can you kind of list for us some of the important presuppositions that we bring to the table when doing science?

Maybe that'll be helpful for our conversation as you kind of later on give the

Christian response to an evolutionary perspective. What are some of the important presuppositions of the scientific enterprise itself?

Okay, well, we've all heard of the scientific method that you can propose a hypothesis, you can test it, observation, experimentation.

So there's an implicit assumption that our observations correspond to reality. That would be a presupposition that what my eyes inform my brain is basically true.

We know that our senses can be fooled under certain circumstances, but God gave us five. And actually more than that, if you consider internal systems and so on, it's pretty amazing.

And from the Christian worldview, I can trust that my senses are basically reliable because they've been designed by God.

Now, I'm a finite creature. They don't have to be infallible, but they're good enough for what we do. God made the seeing eye and the hearing ear, the

Bible says. And so I'd expect that they are truthful because God is truthful. The idea that when we repeat an experiment over and over again, we get the same result.

We would expect that in a Christian worldview, that's a presupposition. That's the presupposition of uniformity, not to be confused with uniformitarianism, but uniformity simply means there's orderliness in nature.

And that orderliness extends over time and space. And that allows us to do what we call induction, which is a very important part of science, where we draw a general conclusion from specific instances.

And the assumption that allows us to do that, the presupposition is that there are patterns in nature that we can uncover by seeing specific instances of those patterns.

And this is something that all scientists assume that. And it's something that has absolutely no secular foundation.

That's something that Dr. Bonson talked about. It's something that David Hume tried to answer unsuccessfully from his secular perspective.

How do I know the sun will rise tomorrow? And of course I have an answer for that, Genesis 8 .22. God promises that there are certain cycles in nature that will continue as long as the earth remains.

And so, and God's in a position to know that because he's beyond time. And he's the one that determines reality.

And so of course he's in a position to know that. So those are some of the presuppositions of science along with the capacity of the human mind to be rational.

Science presupposes that I can consider the various options and choose the one that is the best. And all of those,

I would argue, are Christian presuppositions. Science is an inherently Christian endeavor. That's not to say non -Christians can't do it, but when they do it, they're borrowing from the

Christian worldview because they're borrowing presuppositions that can only be sensibly justified in the

Christian worldview. And if folks are interested in kind of digging deeper, I highly recommend Dr.

Lyle's book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation. Again, a defense of the young earth creationist perspective, but also it is an application of presuppositional apologetics, which listeners to this channel will be very interested in.

I'm sure a lot of people already know about this book, but if you haven't, check it out. It is excellent. Excellent as an introductory text as well.

If you're kind of just wanting to get a feel as to how presuppositionalism works and specifically how it applies to the whole origins debate,

I think this is an excellent place for folks to start. All right, well, let's jump right in,

Dr. Lyle. When we talk about evolution, I mean, even the thumbnail on this show here,

I said, the question was, is evolution viable? We know that evolution is really an umbrella term.

It really, what do you mean is evolution viable? What kind of evolution are you referring to? So my first question will be in light of the fact that evolution is an umbrella term, can you define for us what evolution is generally speaking and perhaps get in more of the specifics as to the different kinds of evolution and where they kind of cross hairs with the

Christian perspective, where our antennas might be going up and saying, well, wait a minute, I'm not sure if that's a position that we wanna hold.

Okay, the big one, and yes, evolution, the word just kind of means change. And there's lots of things that change, so I don't object to that.

But the type of evolution, probably the one that we're gonna go into more depth here would be what we might call common descent.

The idea that all biological life forms on earth are descended from one common ancestor.

And so broccoli is your distant cousin in that view. And I like to use that term.

Some evolutionists have said, well, you're making fun of us when you say that. And I'm like, that's what you believe. Isn't it?

And well, yeah, that's what we believe. So the idea is that there was a common ancestor billions of years ago, a single -celled microbe that itself arose from inanimate non -living matter somehow.

That's sometimes called chemical evolution. That's kind of the first step. And then the rest of it, the descent with modification as this thing reproduces, mutations affect the

DNA and that changes the traits that are expressed. And since this is all accidental, all the mutations are just mistakes.

They're not planned. Most of those are harmful to the organism. Some of them are immediately fatal, but those aren't passed on.

And the idea is every now and then a good one occurs, one that enhances the survival value of the organism and therefore organisms diversify and change.

And so all the kinds, animals, plants, even fungus, were all descended from a common ancestor.

I reject that view, but that's sort of the neo -Darwinian view of evolution.

Now, I've often heard people kind of separate in the debate this issue of abiogenesis and evolutionary progression, from simple to more complex.

So someone will say evolution just describes how organisms have changed and adapted through time, but the issue of where life came from is really a separate issue.

And I've seen some evolutionists, and let me clarify, naturalistic evolutionists. Theistic evolution is a different thing and Dr.

Lyle and myself would take issue with that perspective as well. But let's kind of shift, just focus on naturalistic evolution.

I see many people try to distance themselves from the question of abiogenesis. Is that an intentional distancing or is it just truly, that's just irrelevant to the evolutionary model?

It's very intentional. I remember I was talking with Eugenie Scott one time and she brought that up and I thought that was interesting.

I can understand why these secularists do not wanna talk about chemical evolution. And it's because there's just no good answer for that.

It violates a law of nature, the law of biogenesis. Life always comes from life. We've seen no exceptions to that.

And yet evolution is predicated on a supposed exception to that law. There's no good evidence that that could happen or that it has happened.

And so I can understand why they'd wanna skip that. But then I like to point out to them, but that is the first step. For anything else to follow, in your view, you believe that there was once no life in the universe anywhere, and now there is.

And so you have to get life from non -life. And you can say, well, that's a separate question. Okay, but in order for what follows to be even remotely rational, that step has to be possible.

And I'd like you to justify that, please. So yeah, I mean, it's fine if they wanna separate them as different questions, but my point is they're both required, both chemical evolution and then the neo -Darwinian evolution that follows.

Both are required in order for the secular view to be even remotely rational. Now, I noticed that in this whole creation evolution debate, a lot of people, especially from the people attacking the young earth creationist perspective, they kind of hand wave it as irrelevant.

And I'm very familiar with this. Even if we're not talking about younger creationism, older creation or whatever, you will see many skeptics just hand wave a view as though waving your hand magically makes the issue go away.

So with that said, is the creation evolution debate a closed case? For a lot of people, this is just kind of like, oh, this again, this is kind of like, we're done, evolution along the lines as to how we would disagree with it, right?

It's a closed case. It has been proven, it is demonstrated. Without a doubt, you're kind of irrational and unscientific if you deny this.

Is the creation evolution debate a closed debate? Because I've heard some comments to the contrary.

How would you speak to that? Well, in my mind, it is closed because God has spoken.

And so God's a creationist and he has told us how he made the universe. He didn't give us a lot of details, but the details he gave us are true and they can be trusted.

And so in a sense, it is a closed issue. And I kind of feel, it's kind of funny the way you put that because that's kind of how

I feel. I'm like, we've demonstrated this. It's not only that God's word teaches this, but we've shown how the science lines up with it.

Why are you still thinking that evolution in the Darwinian sense is even remotely possible? Haven't we, this has been, in my view, this has been established since 1985 when

Bonson proved that Stein was wrong because Bonson wasn't just defending the existence of God.

He said that in his debate. He said, I'm defending the Christian worldview as a system of thought. And that includes creation.

And so in a sense, by the impossibility of the contrary, it's been proved. That being said, not everyone has been convinced of that proof.

Not everyone has even heard that proof. And in fact, most people have gone through a public education system where they have simply been indoctrinated to believe that evolution has been proved beyond question.

And they don't really know the details. If I ask them, how do you know that? Well, fossils, I've asked them which fossils, they don't know.

They've just been told that that's the case. And so there is, in the minds of people, this is not settled.

That is, there are a number of people in the world today that still believe in evolution. I would argue they shouldn't. And of course, there are many people that believe in creation as well.

Now I would imagine people listening to this, maybe some unbelievers will listen to what you just said and said, that's ridiculous. Dr. Lyle, you're out of your mind.

Evolution is the majority position in academia today. You know, you,

Dr. Lyle, you're the one that is on the outskirts of believing something that is akin to say, believing in a flat earth.

You've heard all this. I mean, some Christians who disagree with you will say something along those lines. So how would you respond to that?

I mean, a lot of Christians feel intimidated by holding to a creationist perspective because they feel overwhelmed by the majority of very brilliant secular scientists who hold to the theory of evolution.

Now, how would you encourage a Christian who's struggling with that? Yeah, that's a, it's an error in logic.

It's an appeal to majority or an appeal to authority. In this case, they're kind of combined. But just because the majority of people believe something doesn't make it true.

And in fact, every scientific discovery that's ever been made has gone against what the majority believed. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a discovery.

It would have been a merely a confirmation. And so if my point is, if everybody had that attitude, science would come to a standstill.

There would be nothing new to be discovered and we wouldn't make any progress. So that's really kind of an anti -scientific way of thinking about things.

And I'm not suggesting we ignore what the secularists say, but I do think we need to interpret that data and we need to recognize that they have a worldview that controls how they're understanding the evidence.

And by the way, I've had enough conversation with scientists. This would surprise most non -scientists, but most scientists, if you ask them why they believe in evolution, will say it's because all the other scientists believe in evolution.

So it's interesting that scientists, you'd think that we would be above that kind of reasoning, but we're not because we're human beings.

And it is our nature to get intimidated when the majority of people believe something. You know, the

Bible says the fear of man brings a snare and it really does when we get intimidated, but by what even very intelligent people say, when those people go against God's word, we stand on God's word.

And of course, there are many fine PhD scientists who are creationists as well. Are you saying so that when you ask most evolutionists, why are you an evolutionist?

Of course, they will appeal to what they see as evidence, but they will also appeal to, this is the consensus of scholarship to bolster their perspective, right?

Usually they'll throw out a piece of evidence. They'll say, well, fossils. And I'll say, well, which fossils? Lucy. Okay, let's talk about Lucy.

Why do you think that she is even remotely supportive of evolution? Because they don't know any of the details. They've heard that.

They've heard that fossils support evolution. They've heard that. But then I'll ask them, okay, so what's the real reason then?

It's obviously not fossils because you haven't personally, for the majority, now there are a few that have dug into it. I understand that.

So for the majority of them, they haven't dug into the actual evidence. They're taking it on faith that the people that taught them have looked into the evidence.

And most of them haven't looked into the evidence. They've taken it on faith that the people that taught them and so on. And so the bottom line is when push comes to shove and I really start pushing on them, why do you really believe this?

They'll say, well, I just think it's inconceivable that the majority of scientists would be wrong about this issue.

So, okay, so we can always find someone who says, they kind of lean on authority. But what about the people who are the actual workers in the specific field who are not just punting to say, well, this guy said this, they've actually done, we can say they've done the work, so to speak, right?

How would we engage with someone like that who says, here, evolution is true because, and they kind of give some of the specific points that they believe to be evidence for their position.

Okay, there are a few, but the number one answer, believe it or not, is still a form of appeal to authority.

If you were to ask a geneticist, what is the best evidence for human evolution?

If he's really studied the topic, he will probably not say genetics. He'll say, well, probably fossils. And if you ask a person who's an expert on fossils, what's the best evidence for evolution?

They will probably not say fossils. They'll say, well, we think the geneticists have it figured out. And I've experienced this kind of cross -disciplinary circular reasoning in my own field, in astronomy, where they try to age date things and they rely on the geologists, but the geologists are relying on the astronomers and so on.

I've experienced that in my own educational background. But there are a few exceptions, certainly.

And so the two main fields where they would say, well, we think we have evidence for evolution would be either genetics or fossil evidence.

So those would be the areas that we'll probably wanna focus in on. Okay, now I want you to kind of role play for me.

If you could, I hope this isn't too much to ask, but can you pretend for just a few moments to be a naturalistic evolutionist and lay out the strongest case that they make for their position so that we can create a steel man, and then you can put your feet back in the

Christian shoes and refute the straw man. So don't feel like you need to do this quickly.

Take your time. If you can put yourself in an evolutionist's shoes right now and say, evolution is true, and then talk from the perspective of someone who is informed on the data and to the best of your ability, demonstrate the obvious truth of evolution, and then we'll kind of have you respond to that.

Because I think that'll be helpful for people to see kind of both of these positions side by side and see the strengths and the weaknesses.

Is that too much to ask? I'm asking you to pretend to be an evolutionist.

Yeah, I'm gonna try to, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna - You have to have the face. You have to make a mean, see, the evolutionist's a bad guy, so you have to make the mean face.

So I'm just kidding. No, these are good people. Yes, they are. I'm just messing around. At least

I think they are. And I think I have God's word of support. But in any case, I think one of the arguments they would make is they would make an argument based on similarity, taxonomy, the fact that we can classify organisms, and they fall into a nested hierarchy.

So we know a hierarchy, these two things belong to this, and this and this belong to this, and so on.

And there's a hierarchy within a hierarchy. So it's a nested hierarchy. So you can classify humans.

We're in the kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. So we're in the primates, and we're in the mammals, and we're in the vertebrates, and so on.

And they would say that that's what we would expect if life evolved from a common organism. You'd expect to be able to classify it that way.

And then I think they would further try to argue, they would say that not only is it true in terms of physical traits, but genetically.

Genetically, we're more similar to, say, a chimpanzee than a lizard, and more similar to a lizard than a fruit fly, for example.

And so they would say that genetics, the genetic code also falls into a nested hierarchy.

And so they would say that that, then a support of common descent. So that's where they would take it on terms of the genetics,

I think. And they might make some specific cases like the supposed chromosome two fusion that happens.

I don't know if you're interested in that. We can talk about that. Yeah, I mean, so you've given broad kind of, this is what they would appeal to.

Do you think you can give some specific examples that they appeal to to justify those broader points that you just used to summarize their position?

Yeah, one specific example is they'd say that, because we're supposed to be related to the great apes. And so apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes.

Human beings have 23. And so at some point, we lost a chromosome.

What happened there? And so they've claimed that what happened is in, because they think that the thing we're descended from would have a genome similar to a chimpanzee, that it's probably our nearest living relative.

And they would say that the chromosomes 12 and 13 on the chimpanzee fused. You see, so two of the chromosomes came together and there are certain segments in our chromosome two that kind of line up with the chimpanzee's chromosomes.

They've actually renamed them chromosome 2A and 2B in chimpanzees because of the alleged similarity to the chromosome two.

So that's one specific example that they would make. That's in terms of genetics. And then in terms of fossil evidence, they would have to do a little more hand -waving, but they would say that there are certain transitional features.

And this would primarily be coming from people who are not experts on paleoanthropology, but they would say that there is quite a range in terms of the different fossils that we find of human beings, which is true.

And they would try to make a case that we go from a more ape -like form to a more human -like form.

Now, I've studied the fossils enough to know they're gonna have a tough time making that case, but that's what they would argue. And then they would do that.

They would say, well, maybe we haven't found all the missing links, but nonetheless, in broad strokes, there are certain organisms that, because of this nested hierarchy, you can find that in the fossil record too.

And we tend to find certain organisms below other organisms. Statistically, if you find a trilobite, it's likely going to be in a lower layer than, for example, a bird, as just one example.

So there's a statistical order, and they would say that represents time. That represents millions of years of organisms.

And we see that they change as you go up. So there you go, evolution in action. And then third, they would try to argue philosophically that creation should be excluded a priori because it's not naturalistic.

So many evolutionists - And just to interrupt you real quick, I do apologize. You're talking there, at this point, some evolutionists who don't see that as an option.

You have other people who say, well, maybe God could be involved, but I'm not really speaking to that. But there are people who are more vocal to make that point that God is not really a good addition to this whole explanation.

I just wanted to make that qualification because I know not all evolutionists would necessarily say that.

Well, and it's like creationists. There's different varieties of evolutionists. You can't get to a degree on exactly everything.

I'm trying to speak in terms of what most of them would say. And I think a lot of them are motivated by either metaphysical or methodological naturalism.

There are some who would say, well, I believe in God. God exists. But we can't bring him into the equation when we do science.

And they would say, because you'd never know if you were discovering something about the universe or if God's just messing with you, right?

So you have to pretend that God doesn't exist when you do your science. So they would embrace methodological naturalism and in some cases, empiricism.

And I think the more epistemologically astute evolutionists tend to fall back on philosophy as their reason for rejecting creation a priori.

And then they would say, and what is the best naturalistic explanation for life? I actually agree with them on that point.

If you exclude the supernatural, evolution's kind of the best thing you've got going for you. Not that it's good, but it's the best you can come up with.

Right, so it's the only game in town, so to speak. If there is no designer and creator, then evolution is the best theory available that explains the wide variety of biodiversity and things like that.

If God is excluded, and of course, I know there are theistic evolutionists that throws a monkey wrench into this whole discussion.

I wanna keep that away for a moment there. Okay, so in your opinion then, from the secularist perspective, what is, as they see it, the strongest data point in favor of the evolutionary perspective?

So from the perspective of someone who believes it's true, sure, there are some points that are debated and they're tweaking this and tweaking that, and there are some issues where people kind of disagree as to how that all works out or the mechanisms, whether natural selection and genetic mutation are sufficient mechanisms to drive the process.

But what is the strongest data point that most evolutionists will appeal to and say, this is really the strongest piece of data that we have that strongly gives the impression that evolution, really, it's the best explanation for this entire biodiversity that we see in the world today?

A number of the scientists, I think, if genetics is not their field, they would probably say genetics.

And maybe that is that field. They would say that the fact that organisms can be classified in a nested hierarchy, both in terms of physiology and in terms of genetics.

So that's exactly what we'd expect if evolution were true. And then the ones that are a little more epistemologically astute would say, because we're here, because we're here, and the alternative is unthinkable.

And there have been some that have admitted that. Lewontin, I think, was the one who said, we must not allow a divine foot in the door.

Yes, I remember that famous quote. All right, okay, so you have, just as you have popularizers, people who hold to evolution, they popularize the view.

They're not really kind of professional scientists. You also have Christians who are trying to defend the faith. They're not experts, but they're popularizers, or they're just Christians just trying to defend the

Christian faith. And so they'll pick up a book, maybe by answers in Genesis, or maybe some

Christian perspective where when they hear an evolutionist say, evolution is true, and they point to the fossils to support their view, many

Christians, their knee -jerk reaction is, oh, you've never found the missing link, right? You know, you've never, you know.

When Christians say that, I often hear evolutionists say, you're just ignorant. There's plenty of evidence in the fossils for the evolutionary perspective.

What is that evidence that they appeal to? Not to say that it's legitimate evidence, because we understand the importance of interpretation of the data, but what is the specific thing in the area of fossils that everyone says, look, it's right here, man.

What's your problem? Well, with regard to human evolution, there are certain, we find about something on the order of 8 ,000 remains of humans or creatures that look like they're human anyway.

And they would say that there is a progression that some are more ape -like, and some are more like modern

Homo sapiens. And I'm happy to talk about some of the details of that if you're interested, because the most common view now is that Lucy, which is an

Australopithecus, Australopithecus afarensis, that's supposed to be a human ancestor, and that's supposed to have evolved into Homo habilis, and that's supposed to have evolved into Homo erectus, and then

Heidelberg man, and then branched off into Neanderthals. They used to think Neanderthals perhaps were ancestor, but I don't think anybody believes that anymore, that they think that that's probably a separate shoot.

But with the exception of the first two, Australopithecus, the Lucy, and Homo habilis, which

I think is kind of a junk taxon. It has some fragments of apes in it and some fragments of humans, and you get a new, it really is an ape man, but it never existed, if you see what

I'm saying. It's parts from both, but primarily non -humans, primarily non -humans in the

Homo habilis. The other ones, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, those are all humans.

And I think I - I'm impressed that you could pronounce all this. It sounds like you're speaking in tongues, man. I'm like. I'm not a paleoanthropologist.

I'm not sure I'm pronouncing them correctly. So take it - It's all right. You're a good fool. But the good news is

I know people who are experts on either human anatomy. David Minton, he passed away last year.

He's a good friend of mine. He's an expert on human anatomy. And ape anatomy. He taught me how to see the differences and so on.

And I've read other works as well. Dr. Martin, Marvin, pardon me. Dr. Marvin Lubinow, who's got a book called

Bones of Contention. This is a great resource. And it is, I've never met

Professor Lubinow, but he's really done his homework in terms of the fossil evidence.

So all of these, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalus, they really all should be classified as Homo sapiens.

And if they want to put a subspecies after it, that's okay. These would basically be different ethnicities of human beings.

So you said Neanderthals. So people often think of like cavemen, like these sorts of people, like, well, these sorts of creatures.

Are they, did you say that they're human? Or you say there's something different? No, they're human beings.

And people talk about cavemen. Well, sometimes men lived in caves. And there's some people today who live underground.

So, I mean, you know, that's okay. I live close to Norad. So, you know, it's a mountain where there's people that are, they're all cavemen, technically.

Lot lived in a cave for a little while, right? According to the scriptures. So people did that sometimes.

Now, the Neanderthals, those are human beings. And most people recognize that. Now, there has been a recent push back to say, well, they're a different species, but nonetheless, they buried their dead.

They had culture. You know, burial of the dead is an indication that you expect to be resurrected.

So that's an indication that they had religion, whether they had knowledge of the true religion, we don't know, but these are human beings.

There's evidence that they interbred with what we call modern Homo sapiens. And they lived at the same time.

So they can't be an ancestor because they lived at the same time. So that is pretty well shut down any chance of them being an ancestor.

But most paleoanthropologists would say, no, these are people. These are human beings.

Whether they want to put them in as a different species of humans, I think is a bad idea. But many of them classify them as Homo sapiens,

Neanderthal, Asis, or whatever it is. But yeah, so it's a subspecies. But they have all the characteristics of humans.

What are the characteristics? Well, humans differ from apes in terms of our skeletal features, because that's usually all that we can find is the skeleton.

And even then, I talk about 8 ,000 human remains. That could be a tooth.

Okay, the idea, rarely do we find a complete fully articulated skeleton. We do find some.

And Neanderthals are one of the most common that we find. We think that they lived shortly after the flood year during the ice age, which we believe was produced by the

Genesis flood. But their characteristics are human and not simian, not ape. The characteristics of an ape, several.

Let's just talk about the skull. Apes tend to have a smaller cranial capacity, although that's not definitive because the range of your head size for human beings is like a factor of three.

It's like 700 cubic centimeters to like 2100 cubic centimeters. So there's a range in human beings, even today.

And Neanderthals fall in that range. Their average cranial capacity is larger than ours by about 10%. They had bigger brains than we do, which is kind of interesting.

But their head shape was a little different because they tended to have, the back portion of their skull was a little bit longer and they had kind of like a bun almost on their skull in the back.

And that's a little different from some of the other groups that we see. So, but brain size,

Neanderthals are human. The way the face is shaped, we have a kind of a flat face. If you look at it from the side, from the top, our face is kind of flat, whereas an apes is kind of pushes forward.

Their jaws go forward. One really distinctive feature is this, the top part of your nose, the lower part of your nose cartilage, top part is bone.

Apes do not have this, humans do. And so I can tell you immediately when looking at a skull, if this part, see sometimes part of the skull is missing and you don't know.

Okay. If the skull is there, I can tell you if it's human or ape, just I look at this and I remember apes can't wear glasses.

That's how you remember that. They don't have this bridge right here.

And so, and see, I have a fairly long one, which indicates I'm far more evolved than most people. The way our teeth is, is different.

Apes have huge molars and human beings have relatively small molars. The shape that our teeth makes is different.

Human beings, it's like a parabola. Whereas with apes, it's like a U where it becomes parallel on the sides.

And so you can tell by the shape of the teeth, whether it's human and the type of teeth that you find, whether it's human or not.

And that's just the skull. We talk about the other features, the rib cage, human beings, our rib cage is kind of vertical on the side and then it curves at the top.

Apes have kind of a Christmas tree, a cone shaped rib cage. Lucy, cone shaped, just typical ape.

The way our hip bones are structured, they kind of point forward and that allows us to walk upright. Whereas apes have them splayed out to the side and Lucy's are splayed out to the side, just like any other ape.

We tend to have longer legs relative to our trunk than apes have.

The angle at which our shoulders are designed, a lot of apes, especially if they are arboreal, like Lucy was.

Lucy was a tree dwelling primate. And so her shoulder bones are designed differently so that she can hang for a long period of time.

Maybe when you're a little kid and you're hanging in the playground on monkey bars and after a while, your shoulder kind of hurts because we're not built for that.

But Lucy's designed for that. And we have straight fingers, straight phalanges, whereas Lucy had curved phalanges, which is useful for climbing and things like that.

So we have very different designs. Our feet, our feet are designed for walking upright. Apes have often almost an opposable big toe.

It's almost like a second set of hands. Not quite, but so, and Lucy's are typical. Very good for playing video games.

Yeah, you can play two sets. You can play yourself one of these. Yeah, probably not, but you get the idea.

So those are just, those are some of the traits that, and when we look at Australopithecus, all the traits of an ape, 100%.

The way the skull goes down, the lack of the nasal protrusion, the teeth, the way they're shaped, the rib cage, everything, the hip structure, the feet, everything is simian.

Everything is ape -like. All these other categories, Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Heidelberg man, and modern

Homo sapiens, of course, all have the human teeth, the human face, and so on.

Now, Neanderthals were a little different. They had some differences, but they're all within the range of modern humans.

They tended to have extended brow ridges. And so, you know, their brows went out a little bit, but I've seen people today that have that.

I have a substitute history teacher who one time, I mean, he could have easily been a Neanderthal. There's no doubt.

He's like, I was there. He's an old dude. Hey, so, okay, so what I, oh, go ahead, go ahead.

I didn't want to interrupt your thought. If you wanted to finish. Okay, I'm just going to point out that Neanderthals do have some differences in their skull from what most people have today, from what is typical today, including the extended brow ridges, the sloping of the forehead, and the larger back part.

One speculation is that they might've had a larger cerebellum than we have today, which is coordination, things like that.

And they were a little stockier too. They were big people and they would tend to be very strong.

And we think probably pretty muscular too. And they also tended to suffer from rickets. And that tends to distort the shape of the bones somewhat.

And we think that's because they lived during the ice age in a part of the world that didn't get a lot of sunshine at the time.

And so that could be responsible for that. And then these other, all of those features, by the way, modern human beings can have any of those.

It's just, what would be unusual today is to have all of them in one person. So Neanderthals, for example, tend to have a large protrusion on their nose.

They tend to have a recessed chin. Again, you'll get that, people today will get that. It's just, they don't tend to have all those traits combined.

So they're unquestionably human. Everything about them, the skull, the spinal cord, the rib cage, everything about them is 100 % human.

And so it is with Homo erectus and these other ones. So now, okay, so what's up with the,

I mean, I hear a lot of people say, look, if you look at the kind of genetically speaking, we share much in common with chimpanzees, like a certain percentage is like 90 something percent or something like that.

And a lot of people, at least on the popular level, think that that's actually very strong indication that there's a relation there.

How would you interact with that idea? Okay, first, the number is wrong.

The number that's commonly cited, 99 % or 97 % subjectively similar to a chimpanzee.

That is wrong. The reason they get those kinds of numbers is they take the sections of the

DNA that are similar to human DNA and they line them up. And so it's biased from the start under the assumption that we're related to them.

But if you look at it more objectively, it's more like 80%. And there's a range.

I've seen estimates from creation scientists who know what they're doing and have studied this.

As low as 70 % up to 89%. So let's say 80%.

That's generally still pretty high. So I can still see the, assuming they know what they're talking about,

I can see the force of, look how much percentage that we have the same with them. Although if you think about it, that means we're 20 % different, which means in less than 4 million years, you have to get a lot of mutations.

And in fact, that's one of the challenges is that there hasn't been enough time for it. Even if I grant the secularists the millions of years, there hasn't been enough time in their view to generate the number of mutations that distinguish us from chimpanzees.

But the more important issue and the more foundational one is that it is a flaw in reasoning to assume that similarity, even in nested hierarchy, indicates common descent.

A lot of things occur in a nested hierarchy and are not the result of common descent.

In fact, I'm doing a series of articles on the website now on particles, particles in quantum physics.

And they fall into certain families. There are leptons and there are exactly six types of leptons and so on.

And then there are quarks and there are exactly six types of quarks. And these both fall under the category of fermions. You can classify quantum particles in a taxonomic tree just like you would organisms.

And yet nobody argues that quantum particles gradually evolved over time. Over millions of years. And now, unlike animals, quantum particles can immediately change.

They can decay into other particles, but there's no evolution to it. It's not, you know, there's electrons and there's muons.

Muons are exactly like electrons, except they're 207 times heavier. And it's not like they slowly gained weight over millions of years.

It's just, that's the kind of particles that God created in this universe. And so a nested hierarchy just means, it can mean common descent, but it can also mean that the creator has some sense of logic and orderliness.

And I believe that God created categories of things so that we could classify them. Because if he didn't, if God made everything unique, science would be impossible.

We couldn't understand anything about the universe. If you think about it, all of our knowledge is about finding patterns in things, especially in science.

Science would not be possible if everything were unique. The second thing too, to remember, because the secularists will sometimes point out, well, not only do chimps look anatomically similar to humans in the sense that they have two arms and two legs and two eyes and so on, but their genetics are similar, but the genetics are what determines the traits, right?

You know, the reason that we have hands like this is because we got genes to make hands like this. Wouldn't it stand to reason that other organisms that have hands something like this would have similar genes?

So the fact that we have a nested hierarchy and that it roughly correlates between the physiology and the genetics just means genes code for traits.

Now you don't have to be a creationist or evolutionist to believe that genes code for traits. There's good science to confirm that.

So I would expect as a creationist, and this would be my counterargument to the evolutionary case that I made earlier, that we have this nested hierarchy.

That's what creationists would expect too. And so if both models make the same prediction, you can't say, ah, and the prediction's right, therefore my model's true.

Well, the other model makes exactly the same prediction. So similarity doesn't imply common descent.

In my mind, it implies a common designer. And the fact that certain patterns work well.

I'm a computer programmer. That's one of the things that I do. And if you'll look at my programs, you'll find sections of code that are nearly identical, not because this program evolved from that one, but because I wrote both of them.

And I know this code works well for doing that thing. And there are certain things that all life forms do.

All the animal life forms, they all have mitochondria in their cells. And so that acts like a powerhouse.

And we'd expect that to be similar because it's basically the same thing in everything. And so we'd expect that.

And so the similarities and differences that we see in nature are perfectly compatible with creation, and I would argue are better explained by creation than an evolutionary view.

You gave me flashbacks of middle school science with mitochondria. I remember studying. It's the powerhouse of the cell.

That's right. All right, when we deal with evolution and we think of the mechanisms that drive evolution,

I know that many people believe that it's natural selection and genetic mutation. Is that still the two mechanisms that most evolutionists believe drive the evolutionary process?

Or have many people rejected that those two mechanisms are sufficient to explain evolution?

How does that all work? And then finally, if you could explain this issue of genetic mutation, I know that I've heard many people within apologetic literature who kind of provide counter -arguments to evolutionary perspective that genetic mutations don't really help the organism very much.

And so how does that all play into the evolutionary process? If you could speak to that.

Okay, so, well, a mutation is a mistake in your DNA. And it can happen when the

DNA is being copied, right? So you have mechanisms in your cells that when the cells split, they duplicate the

DNA. It's amazing. And you can see pictures of this happening. It's absolutely astonishing, the mechanism.

And so a mutation then is when one of the base pairs gets flipped. So DNA, it looks like a twisted ladder.

And the rungs on this ladder are four different nucleotide base pairs. And we abbreviate them by one of the four letters,

A, G, C, and T. So all the information to make you is spelled out in a language that most of us can't read.

But it's a four -letter language. And the four letters are organized into words that are three letters each.

And that allows you to produce something like 20 different amino acids. And amino acids make up proteins.

And then proteins work. And they do what they do. You're made of proteins, basically.

And some of them have the ability to move. And it's all very astonishing. So, yeah, it really is.

It really is. And, in fact, I think it was the Discovery Institute that put out a video, Unlocking the

Mysteries of Life, where they showed the inner workings of a cell. And I'll tell you, you see that video.

There's a protein in your cells that carries another protein. And it walks.

It's incredible. It is amazing. It is amazing. And I wish that every student of science would see that and think through that, because that is amazingly well -designed.

It's just a sidestep. It's just amazing that we're able to see that and people can look at that and be like, nah, random evolution.

It's just like, what? Yeah. I know it sounds very simplistic, but when people say, well, you know, the evidence of God is all around.

Look outside your window. But in a very simplistic way, look outside your window or look at the human body as generic responses to people who believe that everything is the product of kind of a random process.

I think there's still power to that simplicity that even from an apologetics perspective, if you're not up on the science, that's still a very relevant response to give within the context of your conversations with people.

I just wanted to throw that out there. It's incredible if you know the details, but even if you don't, it's still amazing. It really is.

We are remarkably well -designed. We are truly fearfully and wonderfully made. Amen. So, but the first part of your question,

I wanted to get back to that, but I forgot what you asked. I was talking about genetic mutation and how you said -

Is that still the mechanism? Yeah, okay. Yeah, is that still the mechanism? I think it is. I think the majority of evolutionists would say mutations and natural selection.

That's what it is. Some have disputed that. Michael Behe wrote his book,

Darwin's Black Box, which is a wonderful read. And the interesting thing about Behe is he is an evolutionist.

He believes in common descent, but he recognizes that mutations and natural selection are not going to do the trick.

And he gives some devastating arguments in his book. And you kind of wonder, why are you still an evolutionist?

But he still is, as far as I can tell. And he didn't like creationists very well, from what I can tell as well.

But in any case, the book is a very good read. I highly recommend it, even though I wouldn't agree with everything he says.

But he makes devastating arguments about the irreducible complexity of cells, the fact that certain parts have to work together immediately for the whole thing to work.

So there is no last step, because without that last step, the system fails, and therefore it cannot come about in a piecemeal fashion.

And the interesting thing is, that was the one criterion Darwin gave that would falsify his model. He said that it can be demonstrated that any of the mechanisms, any of the organs of the body could not come about in a piecemeal fashion.

This is my theory would absolutely break down. And we now know that. We now know that's the case. Darwin was honest enough to admit that.

He just didn't know of any at the time. Sure, sure. So yeah, okay, so getting back to, so mutations, mistake, copying mistakes.

So instead of an A here, a G goes there instead. Okay. And that causes a different, well, in some cases, it causes a different amino acid to be produced.

And so the protein is wrong. There is some redundancy built into the code. And so sometimes the last letter, it can be an

A or G, and you get the same amino acid, for example. So sometimes mutations do nothing. But other times they will change the protein that's produced.

And sometimes the new protein still has enough functionality that it still works, but maybe not quite as well.

And so mutations are responsible for a lot of the different diseases we have. Sickle cell anemia, where your cells don't kind of develop into these little banana -shaped things, and they don't carry oxygen nearly as well.

You can still survive with treatment, but it's not good for you. Other conditions, your blood clotting mechanism, there's a mutation that can cause that not to form properly.

And so you have to be very careful because the slightest scratch, it doesn't clot the way it should. And so that's a problem.

So that's what mutations do. The evolutionists like to talk about positive mutations, mutations that make an organism more likely to survive.

And creationists haven't always been as clear as we could be on how we would respond to that, because I've heard some creationists say, well, there are no good mutations.

I think we have to be careful about that because there are mutations that under certain circumstances actually help the organism survive.

That can happen. There's a mutation in H. pylori. H. pylori is a bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, and that's unpleasant.

So you go to your doctor and you get an antibiotic, and the antibiotic's harmless to you, but this bacterium has an enzyme in him that he produces as part of his system that when it contacts that antibiotic, it converts it into a poison.

The poison kills the bacterium and you feel better. There is a mutated form of H. pylori that lacks the ability to produce that enzyme.

At least he can't produce very much of it. And so when the antibiotic goes into him, it's not nearly as toxic because he lacks the ability to convert the antibiotic into a poison.

And so he survives, but he survives because he's got a damaged gene. And in that particular environment, that actually helps him.

And so that's why you need to take all of your antibiotic even when you feel better, because you've killed off all the normal ones and the mutated ones are left.

And if you don't finish them off, they'll reproduce. And now you've got a resistant strain. And so hospitals tend to have resistant strains of bacteria for that reason, because they prescribe antibiotics.

But in the natural world, those mutated ones don't compete very well with the normal bacteria because they are missing.

They're missing some instructions that are part of their system. So whether a mutation is beneficial or not really depends on the environment in which the organism is placed.

And there are a few that I would call helpful mutations in the sense that they improve survival.

But here's my point. Here's my counter. Those cannot drive evolution because in order to take something like a microbe and through descent and mutations and natural selection, turn it into a person, in order to do that, you'd have to add new genetic information into the organism.

We have genetic information that bacteria do not have. We have genetic information to make bones and eyes and hair and things like that.

And bacteria can't make those things because they don't have those instructions. So if evolution were true, at some point you'd have to gain brand new information.

And as far as we know, mutations do not do that. Even the ones that are occasionally helpful, like the one that helped the bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics, it did that by removing a little bit of information.

Okay. And so you can't get from here up to here, more information by removing information.

So mutations, whether they're helpful or not, are always in the wrong direction to make evolution happen.

Excellent. All right, well then, let's make some apologetic application for folks. So I am an evolutionist.

I am a professor. So assuming that I know what I'm talking about, okay, this is not my area, but let's just pretend

I am a PhD scientist. I hold to a naturalistic evolution as a scientific theory, along with my philosophical perspective that contextualizes that.

Why isn't evolution, along the lines that we've been talking about, why isn't it a viable position?

So perhaps you can now provide an apologetic response that some of our Christian listeners can take.

And you know what? That's really a great piece of information that I could use in conversation with my friends and things like that, or a professor that I might be in conversation with.

Why isn't evolution, as we've discussed it, not a viable position?

A lot of different ways I can answer that. Okay. One I might point out, as I would say, well, you're married, do you love your wife and kids?

Maybe he says, yeah, I love my wife and kids. But in your view, aren't those just bags of chemicals? I mean, they're not, they're just an accident of nature, right?

They're not created in God's image or anything like that. So, I mean - So that real quick response can just point to the fact that, well, if you love your wife, you're really kind of just giving, really an internal critique of his perspective.

If what you say is true, what's love, right? That's good to kind of hit the heart, so to speak, right?

So, okay. So that's kind of a very simple way that we can respond. How about some of the more combating the science, so to speak, from his perspective, with what we would call good science, with proper presuppositions?

How would we engage the evolutionists from that perspective? The first thing I would do, I might use what

I just mentioned previously, but other than that, I mean, there's several options open to me, but I'm always gonna start with an internal critique.

And so if you like science, I'm gonna say, that's great, I like science too. I've got a PhD in it, but science involves induction.

How do you account for induction? Now, I, as a Christian, can make sense of induction. The idea that there are patterns in nature that God has imposed on nature, and I can discover them because God's given my mind the capacity to be rational.

He's given me senses that can observe the world and give me a truthful view of the way things are, within certain limitations, of course.

And so science makes sense in my worldview, but you, professor, claim to be an evolutionist, and you're an atheistic evolutionist.

There's no God, so how do you know that your mind has the capacity to be rational? Surely you're not simply using your mind to assume that your mind is rational, because wouldn't that be circular?

And how do you account for induction? How do you know that the sun is gonna rise tomorrow? Because all science is predicated on this idea that there are patterns in nature.

Why would you expect that? And you might say, well, in my past experience, it's worked out pretty well for me.

And I'll say, yes, but that's irrelevant to the future, unless you already believed in induction, unless you already believe the future reflects the past.

And so you're effectively using the scientific method as your justification for the scientific method, and that's circular, that begs the question.

And so I wanna know if you have an independent mechanism to account for induction. Now, that's all very heady, but it's very powerful, because the

Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And so if you have someone who rejects God, you've got someone who cannot account for knowledge.

And so what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna ask him how he counts for knowledge. That always worked, he may not convert, but he's not gonna be able to give a rational response to that, because there isn't one, and God tells us there isn't one.

So that's why I know that works. So your response to an evolutionist is not so much to our,

I mean, you can talk about the specific data points and challenge the interpretation, but really the heart of the issue is that the reason why we believe that they are interpreting the data incorrectly is not so much having to do with the data itself, it's the presuppositions they bring to the data, it's that.

And so instead of responding to the evolutionists with throwing science and he's throwing science at you, and you're throwing science, you're actually going straight to the broader framework.

So you're talking about things like the uniformity of nature, which what we spoke about at the beginning, some of those important presuppositions of science itself, which worldview makes what we're doing when we talk about the quote facts make sense.

Is that what you're saying? So you kind of refuting his science by stepping back and attacking his philosophy.

I'm pointing out that his science is based on my worldview and not his. His worldview can't make sense of it.

He's trespassing, he's standing on God's ground and he needs to either get saved or get off God's property.

Get saved or go. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm happy to talk about the details of science, but you see a lot of people think that the way you reason with somebody like that is you give them all kinds of scientific evidence.

But if in the situation you're talking about, you're talking about a science professor who has studied a lot of the evidence, which tells me he probably knows a lot of the evidence.

The one thing he doesn't need is more evidence. He knows that and he should be a

Christian. He should be a consistent biblical creationist Christian. He's not, why? Is it because he doesn't know enough evidence?

Probably not. If he's a professor on that topic, he probably knows a lot of the evidence. The problem is his philosophy, he's interpreting it wrong.

And he hasn't thought through the fact that his own philosophy is self -defeating. That if it were true, science wouldn't be possible.

And it makes sense to trust our senses if they're just the product of evolution. It says, well, our senses conveyed survival value.

You don't know that. I mean, it could be that our sensory experiences are simply a by -product of photosynthesis.

How do you know you're not a blade of grass and all your sensory perceptions are just the by -product of photosynthesis?

And photosynthesis does have survival value. So you see, it's, but that's just kind of this, all what you think is reality just goes along with it.

How do you know that? And a consistent evolutionist cannot answer that question because there isn't an answer apart from the

Christian worldview. And I would like to also point out for folks who might be listening to you, you're not, this is not a word game.

Okay, you're not shifting the focus of what's most important, the evidence, right?

You are asking a worldview question and it's very, well, it's impossible to talk about science independent of a broader worldview.

We can pretend that worldview considerations aren't important, right? Like someone might listen to what you just said,

Dr. Lyon, say, oh, here he goes, trying to make us doubt the, you know, the existence of the external world by asking all these skeptical questions.

But really what you're doing is really just forcing the person to give an account of reality, which by the way, provides the intelligible context for them to do the science that they're doing.

So you're really going to a foundation. It's not just punting off to these hard philosophical questions, but whether we like it or not, those hard philosophical questions can't be swept under the rug because they affect how we do science, how we do all these other things.

So I just want to point that out to folks. It's not a shift to this kind of ambiguous, hard philosophical questioning.

It really is making the unbeliever, as well as ourselves, what Van Til said, epistemologically self -conscious.

We need to be aware of those broader philosophies we bring to the scientific debate itself. And so I think that's a great point that you pointed out appealing to uniformity of nature and these broader kind of presuppositions that we bring to the data.

And let me add too, most Christians do apologetics as if Romans 1 is wrong.

Yes, yes. They think that the unbeliever says, I don't believe in God. And they take him at his word and they say, oh, okay.

So I need to present evidence to you. Romans 1 tells us everybody knows God exists and they actively suppress that truth and unrighteousness.

And so what I try to do and the reason I'm asking questions like that, I don't have to give him new evidence for God. He's a professor of science.

He's got a lot of evidence for God. What I wanna do is expose his suppressed knowledge of God by pointing out that his behavior shows that he really does know

God. He just doesn't wanna know God. And that's the problem. And so what I'm doing is I'm exposing the inconsistency in his thinking because I believe

Romans 1 is true. And I act on that in the way that I do apologetics. Right. And of course, this is a much broader conversation.

So suppose you attack someone's presuppositions and say, how do you account for A, B, and C? The unbeliever, more philosophically astute, more philosophically informed unbeliever may have his answers.

And of course the conversation will go deeper depending on who you're speaking with. So I want folks to understand that you're passing comments here as to how you would engage their perspective is not just this hand -waving.

You're willing to go into the weeds as the situation calls for it. But generally speaking, our response to evolutionists, our response to Muslims, our response to any form of atheism is really to ask them what ground are they standing on?

It's really to go for the worldview issue, not just endless debates over the specifics, although that does have its part.

Am I correct in summarizing it there? Yeah. And of course I'm happy, if he wants to talk about genetics, I'll do my best.

I'm not a geneticist, but I know enough to know that there are problems with the secular view. If he wants to talk about fossils,

I'm very happy to talk about those because those are very consistent with creation, especially when it regards to human evolution. The picture of the chimp and the

Lord, like you have around the window there, that parade, the evolution parade of getting bigger, more human.

The only place you'll find that is in textbooks. You will not find that in the fossil record and knowledgeable evolutionists know that.

We find very distinctive human beings in the fossil record and we find very distinctive apes. The only way you can make an ape man is to take parts of a human and parts of an ape, which has been done.

That was what Piltdown Man, that was a fraud. It was a human skull cap and an ape jaw where the teeth have been filed down to make it look more human.

And they've been put together. But in terms of the actual fossils that we find, when you have a well -articulated specimen, now sometimes you'd have a few broken fragments.

You can't make anything out of that. I mean, they'll try, but you can't get any good data out of that. In terms of the fossils that we have,

Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and so on, these are humans. And then you have clear apes like Australopithecus and so on.

So the fossil evidence is consistent with what I'd expect, but I do like to eventually, and it'd be okay to talk about some of those things, but I don't wanna remain there.

That might be a good way to open the door to get the person talking about, just kind of thinking through his beliefs.

But ultimately I wanna go for the Achilles heel and point out that all of his other assumptions that he makes in terms of the reliability of science depend on a creation outlook.

They depend on the Bible being true and God being who the Bible says he is. And so that's always what

I'm gonna go for. I'm always gonna be presuppositional in my response. I'm happy to use evidence and talk about it, but more as a door opener than anything else, more to get him thinking about things.

And I'm glad you said that you're willing to go into the evidence because I know critics of presuppositionalism will often say something to the effect that a presuppositional methodology is for the intellectually lazy.

You guys don't wanna dig into the weeds of the data. You're going over, and it's so ridiculous. We just recognize that it's useless in endlessly debating the data points.

We can debate them and they're important, but I mean, the person's soul is at stake. I'm not going to debate for five hours about genetics just so that the person could interpret the data in light of their presuppositions and then we're right back at square one.

So it's not intellectually lazy, really. I think it's intellectually deep. And notice the difference, Dr. Lyle, when you see, and again, this might not be,

I'm not making a broad brush statement here, but when you see evidentialist or classicalist debate, they're often in the weeds of the data, but it's the presuppositionalist that when they're talking with the unbeliever, they're talking about the very nature of reality itself.

There's completely different level of focus in the discussion. And I think that's very, very telling. And it's what the debate's really about.

The debate really isn't about the data. It's about how the data should be interpreted. That's right. And that's a worldview issue.

And so if we're gonna be logical in the way that we debate these things, it's gonna have to be a worldview issue. The details can be part of that.

That's fine. But the worldview needs to be addressed. Right, and the issue isn't to show how smart we are by, you know, look how many books

I read, look how many scientists I can quote, things like that. All super important and have their use, but ultimately we're talking about eternal matters.

Well, we're up at the top of the hour here, Dr. Lyle. Is it okay if we can go through some questions here from the audience? Sure. All right, thank you so much.

Our first question is from Marlon. Marlon asks, is there any reason to suggest that morals can be rooted in evolution?

So for example, someone will say, I don't need God to explain morality. Evolution explains morality just fine.

How would you speak to that? Yeah, people will. I've certainly heard evolutionists try and account for morality from an evolutionary worldview, but I've never seen one that succeeds.

About the best that they can do is they can say, well, it's something that, morality is something that evolved that helped our species to survive.

But then at that point, they're confusing behavior with morality. Behavior is what we do.

Morality is what we ought to do. And I'll grant the evolutionist, for the sake of argument, I'll grant that he might be able to explain that evolution might explain what we do, but it can't introduce an ought.

Why should I behave this way? Well, it would benefit the species. Okay, but why should I benefit the species?

That's what I wanna know. Well, because you are ones. So I can understand being concerned about myself, but why should

I care? After I'm dead, it wasn't gonna matter whether the species continues. And so there's no way to get an ought out of what is.

And I think only the Christian worldview solves that because we would define ought as that which

God commends. And what we shouldn't do is what God disapproves of, that which brings his wrath and so on.

So I don't think the evolutionist can account for morality. They can account for feelings of morality perhaps, but genuine ethical right and wrong, they can't make sense of it.

There's no right in an evolutionary universe. Sure, yeah. That's a good question, Marlon. I think it also makes a confusion between, and I think

Dr. Lyle was getting at this, a confusion between moral ontology and moral epistemology.

Let's suppose that evolution kind of, and morality is related there. All it shows is that if evolution were true, we've come to know certain moral truths through an evolutionary process, but it really doesn't speak as to whether those morals that we come to know actually are ontologically the case.

So it really confuses the moral ontology with moral epistemology. So it really doesn't answer the question.

All right. The Sire asked the question, that's his name is Vinny, his screen name.

His screen name's confusing me. The Sire or Vinny says, what Old Testament scholar would you recommend?

So when someone maybe is studying Genesis or they're looking for a commentary on the Old Testament, maybe relating to the first five books of the

Bible or something like that, who would you recommend? Since there's a lot of people out there that we wanna be cautious of, they have good stuff, but you wanna be careful.

Who are some top scholars, if some come to mind? If you want like a Old Testament scholar who is a language expert, a

Hebrew expert, Stephen Boyd. He's the best. He's great. He's retired now, but he's got a lot of good stuff out there.

So he's very good. And Henry Morris, although his formal education wasn't in biblical studies, he's a hydrological engineer, but nonetheless, he wrote an excellent commentary on Genesis called the

Genesis Record. I wouldn't agree with everything in it, but it's a nice start. And I think other creationists have built on that sense then.

So there are other, I'm sure there are many other Bible scholars too, but those are ones that come to mind off the top of my head.

Okay. And I'm sure there are other, when Bonson went through the Old Testament, when he went through Leviticus and Deuteronomy, boy, he knew those books well, because he understood

God's law and how that applies. Right. And so he would be, he was kind of an expert on everything.

So yeah, he would be good as well. All right, very good. And I'm going in order here.

So he's got another question here. He says, are you familiar with Dr. Heiser's view on the pre -Adamite race?

If you are familiar with them, do you have any criticisms? Okay, I think so. I want to make sure I'm thinking of the right person because there are a few different views on pre -Adamite races.

I think he's thinking Michael Heiser, maybe? Could be. Unless it's a different Heiser. Yeah, it could be.

In any case, there are a few of those and they all have the same flaw. They're not biblical. I mean, human beings were made on the same day as animals, probably later in the day, and God brought the animals to Adam to name them.

But yeah, there's no evidence of a pre -Adamite race or any race other than human beings. We do find variations within a kind in the fossils that we find.

Again, in some cases, they're significant enough. You can say, okay, this is

Neanderthal, okay? Because of the sloping brow and the wider brow and so on.

But, or Homo erectus, which is kind of a smaller version of the Neanderthal, basically. And they lacked the occipital bone at the back.

But they're all human beings. And the fossil layers in which we find these are post -flood layers.

So these are all after the flood. So there's no evidence of a pre -Adamic race, certainly not of people.

And the Bible says he's made of one blood or from one man, all nations. So, and Eve is the mother of all living, the Bible says.

So we're all descended from Adam. All human beings are descended from Adam and Eve. Okay, all right, thank you for that.

Why is Gamora, Gamora asked the question, why hasn't man been to the moon in over 70 years?

This is kind of an unrelated question, but hey, why not? Despite 70 years worth of exponentially better tech.

Do you know the reason behind that? I've always wondered that too. I know it's not related, but why not go back to the moon? The reason is money.

Well, first of all, we are scheduled to go back. They're supposed to be within the next few years. There's plans to send people back to the moon in what's called the

Artemis program. How exciting, I hope it goes through. Money is one of the big reasons.

And there's no motivation anymore. The original motivation was the Cold War with Soviets. And so we wanted to get to the moon first, which we did in 69.

And the budget that NASA had adjusted for inflation is about 10 times what they have now.

Okay, granted the technology is better now. There's no doubt about that. We can do things better in terms of computers alone.

Oh my, my smartphone has far more computing power than the entire - You could send someone to the moon just with your phone.

In terms of the math, really, their computers were primitive back then and massive because they didn't know how to miniaturize stuff.

So yeah, the technology is better now, but we don't have the funding. And so NASA is still gonna do it, but they're doing it with 10 % of the budget that they had in the 60s, once adjusted for inflation.

Wow. That gives you a feel for it. And there's no space race anymore. You're not competing with the Soviets anymore.

So there's not a lot of reason to go other than it's just cool. Well, come on, Russia's got to step up its game.

Give us some problems so we have a reason to go back to the moon. All right, Richard Cox has a question, unrelated, but then we move back into the evolution questions.

Dr. Lyle, how has Dr. Bonson influenced your thought, theology, beyond the area of apologetics?

Very positively and massively, I would argue. Bonson knew the Bible very, very well, very, very well.

And I've benefited from him tremendously because I started studying all of his apologetic stuff and he's got a lot out there and it's great.

But as I realized, as I started going through his apologetic stuff, I realized one of the reasons his apologetics is so great is because his theology is so great.

And that's not to say I have 100 % agreement and everything, but nonetheless, we agree on a lot of areas.

And a lot of those areas, he kind of helped me to understand too, where I had a lot of confusion, some of the

Levitical laws and things like that. Bonson was an expert on biblical law as well. I'm not gonna go into all the areas of agreement.

Don't worry. I can say this, I would highly endorse the works of Greg Bonson beyond just his apologetic stuff.

Again, that's not a blanket. I'm agreeing with every single nuance, but nonetheless, it's masterful.

The guy knew the Bible very well and he was a very clear thinker. God gifted him with a really sharp mind and he used it for God's glory.

And I regret that I never got to meet Dr. Bonson in person, but he's gonna get a big hug from me in heaven.

That's right. Toto Bermundo asks, we hear, quote, gain of function research nowadays, but with the evolutionary assumptions of scientists, is this gain of function possible through mutations genetically speaking?

Thanks, Dr. Presupp. So with gain of function research, we can introduce genes and it's amazing and it's scary because we don't fully know exactly how all genes interact with each other.

There was an experiment years ago to introduce a gene from a blue flower into a rose.

So you have a blue rose, neat idea. And it failed. Rose came out, it didn't produce the blue color because that gene needs to interact with other genes and things like that.

And so we're kind of at the beginning of the game. We're starting to understand the genetic code. We understand that which amino acids are produced by various codons, amino acid sequence, we get that.

But in terms of how they all interact with each other, it is an equation that is beyond the capacity of any one human mind and perhaps beyond all of us combined.

So we have to be careful about that. But yeah, you can make bacteria do things that they don't normally do by introducing new genes.

And that's kind of an artificial mutation because it's not something that occurs naturally.

It's something that takes intelligence to do. And so I'll grant, yeah, you can make bacteria that produce penicillin, for example.

And that's a good use because then people, or not penicillin, insulin, I'm sorry, insulin.

And that's a very good use of genetic engineering because then you can produce insulin for people who are diabetic and so on.

That's great. And we just gotta be real careful about that. And I won't, there's a lot

I can say about COVID -19 and things like that, but that'll get us all kicked off the air. Okay. I've never gotten a warning from YouTube, so I don't want tonight to be the first time.

Yeah, let's not change that. Let's not rock the boat. All right. Richard Cox asks, have you heard of R .J.

Rush Dooney's argument against evolution from genetics of inbreeding in Institutes of Biblical Law, volume one?

You know, I've read that. And yet I don't recall that. I don't recall his argument against it. Of course, it's been a few years since I've read it, but from the genetics of inbreeding, but there can be an argument made because inbreeding tends to concentrate the mutations.

We have two sets of DNA. You get one set from daddy, one set from mom. And the neat thing about DNA is most mutations, when there's a mistake in one of the two sets, if the other set's healthy, usually mutations are recessive.

And so the other gene will sort of cover up and you won't have a disease. That's nice. That's a feature.

But if you marry somebody that you're closely related to, which is why we don't do that anymore, then it increases the probability of having two mutations at the same location.

And then you can suffer from a disease. And so purebred animals tend to have a lot of problems and they tend to, you know, golden retriever.

I love golden retrievers. Everybody knows that, that knows me. And, but they tend to have some genetic problems. They tend to suffer problems with their hips because there's some genetic instructions there that are missing and so on.

And so now originally that wouldn't have been a problem. So this also goes back to, you know, because people ask, well, where did

Cain get his wife? And well, obviously would have, you know, Adam had sons and daughters, the Bible says. So they were very, very close relations initially.

And that wouldn't have been a problem initially because there's no, presumably Adam and Eve had no mutations at creation and relatively, their children had relatively few.

It wasn't until the time of Leviticus, you know, where the mosaic laws given that God prevented close intermarriage.

We still marry our relatives, because we're all related, we're all the same. If you don't marry a relative, you don't marry a human being, and that's a problem.

That's right, that's a good way to put it. So, yeah, I can't recall Rush Duny's argument specifically against that, but I have read his

Institutes of Biblical Law. And of course it's, that's kind of a tough read. Yeah, Rush Duny, he's got a lot of material.

Very, very tough read. He's also written a really good book called The One and the Many. So I know folks are interested in that who wanna go deep in the weeds of presuppositional methodology.

Definitely wanna check that out, if you could find it. It's very hard to find. In the Creed asks, do you foresee the

James Webb project providing any confirmation of a young universe or will faulty presuppositions muddy the available data?

Example, we don't know the one way speed of light. Right, that's a very good question. I think it will provide confirmation of a young universe.

I've made some specific predictions on what James Webb will see. I posted an article several months back, back when

James Webb was launched. And I made some predictions about what it'll see that are contrary to the predictions of the secularists.

And we got the first data set today and I'm looking at it. And I think my predictions are right.

I think what we're seeing is fully designed galaxies at distances that were probably not expected in the secular view.

So, but I wanna take a little time. I don't wanna jump on things before data comes in. But yeah,

I expect that, I think we'll get some good data. Faulty presuppositions do muddy the waters, but hopefully in terms of the data that they're presenting,

I think those will be relatively untainted by secular presuppositions because they're using the scientific method to gather the data and that's creation -based.

So I believe in those presuppositions. So I think they will no doubt put a secular spin on it as they already have.

I watched the press announcement today, NASA did a press release today.

And I watched it and sure enough, they started interpreting the data as this is a star forming region and so on. I'm thinking, no, but it's a pretty picture and you got some good data there, but I'll do the interpreting myself, thank you.

So I think we'll get some good data. But take a look at my article that I wrote a couple of months ago and take a look at -

On your site? I've made, it's on the website, biblicalscienceinstitute .com. Yeah, go back, I forget when. It was whenever James Webb was actually launched.

And I made some predictions about what we're gonna see in terms of the distant galaxies and also in terms of extrasolar planets.

Thank you for that. That's super fascinating. That'd be interesting to follow. Mr. T, not the

Mr. T, side fact, I actually invited the real Mr. T on this show. He never responded, but it would have been cool if I got

Mr. T, except Jesus, fool. That would have been super cool, man. Anyway, the question is, does taxonomy support the evolutionary theory?

No, I don't think it does, for the same reason that quantum particles, they can be taxonomically classified.

In fact, I would argue that taxonomy really kind of, it really refutes evolution, doesn't it?

Because if the evolutionary view were true, things are constantly evolving from one thing into the next.

And so if we look back into the fossil record, we ought to see not fish and amphibians, not reptiles and birds, but something that's 80 % reptile, 20 % bird, and so on.

Taxonomy, if everything's in a continuous flux, I don't know how you'd do taxonomy, to be honest. The fact that organisms fall into discrete bins, there's variation within those bins, but there are certain bins that they fall into, and we can classify them.

We can say, no, this is a reptile, and this is a bird. It's got fully designed feathers. We don't find fossils with feathers starting to evolve, where you have the quill, but you don't have the barbs, or you have the barbs, but you don't have the barbules, or the barbules exist, but they don't interlock yet, because that mechanism.

No, the first feathers we find, deep down in the fossil records we can go, fully designed feathers with an asymmetric quill, which just means they're designed for flight.

So I would say taxonomy makes sense in light of the fact that God is a God of order.

We live in a universe, universe, uni from one, verse from diversity, meaning many.

It's the one in the many. God himself is triune, and that's what makes classification of things possible. God's built that into the universe.

So we can say, on the one hand, these two organisms are both mammals. They're one in that sense, but they're different in this sense.

So it goes back to the one in the many, and I think that it's the Christian worldview that makes sense of the one in the many, and really no other.

And the fact that we can taxonomically classify almost anything, you can put automobiles into a taxonomy if you want to.

And I'm working on some ideas about how to present that in a humorous way that makes the point.

I've got some new ideas coming up. Well, I'm looking forward to that. Just as a side note, I really do appreciate your articles.

They are, you're really good at taking something that's very complicated and simplifying it for the lay person, which goes a very long way in serving the church.

I know it's not academic in the sense that you're writing to professors, although they're welcome to the material and engage in it.

You do a very good job communicating those complicated issues. I appreciate it. Thank you, appreciate it.

Post Tenebrous Looks asks, some evolutionists ask if the sun is created on day four, what is the light on day one?

Yeah, the Bible doesn't give us a lot of details on that. It just tells us there was light. Apparently God provided the light for the first three days.

What's really interesting is the evolutionists that, and I like the way that's asked there.

That's perfectly a legitimate question. But some evolutionists say, well, it's impossible to have light without the sun.

I'm thinking, well, I've got light in here. I don't have the sun in here. I mean, light doesn't necessarily require the sun.

It just requires some kind of source. And that source may have been God himself. He may have created light supernaturally for the first three days.

The implication I get from reading Genesis is that if, granted nobody was there, but if other than God, but if there'd been a human being standing on the surface, he would have seen a blue sky, bright blue, but there'd been no sun in it.

So God was apparently providing the light for those first three days. And then God provided a light bearer on day four to be for signs, seasons, days, and years, and to give light upon the earth.

So the sun was the object that continued to produce the light that apparently

God provided for those first three days. And the Bible doesn't specifically say why God did it that way.

My conjecture would be, so people would be less inclined to worship the sun as the primary source of life, because most ancient cultures worshiped the sun as the primary source of life.

And so God displaced it a few days. It's not the prime, God's saying, I'm the primary source of life. The sun is just something that God made to sustain the life that God himself created.

So he displaces a few days, doesn't even give it a name. It's just the greater light. It's an object that God made and not something to be worshiped.

So, okay, so if someone says, okay, there was a light on day one, and then God created the sun on day four, and then you say, well, you know, you don't need the sun to have light.

Maybe God created this other source of light. How would you respond to someone and say, well, that's a little ad hoc, right?

I mean, it's kind of like, all right, yeah, there was this mysterious light that wasn't the sun. And then of course that mysterious light no longer plays the major role.

Now you have the sun and now it explains, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. How would you interact with someone who points that out?

Well, I just gave a plausible explanation for why God may have done it that way. But if he says that's not, you know, there's a better way,

I said, well, then do it. Make your own universe and show me how you would do it better. Because until you can do that, your explanation is just ad hoc.

You're just saying, ah, I'd have done it this way. And evolutionists like to do that. Oh, you know, I would have designed the eye this way.

Do it, see if it works, see if it's better than the eyes I have. Because I gotta tell you, you're not gonna win in those kinds of competitions with God.

You're not gonna win. I don't know why God does 99 % of what God does. And the good news is in the creation world view,

I'm not required to know that. I have justification for believing that God is a God of his word.

And that's all that I really need. But I think it's perfectly sensible in light of what I just said, for God to make light, for God himself to provide the light for the first three days and then to provide a barrier to provide the light after that.

That's perfectly sensible. Why he did it, it's up to him. Okay, well, we have two more questions and then we'll wrap things up.

You're doing an excellent job and I'm sure folks will very much benefit from. I know there's some people who it's very late for them.

So they are gonna watch the rest later. But this has been an excellent conversation and I know this can be very useful for people.

So here, the last two questions here. So the sire asks this question. Are you familiar with the argument that the holes at the bottom in a skull perfectly fits the evolutionist model for human development rather than creationism?

I'm sorry, I haven't heard that argument. I know that the way the skull sits on the neck is a little different for humans than it is for apes because apes, the neck's kind of forward like that.

I have not heard that argument, sorry. No worries. And the last question, somewhat not related to evolution but related to an area that you'd be familiar with.

Why is Gamora asks, are you familiar with the Electric Universe Thunderbolts project? If so, what are your impressions of their models of the universe and planets?

And with that, we'll end our line of questioning here. Okay, so I am familiar with it.

It's something that I looked at a couple of decades ago. So I thought it's kind of a neat idea, but I don't think it's,

I don't think it works. And one of the reasons is because the electromagnetic force is incredibly strong and because it's so strong and because there are opposite charges in the universe, positive, negative electrons and protons, any charge in the universe almost immediately neutralizes itself.

If you have a positive charge out there, it will attract a negative charge because the electromagnetic force is stronger than gravity.

And that in a way is what defeats it because it's stronger than gravity immediately neutralizes itself and you end up with a particle like an atom, but an atom has one proton and one electron, it's neutral.

And so it's not gonna attract other atoms electromagnetically at a long, at a far distance, there's residual charge nearby, but so that's not gonna happen.

So, but basically that's the idea behind the Electric Universe is that in fact, the shapes of galaxies and things like that are determined primarily by electromagnetic forces.

I would say, no, I would say gravity is the winner because gravity, even though it's a weaker force than electromagnetism, it has only positive charges and they're attractive, positive charges attract, and masses attract mass and there's no way of neutralizing that.

So gravity, on the largest scale, gravity wins. And that maybe is a little lesson in perspective because there's four fundamental forces.

Gravity is the weakest, but on a large scale, it wins because all the other ones cancel out.

So I think that's kind of interesting. Okay, excellent. Well, Dr. Lyle, I'd like to thank you so much.

This has been wonderful. And I learned a lot. Again, I'm a seasoned apologist, but this area specifically is not an area that I usually get into.

And I've learned a lot just listening to you and I'm sure others have learned a lot as well. So I've been talking to Dr.

Jason Lyle. He's the author of The Ultimate Proof for Creation, which I highly recommend. And he is over there at the

Biblical Science Institute where he has most of his, well, all of his articles covering a wide variety of apologetic and theological topics.

Highly recommend. And if you really value what Dr. Lyle is doing, I highly recommend that you give to his ministry if you can.

I remember I did a debate with an atheist on YouTube and prior to going live with him,

I asked him, you know, what do you do for a living? He goes, well, I do this. And I'm like, what do you mean?

You do like debates and stuff? Like does people pay you so that you could like just debate

Christians all day long? I'm like, wow. And that shocked me that you have unbelievers who gather together and support their favorite atheists as they work against the gospel.

Now that's not to say that you should, you know, throw money at various ministries and like it's all about that.

But I think it's very, very helpful to financially support a ministry that you think is doing a really important work for the kingdom.

And so if you see Dr. Lyle as doing that in a way that is honoring Christ and being faithful to scripture,

I highly recommend that you go over to the Biblical Science Institute and support in any way what he's doing there.

So would you like to say anything before we close this interview out, Dr. Lyle? Thanks for that plug. I appreciate it.

No, no problem. I'd encourage people to check out the website, regardless, I have a heart for students and students don't have money.

So there's a lot of free articles on the website. That's just to bless you. I hope it'll encourage you. So check us out on the web, biblicalscienceinstitute .com.

And thank you very much, brother Eli, for having me on the show. It has been an honor and a pleasure. Until next time, guys, take care and God bless.