Is God’s creation THOUSANDS or BILLIONS of years old? — with Dr. Hugh Ross

[00:00:00] welcome to educate for life i’m your host kevin conover and we’re broadcasting from southern california

[00:00:05] if you’re local you can listen on our local christian station k praise 12 10 a.m if you still listen to radio and also on

[00:00:12] fm 106.1 in north county but we’re also all over the internet we’ve got a youtube channel we’re on

[00:00:19] facebook we’re everywhere so you can check it out i’ve got interviews up there with all kinds of different

[00:00:25] experts in their particular field whether that’s somebody who’s a expert on islam whether that’s somebody who’s an

[00:00:30] expert on buddhism uh whether it’s dealing with scientific issues um or social and cultural issues we’ve

[00:00:37] got now over 200 interviews up uh with experts all over the place who are talking about how god has impacted

[00:00:43] their life and then how god is using them to impact the lives of those around them and i’m excited to let you know my guest

[00:00:50] today is hugh ross dr hugh ross he’s an astronomer he’s the founder and president of reasons to

[00:00:55] believe that’s an organization dedicated to integrating scientific fact and biblical faith

[00:01:00] and his books include among many others weathering climate change why the universe is the way it is and navigating

[00:01:06] genesis and uh dr ross thanks so much for being here today oh my pleasure thank you absolutely and

[00:01:13] um you can find out more about uh hugh at reasons.org uh that’s his website

[00:01:18] and there’s all kinds of great stuff up there now i do have to uh preface this show um i very frequently

[00:01:24] have guests on my show whether that’s atheists i’ve had lawrence krauss on the show who’s a physicist who teaches that

[00:01:29] the universe came from nothing and i’ve had uh dan barker on the show and many other people who

[00:01:34] i’m not on the same page with and hugh and i i just like to because i don’t want to get letters uh written to the the radio

[00:01:40] station which i’ve had happen before i just want to clarify that you and i have a difference of opinion

[00:01:46] about the age of the earth but i love talking to people that have different opinions than i do because what i’ve

[00:01:51] found is i can learn a ton rather than talking with people that agree with me all the time

[00:01:56] and so uh i just want to preface that we’re living in a time right now where uh they’re calling it the cancel culture

[00:02:03] right um and and this is a scary thing to me honestly where we’ve decided if i don’t

[00:02:09] agree with somebody i’m just going to shut them down and i’m not going to talk to them and i think that’s one of the most dangerous things

[00:02:14] you can do because it shuts off the ability to learn and i’ve experienced this myself i

[00:02:19] was going to speak at a church here locally in san diego nazarene church and before i i went the pastor called me up

[00:02:26] and he said hey kevin i want you to know that i’ve had about three professors from the local

[00:02:31] nazarene university call and say that they don’t want you to come speak at our church but uh and i wasn’t even speaking on on

[00:02:37] anything controversial is it things that we all agreed on but uh they didn’t want me to speak there and thank god the pastor

[00:02:44] decided to have me speak anyway but i just think that’s a bad trend for us as christians we want to dialogue

[00:02:50] with people be intelligent and learn we all have to take a humble position so that being said uh uh dr ross

[00:02:59] um can you tell us um a little bit about i’m going to start with this question when i was at biola i got a master’s

[00:03:05] degree in apologetics from biola there was a speaker there who inferred that god could have used evolution

[00:03:12] now i know biola doesn’t support uh you know theistic evolution or evolution as a viable theory um

[00:03:19] and and so i don’t know if he wasn’t vetted or what happened but i raised my hand and i said hey uh you

[00:03:24] know did you just infer that evolution is a possible um mechanism for god’s in the creative

[00:03:31] process and he said to me um that’s an origin issue it doesn’t matter and so what i wanted to ask you is what

[00:03:38] do you think about that what what what do you think about that statement it’s an origin issue it doesn’t matter what are your thoughts

[00:03:44] well if it’s an origin issue it does matter i mean who’s responsible for the origin

[00:03:50] uh is it the god that created the universe or is it just natural process that unfolds

[00:03:56] are we looking at deism are we looking at a theism if we’re looking at theism are we looking at jesus christ the redeemer god

[00:04:03] of the bible those are issues that the bible addresses but the book of nature

[00:04:08] also addresses so it’s not something that science is silent on it’s very much apropos and now that’s why we at reasons

[00:04:16] believe are engaged in dialoguing uh with people who take these different positions

[00:04:21] so for our listeners can you clarify what your position is and how the nuance there because a lot of people

[00:04:27] have no idea about the difference i know when i was younger i had no idea that there was these different positions i was

[00:04:33] completely caught caught unawares and and then slowly over time i realized oh okay

[00:04:39] people have these different views what are the different positions that christians take when it

[00:04:44] comes to uh creation and you you specifically wrote a book navigating genesis

[00:04:50] um that’s based on this very subject um to clarity to give clarity to people what are the different positions

[00:04:56] that people have well i participated in a book called four views

[00:05:01] on creation evolution and intelligent design or the four dominant positions within

[00:05:07] the christian community how were discussed and those four were uh young earth creationism and the

[00:05:14] author of that one was ken ham and then we had deborah harzma of biologos she was defending

[00:05:21] evolutionary creationism uh which she considered to be distinct from theistic evolution

[00:05:28] and i know deborah quite well and i basically in the book said you know please make a distinction

[00:05:33] and uh the theistic evolution is a very broad camp but a lot of theistic

[00:05:38] evolutionists believe god exists but he stopped doing anything in terms of the natural realm

[00:05:45] after he created the universe evolutionary creationists don’t take that position

[00:05:50] they believe that god was involved but involved in a way that science cannot determine

[00:05:57] and so my critique of her position is while you’re claiming the book of nature can’t distinguish

[00:06:02] between atheism deism and christianity whereas our position it reasons to

[00:06:08] believe is that the scientific record indeed can do those very things

[00:06:13] i defended the old earth creationist position which is the idea that god created over

[00:06:20] the time scale that geologists and astrophysicists determined namely 14 billion years for the universe

[00:06:27] and four and a half billion uh for our earth and then we had

[00:06:32] steve meyer of the discovery institute and he defended the intelligent design

[00:06:38] movement which basically says we’re going to look at this whole issue from science alone independent of the

[00:06:44] bible and so he really didn’t want to get into the issues of the biblical creation text

[00:06:50] and my response to him in the book was well we all know where the discovery institute stands

[00:06:56] but what about you personally and being a friend to steve i knew that he

[00:07:01] actually believed that the creator was jesus christ and so and he also believed that the

[00:07:06] origin of life like i do is a supernatural event it’s not naturalistic

[00:07:12] and likewise when we see the major introductions of life in the fossil record

[00:07:17] those are supernatural and he basically thanked me for giving you an opportunity to express where he stands personally as

[00:07:25] opposed to where the discovery institute stands but the book is an excellent place to go

[00:07:30] to find out uh the different positions and what i thought was especially revealing about the book

[00:07:37] each of the four authors had a different position of biblical inerrancy they all said they

[00:07:43] defended biblical and heresy but they all had different definitions i was the only one of the four authors

[00:07:50] that was willing to endorse biblical inerrancy as is defined by the international council

[00:07:56] of biblical inerrancy and so that tells me hey when somebody says or believe in biblical heresy need to ask them what

[00:08:03] kind do you believe in very interesting huh um so so for more

[00:08:09] clarity there just uh i’ve spoken actually had the opportunity in a in a green room uh to to overhear a discussion with stephen

[00:08:16] meyer he said he was a uh he’s he said he was old earth and then he um but he believed in a recent humanity uh

[00:08:24] which i thought was interesting so there is this so um for our listeners who aren’t familiar with this

[00:08:29] a progressive uh creationist essentially believes that god started things somewhere around 14 15 billion years ago

[00:08:36] created then created some more a while later then created some more a while later

[00:08:42] until he gets down to adam and eve is that accurate what i’m saying yes uh the position we hold it reasons

[00:08:47] to believe is you’ve got god intervening with millions of creation miracles

[00:08:53] over the time scale of the universe that culminates with god creating adam and eve

[00:08:58] as it tells us in genesis god went into a state of arrest after he created eve and i think that

[00:09:05] explains why you get so many biologists today saying we see no scientific evidence for the

[00:09:11] supernatural ending work of god they’re looking on the wrong day they’re looking at day seven when god’s at rest

[00:09:18] and explains why so many of us who are astronomers say we see evidence for god everywhere

[00:09:23] because almost all of our data comes from the six days of creation not the day of rest

[00:09:29] when god is ceasing from his work or creation i see okay so the the big difference so you you

[00:09:35] believe in a literal adam and eve you don’t adhere to uh that those are figurative uh characters

[00:09:41] i believe in the literal adam and eve i believe the entire human species is descended from that one man and one

[00:09:48] woman that god specially created and like steve meyer i believe that’s a relatively recent event

[00:09:55] in fact i’ve written in navigating genesis you actually get a more accurate date

[00:10:00] uh for the origin of humanity from the bible and you do the scientific record because

[00:10:05] the problem is you got the origin of humanity in a time window where we don’t

[00:10:11] have any objective reliable dating method there’s a range between about 45 000

[00:10:19] years and 250 000 years where we do not have any objective dating tool so that’s very

[00:10:26] interesting yeah the bible actually gives you a more accurate date okay now when you say um we don’t have an accurate dating method

[00:10:33] 45 to i think you said 250 000 years is that what you said right so so are you talking specifically about

[00:10:39] radio isotope dating and um like carbon dating is only accurate to somewhere around 50

[00:10:45] 50 000 years is that accurate yeah carbon dating i mean any radiometric

[00:10:50] tool is going to be accurate within about a factor of six of its half-life and with carbon-14 that’s 5715 years

[00:11:00] so if you multiply that by six you’re getting to roughly 35 to 40 000 years ago that’s where you’re

[00:11:06] going to get an accurate date 45 000 you’ll get a date that’s

[00:11:12] you know accurate to plus or minus two or three thousand years older than that you’re not going to get

[00:11:17] an accurate date mainly because everything’s going to date to be about 58 000 years old no matter how old it is

[00:11:25] through made it right to dating why because you got residual uranium and thorium everywhere

[00:11:31] and the radiation of uranium thorium has bound to convert some nitrogen into

[00:11:37] carbon 14. so you got what’s called a background level that explains why even ancient

[00:11:43] diamonds and zircons if you date them with carbon 14 are going to give you a date of about 58 000

[00:11:49] years that’s simply the background you get from the uranium and thorium that’s in the environment but yeah

[00:11:56] earlier than 45 or 40 000 years we really don’t have we have what we

[00:12:03] call dating methods that have uh that are indirect you know things

[00:12:10] like uh thermoluminescence optical luminescence and uh you may have heard of things like

[00:12:16] uh uranium precipitation where they compare the rate of uranium precipitation

[00:12:22] to thorium precipitation but those are indirect methods that have very large systematic errors

[00:12:29] and i actually wrote an article on our reasons.org website explaining how large these systematic

[00:12:36] errors are in some cases the systematic errors are plus or minus 200 percent

[00:12:42] oh wow so what does this mean then what is the conclusion here when you say okay we don’t have we don’t have reliable dating methods 45

[00:12:49] to 250 000 years what does this mean when when having a discussion with somebody who’s

[00:12:54] who’s uh you know says okay you know the bible’s not true or somebody says

[00:12:59] um you know i believe in evolution or is that relevant how does that affect that discussion

[00:13:05] well the very best scientific date we got for the origin of humanity is 150 000 years ago plus or minus 150

[00:13:13] 000 years okay yeah well i mean again we know that

[00:13:18] humanity’s been here for forty thousand minimum because of carbon-14 and we bet we’re able to calibrate that

[00:13:25] with high precision so that’s kind of gives you uh you know an upper bound however we go to genesis

[00:13:33] chapter 2 it tells us that god created adam and eve when four known rivers come together in

[00:13:41] the garden of eden and notice the text names of four rivers and tells us where they flow from

[00:13:48] and because of the detail is given in genesis 2 we can identify those four rivers two of

[00:13:54] them flow today the tigris and euphrates the gihon the pishon are dried up

[00:13:59] riverbeds they were flowing during the last ice age when there was lots of melting snow

[00:14:05] and ice but they no longer flow today which tells us that the creation of adam and

[00:14:10] eve took place sometime during the last ice age and we can go on a map and see where

[00:14:17] those four rivers come close together and where they come close together is in

[00:14:22] the southeast portion of the persian gulf well during the last ice age that was

[00:14:28] dry land today is 200 feet below sea level but during the last ice age the sea levels

[00:14:34] were 300 to 400 feet lower than they are today and so that tells us that god created

[00:14:40] adam and eve sometime during the last ice age which gives you a date range

[00:14:46] of 15 000 years ago to 130 000 years ago

[00:14:51] and i think you can get a little more of a detail because we notice that the earliest artifacts of

[00:14:58] humanity are in east africa and the persian gulf which indicates that the origin of

[00:15:05] humanity must have been relatively close to epochs when there is an easy

[00:15:11] migration route between the persian gulf and east africa and during the last ice age there were

[00:15:17] three times when there was a very easy migration route up the gihon river over the land bridge

[00:15:23] between arabia and east africa and i named those three dates and navigating genesis

[00:15:29] as like 157 117 000 years ago 73 000 years ago

[00:15:36] and about 52 000 years ago so you can pick one of those dates but hey

[00:15:42] if you want to be conservative sometime between 15 and 130 000 years

[00:15:47] ago and that also is consistent with the biblical genealogies i mean the genealogies kind of give you

[00:15:54] a rough clue but we know that all the biblical genealogies are incomplete

[00:15:59] and so it’s basically trying to discern okay how complete are they well the incompleteness factor

[00:16:06] roughly manages roughly as consistent with the date we get from genesis chapter 2.

[00:16:12] okay well that’s a lot of information there if you’re listening my guest today is hugh ross reasons.org and he is an old earth

[00:16:20] creationist i am not i’m actually a young earth creationist and but i love talking to people who who don’t agree with me i find it very

[00:16:27] interesting and i like to hear their perspectives and uh so just so you’re aware if you’re if you’re just tuning in

[00:16:33] there’s also lots of options to to hear the other side of the issue of what he was talking about one of the people that i had the

[00:16:38] opportunity to interview is dr john sanford and um uh you probably know him uh doctor i know who he is

[00:16:44] yeah corn he was a cornell university geneticist and i’m just curious about this he he studied population genetics and he

[00:16:51] said um very specifically that the rate of mutation that we’re seeing in populations uh limits the ability to go back too far

[00:16:58] right you end up if you go back too far the rate of mutation we would basically be extinct

[00:17:03] because we’re getting increasing mutations as we uh every generation has 100 to 300 new

[00:17:08] mutations and you’re essentially corrupting the dna and ultimately you couldn’t really go based on that rate you couldn’t go

[00:17:14] back farther than 6000 years before you got to adam and eve i’m just curious what your thoughts are on that um

[00:17:20] and and does do you feel that genetics uh supports uh first of all does it support god and

[00:17:26] second of all does it support support either an old earth or a young earth well we actually had john sanford

[00:17:31] speak at our reasons to leave headquarters to our scientific team i mean we love engaging

[00:17:37] people who are prepared to engage us with the spirit of charity yeah and uh john is you know one of the few

[00:17:42] young earth creationists who is able to do that so we’re very much welcoming him we agree that

[00:17:49] the genetic data on current humanity argues for a relatively recent date

[00:17:55] uh for uh god creating adam and eve where we disagree is that he’s presuming

[00:18:01] the mutation rate has been constant throughout all of human history and we would argue that that’s not the

[00:18:08] case in fact i had a right wrote in navigating genesis if we take seriously

[00:18:13] the biblical claim as i do that people living before the flood had the potential to live eight or nine

[00:18:20] hundred years uh that means we’re looking at a much reduced mutation rate

[00:18:25] and therefore you could have an earlier date than 6 000 years but you can’t have a million years you

[00:18:31] can’t have half a million years we’re looking at something in the order of say 50 to 100

[00:18:36] 000 years ago and you know kind of what we’ve said with both and by the way we’ve had these

[00:18:42] debates with biologos because they’re they have genetics experts and

[00:18:47] our response to them is the same to john is that genetics is not yet a high precision science in fact it

[00:18:55] probably never will be uh it’s a very complex issue and a matter of fact

[00:19:01] a number of atheist geneticists have basically said there’s no way you can look at the

[00:19:06] genetic diversity of present-day human beings or for that matter any other mammal species

[00:19:13] and come up with a date back to the common uh to the original couple is that uh you you never get an accurate

[00:19:20] date it could easily be off by a factor of 10 or 20. yeah yeah okay now um i was uh

[00:19:28] when i was up at biola uh the the by and large they had an interesting answer whenever we got into a discussions about age of

[00:19:34] the earth um dr bloom uh said and several professors said uh you know i’m a young earth creationist

[00:19:40] uh three days a week and an old earth creation is four days a week which i thought was pretty funny but but

[00:19:45] um what was interesting to me was one guy actually said to me i’ve met i’ve never met a young earth creationist

[00:19:52] and i thought to myself well that that’s silly how can you never met a young earth creationist one of my classmates

[00:19:57] and we had some really good discussions it was very interesting and it was great to have this open dialogue and everything but you know what um when it

[00:20:04] comes down to the historical record in in the bible and in genesis

[00:20:10] and you’re looking at this um you’ve referenced several times the book of nature and the you know contrasted with the

[00:20:15] book of scripture uh can you clarify with us because some people would arg they’d say oh you know hugh ross he

[00:20:21] um he elevates the book of uh of nature higher than he elevates the book of scripture right

[00:20:27] saying um accusing you that you placed a higher level on uh science and uh

[00:20:32] i had some interesting conversations where one of the students said yeah um he said you know biblically i think

[00:20:39] scripture is more clear that the earth is young but he said but scientifically i think the evidence leans toward it

[00:20:46] being old and he said therefore i’ve decided that it’s old what are your thoughts on that and

[00:20:51] and uh as far as it pertains to the book of nature versus the book of science uh can you explain that to our listeners

[00:20:57] um the the thought process to be really clear we uphold all the affirmations and denials

[00:21:03] of the international council of biblical narrative we also uphold sola scriptura that the bible is the

[00:21:10] only propositional authoritative revelation from god but it’s that authority of revelation it

[00:21:16] tells us in psalm 19 and romans 1 and elsewhere the record of nature is a book from god

[00:21:24] and god cannot lie or deceive the book of nature is utterly trustworthy and

[00:21:29] reliable so if we see the possibility of a conflict between what god reveals in

[00:21:36] the book of nature and what he reveals in the book of scripture we know it’s not god’s fault

[00:21:42] it’s our problem we’ve misinterpreted one book or the other and in some cases we misinterpret both

[00:21:48] and so whenever we find an anomaly or an apparent disagreement that should motivate us to study let’s

[00:21:54] dig into this and see if we can get it resolved and what i find interesting is that when i teach at a seminary

[00:22:01] that’s how seminary researchers treat the book of scripture if they see one book of the bible

[00:22:07] apparently contradicting another book they say we’ve got to dig in and resolve this

[00:22:12] and if you study enough you get a resolution and my peers in science they operate the same way

[00:22:18] they say if we see an apparent conflict between geophysics and astrophysics then we’ve

[00:22:24] misinterpreted something let’s dig into this let’s do more research and let’s resolve it the other thing we

[00:22:31] notice is both theologians and scientists whenever we resolve an apparent contradiction

[00:22:37] or an anomaly it reveals what other ones we hadn’t even seen before

[00:22:42] but the new ones we see had on a lower level of significance which is an indication here on the

[00:22:49] pathway to truth if the anomalies become less and less significant as you learn more and more

[00:22:55] then you know you’re going the right direction but you also know you don’t have the total truth yet

[00:23:01] and frankly humans will never have the total truth there’s always more to learn from both

[00:23:06] books so hopefully that helps yeah it does yeah but again from a biblical perspective

[00:23:13] my point is it’s not enough to read the creation text literally which i do you have to read

[00:23:19] them consistently there’s over two dozen major creation texts in the bible

[00:23:25] not just those in genesis i think god expects us to integrate all these creation texts and

[00:23:32] you know i didn’t meet a young earth creationist for the first nine years i was a christian and that’s because i went through all

[00:23:39] these texts and said boy when you integrate all the texts the bible is an old earth book

[00:23:45] and so it’s a shock to me to meet someone who thought it was a young earth book but now i kind of understand because i

[00:23:52] wasn’t raised in a christian home yeah you know i came to christ through studying gideon bible

[00:23:58] and uh you know when i started sharing my faith i was sharing my faith with atheists

[00:24:04] every church i went to where i was raised in canada people didn’t believe the bible was the word of god so i didn’t go to church

[00:24:11] until i came to the u.s oh and that’s where i found bible bullying in churches

[00:24:16] and that’s when i first met young earth creationists uh but it’s always a fun time to sit

[00:24:22] down with them and say let’s go through all the creation texts not just the first page of the bible

[00:24:28] and let’s see if we can make sense of it all that’s great uh so so um i i really appreciate um

[00:24:35] how open you are to dialogue and everything i think that’s fantastic uh when it comes to um you know looking

[00:24:42] at this from uh the perspective of history and everything um and and when you’re dealing with

[00:24:48] people that are talking about evolution um what is it that keeps you from being an evolutionist so

[00:24:54] so from an origin issue um you you believe in old earth geology but

[00:25:00] you don’t believe in evolution um so what is it about it that keeps

[00:25:06] what’s science or or i don’t know if there’s biblically if you have an argument against evolution also what is it that keeps you from being uh

[00:25:13] a um either a evolutionary creationist or a theistic evolutionist yeah well i’ve never been an

[00:25:18] evolutionist even when i was not a christian uh you know my story is i became very

[00:25:25] fascinated by astronomy when i was seven i was reading five books a week on physics and astronomy

[00:25:31] and that made my parents upset you know so when i was 11 they bought our family

[00:25:37] this big thick book on evolutionary biology i was the only one in the family that read it but i said to my parents mom and

[00:25:44] dad the numbers don’t add up uh you know all you got is 3.8 billion years

[00:25:50] for the history of life on planet earth there’s no way you can make all this happen uh through naturalistic evolution and i

[00:25:57] said well go talk to your professors and none of my professors can help me with that too

[00:26:02] so when you say there’s not enough the numbers don’t add up what do you mean by that exactly well what you notice for example is that

[00:26:09] when you get to the higher life forms uh in the present era the extinction

[00:26:14] rate far outweighs the speciation rate so for example we know that when god

[00:26:20] created adam and eve there’s a little more than eight thousand species of mammals

[00:26:25] well today on planet earth there’s only four thousand and none of those four thousand are new

[00:26:30] species and there’s been field studies done uh where they take a mammalian species

[00:26:36] that’s had a population drop and what they discover is if the mammal species

[00:26:43] has an adult body size greater than seven pounds it will go extinct before it can

[00:26:49] experience any possible significant evolutionary change by naturalistic means

[00:26:55] so any mammal that is an adult body size bigger than seven pounds is not going to evolve it’s

[00:27:01] going to go extinct and that matches the field studies that matches what we observe about the extinction rate and you can

[00:27:08] extend that to birds to insects etc but as a scientist what really persuaded

[00:27:15] me first of all the origin of the universe where we now have these space-time

[00:27:21] theorems that prove that not only does a matter and energy the universe have a beginning

[00:27:26] even space and time as a beginning and so you need a creator that creates

[00:27:31] space-time matter and energy and does so instantly and then you look at the origin of life

[00:27:38] i’ve been studying the origin of life for decades and there’s really no possible even

[00:27:44] conceivable naturalistic scenario that can explain the origin of life

[00:27:49] i mean you can get amazing achievements in a laboratory but you’re using highly trained

[00:27:54] biochemists using very expensive equipment where all the chemicals they bring in are purified

[00:28:01] that never happens in the naturalistic realm and basically i share with my origin of life friends that are atheists

[00:28:07] saying notice how intelligent and well-educated you are look at all the equipment you’re using

[00:28:13] look how much money you’re spending someone a whole lot more educated than you with a lot more technology

[00:28:20] and power must have been the one that created life because you can’t do hardly anything in the lab yeah

[00:28:26] they’re nowhere close to making life from scratch they can re-engineer life but they can’t make life from scratch

[00:28:33] and then i’ll look at the mass speciation events things like the avalon explosion of the first animals

[00:28:41] followed by the cambrian explosion and then when you look at human beings you know darwin made a

[00:28:48] prediction when he wrote his book he made the prediction that the smartest of non-human animals

[00:28:54] would be the animals that most closely resemble our physical appearance and therefore everybody

[00:29:01] expected the chimpanzee would prove to be the most intelligent non-human animal

[00:29:06] and chimpanzees are smart but they’re nowhere near as intelligent as ravens and crows so i mean if you’re

[00:29:14] an evolutionist you would have to conclude were descended from ravens yeah exactly being descended from the great

[00:29:21] apes yeah there’s a mismatch there now from a creation perspective you could have a

[00:29:26] mismatch but from a naturalistic perspective uh the advance of intellectual capability

[00:29:33] must match the advance of a morphological similarity of human humanity and that doesn’t happen yeah it

[00:29:40] shocked me no paper was published pointing out that failed prediction of charles darwin

[00:29:46] until eight years ago and the title of the paper was darwin’s a mistake but they very clearly pointed out look

[00:29:53] there’s a huge difference here and that just led to a flood of papers that made the point

[00:29:59] only humans are capable of manipulating symbols now those are are those uh papers

[00:30:06] published in in peer-reviewed scientific secular journals they are and i cite them in my book

[00:30:12] hidden treasures in the book of job i mean i wrote that book because when those papers started getting published

[00:30:18] i said this has got to be made public uh so i said yeah that’s huge about this and i’m gonna cite these papers

[00:30:25] that’s great um yeah so so um you’ve you’ve made it really clear you

[00:30:30] know and if i i had the opportunity to talk to dr james tor too about you know the the feasibility of

[00:30:37] evolution from a uh chemical level uh organic chemical level he’s and that that was stunning what he had

[00:30:43] to say and um i think there’s so much evidence that doesn’t support evolution it’s hard sometimes to wonder why people

[00:30:51] continue to hold so tightly to it but from a biblical perspective is there a biblical reason not to believe in

[00:30:56] evolution or is it mostly a scientific case you’re making against the biblical reasons is that god

[00:31:02] takes credit for the existence of different life forms and planet earth

[00:31:07] and uses verbs like a saw and bara in the hebrew where you know birds that translate as create

[00:31:13] make manufacture and so this is not a god just sitting back and letting the

[00:31:19] natural process unfold everything if that was the case you’d expect the use of the hebrew verb

[00:31:24] hayah uh what you see in genesis chapter one sometimes you see it says let there be

[00:31:31] which means you let the natural process unfold but the fact that it uses the verbs of saw and barack

[00:31:38] means this is god’s direct supernatural intervention so yes the bible god takes credit

[00:31:45] for personally intervening uh to create life here on planet earth so would that mean that

[00:31:50] that um theistic evolution would be wrong because it’s more deistic but creationary evolution

[00:31:58] would be a possible uh valid paradigm in your view how do you how do you view

[00:32:03] that well i’m a little more comfortable with the evolutionary creationist but i’m very uncomfortable with her position

[00:32:10] that science cannot tell the difference that’s like what you’re saying i mean god does not erase the evidence

[00:32:17] of his miracles uh you know we can go back and see the evidence for the creation of space

[00:32:23] and time god didn’t use a big eraser and says i’m gonna hide this from you yeah yeah and likewise with the origin

[00:32:30] of life you know when i engaged my friends with biologos i said let’s look at the easy problem this idea

[00:32:36] that physics and chemistry can produce biology this is much simpler science to deal

[00:32:41] with than the history of first life and at that level uh you realize

[00:32:47] that you know this cannot be a naturalistic process i mean i mean okay well i think what’s

[00:32:53] different the scientists we have it reasons to believe we regularly attend origin of life research conferences so

[00:33:01] we get to hear firsthand uh what these non-theistic origin of life researchers are trying to

[00:33:07] do yeah and they frankly admit that they’re running into intractable problems in fact what

[00:33:13] we’ve observed over the past 20 years is each successive origin of life research conference

[00:33:19] is more depressing than the previous one yeah that’s right because they keep running into these roadblocks yeah and they just can’t

[00:33:26] they can’t overcome them yeah well they’re actually admitting that they’re not only can’t they overcome them

[00:33:31] there’s no possibility that they’re going to be able to overcome them wow that’s awesome

[00:33:37] and so along those same lines i was

[00:33:42] you know uh i was in the back room of a conference one time i was

[00:33:48] going to be speaking specifically about the historical credibility of the bible and i happened to be in the room with

[00:33:54] several other gentlemen who were going to be speaking and i overheard this conversation and uh that one of the gentlemen said

[00:34:01] not knowing i don’t think he knew that i was a young earth creationist or he maybe wouldn’t say or maybe he knew and he was just like hey i want to

[00:34:07] make you make this clear to you um but he said um i don’t think young earth creationists

[00:34:13] should even have a a place at the table he said i don’t i think they should be banned from the uh

[00:34:19] you know the scientific conventions and everything um you know what’s your attitude towards

[00:34:24] that because a lot of young earth creationists feel that there is a stigma against um them because for whatever

[00:34:32] reason even when i was at biola i was kind of um a little bit bothered because i felt

[00:34:38] like there there wasn’t a good representation of that particular viewpoint from somebody who had was well credentialed scientifically um

[00:34:46] and so um i’m just curious how do you feel about that well number one

[00:34:52] this is not a salvation issue i think many of my young earth friends

[00:34:57] make it a salvation issue unnecessarily or they try to tie it into the doctrine

[00:35:02] of the atonement sure and uh i think that’s a huge biblical mistake and how i try to persuade my young earth

[00:35:09] friends i said notice the age of the earth is not in any of the biblical creeds

[00:35:15] not even in the longest creeds like the belgian confession or the westminster confession it’s

[00:35:21] missing and so the fact that it’s not in the creeds means this is not something we should divide fellowship over and

[00:35:29] also we should be cautious about using something that’s not in the creeds as an

[00:35:35] evangelistic tool i said i’m fine with you being a young earth creationist but i would caution

[00:35:40] you to use your belief in a young earth creation to try to persuade an atheist scientist

[00:35:47] to come to christ as based on the principle you see in acts 15 do not put an unnecessary barrier

[00:35:55] between a non-christian and come into relationship with jesus christ i mean you may feel very passionately

[00:36:02] that circumcision is crucial to being a christian but don’t make it a barrier

[00:36:08] and likewise i would say don’t make the age of the earth a barrier to someone coming to christ

[00:36:13] but in order to understand where these uh comments are coming from you know in several debates i’ve had

[00:36:20] with the younger creationist scientists the moderator of our debate asked this question to the young earth creationists

[00:36:27] do you know of any scientist who thinks there’s evidence for young earth

[00:36:33] independent of any bible interpretation and i can name you the names it was john morris

[00:36:40] and dwayne gish they were involved in they were long debates and both of them said you know over our

[00:36:46] 40-year career we’ve yet to hear or know of a single scientist who independent but bible interpretation

[00:36:54] ever thought there was evidence uh for a young earth or a young universe now the moderator shared with me says

[00:37:01] that’s all i need to know i’m not a scientist but that tells me there really is no credible scientific

[00:37:07] evidence for a young earth and that explains to why you see in the supreme court hearing

[00:37:14] on a creation science uh where a geologist stepped forward and said you know i put this in the same category

[00:37:21] as a flat earth now keep in mind today seven percent of the adult u.s

[00:37:27] population believes that the earth is flat but don’t be surprised if scientists say

[00:37:33] hey if that’s your position i don’t want to talk to you i think that’s the same thing you’re getting

[00:37:38] uh from say atheist scientists who think that

[00:37:43] they have to believe in a young earth in order to become a christian sure sure do you mind if i push back a

[00:37:49] little bit on that yeah go ahead um so i i feel like that would be difficult to say that there’s a scientist that believes that

[00:37:55] um in a young earth creation independent of the bible simply because especially during the time of dwayne gish and um and john morris

[00:38:04] uh the by far the majority of people were christians and and believed in the bible so it’d be very difficult to

[00:38:10] to actually come to the to find an atheist i mean atheism was a blip on i mean it’s still very low

[00:38:16] percentage but uh even agnosticism was generally non-existent especially in america up until

[00:38:23] relatively recently um would you say or no well that’s true of the american public that’s about 90

[00:38:30] percent that believe in god at an afterlife and by the way that percentage has not

[00:38:36] changed hardly at all over the past 100 years amongst research scientists you get a different

[00:38:42] percentage it’s 45 percent that believe in god and an afterlife

[00:38:48] and likewise over 100 years that percentage has not changed i find that interesting because uh

[00:38:55] a professor of philosophy luba dr luba back in 1916 predicted

[00:39:01] with a march of scientific knowledge we’re going to see scientists abandoning belief in god in

[00:39:08] an afterlife that has not happened the percentage is the same today as it was back in 1916 which tells me

[00:39:16] that it’s not just the scientific evidence there’s other issues and the bible has always made it clear

[00:39:24] that there would never be a majority of people that would be followers of jesus christ but also made it clear it would be a

[00:39:31] large minority so the fact that 45 percent believe in god in an afterlife

[00:39:36] that to me kind of fits the biblical standard you know people really study the issue that’s about the percentage

[00:39:42] you would expect yeah that’s very interesting um so so

[00:39:47] um when when we’re discussing you know i’ve interviewed quite a bit of uh

[00:39:53] creationists a decent amount of creation scientists uh and i’m sure you’re familiar with a lot

[00:39:59] of their names uh uh dr john bart a bomb gardener geophysicist and

[00:40:04] and uh like i said dr sanford and and a variety of other different

[00:40:09] scientists um do you think um

[00:40:15] have you ever heard an argument for creation uh for a recent creation uh

[00:40:21] only around six thousand years old that you felt like well you know that’s a that’s an interesting argument um that bears a scientific weight um or

[00:40:28] do you feel like no you’ve never heard anything that oh it’s zero i’ve yet to hear one

[00:40:34] i mean i wrote this book uh a matter of days and mainly what it did in this book is

[00:40:40] give the biblical evidence why the creation days must be long periods of time

[00:40:46] but also several chapters where i address the scientific arguments that people put forward for

[00:40:52] young earth and basically explain once you understand the scientific background what looks like scientific evidence for

[00:40:58] young earth always transforms into scientific evidence for an old earth i mean a good example

[00:41:06] and this is a little bit dated people were saying well uh if the

[00:41:11] universe is old then the moon is going to have 200 feet of dust on its surface and so when they walked on the moon they

[00:41:17] found that it only had 60 millimeters and they said that’s proof that the

[00:41:23] moon indeed is young and not old well what was missing is to get that 200

[00:41:28] feet it was based on a scientist putting a filter on top of mauna kea in hawaii

[00:41:35] and measuring the amount of dust that went through the filter and assuming all the dust was spaced us

[00:41:42] and he published the result and said based on that we would expect this many feet of dust on the moon but he had a caveat in there

[00:41:50] says who knows of all the dust coming through my filter is spaced us and he says we need to repeat this

[00:41:55] experiment with a satellite and with high altitude balloons and when

[00:42:00] they did that they discovered that his estimates off by a factor of 1100 times

[00:42:05] and actually determined uh that you would only get about a centimeter of dust on the moon

[00:42:13] but then another paper got published and said we need to realize powerful ultraviolet radiation from the

[00:42:19] sun is going to produce more dust than just what you get from space and calculated

[00:42:25] there would be 60 millimeters of dust on the moon if the moon was 4.5 billion years old

[00:42:31] and when the apollo astronauts went to the moon that’s what they found 60 millimeters

[00:42:37] okay so and then um another question along those same lines um you know i i had mark armitage on um

[00:42:45] he he found uh he was he used he was a microscopy expert at cal state northridge he found a

[00:42:50] triceratops horn it had uh tissues in it a non-fossilized bone tissue and cells and everything

[00:42:57] and um so from that perspective uh you know some people have said well we don’t agree with the idea that

[00:43:03] dinosaurs um you know evolved 230 million years ago they went extinct 65 million years ago

[00:43:09] where do you stand on dinosaurs do they is that something that was created um along the way with with god and then

[00:43:16] um eventually we got up to adam and eve or how does that all fit for you in your paradigm yeah well

[00:43:24] my calling fazal rana he’s their staff biochemist he wrote a book in response to armitage’s claims it’s called dinosaur

[00:43:31] blood and the age of the earth and he basically said the problem with armitage’s claims

[00:43:37] is he’s not aware that if you cut off exposure to oxygen and bacteria these tissues can be

[00:43:43] preserved for many tens of millions of years even hundreds of millions of years

[00:43:49] it explains for example why we have such good soft tissue preservation in the cambrian fossils

[00:43:56] because you had this massive mudslide that buried these creatures cut off the

[00:44:01] oxygen protected them from radiation damage and cut off the bacteria

[00:44:06] and so even though the fossils are 540 million years old the soft tissues are perfectly preserved

[00:44:14] and so but you know armitage is right if you’ve got oxygen and you’ve got bacteria it’s

[00:44:19] going to degrade very quickly but these are cases where that was not not the situation

[00:44:26] so uh and i missed one other part of your question here um well i wanted to know where in

[00:44:31] your your particular view progressive creation yeah where do they fit in that whole

[00:44:37] design well i believe that the bible is inspired to communicate to all

[00:44:42] generations not just the generation of the author and not just 21st century readers but to

[00:44:49] all generations and therefore it doesn’t surprise me that the bible says nothing about

[00:44:54] neutrinos we’ve only known about neutrinos for the past 60 years

[00:45:00] and that would mean nothing to people reading the bible a thousand years ago well likewise dinosaurs weren’t

[00:45:05] discovered until 200 years ago so we shouldn’t be surprised that the bible is silent on dinosaurs

[00:45:12] but where i think you can imply it is psalm 104 it’s the longest of the creation psalms

[00:45:19] in the bible and makes the point that god has filled the earth with as much life as possible and as

[00:45:26] diverse as possible you’ve got phrases saying go into the deepest ocean you’ll find life

[00:45:32] go to the highest mountain you’ll find life it’s everywhere it’s basically making the point do we

[00:45:38] get to the end of psalm 104 says the property of all life to die off but god recreates and renews the face

[00:45:46] of the earth and i cite this as a biblical indication that we look at the fossil

[00:45:52] record we should expect to see mass extinction events followed by mass speciation events and

[00:46:00] what i say to evolutionists is what you’re overlooking is the physics of the sun

[00:46:05] the sun is getting brighter and brighter as it gets older and older and the way the creator compensates for

[00:46:12] the brightening of the sun is that he removes species of life from the planet

[00:46:17] and replaces those species with new life that’s more efficient in pulling greenhouse gases out of the

[00:46:24] atmosphere but we know this is the miraculous hand to god because god creates

[00:46:29] just the right life at just the right time and the right diversity and the right geography to exactly pull

[00:46:36] the amount of greenhouse gases of the atmosphere to perfectly compensate for the

[00:46:41] brightening of the sun only a being that knows the future physics of the sun

[00:46:46] would know which light to remove from the earth and which new life to replace that with

[00:46:52] and in terms of the dinosaurs these are really large land creatures which means that

[00:46:59] the only way they could survive on the planet would be if they had water buoyancy

[00:47:04] support i mean the largest animal you can have on the earth without water buoyancy

[00:47:10] support is an elephant you get a creature bigger than the elephant then gravity is going to result in

[00:47:16] significant injury to the creature but with water support so for example if

[00:47:22] you’ve got 15 feet of water that water will provide buoyancy where you could have a creature instead of

[00:47:29] weighing six tons weighs 50 tons and notice the only time we have dinosaurs in the

[00:47:36] face of the earth is when you’ve got these very large extensive shallow seas

[00:47:41] covering most of north america and europe and south america and asia and when those seas are no

[00:47:48] longer round the dinosaurs are no longer around oh that’s interesting i’ve never heard that before

[00:47:53] well no matter what geological era you’re in god creates the maximum biomass the

[00:48:00] maximum biodiversity there are no dinosaurs today because there aren’t the shallow seas to support

[00:48:06] them but where they are god creates them and notice he creates them with a maximum diversity you’ve got

[00:48:12] really tiny dinosaurs they’re just a few inches in body size and you got the ones that are 100 feet long

[00:48:19] you’ve got the whole range and you know this is god basically is showing us the extravagance of his creation power

[00:48:27] but where we humans benefit because of god creating life

[00:48:32] with maximum diversity and maximum biomass for the maxim time window that the

[00:48:38] physics of the sun would permit we humans today have over 76 quadrillion

[00:48:44] tons of biodeposits in the crust of the earth coal oil natural gas marble

[00:48:51] limestone gypsum and we’re able to use that to launch and sustain global

[00:48:56] civilization you know one reason why i’m an old earth creationist it takes 3.8 billion years of our planet

[00:49:04] being maximally packed with life that god creates to provide us with all the resources so

[00:49:10] that billions of people can hear and respond to the gospel message in just a few thousand years

[00:49:17] and i build that off of revelation 7 9. the redeemed hosts will be from every

[00:49:23] tribe nation language people and it’s going to be an uncountable number of redeemed humans

[00:49:30] and at that time the greeks had a number system that went up into the billions so it’s

[00:49:35] telling us there’s going to be billions of humans that will be redeemed and for that to be possible in a short

[00:49:41] period of time you’re going to need these quadrillions of biodeposits and notice the biodeposits are all

[00:49:49] optimized to enable us to sustain civilization at a very high level

[00:49:54] a lot of people don’t even realize for example the metals we mine they were concentrated by bacteria

[00:50:01] sulfate reducing bacteria prolificing on proliferating on our planet for 2.5 billion years

[00:50:08] transforms soluble metals into insoluble metals which won’t poison us soluble metals

[00:50:15] would be deadly but today there’s very little soluble metals most of them are insoluble

[00:50:20] and they’re highly concentrated by these bacteria so we can mine them and quickly launch metallurgy

[00:50:27] well dr ross we’re almost out of time here i just want to say thank you so much for being on the program um i i love talking to you and i love

[00:50:35] that you’re so civil too i think that’s so important in our dialogue and i really appreciate your testimony in that in that sense um

[00:50:42] for those of you listening reasons.org dr hugh ross and uh he has got all kinds of interesting books um that

[00:50:49] you can read and study and uh and heck out and and dr ross they

[00:50:54] can get free copies of some of the chapters of your uh your most recent book um on your website

[00:51:00] also is that correct yeah reasons.org ross they can get free chapters of eight of the 20 books that

[00:51:07] i’ve written oh that’s fantastic okay well um thanks again dr ross uh and for those of

[00:51:14] you uh who didn’t hear my website is educate4life.org and i’ve got a full apologetics curriculum up there also

[00:51:20] that’s meant for you to be able to study the word of god and come to good conclusions about the truth of the bible and ultimately be

[00:51:27] able to share your faith with those around you and be comfortable about it not have to get defensive not have to get

[00:51:32] uh take it personally but just be able like like christ said um he’s come to set the captives free

[00:51:37] and what we’re looking at is just helping people to be aware of the truth and ultimately to come to know jesus christ their savior and be able to spend

[00:51:44] eternity in heaven so i hope you enjoyed the show today we’ve got all kinds of other shows up on my

[00:51:49] website and online over 200 shows now with experts in every area you can possibly imagine and so uh please check it out and also

[00:51:57] check out reasons.org thank you dr ross oh you’re very welcome my pleasure absolutely have a great evening thank

[00:52:04] you bye

[00:52:16] bye

[00:52:25] you