Young Earth Creation Catholics with Hugh Owen and Pamela Acker

[00:00:00] thanks for tuning in this evening my name is kevin conover i’m the host of educate for life radio we broadcast from

[00:00:05] southern california down here on k praise 12 10 a.m is the local radio station and uh also fm

[00:00:13] 106.9 in north county and then of course all over social media and uh just last

[00:00:19] week we had a an astronomer on uh spike soros who was fantastic uh just talking

[00:00:25] to us all about the planets and how they point to a creator and our solar system uh some of the stuff he said was just

[00:00:32] amazing and uh if you’re interested in that you can always go back into our archives and check that out the week

[00:00:37] before that we actually had a geneticist on the show uh dr georgia perdom and she

[00:00:42] talked about how genetics points to a creator and uh it seems to me everywhere i look i’m i’m looking at evidence for

[00:00:48] god and for the truth of the bible so very very cool and i had the privilege

[00:00:53] of bumping into pam aker at a homeschool convention that i was at in missouri and uh

[00:01:00] didn’t expect that but it was awesome to get to meet her and the ministry colby center

[00:01:07] the study for creation with the colby center and that’s what our guest this evening let me tell you a little bit about them before

[00:01:13] before um we get to our discussion here because we’re going to be talking about uh creationism within the catholic

[00:01:19] church specifically and um and so uh pam she holds a master of science

[00:01:26] degree in biology from the catholic university of america she’s taught science in a variety of settings including middle school and college

[00:01:33] and she’s conducted research in vaccine delivery using t4 bacteriophage nanoparticles and was also briefly

[00:01:39] involved in researching novel gene regulation mechanisms she’s published two books vaccination a catholic

[00:01:45] perspective through the colby center center for the study of creation and also a high school biology textbook that

[00:01:50] she co-authored with the founders of the angelic doctor academy and now she works with the colby center

[00:01:56] uh full-time supporting the doctrine of creation and then uh also we have mr

[00:02:01] hugh owen he um got a ba in uh honors in history from new york

[00:02:08] university on ms in education in in supervision and administration from bank street college of education in new york

[00:02:14] city and for the past 25 years he’s dedicated his life to the service of the church as a writer editor teacher

[00:02:19] lecturer he’s written numerous books and articles on catholic catholic and secular topics

[00:02:25] and for the past 20 years he served as the founder and director of the colby center for the study of creation in

[00:02:30] mount jackson virginia and what i was most impressed with by his bio

[00:02:35] was that he has nine children and 19 grandchildren so uh that is quite an accomplishment

[00:02:41] right there [Laughter] hugh and pam thanks so much for being on the show this evening

[00:02:47] it’s our joy to be with you absolutely wonderful well um so i wanted to start off hugh i’m i’m

[00:02:54] super curious uh you know the it’s i’m i’m enveloped in the protestant

[00:03:00] um church and in specifically i’m apologetics oriented i’m very focused on

[00:03:06] creation and all these sorts of things and this was actually my first time and you know maybe i need to get out of

[00:03:12] my bubble more often but this was actually my first time bumping into somebody uh within the catholic church

[00:03:17] that held um you know to a strict biblical understanding um of what the text

[00:03:23] teaches in uh genesis about a six day creation and so

[00:03:29] forth and um it was really a blessing to to be able to talk with pam

[00:03:35] and the other people that were there uh representing the colby center and i wanted to ask you um

[00:03:40] you know at what point did you have you always believe in in creation as the bible teaches in genesis chapter uh you

[00:03:47] know 1 through 11 or was that something that um changed over time where your perspective changed on

[00:03:53] that uh can you give us a little bit of background sure well i really have to go back

[00:03:59] two generations because my grandfather was a baptist minister in

[00:04:04] wales in great britain wow and uh my dad was brought up in in a in a

[00:04:11] baptist home very conservative baptist home in wales but

[00:04:16] he went to university in england in the 20s and 30s and already

[00:04:21] evolution-based secular humanism reigns supreme so he was thoroughly indoctrinated into

[00:04:29] that and completely lost his faith in christianity and became a secular

[00:04:35] humanist and went to work for the united nations uh became a

[00:04:41] high up administrator within the u.n after 25 years

[00:04:46] was knighted by the queen for his work but retired

[00:04:51] a frustrated man because he looked at the world and saw that all the problems of the world were much worse

[00:04:57] than when the united nations was started and so unfortunately he once again

[00:05:02] turned to the secular humanist intelligencia for advice and

[00:05:09] they told him that the reason that the un wasn’t making headway in solving the

[00:05:14] world’s problems is that it wasn’t addressing the root of all the world’s evils which they said

[00:05:21] was overpopulation oh too many people that’s why we have wars and pollution

[00:05:28] and social and economic injustice and so my dad actually accepted to become

[00:05:33] the first ever secretary general of international planned parenthood federation

[00:05:40] at the very time when ippf changed its position on abortion and

[00:05:45] became the world’s number one provider of abortion as well as contraception and sex education

[00:05:52] and he held that position for just about a year when he died unexpectedly of a heart

[00:05:57] attack in london when i was when he was just 65 years old and i was just 16

[00:06:05] and it was really his death that precipitated my conversion um

[00:06:10] and about a year after he died i received the gift of faith

[00:06:16] and then i was looking for the church that i should belong to and

[00:06:22] when i was a freshman at princeton university at the age of 18

[00:06:28] i recognized that the catholic church was the church that our lord jesus christ had founded and that i should

[00:06:35] join that church so i was baptized confirmed and made my first holy communion as a catholic in the princeton

[00:06:41] university chapel at the easter vigil 50 years ago when i was 18

[00:06:49] and uh of course at that time there was already quite a bit of confusion

[00:06:55] within uh catholic academia and the priests who received me into the

[00:07:00] church were actually jesuit priests who unfortunately like many other

[00:07:07] catholic intellectuals had already embraced evolution and thought that they had to

[00:07:12] reconcile evolution with the catholic faith but um

[00:07:19] by the grace of god i came into the church without really being convinced

[00:07:26] that this reconciliation was necessary or valid and eventually um

[00:07:33] you know i i discovered that the authoritative teaching of the catholic

[00:07:39] church was completely incompatible with evolution

[00:07:45] and because the leadership of the church had actually asked

[00:07:52] back in 1950 for catholic intellectuals to examine

[00:07:58] the claims of the evolutionary hypothesis and there wasn’t really any kind of

[00:08:04] forum in which to do so in the year 2000 with the encouragement

[00:08:11] of my pastor i founded the kobe center for the study of creation

[00:08:16] to provide a forum for the catholic theologians philosophers and natural scientists all

[00:08:22] over the world who held fast to what is actually the traditional authoritative teaching

[00:08:29] of the catholic church what was believed and taught by all the apostles fathers

[00:08:35] doctors popes and counsel fathers in their authoritative teaching from day one and uh and that’s

[00:08:41] that’s what we do so that’s really interesting to me because you know you you’ve really um

[00:08:49] you’re really swimming upstream in a sense uh you said that you know all these academics and all these uh people

[00:08:56] when they when they joined the church they felt that they needed to somehow meld evolutionary teaching with the

[00:09:01] doctrines of the church and yet that’s not something that you you went along with how did you end up not

[00:09:08] you know there’s so many people in leadership and an authority that take that position how did you not just go

[00:09:14] along with that well um i’ve always been a a student and a lover of history and

[00:09:22] especially the history of the people of god and one thing that i’ve

[00:09:27] learned very very well from studying the bible and also studying

[00:09:34] the history of the church and of the people of god is that this problem of

[00:09:40] forgetting genesis forgetting what god told us

[00:09:46] to remember when he gave us the ten commandments written on those tablets of stone

[00:09:51] this has been a problem for the people of god for a very long time and as as i’m sure

[00:09:59] you and and your listeners and viewers are aware

[00:10:04] if we go back and look at the history of god’s people from the time of king david up to the

[00:10:10] coming of our lord jesus christ we can see that there was collective amnesia

[00:10:18] with regard to the sacred history of genesis to the point that

[00:10:24] the pretty much the whole leadership of the people of god

[00:10:29] went over to idolatry they were worshiping the sun and the moon and the stars and practicing all

[00:10:36] kinds of sexual immorality in connection with this false worship

[00:10:41] and it was so bad that as you know during the reign of king josiah was one of the few

[00:10:47] the few good kings that came came along during that thousand year period

[00:10:54] uh it was so bad that we read in the word of god that hillary stumbled upon

[00:11:01] the law they had completely forgotten genesis to the point they didn’t even know that it existed

[00:11:08] and it just did what was right in his own eyes you know he found the scroll of

[00:11:14] moses written in the hand of moses and of course when they read it to the

[00:11:19] people they were convicted because it was something that was totally unfamiliar to

[00:11:24] them so i see that during the last

[00:11:30] 100 years there’s been a kind of a collective amnesia

[00:11:36] within catholic academia not only with regard to the sacred history of genesis but with regard to

[00:11:44] our own teaching that was handed down from the apostles but it doesn’t it doesn’t

[00:11:50] scandalize me it it breaks my heart but it doesn’t scandalize me because i see

[00:11:57] that the same thing has happened within the people of god

[00:12:02] in the past and you know god didn’t say when he looked at all of this

[00:12:08] idolatry and sexual immorality and and apostasy on the part of the

[00:12:14] church the the the religious leadership and the civil leadership he didn’t say well okay i’m done with you people i’m

[00:12:21] gonna find another family from which to bring forth the messiah no he had promised

[00:12:27] that the messiah was going to come from the house of david and he wasn’t going to break his promise and we believe the

[00:12:32] same about the catholic church sure sure you know so so yes we’re in a we’re in a crisis of

[00:12:39] faith but those who want to know what is our authentic teaching

[00:12:46] can easily find it out and and that’s our mission is to make sure that

[00:12:52] we hold fast to what was handed down i love that i love what you’re saying

[00:12:58] there because um it’s interesting to me that you your emphasis on history your knowledge of history really is what

[00:13:05] helped you to have a perspective that no um i’m not just gonna go along with this because i’ve seen this because of my

[00:13:11] study of history i’ve seen this mistake um happen repetitively and therefore i know not to make this same mistake right

[00:13:19] and exactly i think that’s a great that’s something for whether you’re protestant or catholic that’s something we all have to

[00:13:25] focus on is the fact that um we do the bible is ultimately a history book we need to know our history

[00:13:32] we need to know our heritage we need to know what god has done in the past so that we don’t make those same mistakes

[00:13:38] again in the future the bible can’t be a light unto your feet a lamp until you’re feeding the light into your path if you don’t

[00:13:45] know the bible how is it going to light the past if you don’t if you don’t know it and so that’s really uh fantastic

[00:13:51] thank you for sharing that that’s very encouraging um pam i wanted to ask you the same question that i

[00:13:57] asked you which is um can you give us a little bit of background how you came to

[00:14:02] your position that uh you know the biblical creation perspective uh especially as a biologist uh

[00:14:09] scientifically again it’s you’re swimming upstream there’s so many in academia who who don’t hold that

[00:14:15] perspective where did you come from and uh has that

[00:14:20] been a tough road to travel with your peers you know

[00:14:25] going in the opposite direction a lot of times sure um so i uh i actually became a theistic

[00:14:31] evolutionist uh so i believed that the world was created through evolution but god did it

[00:14:37] um through reading a creationist uh high school textbook because i was looking at the arguments that were

[00:14:43] being presented in the textbook and i was a little bit precocious as a kid and and kind of um

[00:14:50] really saw that a lot of the things that were presented were kind of superficial they weren’t really very philosophically

[00:14:56] sound and i said well if these people are over here making fun of evolution in this way then there must be something to

[00:15:02] evolution and so i just kind of i it was almost like a reverse psychology kind of thing i accepted it based on the bad

[00:15:08] arguments that i had heard for creation so can i ask you about that pam um so when you say these people over here

[00:15:15] we’re making fun of it because this is something um that i find like what you’re saying to be very

[00:15:21] dangerous is to just haphazardly treat you know the arguments

[00:15:26] without because i teach high school students i teach 12th grade high school students and it’s very important that um

[00:15:33] the dialogue is fair that it’s not ad hominem ad hominem arguments or just

[00:15:38] name calling uh right so who was it when you were growing up that was that was just making fun of it and not

[00:15:45] actually giving you good answers so it was actually my uh mom started homeschooling us when i was a freshman

[00:15:51] in high school way before it was cool this was back in the mid 90s um so uh so i was using a biology textbook

[00:15:58] from my becca publications and that was where i had i saw the arguments presented and prior to that

[00:16:04] you know because this isn’t something that’s really preached about from the pulpit unfortunately um much in the in

[00:16:10] the catholic church um although my pastor preaches about it literally all the time um

[00:16:15] yeah he’s amazing where do you go to church we gotta get this guy’s name out there i know right

[00:16:21] i’m not allowed to say that okay that’s all right that’s right he doesn’t he doesn’t like me to throw him under the bus like that but

[00:16:28] okay he’s he’s a great guy but he he preaches about it a lot but you know i hadn’t really heard it preached about um

[00:16:33] from the pulpit i’d heard a lot of other things preached about but um you know i was reading this textbook and a lot of the arguments were

[00:16:40] logically fallacious a lot of the ad hominem a lot of strawman kind of arguments and yeah and i said well if if

[00:16:46] this is if this is the best they’ve got then i don’t really want to to deal with that and so i i kind of i’ve carried

[00:16:52] that forward in my own you know work that i do now actually defending genesis um and trying to be very careful and

[00:16:58] make a lot of distinctions because those distinctions are important and if i’m if if we’re not actually making the proper

[00:17:03] distinctions and we’re not really countering the the arguments on a scientific level that the people are

[00:17:09] presenting and dealing with them in a straightforward way i mean obviously we know that the theology trumps the

[00:17:14] science because revealed truth is going to trump anything i can learn on a natural level because i’m a fallible

[00:17:20] human being right but but a lot of people don’t have you found that a lot of people

[00:17:26] don’t agree with that that that because you know in people i’ve discussed you’ll hear people say things like well we have

[00:17:33] the revealed word of god but then we have the word of god from nature and

[00:17:38] then they’ll actually put them on a level playing field and they’ll say no no no the the word of god does not trump

[00:17:45] um science because they’re both uh god’s books um have you ever heard that before has

[00:17:52] anybody ever said i mean i’ve heard them described to both as god’s books but like when it when it comes to scripture

[00:17:57] i mean we have the the tradition of the church we have the teaching magisterium we have an in

[00:18:02] you know official interpreter of that book if you will there is no official interpreter of the book of nature you

[00:18:07] know there’s there’s nobody that whose authority i can trust and say this is exactly how i need to understand this

[00:18:12] natural phenomenon and um it’s it’s just really it’s it’s not

[00:18:18] equivalent uh i don’t think at all and when you’re you’re talking about something that that is a revealed truth

[00:18:23] that has been passed down you know through uh the proper authority and hierarchy versus you know it truth that

[00:18:30] i’m sort of i’m looking at something outside of myself and drawing conclusions about it you know um so it’s

[00:18:36] it’s very important um that you know that that there is the living

[00:18:42] teaching magisterium of the church that carries on our understanding of the of the holy scripture um because

[00:18:49] you know anything that we come to on our own on our own reason it’s we we need to question that a little bit

[00:18:55] yeah because like you said we’re not we’re fallible we’re finite our minds are finite and so we have to approach

[00:19:02] things with humility and uh ultimately um the word of god is our final authority like you said for those very

[00:19:08] reasons uh because it is the rock we can lean on uh the unchanging inspired

[00:19:14] infallible word of god right yeah you know properly interpreted through tradition and all that um

[00:19:22] so yeah so i don’t i don’t think that the two obviously are on the same playing field and but i do find that a lot of

[00:19:28] people um don’t like the idea that theology is the queen of sciences and i didn’t even like that at the beginning i

[00:19:33] used to argue with hugh actually i’m like we got it we gotta deal with the science stuff first because because if people don’t take these preconceived

[00:19:40] notions out of their head they’re never going to listen to what we’re saying but but he pointed out to me and i think

[00:19:45] this is very true that you know we always start and we always end with the theological premises because

[00:19:51] that’s that’s what actually is most important and the very fact that we always start with it and end with it

[00:19:56] shows the proper order of things and so i always give my talks in the middle where i take you know the the

[00:20:03] icons of evolution if you will and and debunk the science behind those things um

[00:20:08] but i actually started kind of coming back to um coming back out of evolutionism in

[00:20:14] college when i i learned about proteins and genes so my primary focus in my my

[00:20:19] undergrad was in the area of genetics i was very interested in in doing um i was actually interested in uh genetically

[00:20:26] engineering vaccines so i’ve had a conversion on that as well oh wow that’s interesting engineering

[00:20:32] and the fact that

[00:20:40] so that was my primary interest in looking at looking at the incredibly complicated way that genetic information

[00:20:45] is coded in the genome and then it’s codes for these incredibly complicated molecular structures called proteins and

[00:20:52] i can’t have the code without the proteins that actually build the code and i can’t build the proteins

[00:20:58] without the code so it was it’s kind of a molecular chicken and egg problem yeah and i think a lot of people look at they

[00:21:05] look at you know sort of organism sequences and they say okay well maybe i could see how a dinosaur evolved into a

[00:21:10] bird or imagine how a monkey evolved into a man but when you zoom way in and you look at the cellular level you can’t

[00:21:16] really imagine how it non-non-living matter became living matter like there’s there’s really

[00:21:23] there’s no conceptualization of that and you can’t really imagine how you you got this this incredibly complicated

[00:21:29] information conveying system that that’s you know microscopic that that’s totally

[00:21:34] integrated with the system that that builds it you know um so i started to kind of it cracked the facade at that

[00:21:40] point you know through the natural sciences but it wasn’t until i met hugh um at one of the seminars that he gave

[00:21:46] in a parish about i don’t know seven eight years ago that

[00:21:52] then i really kind of came all the way around and i remember him putting up a slide in his presentation

[00:21:57] and and he talked about what you have to believe about the character of god um based on what you believe about the

[00:22:03] way he created and he just kind of had two lists you know the god of evolution and the god of creation and i i looked at that slide and i

[00:22:09] realized that i couldn’t believe that god created through evolution anymore because of what it says about the character of god because

[00:22:16] god did not create an imperfect world and he did not use death and deformity

[00:22:22] and disease to to somehow bring to some culmination you know the the this human

[00:22:28] being that then then he’s somehow infused with an immortal soul like that’s not how a good god would create

[00:22:34] he created something perfect in the beginning and and we messed it up yeah you know and that’s a very very very

[00:22:40] different god and it’s a very different faith ultimately um when you when you start living according to that

[00:22:46] understanding of creation so wow that’s powerful really the theology that converted me in

[00:22:52] the end that’s really neat um yeah and that that is that’s a really um

[00:22:58] interesting distinction that uh because there is a lot of people that believe in theistic evolution they believe that god

[00:23:04] used evolution in order to make everything um but but that would have

[00:23:09] mean uh millions and millions of years of death and destruction of animals the survival of the fittest is

[00:23:16] brutal i mean even when darwin talks about it that um that’s actually

[00:23:22] impacted his own faith in god was that he felt that nature was too cruel in order to be able to say

[00:23:28] that a good god did this um so that’s that’s really powerful um to

[00:23:33] have come from that from both the theology perspective as well um hugh i wanted to ask you about this also

[00:23:40] um you know you’re the story of your father is such a tragic story uh of of

[00:23:46] how here he was a bible-believing christian and then evolution itself

[00:23:52] um was just the the idea of it was destructive enough to ultimately cause him not to believe in god

[00:23:59] um was that because he just couldn’t justify that the connection between what

[00:24:05] the bible taught and what evolution uh presents or is that was was there

[00:24:10] something else besides that that that drove him away from christianity well since since

[00:24:16] my last conversation with my dad occurred when i was 15 i it’s i have to do some guess work

[00:24:23] about that kind of putting clues together but it seems to me that

[00:24:30] my dad didn’t really become an atheist so much as an agnostic

[00:24:36] um he like so many others was content to say that

[00:24:43] science could explain the origins of man and the universe but maybe there was

[00:24:51] some higher power behind it all but you know he definitely

[00:24:58] lost his faith in christianity because

[00:25:03] he believed that human science could explain

[00:25:08] things differently than the bible as understood by all

[00:25:13] christians had explained them and and that was the case with

[00:25:20] so many millions of people in his generation and it’s going on today of course it’s been going on for the last

[00:25:26] 100 years but at the root of it

[00:25:31] is really the unconscious embrace

[00:25:38] of the false philosophy of renee descartes and the enlightenment

[00:25:44] philosopher because if you look back at the history of ideas

[00:25:50] you can see that until the 17th century

[00:25:57] it was the common conviction of all self-identifying christian theologians

[00:26:05] that there was a distinction that had to be made between the supernatural work of

[00:26:11] creation in the beginning which was a complete and finished work of creation what

[00:26:18] st thomas aquinas calls the first perfection of the universe all the different kinds of creatures

[00:26:24] each one perfect according to its nature all existing together with adam and eve and for adam

[00:26:32] and eve from the beginning at the beginning of time and and and all uh self-identifying

[00:26:40] christian theologians understood that that was entirely supernatural

[00:26:45] and that the natural order what many doctors call the order of providence

[00:26:50] only began when the whole work of creation was finished well

[00:26:56] rene descartes was really the first baptized catholic

[00:27:02] we call him scoffer with reference to second peter chapter 3 where saint peter

[00:27:08] is inspired by the holy ghost to prophesy the evolution revolution and the rise of

[00:27:14] this false enlightenment philosophy descartes the first one to begin to be taken seriously when he

[00:27:21] says after leading a very immoral life and dabbling

[00:27:26] in the occult and leaving catholic france for free thinking that

[00:27:32] netherlands and having these three mystical dreams where he says a spirit of truth possessed him and put him on

[00:27:39] the path to develop a wonderful new way of thinking that would change the way everybody thought

[00:27:45] at that point descartes says that one of these wonderful insights that he got from of course from

[00:27:52] some demon in hell was that it’s more reasonable to explain

[00:27:58] the origins of things in the universe like stars or plants or animals or even

[00:28:03] the human body in terms of the same material processes that are going on now

[00:28:10] instead of this strange idea that things just popped into existence whole and

[00:28:15] entire in the beginning now the catholic church authorities put descartes works on the index of

[00:28:23] forbidden books because every theologian worth his salt knew that that was nonsense you can’t

[00:28:29] explain a supernatural creation in terms of natural processes

[00:28:36] but if you look back over the intellectual history of the next 200

[00:28:42] years you can see that little by little that false uniformitarian naturalism of descartes

[00:28:50] and immanuel kant and spinoza and the rest of them gradually insinuated itself into the

[00:28:56] minds of the overwhelming majority of the intellectual elite of the western

[00:29:02] world and that’s what set the stage for whole generations of people like my

[00:29:09] father to be robbed of their faith because by the time

[00:29:15] by the early 20th century the overwhelming majority of

[00:29:20] intellectuals in the once christian world have completely accepted this idea

[00:29:26] that things have always been the same and that it’s legitimate for natural

[00:29:32] scientists to study the natural world and extrapolate from what they observe here and now

[00:29:38] all the way back to the beginning to explain how everything came to be

[00:29:44] and yet this is completely false because

[00:29:50] if we if we accept god at his word as his word was understood in his church

[00:29:57] from the beginning we know that that is completely false the whole work of creation was

[00:30:03] supernatural the natural order only began when the entire work of creation

[00:30:08] was finished so it’s totally absurd to think that we can study what’s going

[00:30:13] on now and extrapolate back to explain how everything came to be and of course you can be the smartest

[00:30:20] person in the world and have the greatest technology but if you start from the wrong premise

[00:30:26] and think that you can figure out how everything came to be by that kind of extrapolation you may you

[00:30:33] may be the smartest person who ever lived but you’re going to come up with a totally wrong answer every time

[00:30:38] yeah yeah i couldn’t agree more i i had lawrence krauss uh on the show who says

[00:30:44] that the universe came from nothing and he has incredible credentials but but his conclusion is just absolutely

[00:30:50] bizarre uh it just makes no sense at all um and uh so so that’s i couldn’t agree

[00:30:57] with you more my guests today are hugh owen and pam aker uh from the colby

[00:31:03] center for creation you can visit them at colbycenter.org and uh i i just think it’s phenomenal

[00:31:09] what you’re doing and uh i’d love to tell everybody i know about what you’re doing we have a

[00:31:15] pretty popular um university here in san diego usd it’s a

[00:31:21] very very big university and they they i have students that go there and they they uh text me or or call me and

[00:31:29] say mr conover that here i am at the catholic university and they’re teaching me evolution is true and and i know

[00:31:35] creation is true and and uh you know they’re asking me questions about should i stay should i even stay in this class

[00:31:40] this this teacher is so adamantly um just aggressively uh pushing evolution i’m

[00:31:48] curious um from your experience um hugh and pam that

[00:31:53] since you’ve been doing this do you do you get a lot of hostility within um

[00:31:58] the catholic church and and uh catholic academia as far as um because that

[00:32:04] happens sometimes on the protestant side that you know here we’re supposed to be uh brothers and sisters in christ and

[00:32:11] sometimes there’s a pretty extreme animosity that takes place do you experience that a lot of pushback from

[00:32:17] um what you’re um you know what you’re teaching ladies first

[00:32:24] what a guy he’s always a gentleman um no so so i uh

[00:32:31] mostly haven’t actually experienced hostility so i think the hostility depends on the

[00:32:37] person um and and it’s it’s a lot you know it’s temperamental and it’s also just kind of

[00:32:42] where they’re at in terms of how invested they are in their world view you know i’ve i’ve met i’ve traveled all

[00:32:47] over the country um since i started speaking with the colbay center a number of years ago and i’ve met wonderful people everywhere

[00:32:54] we’ve been and we usually speak to fairly small groups of people but they’re people who come with an open mind and an open heart for the most part

[00:33:01] and they might have questions um but often they’re thoughtful questions they’re good questions that when people

[00:33:07] really want to engage um it’s it’s a little intimidating for me i’m not i’m not an argumentative type

[00:33:14] you know and i’m defending you know one of the most argued about positions i think

[00:33:19] in our day um but uh you know it’s it’s it’s been really

[00:33:24] beautiful just to see how many people are actually interested in hearing um

[00:33:29] and hearing about it um and you know i i have i have encountered a

[00:33:35] hostile person or two one one stands out in memory the poor man i was trying to argue with them

[00:33:41] about first principles because he was studying uh the philosophy of science and he said well you know why why why do

[00:33:46] we care about first principles because you know x y or z and i said well we can’t even have a conversation at this point you know if you’re if you’re

[00:33:52] denying that there are some things that that we can know you know that that are kind of self-evident like the law of

[00:33:58] non-contradiction you know something can’t both be and not be at the same time yeah you can’t even have a conversation

[00:34:04] so if you abandon logic you’ve got a real problem right right so

[00:34:10] so yeah okay but he’s been doing this longer than me so he might have some some more stories

[00:34:15] what about you hugh yes we we do

[00:34:20] encounter uh opposition and um

[00:34:25] i don’t hesitate to say that that it’s clear from our experience

[00:34:32] that uh the devil has a special hatred for

[00:34:37] this fundamental doctrine of creation and it we can see how

[00:34:44] he works overtime to keep this truth from being proclaimed

[00:34:49] especially to young people and uh and sometimes it can manifest when um

[00:34:56] one of our members goes to somebody in authority let’s say the head of a school and

[00:35:02] this person is normally very kind and even tempered and

[00:35:08] at the request that the kobe center be allowed to make a presentation in the school

[00:35:14] this person might fly into a rage and order the person out of his office which

[00:35:19] is totally out of character well we we’ve seen this quite often all over the world and

[00:35:26] it doesn’t surprise us because we we have to say that when a person acts

[00:35:31] so so much out of character that there’s a pretty natural element

[00:35:37] that’s entered in to the situation so yes we’re we’re dealing with

[00:35:45] an intellectual controversy but as one of our patrons saint maximilian kolbe

[00:35:50] always reminded people this is primarily a spiritual warfare and our our enemies

[00:35:59] are satan and his minions and they are the ones that are

[00:36:06] trying their best to keep people in the dark with regard

[00:36:11] to the truth about creation because anybody that understands the doctrine of

[00:36:18] creation correctly knows that god

[00:36:23] who is all good all loving and all wise created for us a perfectly beautiful complete and

[00:36:30] harmonious universe and that when we messed it up with the original sin and

[00:36:37] our subsequent sins he came into the misery that we made took it all upon himself suffered and

[00:36:43] died rose again founded the holy church sent the holy ghost upon her so that we

[00:36:49] miserable sinners could be new creations in christ and cooperate with him

[00:36:55] in restoring everything back to the beauty that it had in the beginning and and bring it to an even

[00:37:01] more beautiful final perfection who wouldn’t fall in love with a god like that that’s

[00:37:07] that’s the proclamation the foundation of the gospel that converted

[00:37:13] barbarians to the to the catholic faith in the early centuries of the church

[00:37:19] so the devil doesn’t want us to proclaim that he wants us

[00:37:25] to present the christian faith on a different foundation which is false

[00:37:33] and this is why we’re seeing a mass exodus of young people out of the church

[00:37:39] because the faith is being presented to them incoherently

[00:37:44] on a false foundation and as as it says in the psalms foundations once destroyed

[00:37:50] what can the just man do all right i love that thank you for

[00:37:56] sharing that that was wonderful um you know and i i couldn’t i mean i i’ve i’ve

[00:38:01] been teaching now for 15 years high school students and when they get a coherent view of

[00:38:06] creation and the fall and redemption boy their eyes light up and you it is

[00:38:13] unbelievable what god does when the truth gets inside of them i mean

[00:38:19] they’re so excited to see how logical how much it makes sense

[00:38:25] you know just like the bible tells us come god says come let us reason together and though your sins are like

[00:38:31] scarlet they will be white as snow and that that is um they just see it makes sense and and i

[00:38:38] i tell my students you know god has taught us to be attracted to or he’s created us to be attracted to two things

[00:38:44] love and truth and if we come to somebody with both love and truth it is

[00:38:50] irresistible um that that uh just combination is just amazing so

[00:38:57] um i love it i love what you guys are doing um colbycenter.org for those of you listening um if you want to get more

[00:39:03] involved and that was my next question for you hugh and pam was you know um

[00:39:08] hugh how how can people be more involved with what you’re doing uh because i i just want to shout it from the rooftops

[00:39:15] and and get more people involved in in your ministry and your efforts because

[00:39:20] uh i i just think that it it catches fire when people find out

[00:39:26] about it and they start to learn they grow and they just get excited what what can people do to get more involved with

[00:39:32] what you’re doing well first of all if any of the students enrolled in

[00:39:37] the catholic university in your area want to contact us we’ll gladly

[00:39:43] give them all the support that they need and we we also have a

[00:39:48] standing invitation to have a public debate with any

[00:39:54] theistic evolutionists anywhere in the world um we’ve had that out for 20 years and

[00:40:00] amazingly enough we’ve only had two takers in that entire period of time so wow if anybody can find

[00:40:07] uh two theistic evolutionists that are willing to have a debate with us in a public forum we’ll

[00:40:14] we’re happy to go anywhere to to do that because that’s another another way not

[00:40:19] necessarily the best way but it is a way of getting the truth out there um

[00:40:25] but what i would encourage people to do who would like to get more involved if they really have a

[00:40:31] conviction of the importance of the true catholic doctrine of creation as

[00:40:38] the foundation of our faith the first article of the creed i would encourage them to come to our

[00:40:43] leadership retreat we have a week-long leadership retreat every year

[00:40:49] this year it will be at a retreat center in ohio and that is a wonderful place to get a

[00:40:55] really solid foundation in the theology philosophy and natural

[00:41:01] science that one needs to be able to really defend this truth effectively

[00:41:07] and it’s also a wonderful opportunity to meet the um

[00:41:13] other people from all over the united states and even from other countries who also have this commitment

[00:41:20] to advancing our mission but there are so many wonderful resources

[00:41:28] that are available now through our website we have a dvd series in which

[00:41:34] pamela features prominently which took us a number of years to complete

[00:41:40] and it is a very comprehensive defense of the traditional teaching of

[00:41:46] the church on creation from the perspective of theology philosophy and natural science with wonderful teachers

[00:41:52] like pam and father chad ripperker and and others and

[00:41:57] we have a dedicated website for that dvd series www dot

[00:42:03] foundationsrestored.com and that one more time hugh can you refer to

[00:42:09] that website again yes www.foundationsrestored.com

[00:42:16] and anybody can go onto that website and view the first two episodes

[00:42:23] of the thirteen in the series for free and then um

[00:42:28] if if you want to get the dvd series you can either get the physical dvds

[00:42:34] or you can get the online streaming so that you can watch the whole thing on

[00:42:39] the website and i should also say because you may have viewers in

[00:42:45] in other parts of the world um or people who are just in in difficult economic circumstances

[00:42:52] we uh operate on a suggested donation basis so

[00:42:57] if somebody wants to take advantage of any of our materials and they cannot

[00:43:05] afford the suggested donation as long as they promise to share the information as much as they

[00:43:12] possibly can we will gladly give it to them for whatever they can afford to

[00:43:18] to donate or nothing at all if that’s if that’s all that they can manage so i would say go to these websites

[00:43:25] if you’re really zealous for the cause contact us about uh taking part in the

[00:43:32] leadership retreat and um i i think that will cover the waterfront pretty well and and any

[00:43:39] students at any catholic institution who uh are being taught

[00:43:45] that evolution is a is is a fact or that catholics must believe in it

[00:43:50] we can provide them with all the resources they need to know that this is not true

[00:43:56] and that the true authentic authoritative teaching of the catholic church

[00:44:02] is to take god at his word in the sacred history of genesis

[00:44:07] that’s fantastic well we’re just right about out of time here and uh hugh and pam i just want to thank you so much for

[00:44:13] being willing to come on the uh the program this evening thank you for having me

[00:44:18] absolutely and i am really going to look into seeing if i can arrange something over at usd here in our local catholic

[00:44:24] university for a debate or some sort of a conference i just think that would be very um

[00:44:30] impactful and that it would it would go a long ways in in really

[00:44:35] moving people’s hearts and ultimately uh drawing people into a deeper relationship with jesus christ so that’s

[00:44:41] fantastic i can i can send you a letter from a university professor who with another

[00:44:47] university professor organized a debate um for us

[00:44:53] in kentucky in 2014 and um it’s really an excellent letter

[00:44:58] that explains how he set up the debate and it gives a very good sort of template for setting

[00:45:04] up a debate so if anybody is is interested in pursuing that notion i’d

[00:45:09] love to share that letter with you yeah i’ll definitely get that letter from you and um

[00:45:14] and uh we’ll have a protestant set up a debate at a catholic university for

[00:45:20] catholic creationists that’s good yeah awesome right and um oh i had one

[00:45:27] other thing i was going to ask you uh i mean there’s so many more things we could talk about i think because i do

[00:45:32] want to touch more on the science aspects too but but um

[00:45:39] oh are are you willing to travel uh to san diego is that uh something you guys

[00:45:44] absolutely would be willing to do we travel pretty much all over the country anywhere that we’re asked okay um and

[00:45:50] invited to go and so even if you can’t organize a debate we’ve we’ve given um presentations on college campuses and it

[00:45:57] parishes um okay all over the country so if if there’s interest we’ll go

[00:46:02] great great okay and um that’s colbycenter.org for those of you listening my name is kevin

[00:46:08] conover my guests were pam acker and hugh owen of the colby center my

[00:46:13] website’s educate4life.org you can check out all the resources i have over there along with many many hundreds over 100

[00:46:19] different podcasts with with people who love jesus all over the world and how god has impacted their life and god is

[00:46:25] using them to impact others so thanks for being here with us this evening and we’ll be back again next week you guys

[00:46:30] have a great night god bless you

[00:46:45] you