Podcasts about Uniformitarianism

Salikoko S. MufweneMondes francophones (2023-2024)Collège de FranceAnnée 2023-2024Colloque - Konstanze Jungbluth : Emergence of "Kust-Portugees" (Coast Portuguese): Encounters along the Gold Coast and beyond in Early Modern TimesIntervenant(s)Konstanze JungbluthProfesseur, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Franfurt (Oder)RésuméHistory shows that creole vernaculars are just ordinary language varieties. Five hundred years ago, dialectal diversity was a well-known fact in Portugal itself. Whenever merchants moved to new places, they needed to create new trading routines including appropriate forms of communication jointly with the locals. Together with their African and, later on, their Asian interlocutors, Portuguese sailors and merchants going native on the continent developed new vernaculars identified as "Kust Portugees", which was also adopted by their European competitors. Dutch companies produced word lists of it that their crews could find handy. It became the lingua franca of that time on the African coast. European and African Portuguese varieties mirror the differences of their ecologies of their encounters and reflect both syncretism and hybridization.Konstanze JungbluthSince 2007: Professor of Linguistics (Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Romance Languages), Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder).Publications:2022 Jungbluth, K./Milano, Frederica de: Address Systems and Social Markes IN: Maiden, M./ Ledgeway, A. (edd.), Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics, Cambridge: CUP, 763-783.2015 Creoles. IN: Jungbluth, K./Milano, Federica de (edd.), Manual of Deixis in Romance Languages; Series: G. Holtus/F. Miret Sánchez (edd.), Manual of Romance Languages 6, Berlin/Boston: MOUTON De Gruyter, 332-356. (submitted): Brokers on the move. Encounters between Europeans and Africans in the Portuguese Seaborne Empire. IN: Enoch Aboh, Salikoko Mufwene (edd.), Uniformitarianism in Genetic Creolistics. Series CALC. CUP.Projects:2020: B/Ordering Cultures. Conference of the KWG, BIG & TEIN, DFG-funded, Frankfurt (Oder).2015-2018>2023: German-Brazilian co-tutelle PhD program Ethnicity in Motion (DAAD-CAPES/EUV-UFF).2014-2015: Beyond Language Boundaries. Use of L1 and L2 in Multilingual Contexts – 1eres i 2nes Llengües en contextos multilingües (DAAD: Univ. de Barcelona UB-EUV).2013-2016: The Impact of Current Transformational Processes on Language and Ethnic Identity: Urum and Pontic Greeks in Georgia (VWStiftung: together with Stavros Skopeteas, Univ. Göttingen & Greek Department of TSU, Georgia).2010: International Conference 1, 2, 3: my Language, your Language, our Language? Language Use in Multilingual Spaces. EUV Frankfurt (Oder), funded by DFG.

A new MP3 sermon from Union Grove Baptist is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Uniformitarianism Subtitle: Luciferianism Speaker: Dr. Rich Schmidt Broadcaster: Union Grove Baptist Event: Sunday - PM Date: 3/10/2024 Bible: Genesis 1:1-31; Exodus 20:11 Length: 46 min.

Is change inevitable, the quest for life's pleasure,circles r squares and squares r now triangles Uniformitarianism what is that all about. That's not even in spell check ;> A world view, belief it or be canceled. You Sky getting in the way of what we want. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sky-brooks/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sky-brooks/support

Paul Garner and Paul Larson talk about scientific evidence supporting the view that the earth is only thousands of years old.

Paul Larson argues that uniformitarianism should not be an obstacle to believing in young earth creationism.

The book of 2 Peter predicts that many people in the last days will reject the Bible's explanations of origins and accept a view that life evolved slowly over vast periods of time. What spiritual implications does the evolutionary worldview bring with it? Is it possible to accept evolution as an explanation for human origins, and at the same time accept the biblical view of salvation?

So far we've considered physics and biology in our exploration of scripture and science. Today we begin to consider how earth science and the bible fit together. This becomes particularly significant when considering interpretations for Noah's flood. We'll get to that next time. But, for today, our teacher will lay out the basics of geology and earth science to give us a good overview. He'll also cover radiometric dating, which has a bearing on how scientists determine the age of the earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VzgrLAFXfg&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Flhim.org%2F&feature=emb_imp_woyt See below for notes. —— Links —— We are doing follow-up discussions to these episodes on YouTube. Check them out! See other episodes in this Scripture and Science Class Check out Barlow's previous podcast episodes Learn more about and support the church Barlow and his team are starting in Louisville, KY, called Compass Christian Church Find more articles and audios by Barlow on his website: Study Driven Faith Support Restitutio by donating here Designate Restitutio as your charity of choice for Amazon purchases Join our Restitutio Facebook Group and follow Sean Finnegan on Twitter @RestitutioSF Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play them out on the air Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library. Who is Sean Finnegan?  Read his bio here —— Notes —— Geology, Earth Science, and Atmospheric Science • Geology• Important cycles• Plate tectonics Geology • Types of rocks/rock cycle• Geological principles• Dating methods• Structure of the Earth What is Geology? Geology is the study of the Earth and the processes related to the Earth. • Geologists study rocks (and the rock cycle)• Subfields include atmospheric studies (meteorology), volcanology (studying volcanos), and mineralogy (study of minerals) Types of Rocks There are three major categories of rocks: • Sedimentary - formed by pressure acting on sediment• Igneous - formed by lava• Metamorphic - formed by extreme pressure and heat The Rock Cycle Since wind and water are constantly affecting change, there is a rock cycle. Geological Principles There are several main principles of geology: • Superposition• Cross-cutting relationships• Uniformitarianism Dating Methods There are major types of dating: • Absolute dating• Relative dating Absolute Dating Absolute dating is based on radioactive decay. What is radioactive decay? • Some forms of certain elements are (by nature) unstable• Over time, these elements change on the atomic level (sometimes losing protons and neutrons; sometimes exchanging protons and neutrons, etc.) Carbon Dating Carbon dating uses the decay of Carbon - 14 • Carbon - 12 has 6 neutrons and 6 protons• Carbon - 13 has 7 neutrons and 6 protons• Carbon - 14 has 8 neutrons and 6 protons What happens when Carbon - 14 decays? • Carbon - 14 exchanges a neutron for a proton• This changes the element from carbon to nitrogen• The reaction also produces an electron and an antineutrino So, how does this tell us anything about dating? • Radioactive decay is a process that is well understood• The half-life for carbon - 14 is ~5,700 years• This means, that it takes 5,700 years for the amount of carbon -14 in a sample to cut in half Is carbon dating exact? • No - it's a statistical process• However, there is a range of probable dates given Relative Dating What is relative dating? • Relative dating uses the geological principles of superposition and cross-cutting relationships to provide estimates on how old certain features are• Example: dating a rock layer based on the age of another layer (dated using radiometric dating) Structure of the Earth How do scientists know about the structure of the Earth? • Scientists understand what waves do when they hit various materials (ex: ultrasound imaging)• Seismological data from earthquakes has given us insight into the structure of the Earth The Water Cycle The water cycle is the process by which water goes through the phases of liquid, gas, and solid. • The water cycle helps moderate temperatures on Earth• The water cycle also supports life through crops and drinking water Carbon and Nitrogen Cycles Carbon and nitrogen also experience cycles of solid, liquid, and gas. • The carbon cycle is important for the support of life.• Disruption of the carbon cycle is one of the biggest fears of those promoting climate change. Plate Tectonics History of plate tectonics • Ancients did not believe in tectonic separation• In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon noted that Africa and South America looked like they could have fit together• Similar animal fossils and other pieces of evidence started getting scientists' attention• In 1925, Alfred Wegener formally proposed plate tectonic theory and was ridiculed.• In 1930, Wegener died while on expedition in Greenland, trying to find evidence for his theory.• In the late 1960s, almost overnight, the theory of plate tectonics reached scientific mainstream. Evidence for plate tectonics: • Paleomagnetic data• Similar rock outcroppings• Fossil evidence• Spreading of the sea floor• Direct evidence - we can observe the movement! Challenges to plate tectonics: • Where is the energy coming from?• Why are the continental plates moving like they are? “Even today, many questions pertaining to plate tectonics remain unanswered. Many exceptions to rigid rules have been found throughout the world. Although classical plate tectonic theory works well for oceanic crust, it has a difficult time explaining the motion of the continents”— Jon Erickson, Plate Tectonics, page 259. Challenges for Geology There are several concerns with geology as a science: • The principle of uniformitarianism is impossible to prove and so it's an assumption• Relative dating techniques can use circular logic at times

Episode 185 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 13 – The Chicken Came First Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: … God made … every kind of bird. God looked at what he had done, and it was good. Then he gave the living creatures his blessing—he told the ocean creatures to increase and … the birds to increase everywhere on earth. Evening came, then morning—that was the fifth day. Genesis, chapter 1, verses 20 through 23, Contemporary English Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you. Today we are going to conclude the series we started several weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We called this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” To help us close our series, in the studio today we have RD Fierro, author of a well-known set of Christian allegories called Doors of Destiny and Prodigal’s Advocate. Doors of Destiny is a great way to begin a discussion with family members and friends about their faith and Prodigal’s Advocate is for anyone who is serious about their faith and wants to develop Christian maturity. RD is also the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, this “10 Facts Every Christian needs to Know” series has covered 13 episodes. That’s the longest series we have every done on Anchored by Truth. Why did we spend so much time on it? RD: Well, I’d also like to welcome everyone joining us here today and just to remind them that anyone who missed a previous episode in this series can find episodes of Anchored by Truth on their favorite podcast app or our website, crystalseabooks.com. The reason we have been so diligent in working out way through 10 facts every Christian needs to know is simple. There’s a lot of disinformation and misinformation that circulates within our culture today. We are constantly being bombarded with narratives about abortion, marriage, politics, social concerns, financial concerns, etc. It can be overwhelming. But most of the narratives that are jammed at us are what I call secondary narratives. We talk about these secondary narratives but we hardly ever talk about the primary narratives that underscore these secondary narratives. Three of these primary narratives are Deep Time, evolution, and uniformitarianism. VK: Deep time is the idea that the universe is 14 Billion years old and the earth is 4.5 Billion years old. You have said “Deep time is the root of the evolutionary weed.” Evolution needs deep time because without it the whole idea that the random collision of unintelligent atoms and molecules could have produced the biodiversity we see around us – let alone biologists that can study life – is ridiculous. Without deep time evolution dies as an hypothesis even worthy of contemplation. Uniformitarianism is the idea that “the present is the key to the past.” In other words, everything we see going on around us today is the same as what has been occurring during that Deep Time. Geological uniformitarianism explains why the surface of the earth looks the way it does. Biological uniformitarianism explains why living creatures look like they do. But in this series we have pointed out that there are scientific observations that dispute Deep Time. These observations point out that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old. In doing so, these scientific observations are a death knell for the evolutionary and uniformitarian hypotheses. RD: Well said. Most of our attention gets focused on the secondary narratives. But it is important to note that the secondary narratives emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. Primary narratives are the overarching paradigms so embedded in the culture that they are not even noticed any more. As we have said in this series, these primary narratives are like the framed art prints on your wall. Initially you see them and think about them, but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only notice them when a visitor comes in and makes a comment about them. Deep time, evolution, and uniformitarianism - among others - are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. VK: What these primary narratives have done is to displace the need for God. Without the Big Bang/Deep Time narrative we would all look to God as the creator of the physical universe. Without evolution we would all look to God as the creator of life. And without uniformitarianism we would all look to God as being necessary to sustain the operation of the created order. We wouldn’t think creation was some kind of self-sustaining animatronic that just keep going because that’s always the way it has been. So, the net result of these primary narratives has been to displace the common sense notion that God is necessary to explain our universe, our world, and our own existence. And of course, once these narratives do away with the need for God they have also done away with trust in the Bible as being God’s word. RD: So, in the first five facts we discussed we pointed out – just scratched the surface really – a few of the empirical observations that point out that these primary narratives have major problems that are rarely acknowledged. And in the next four facts we moved on to demonstrating that there is evidence not only in the physical creation but also in human history, language, and geography that confirm that the book of Genesis is reliable. Then, the 10th fact every Christian needs to know to ensure that they can be secure in their confidence in the Bible is this: while the secular world has doubts about the historicity of the book of Genesis, the book of Genesis has never been disproven and indeed it cannot be disproven. Conversely, while the Big Bang Theory and Deep Time, the evolutionary hypothesis, and the uniformitarian hypothesis are widely accepted they have never been proven to be true, and indeed, they cannot be proven to be true. VK: And today you said you wanted to move on to another observation that you believe helps put the big picture into perspective. And you said you wanted to call this episode of Anchored by Truth “The Chicken Came First.” That’s a pretty strange title isn’t it? RD: Well, actually I wanted to call this episode “The Chicken Came First, Silly,” but you objected to me using “Silly.” VK: Yes. I did. The title “The Chicken Came First” is pretty … strange all by itself. RD: Maybe. At any rate, the final observation I wanted to make to conclude this series is something my wife pointed out to me on a walk not too long ago. She pointed out that a lot of people don’t understand the fact that when God made the physical creation and life that He created everything in a mature state. That uncertainty or ambiguity is illustrated pretty well by the old question: “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” That question is supposed to be a sort-of philosophical puzzle. You can’t have a chicken without first having an egg. But of course you can’t have an egg without first having a chicken. But for people who are familiar with the Bible it’s not a puzzle at all. God created everything to be fully functional from the moment He brought it into existence. So, the answer is simple. The chicken came first. Or speaking specifically, the first chicken kind came first. VK: But the Bible says that on day one after God created the heavens and earth that the “earth was formless and empty [and] darkness was over the surface of the deep …” That doesn’t sound like the earth was necessarily functional at that point. RD: Well, it might be better to say that God initially formed the matter and energy that comprised the heavens and earth. Then, He immediately began conforming the earth so that it would be fully functional to perform its intended purpose – to support living creature including man who would be the pinnacle of God’s living creatures. Let’s not forget that the Bible no sooner tells us that darkness was over the surface of the deep that the Bible tells us that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Said a little differently, right from the beginning God set about conforming the earth for man. On that day one God made light and brought the day/night cycle into existence. VK: And then on the next five days God began bringing about further changes that would be necessary to make man’s existence on the earth possible. On day two God created waters on the surface of the earth and separated them from those that would make the atmosphere suitable as a protective and supportive covering. On day three God made dry land and brought forth the first vegetation. On day four He made the sun, moon, and stars to give definition to the cycles of time He was planning. Then on day five God populated the sea and skies with living creatures. We heard about part of that in our opening scripture. But I think I see what you are getting at. At each stage when God finished that step in the creation process the product of that step was ready to go. When God created the fish they were ready to swim. When God created the birds they were ready to fly. And both the fish and the birds already had plants available for nutrition and a sun and moon by which to know when it was time to move and when it was time to rest. That’s what you mean when you say “the chicken came first.” RD: Exactly. And just to finish the thought both the fish and the birds were immediately able to reproduce. Remember God told both the creatures in the sea and the creatures that were to inhabit the sky to begin increasing. And God pronounced the creatures He had created “good” which would mean they must have had the capacity to reproduce. This in turn answers another question that is a real problem for the evolutionary hypothesis – the origin of biological sexes. VK: What you’re saying is that the evolutionary hypothesis has no real answer of how a gradual, mutational process can produce two different genders both of which are necessary for the continuation of the species. After all there living species on the earth that reproduce asexually. Asexual reproduction is a mode of reproduction that involves the offspring being produced by a single parent rather than two. RD: The supposed evolutionary answer to why there are a great many species on the earth that require two different, but compatible genders, for reproduction usually attempt to explain how the operation of sexual reproduction is beneficial to the species. But explaining the benefits of the operation of something is quite different from explaining the origin of it. The origin and maintenance of two different genders, the sex process, and recombination of compatible components of separate cells is not easily explained by natural selection. Evolutionary biology hasn’t discovered why animals would abandon asexual reproduction in favor of more costly and inefficient sexual reproduction. In sexual reproduction not only must each gender must possess its own unique physiology to make the process work but the physiologies must match each other. VK: After all, if there is one thing that is certain, it is that malfunctions or mistakes in reproduction are pretty much guaranteed to eliminate a species. Thinking about what would have to have happened for gender to arise without design or planning pretty much boggles the mind. Random mutations would have to have produced two biologically complementary entities that were both formed at the right time and right location. Those two entities would have to find each other – just in time – and know what to do. Then the cells from each would have to be able to combine in such a way that they would create an entity similar to their parents but also possess a new ability. And if anything goes wrong along the way the existence of that species either goes away or at best this new found regenerative function disappears and the earlier asexual process continues. As I said, the likelihood that all that occurs from random mutational changes boggles the mind. RD: Yes. And you’re only speaking about what we might term the level of gross morphology. Biological life doesn’t begin with morphology and structural function. It starts at the biomolecular level. Living creatures are similar to computers in many ways. We, they, don’t just have hardware. We have software – our programming that’s contained in our DNA. And, of course, the hardware and software don’t work if there’s not a reliable source of energy that is available in just the right forms and amounts to allow all of the components to work together. And sexual reproduction is just one example of biological systems that must be complete at the point of origin or they are no good to anyone or anything. VK: Even Charles Darwin admitted in a letter to American botanist Asa Gray in 1860 that "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder … .” Darwin knew that eyes don’t function without a lot of moving parts all of which must operate together. There has to be a clear outer covering that holds all the parts together but admits the light. There’s a pupil that opens and closes to control the amount of light that enters and a lens that focuses the light. And there have to be a set of pretty finely tuned muscles and ligaments that will allow the eye to have motion within a socket that was specially prepared to hold all the parts. There has to be a receptor pad to receive the photon and generate a chemical signal to be sent to the brain. But that signal doesn’t do any good without an optic nerve to carry it and a part of the brain that has been configured to generate an image. And none of that does any good if the creature doesn’t know what the images mean about its surroundings. When you think about all that it’s pretty amazing that anyone thinks that all that arose by chance. RD: Yes. And, again, you’re only speaking about the gross morphology. There are dozens of chemical changes taking place at the molecular level that permit all the various functions to occur. When speculating about how eyes could have developed gradually I’ve heard some evolutionists speculate on “light sensitive spots” that became dimples in the skin and were gradually covered by a thin membrane and so forth. But all of that misses the point. Even to have a “light sensitive spot” would have required dozens of biochemical mutations to have occurred simultaneously. And even the evolutionists will admit that half an eye or three-quarters of an ear doesn’t do the creature any good. Biological systems must function all together or they don’t function at all. VK: So, back to the chicken and the egg. The reason that it’s not a problem for Biblical creationism is because the Bible straightforwardly tells us that God completed a complete creature to start with. The fish in the sea were ready to survive in their environment. The birds were immediately capable of flight. They were immediately able to launch, land, maneuver in flight, and avoid trees. They were also able to lay eggs and they had been programmed with DNA that told them what they needed to do to get those eggs to hatch. The first birds to hatch from eggs had to go through a maturation process but their parents didn’t. RD: And that’s why, in a simple but powerful way, the Biblical explanation is superior to the evolutionary hypothesis. The Bible explains the puzzle of the complete functionality that must be present for biological systems to work at all. And all evolution can ever provide are pieces and parts that are somehow useless today, but will one day turn into something like an eye, a circulatory system, a flight feather, or the avian lung. VK: One of the biggest challenges to the idea that dinosaurs turned into birds is that the breathing systems of dinosaurs are completely different from those of birds. Dinosaur lungs work like ours do. They are a sort of bellows where air goes in and out of the same opening and through a series of branching tubes that finally terminate in tiny air sacs. But the breathing system of birds is completely different. In birds the major air passages break down into tiny tubes which permeate the lung tissue that are called parabronchi [PAIR-AH-BRON-KAI]. These parabronchi eventually join up together again so the air only flows in one direction through the bird lungs. Birds are vertebrates because they have a spine but their lungs are unique among the vertebrate world. It’s hard to see how this system could have developed gradually because if an animal can’t breathe that animal is not going to survive very long. And a respiratory system going through a change isn’t going to work very well if it’s only halfway through the change. RD: Simply put, biological systems don’t work unless they are complete. Now the system may be simple or complex compared to another biological system but biological systems are all enormously complicated when compared to any non-living system. The simplest bacterial cell without a nucleus contains 100 Billion atoms and they are all organized with exquisite precision into a flotilla of protein machines each performing its own specialized function. If one part goes missing the bacteria dies. Same thing with higher order animals. Eyes only work if the entire system is present. Hearts are no good without complicated networks of blood vessels. Birds don’t fly without the feathers that allow them to generate lift, the muscles to move the wings, the brain to make minute adjustments at a speed no human could manage, and lungs that keep air flowing continuously. But evolution is supposed to work with no mind or design. And the problem is that when pressed on how random mutation could produce evolutionists must resort to speculation and guess. They can never say for sure how a complex biological system came into being so that it functioned immediately. VK: Here’s how Dr. Colin Patterson, the senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum described his realization that the evolutionary hypothesis was speculation, not settled science. “… I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night; and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock, to learn one can be misled for so long … So, for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people … Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? … All I got was silence.” RD: The chicken and egg question points out something very significant. Eggs will turn into chickens when they are kept in the proper environment but only because they have been programmed to do so. And at each stage of development the developing chicken is still functional at that stage. The system is changing but functioning at every step throughout the transformation. But evolution as a process, by its own rules, is never going to be allowed to know that function is necessary for life – much less the brilliant complete complexity that is present in all living creatures. Evolution holds to the core idea that random, undirected, purposeless atoms collided chaotically and somehow produced protein machines that populate and power each cell. But these purposeless atoms didn’t just produce the protein machinery they went on to organize those machines into a cooperative collective that is more sophisticated than the factory that builds passenger airplanes. VK: So, the chicken and the egg points out what Michael Denton who wrote Evolution: A Theory in Crisis the “puzzle of perfection.” Living systems must be complete to live at all. Living systems cannot operate with half formed hearts or bits and pieces that may one day become a lung if that mutation survives another five hundred generations. Christians are sometimes criticized as inserting “God in the gaps.” The criticism is that when Christians cannot explain all the intricacies of how a particular thing happened we insert God into that gap. But as we pointed out in our last episode when the math for the Big Bang doesn’t work out secular physicists insert Dark Matter into the gap to explain the need for more gravitation. When evolutionary biologists can’t explain how a permeable cell membrane enclosed a DNA molecule that just happened to be close by enough other protein machinery to make the first cell they say “well, we don’t how it happened but we know evolution was responsible.” So, physicists and biologists insert Dark Matter, evolution, and Deep Time into their gap and then tell us that is what science demands. RD: Charles Darwin speculated about his now famous “warm little pond” where life must have first emerged. Now some scientists tell us that it wasn’t a warm pond but a deep ocean vent. For Darwin and the others warm ponds and deep ocean vents are like Star Trek replicators that magically convert energy and matter into living molecules that can proceed on their own to craft ever more complicated and sophisticated living creatures. VK: Warm little ponds are Star Trek replicators – really? RD: Yes. The idea that undirected, inanimate matter can produce the specified and irreducible complexity of living creatures is like believing a chimpanzee can bang rocks together and produce the space shuttle. There’s a famous story of a woman challenging a evolutionist who was giving a lecture on how evolution works. The woman asked how a single cell could ever turn into a human being. The evolutionist responded, “You did it yourself madam, in nine months.” The evolutionist thought he was being clever but he actually eviscerated his own thesis. A fertilized human ovum grows into a human being because it contains the programming that tells it what to do and guides its growth at every step of the process. Furthermore that developing human must be protected within the mother’s womb and supported by the mother’s body until it is able to function on its own. Any failures along the way and life doesn’t continue. Far from pointing out how evolution could have produced a human from a single ancestral cell the evolutionist pointed out that life would be impossible if it were not designed, protected, and sustained until it can function independently. The chicken had to come first – and it did – because an omnipotent, omniscient, purposeful God sovereignly decided to make it. And He didn’t need any help from warm ponds, deep ocean vents, or Star Trek replicators. VK: The point of this series and today’s discussion is to help Christians begin to grapple with the narratives that circulate so widely today. As we said in the first episode in this series Christianity is a faith of facts. The culture tells us that the universe sprang into being from nothingness and then life arose without the benefit of direction or intelligence. Those assertions are refuted by facts and logic. But that truth won’t do any Christian any good if they don’t take the time to arm themselves with the facts and learn how to apply those facts to sort out the barrage of false claims that are directed against their faith. To close, since Veterans Day is right around the corner today let’s listen to a prayer for the veterans of our armed forces whose sacrifice built and preserved this nation for almost 250 years. ---- PRAYER FOR VETERANS DAY VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the Contemporary English Version ) Genesis, chapter 1, verses 20 through 23, Contemporary English Version Dark matter in trouble again - creation.com Stars don’t form naturally - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 184 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 12 – Genesis Withstands the Doubts Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 37 through 39, New International Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we started several weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We are calling this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. Today we are going to cover the last – the 10th of the 10 facts that we are discussing during this series. RD, we have typically been doing a short review of where we are in the series before we start of the new fact. But you said that today you wanted to just jump right into fact 10 because we have so much material to cover. RD: Well, I’d like to start by also saying hi to the listeners joining us here today but – yes – today I just wanted to get right into our discussion. Listeners who want to hear the discussion about any of the first 9 facts episodes of this series can find the episode where we discussed them on their favorite podcast app or from our website: crystalseabooks.com. VK: So, what is the 10th fact that every Christian needs to know? RD: The 10th fact every Christian needs to know to ensure that they can be secure in their confidence in the Bible is this: while the secular world has doubts about the historicity of the book of Genesis, the book of Genesis has never been disproven and indeed it cannot be disproven. Conversely, while the Big Bang Theory and Deep Time, the evolutionary hypothesis, and the uniformitarian hypothesis are widely accepted they have never been proven to be true, and indeed, they cannot be proven to be true. VK: Wow. Those are seemingly remarkable statements. Yet, you are saying those are facts. So, just to be sure that we’re being clear I want to restate our 10th fact. The secular world may have doubts about the historicity of the book of Genesis, but the book of Genesis has never been disproven - and indeed - it cannot be disproven. Conversely, while the Big Bang Theory and Deep Time, the evolutionary hypothesis, and the uniformitarian hypothesis are widely accepted they have never been proven to be true - and indeed - they cannot be proven to be true. I think that you’re right that we do need to get straight into the discussion. Where do we begin? RD: Well, let’s focus on the first part of our fact first. It’s sad to say but we cannot avoid noting that there are widespread doubts today about the historicity of the book of Genesis – not just by unbelievers but also by some Christians. That’s sad but it’s true. Many Christians have felt the need to surrender their belief in the Bible’s record of 6 literal days of creation that occurred just over 6,000 years ago. These Christians have been so bombarded by the narratives that circulate in our culture, especially our educational institutions, that the universe and earth are billions of years old that they have tried to reach an accommodation with those ideas. So, a number of seemingly acceptable alternative ways of interpreting Genesis such as the Day-Age theory or the Gap theory. VK: The “Day-Age” idea is that the creative days described in chapter 1 of Genesis are not normal 24-hour days but rather simply creative periods of an indeterminate length. The Day-Age theory argues that the Hebrew word translated as “day” in Genesis, chapter 1, can simply mean a long period rather a regular day. They sometimes appeal to passages like 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 8 which says, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” That’s the New International Version. RD: Yes. But as we pointed out in our Truth in Genesis series the Day-Age theory is not consistent with the ordinary rules of interpretation of the Hebrew words and grammar which clearly point to that part of scripture as being history and not some sort of poetic construction. Dr. Jonathan Sarfati who was our guest in that series makes that point very clearly in his Genesis commentary The Genesis Account. VK: And the “Gap theory” postulates that there was somehow a long gap between verse 1 of chapter 1 of Genesis and verse 2 of chapter 1. Gap theorists believe that during this gap millions or billions of years of uniformitarian development and evolution occurred in the universe and on earth. They further believe that from verse 2 onward Genesis describes the recreation of the earth to restore it from a great war that occurred between the followers of Satan and God’s forces. This war devastated the original creation and therefore God had to repair the damage. Both the Day-Age theory and the Gap theory are attempts by Christian interpreters to harmonize the supposed billions of years conventional science says happened and the seemingly incongruous record of the 6 days of creation found in Genesis. RD: But the truth is that there is no need for Christians to adopt strategies such as the Day-Age theory or the Gap theory. There is abundant scientific evidence that supports the accuracy of the 6 day creation account of Genesis as well as other events described by Genesis such as a worldwide flood. VK: And we have covered some of that evidence in this series because we want people to begin to realize that they do not have to surrender their belief in Biblical inspiration and infallibility yet also trust science – real science that is. RD: Exactly. Real science casts considerable doubt on the alternatives that are postulated to the history contained in Genesis – and that’s what we want to focus on with this 10th fact. The secular world has come to doubt Genesis largely because of the idea of uniformitarianism that was popularized by Charles Lyell and the biological extension of uniformitarianism, evolution, which was popularized by Charles Darwin. Neither Lyell nor Darwin were the originators of the ideas with which their names are now prominently associated but they did write books that brought their ideas into widespread public consciousness. Lyell wrote Principles of Geology in the early 1830’s and Darwin wrote On the Origin of the Species in 1859. Over time these books and the ideas contained in them continued to gain a greater foothold in western thought. That foothold has progressed to such an extent that today their ideas are taught in virtually every educational classroom and textbook in much of the developed world. VK: And it is largely owing to the spread of the ideas of geological uniformitarianism and biological evolution that many Christians have felt compelled to try and find a way to keep one foot in so-called science and the other foot in believing in the Bible. But this attempt has never achieved the desired aim. Christians hoped to preserve the Bible’s acceptability by seemingly finding within its text reasons that the Genesis creation account was consistent with the alleged spread of a science that demanded billions of years. But that never happened did it? RD: No. Starting in the latter part of the 19th century Christians began trying to embrace what was a blatant contradiction in their belief system – a manufactured harmony between deep time and the 6 creative days of Genesis. But the only thing since they began the attempt is that the Bible has seen its influence on society consistently shrink. Lyell’s and Darwin’s ideas require billions of years of Deep Time in which to accomplish their work. We need hundreds of millions of years for a trickle of water to turn a rut into the Grand Canyon. And the hope is that with billions of years the random collision of inanimate hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms could turn into heroes, warriors, and champions. But, of course, the idea the earth and universe have been around for billions of years is in direct conflict with what we learn from Genesis. So, many Christians surrendered the truth of Genesis and placed their trust in human pronouncements. This has had a predicable effect. Rather than those Christians influencing the culture the culture influenced their faith. In the process both were compromised. VK: The truly tragic thing is that there was no need for Christians to make this accommodation. Ironically, as real science has progressed we have seen more and more empirical observations that actually affirm the historicity of the book of Genesis. For instance in Darwin’s day there had been no discoveries of soft dinosaur tissue that was so well preserved that red blood cells were still identifiable as such under a microscope. That happened in the 1990’s. In Lyell’s day geologists began to think that enormous river valleys such as the Grand Canyon were the result of erosion that occurred over millions of years. But in the 1920’s an American geologist, J. Harlan Bretz, became convinced that many of these river valleys weren’t due to erosion but were created by truly epic floods. Bretz proposed that the river valleys of eastern Washington were caused by such floods. When he first proposed his idea in the 1920’s he was met with widespread disbelief. Yet acceptance of the truth of Bretz’s observations is so widespread today that, at the age of 97, Bretz was awarded the Geological Society of America’s highest honor. Said differently, disbelief was transformed into belief. RD: Yes. And in the case of the book of Genesis widespread belief in its truth in the early part of the 19th century was gradually transformed into widespread disbelief by the latter half of the 20th century. A great many Christians came to, and are still under, the mistaken impression that the book of Genesis has either been disproven or at least that we cannot accept it as literal history. They thought and think that Deep Time, uniformitarianism, evolution, the Big Bang, etc. had rendered Genesis a sort of poetic origins story at best or outright wrong at worst. In any case they came to believe that the creation account of Genesis was irrelevant to the weightier matters of their faith like sin, salvation, and eschatology. But the book of Genesis was never disproven and, in fact, it cannot be disproven. VK: Why not? RD: Well, the biggest reason it can’t be disproven is because it’s true. VK: Touché. But I think we’re going to need more than that. RD: Well, also because you can neither prove nor disprove particular explanations for events of the distant past. All anyone can do with respect to events of the distant past is to look at the evidence that is currently available and then provide an explanation for why that evidence appears the way it does. This will always fall short of a complete “proof” because there will always be a second, third, or more possible explanation for that evidence. But in saying this we are not saying that some explanations may not be more reasonable than others. Some explanations certainly can be more reasonable than others. And that is what we have pointing out throughout this series. This 10th fact helps summarize what we have learned in this series. VK: So, the secular world may doubt the historicity of Genesis but doubt is not disproof. Doubt is just that. Doubt is a subjective opinion about the truth of a particular proposition but doubt does not prove anything. Nor does the doubt of a collective body of people prove anything. When J. Harlan Bretz first proposed his idea that the river valleys of eastern Washington were carved by monstrous floods his idea was widely doubted. But over time as more evidence came to light his idea gained widespread acceptance. The initial doubt did not mean Bretz was not correct. Today, most geologists believe Bretz is correct. But widespread acceptance does not automatically mean that Bretz is correct either. It simply means more people simply believe his explanation than the alternative. RD: Exactly. So, let’s reinforce that idea by turning to the second part of our 10th fact. VK: The second part of our 10th fact is that while the Big Bang Theory and Deep Time, the evolutionary hypothesis, and the uniformitarian hypothesis are widely accepted they have never been proven to be true - and indeed - they cannot be proven to be true. RD: Right. Today the most widely accepted theory of how the universe came into existence is the Big Bang theory – the idea that at one time all the matter and energy of the universe were present in a singularity that exploded one day and began a formation process that resulted in our current universe. This idea is so prevalent that many people, including many Christians, believe that it must have been proven to be true. But that is not the case at all. Again, in part because the only thing any current observer can do is to look at current evidence and try to provide an explanation for that evidence. And there is evidence that is helpful to the idea of a primordial Big Bang such as the expansion of the galaxies and the presence of universal cosmic background radiation. VK: Observations of the universe indicate that the galaxies are not simply in a static holding pattern. Instead they seem to be moving outward as if they were moving away from a central point of origin. Moreover, scientists have now detected what is sometimes called a background microwave radiation “echo” that seems to come from the entire universe. This echo was first thought to be malfunctioning instruments but it has now been verified so some scientists see it as the radiation that must have come from a giant fireball or explosion in the past – hence the term “Big Bang.” RD: And there are other lines of evidence that proponents of the Big Bang point to. And you hear affirmations about the theory so much it seems that it must almost have been proven to explain the origin of the universe. Yet, very few people focus on the fact that the Big Bang theory is far from having proven to be true. There are lots of scientific observations that do not support the Big Bang hypothesis such as the need for so-called Dark Energy and Dark Matter. VK: According to Wikipedia “Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation like light and is, therefore, difficult to detect. Various astrophysical observations – including gravitational effects which cannot be explained by currently accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seen – imply dark matter's presence. For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is abundant in the universe and has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution.” RD: Simply put, the Big Bang cosmological model needs dark matter to work. Without dark matter there is not sufficient gravitational pressure to cause stars to form with the known laws of physics. And it goes without saying that without stars the universe does not contain galaxies, planets, and ultimately life. But physicists have been looking for some way to confirm the existence of dark matter for decades and have come up empty. Dark matter is neither seen nor detected yet – as the Wikipedia article stated - it supposed to make up to 85% of the material of the universe. Dark matter is also needed to solve other puzzles that astrophysicists know about. But some scientists are starting to acknowledge the elephant in the room. A theoretical physicist Mordehai Milgrom has proposed an alternative to dark matter, called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (or MOND) wherein he slightly changes the law of gravitation on the very large-scale of galaxies to solve the problem of galaxy rotation curves and dynamics of galaxies on larger scales. VK: According to a 2014 New Scientist article1 Milgrom was asked by reporter Marcus Chown: “Why is now a good time to take an alternative to dark matter seriously?” Milgrom replied: “A host of experiments searching for dark matter, including the Large Hadron Collider, many underground experiments and several space missions, have failed to see anything convincing. This comes on top of increasing realization that the leading dark matter model has its failings. Among other things, it predicts that we should see many more dwarf galaxies orbiting our Milky Way than we actually do.” RD: There are a great many problems with the Big Bang theory but that does not mean it is not widely accepted. It is. But the Big Bang theory, like all theories that depend on deep time are based on assumptions that are unproven and unprovable. They all require the user to make assumptions about the initial conditions of the universe or matter, a consistency of processes for indeterminate time periods, an absence of intervening external factors, etc. Yet none of these assumptions can be proven. And all of these explanations to Biblical creationism are necessary because of an unwillingness to simply acknowledge the presence of God and the truth of the Bible. VK: And some scientists have become willing to admit that they do so. Harvard evolutionary biologist and geneticist Richard Lewontin wrote: “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failures to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” But some people might say that this is just a case of “he said, she said.” RD: They can certainly say that but as we have pointed out throughout this “10 facts every Christian needs to know series” there are not only problems with the widely accepted explanations of secular scientists there is affirmative evidence supporting Biblical creation – supporting the Bible’s record that the earth and universe are thousands of years old, that God intelligently used the matter He created to create living creatures, and that the events of Genesis still reveal their presence in language, geography, geology, etc. So, it’s not just a matter of “he said, she said.” One side brought not only their claims but also pictures, recordings, forensic evidence, supporting eye witness testimony, and rigorous analysis that did not suffer from the need to keep creating, as Dr. Lewontin put it, ”just-so stories.” VK: In other words, the Biblical explanation makes better sense about a lot of things. It makes better sense about how the sun makes the amount energy the earth needs to sustain life, how the earth-moon operate together to create the conditions for life, and why marine fossils are found on the highest mountains on earth. The Biblical explanation makes better sense the number and type of languages we see in existence today, the number of people we see around the world, and why regions, towns, and rivers are called by certain names. Yet, despite this, it is fair to say that doubts about the Bible remain. RD: Yes. And that’s why I chose the opening scripture I did. Jesus told us that in Noah’s day people were pretending that everything was okay, but it wasn’t. It will be that way when He comes back. The doubts are not proof of anything and despite the repeated attacks against it the Bible remains defiant. The Bible displays the two characteristics that any book claiming to be the word of God would have to meet. It is consistent with what we know about the history of the earth and universe and human history and it displays evidence of supernatural origin. These attributes are demonstrated by the 10 facts that we have covered in this series and, of course, thousands or hundreds of thousands of others. We’re not suggesting that we expect the narratives that have been gaining force and acceptance for over 150 years are going to be set aside overnight. But we do think that it is high time for Christians to arm themselves with the facts that will enable them to sustain their own faith and effectively pass it along to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. VK: The point of this series and today’s discussion is to help Christians guard against the narratives that circulate so widely today. One of those narratives is that the Bible cannot be trusted. So, to push that narrative the critics must cast doubt on the reliability and authenticity of scripture. But reality pushes back on the claim that the Bible can’t be trusted. The evolutionary, uniformitarian, and deep time explanations that are offered all come with significant problems. Moses wrote Genesis 3,500 years ago. Humanly speaking, he could not have known what the population of the earth would be in 2022, what languages would be spoken, or how the names of Noah’s grandsons would continue to be found in the names of rivers, cities, regions, and cultures. He didn’t know the moon was slowly moving away from the earth or how fast carbon-14 would radioactively decay. He didn’t know there were mollusk fossils on Mt. Everest. But God did. Moses just recorded the history God gave to him. He did so faithfully and accurately and we see the fidelity of his account all around us today. To close, for today let’s listen to a prayer of corporate confession. All of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s expectations and we should confess that regularly. But we must always combine our confession with the gratitude that he tells us in 1 John that even as we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive those sins. Truly we serve a gracious as well as a mighty God. ---- PRAYER OF CORPORATE CONFESSION VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the New International Version ) The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 37 through 39, New International Version Dark matter in trouble again - creation.com Stars don’t form naturally - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 183 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 11 – Babel Then and Now Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, … now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, ... Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Genesis, chapter 11, verses 6 through 9, New King James Bible ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we started several weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We are calling this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. Today we are going to cover the 9th of the 10 facts that we are discussing during this series. For any listeners who want to hear the discussion about any of the first 8 facts episodes of Anchored by Truth are all available on their favorite podcast app or from our website crystalseabooks.com. RD, can you give us a brief overview of what we have covered in this series to this point. RD: Well, I’d like to start by also saying hi to the listeners joining us here today and thanking everyone for their interest. As you just mentioned this series is all about giving listeners a solid factual foundation for being assured the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. People need that today because so many of the narratives that circulate in our culture today not only don’t acknowledge the Bible as the word of God but they actively promote the fallacious notion that science, archeology, and history “disprove” the reliability of scripture. This notion is countered by the facts but frankly those facts won’t do anyone any good if they are not aware of them. In this series we want to highlight some those facts. So, the first 5 facts we covered demonstrated that the popular narratives of Deep Time, evolution, and uniformitarianism don’t possess nearly the quality of scientific support that they are normally assumed to possess. In short, these narratives aren’t trustworthy as a basis for forming a coherent worldview yet these narratives are often used as the basis for doing away with the need for God to explain the physical universe and life. Now, with fact number 6 we moved on to beginning our demonstration that the foundational book of the Bible, Genesis, is, in fact, a trustworthy foundation for our understanding of the universe, life, and human history. And that’s the theme we are continuing as we move through these last 5 of the 10 facts. We are showing that the most disputed book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, is a reliable record notwithstanding the many attacks that are hurled against it. VK: So, thus far, we saw from fact 6 that the available evidence demonstrates that Moses was the author of Genesis and the other 4 books of the Pentateuch – the name given to the first five books of the Bible. Why is it important that we know that Moses wrote Genesis? RD: Because it helps us date when Genesis was written. The traditional date assigned to Moses writing the Pentateuch is in the 15th century B.C. Many scholars place the composition starting around 1445 or 1446 BC which is the so-called “early date” for the start of the Hebrew exodus out of Egypt. But even the scholars like the supposed “late date” for the exodus would place the composition of the Pentateuch in the 13th century BC. VK: In other words Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch were written about 3,500 years ago. So, it is a reasonable question to ask whether we have evidence from those 3,500 years of human history that we can point to as validating the record that Moses gave us. RD: And the answer to the question is a decided “yes.” So, we began our demonstration of the fact that the events described in the book of Genesis have left their imprint on today’s world with facts 7 and 8. Fact 7 was that there is not only geological and paleontological evidence the flood of Noah occurred as described by the Bible (which we covered with fact number 3) but also that there is geographic, historical, and linguistic evidence of the reliability of the text. Said slightly differently, there is considerable evidence that the names of Noah’s grandsons have been preserved in remarkable ways on at least 3 different continents – in the names of cities, regions, rivers, tribal names, and in languages. Fact 8 that every Christian needs to know is that the Biblical time periods and population sizes are far more reasonable when it comes to explaining the current size of the world’s human population than the alternatives that are commonly believed. We pointed out that to go from 3 reproducing couples to 7 to 8 Billion people in a period of 4,500 years you don’t need an outlandish population growth rate – one-half of one-percent a year will do it. VK: So, with facts 7 and 8 we can see that we can still see evidence all around us of the truth of the book of Genesis. You do need to know where to look but it’s not all that hard. And Genesis fits the world as we know it far better than the evolutionary and Deep Time alternatives. Last time we pointed out that if humans had been around for a million years, as the evolutionary hypothesis would have us believe, the current population of the earth is far smaller than would be expected. To explain this discrepancy those who support the evolutionary hypothesis say that famine, disease, plague, etc. simply kept the earth’s population greatly suppressed for most of our history. But this would mean the human population of the earth was literally on the brink of extinction for 99.9% of the time of its existence. That seems to be at odds with the idea that we are the “fittest” creature on the earth when it comes to survival. If we were so “fit” we should have been reproducing a lot more. RD: Yes. Genetic researchers have found by comparing DNA from different humans around the world that humans share roughly 99.9% of their genetic material. In other words humans, no matter where they live on the earth, are almost completely identical, genetically. Geneticists tell us that human beings exhibit very little polymorphism, or variation. VK: Polymorphism, as related to genomics, refers to the presence of two or more variant forms of a specific DNA sequence that can occur among different individuals or populations. Simply put, the absence of polymorphism means that a given cohort of living creatures displays very little difference genetically. Species that have existed for hundreds of thousands or millions of years would be expected to show some amount of polymorphism because mutation in individuals would gradually lead to perceivable differentiation. But studies of humans don’t show this. RD: The lack of a significant amount of polymorphism is consistent with a recent human origin. It is also consistent with a global flood where everyone on earth except for one family died. Evolutionary models of origins would not predict such low human genetic diversity. Mutations should have produced much more diversity than 0.1% over millions of years. Again, this means that pretty much the entire population of humans on the earth provides testimony to the accuracy of the first several chapters of Genesis. VK: Let’s remember that Moses wrote Genesis about 1400 years before Jesus lived. He would have had very little knowledge of civilizations and peoples outside of Egypt and Palestine. Yet far away from where he was writing people were living and developing in exactly the way we would expect if the account he was writing was true. We still see that today. The size of the earth’s population is consistent with a significant bottleneck that occurred about 4,500 years ago. Moreover, the names of nations, rivers, and even languages give testimony to the first generations that emerged from the ark after the flood waters receded. The lack of genetic diversity among human beings today testifies to a common ancestor. And as we have covered on other Anchored by Truth shows even the bit of DNA contained in human mitochondria gives evidence that people today can trace their ancestry back to 3 female ancestors. RD: So, we can demonstrate that Moses gave us an accurate record of the creation of the earth – and its subsequent destruction by a global flood – by taking a look at the current population of the entire earth. But we can also verify that the Bible’s description of what happened after the flood is also validated. Today, we want to consider the famous episode of God’s confusion of the language that occurred at Babel. So, the 9th fact that every Christian needs to know is that we see evidence of the Bible’s accuracy through the study of linguistics and languages. Let’s start this discussion by noting that it is not easy to study the differences or commonalities in languages. VK: Scholars often say that there are two major ways of classifying languages. All languages exhibit certain characteristics. They obey certain rules and constraints that apply to word order and other conventions. These rules are referred to as syntax. In addition, of course, all languages have vocabularies of their own. Each assigns meaning to particular sounds or collections of written symbols. In other words each language has its own vocabulary and its rules of grammar and syntax tell the users how to arrange that vocabulary to communicate. RD: And, interestingly enough, this construction pattern for language is innate in human beings. In his book, The Genesis Account, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati notes an instance where a group of about 500 deaf children in Nicaragua developed their own unique sign language. One behavioral neuroscientist from Rutgers, Judy Kegl, described what happened as “the first documented case of the birth of a language.” Dr. Kegl reported that the sign language invented by the deaf children displayed all the characteristics of other languages such as noun and verb agreement, subject-verb-object sentence construction, and distinct hand shapes and movements that were the building blocks of their communication. Dr. Kegl said, “It’s clear evidence of an innate language capacity.” VK: So, the two ways of classifying languages look at these two different aspects. Typological classification looks at grammatical structures and classifies languages accordingly. But in the middle of the 20th century Dr. Joseph Greenberg came up with a new way of classifying languages that is often referred to as the genetic approach. The genetic qualification of language uses ‘core vocabulary’ to classify a language. Core vocabulary are words that don’t change much over time. The method aims to see how many of these words are similar in different languages. Core vocabulary includes words that every vocabulary would be expected to contain such as words for body parts, numbers, and personal pronouns. When clear patterns of similarities between languages are observed, then those languages are said to be related. Greenberg’s method has become the most commonly used way of comparing languages because it works well for languages that don’t have an abundance of historical written material that can show changes in language structure over time. Greenberg developed his method after noting that several African languages which had puzzled linguists had similar sounding words for similar things so he concluded those languages must be related. RD: Core vocabulary between related languages is never identical, but similar, or ‘cognate’. An article from Creation Ministries International on this subject, entitled “The tower of Babel account confirmed by linguistics” says this about cognate words. “Words are cognate when they are shown to be consistent to the pattern of phonetical change that has taken place in the past. For example, the word tahi in Tongan might not look like kai in Hawaiian, even though they both mean ‘sea’. But, if you also compare Tongan tapu to Hawaiian kapu (both meaning ‘forbidden’) and Tongan tanata to Hawaiian kanaka (meaning ‘man’) you begin to see a pattern: Where Tongan has an initial ‘T’ Hawaiian has an initial ‘K’, and one begins to see that the words might be related. They are cognate.” VK: So, linguists can compare languages by their structure and by their vocabulary. But how do linguists decide that languages are “different?” RD: A common definition of a different language is mutual unintelligibility. In other words languages are different when speakers of one language cannot understand speakers of another language. Of course, there are instances where speakers may be using different dialects of the same language. The speakers may be able to understand one another by there are still distinct differences in pronunciation, word usage, vocabulary, etc. VK: George Bernard Shaw once famously said that “The British and the Americans are two great peoples divided by a common tongue.” His observation was pretty clever but speaking precisely British English and American English are probably best described as being different dialects that had their origin in the same tongue. So, how does all of this help us with our 9th fact that we see evidence of the Bible’s accuracy through the study of linguistics and languages? RD: Because of what we see in language variance around the world. For the reasons we mentioned briefly above there is no precise count of the number of the world’s languages. But it is commonly thought that there are 6,000 to 7,000 different languages spoken around the world. That seems like a lot but that number becomes a lot less daunting when you consider that those 6,000 to 7,000 languages are usually grouped into about 20 or so language families. For instance, the language family that includes English is the Indo-European family. The Indo-European family covers most of Europe plus a part of south west Asia. In northern Europe there is the Uralic Family, which includes Finnish and Hungarian. In north-east Asia we find the Chukchi-Kamchatkan family. Central Asia and the rest of northern Asia host the Altaic family, which also contains Turkish. Southern Asia is considered to have another 3 or 4 language families and the Caucasus region may have two further families. The Pacific region has three or four families. The languages of the Australian Aborigines are usually grouped as one family, as are the languages spoken on mainland Papua. There is no agreement on the treatment of Tasmanian, which is now extinct. The Austronesian family includes languages spoken on Madagascar, the Southern part of the Malaysian Peninsula, the Indonesian Islands, the Philippines, and the Maori languages. And Africa and America each have another 3 or 4 major families. VK: So, what all that means is that even though there are thousands of separate languages worldwide there are far fewer so-called language families. And languages are grouped into families because linguists can tell that those languages are related to one another. For instance we sometimes hear of the Romance Languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. They are called Romance Languages because they are all derived from Lain which was the language of the Roman Empire. Languages such as German, Dutch, and English are often grouped in a group called the Germanic Languages. Languages such as Russian, Czech, and Polish are grouped into the Slavonic Languages. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that all of these groups share a similarity with some languages you wouldn’t expect such as Sanskrit and the languages spoken in India. So, all of these groups are part of the Indo-European Language Family. RD: Exactly. And the fact that the languages spoken in such diverse places as England, Spain, Russia, and India all bear some similarity might surprise us until we think back to what we learned from our 7th fact – that Noah’s sons and grandsons left an indelible mark on history. So, harkening back, we remember that Noah’s oldest son, Japheth, had descendants that settled in territories that spanned the Eurasian territory from England to India. VK: And all of this is very consistent with what we heard from our opening scripture today about God confusing the language at Babel. In Genesis chapter 8 God had told Noah and his sons to “reproduce and spread over all the earth.” But we see from Genesis chapter 11 that the people had not obeyed that command. Instead they had remained together and begun to settle in a “plain in Babylonia.” And once there they decided to build a huge tower which seemed to be an expression of pride and arrogance. Genesis, chapter 11, verse 4 says the people said, “Now let's build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.” RD: So, rather than spreading all over the earth as God had commanded they wanted to create a tower that would be a reason to not “be scattered all over the earth.” VK: Given that the Babel incident is only decades after the flood it seems like those people had a pretty short memory. And at that point at least one of Noah’s sons was still alive. You might have thought they would have been more attentive to God’s commands given there was a rather stark example in the recent past of the consequence for disobedience. That’s a good lesson for today. RD: You might have thought that – but no. At any rate, God decided to enforce his command by going down and confusing their language. This effectively forced the people to begin to separate and spread. It also gave birth immediately to several new languages which over the intervening 4,400 years or so have continued to transform into the thousands of languages that are spoken around the globe. And we have distinct evidence of the truth of the Babel account because there is no evidence of a common point of origin among the many language families. We can see that within the families there was most likely a common ancestor that is now lost – but there is no indication that there was a common ancestor for all the families. Linguistically, at least, the various families stand separate and distinct. This is not what you would expect if the evolutionary hypothesis were correct and there was a single point of origin of all the languages on the earth. VK: Moreover, the Biblical explanation makes better sense about the number of languages in existence today. Let’s just say that God divided the language in such a way that there were several new languages. If there were 10 new languages present after Babel, then as time went on the languages would begin to change. New languages would come into being and some languages would fall into disuse or become extinct if the speakers all died from war or tragedy. In general linguists know that it takes hundreds of years to create a new language but languages can arise in very small populations. Today there are over 800 languages spoken in the country of Papua [POP-OOH-AH] New Guinea. For simplicity’s sake let’s just say that the number of languages present on the earth doubled every 400 years. That would mean that there would be over 5,000 languages present now after 4,200 years. That’s pretty close to the number of languages estimated to exist right now. RD: Linguists also know that languages tend to get simpler through time, not more complex. Dr. Sarfati notes that “For example, in the Indo-European family, Sanskrit, Classical Greek and Latin had many different noun inflections for different case, gender, and number, while verbs were inflected for tense, voice, number and person. Modern descendants of these languages have greatly reduced the number of inflections, i.e. the trend is from the complex to the simpler, the opposite of evolution. … English has also lost 65 – 85% of the Old English vocabulary, and many Classical Latin words have also been lost from its descendants …” VK: So, does all this discussion prove the truth of the Babel account in Genesis? RD: It’s not correct to say that a linguistic analysis “proves” the Genesis account but it’s correct to say that it is consistent with Genesis. There’s really no way to prove that a particular event happened in history because alternative explanations are always possible. It is also fair to say that the Biblical explanation for the languages we hear all over the earth makes far more sense that the evolutionary alternative. The number of languages that are present, the linguistic relationship within language families and the lack of relationship among language families are all consistent with the Genesis account. It is yet another example of where accepting the historicity of Genesis allows us to form a coherent view of the world we see and hear – whereas the evolutionary hypothesis just leads to more and more questions. VK: The point of this series and today’s discussion is to help Christians guard against the narratives that circulate so widely today. One of those narratives is that the Bible cannot be trusted. So, to push that narrative the critics must cast doubt on the reliability and authenticity of scripture. But reality pushes back on the claim that the Bible can’t be trusted. And that’s what these 10 facts that every Christian needs to know points to. Furthermore, the evolutionary explanations that are offered all come with significant problems. As we discussed in our last episode of Anchored by Truth if humans had been around for over a million years we should have countless numbers of additional people alive today. We should also find billions of remains and the artifacts of those who came before. We don’t find either. Moses wrote Genesis 3,500 years ago. Humanly speaking, he could not have known what the population of the earth would be in 2022, what languages would be spoken, or how the names of Noah’s grandsons would continue to be found in the names of rivers, cities, regions, and cultures. But God did. Moses just recorded the history God gave to him. He did so faithfully and accurately and we see the fidelity of his account all around us today. Sounds like a good time for a prayer. To close, for today let’s listen to a prayer for our friends. God meant for us to live in communities where we share the joys and trials of this world – giving each other mutual strength and receiving mutual comfort. We should all pray regularly for those friends and praise God when He gives us friends who pray for us. ---- PRAYER FOR FRIENDS VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the New King James Bible) Genesis, chapter 11, verses 6 through 9, New King James Bible The Tower of Babel account affirmed by linguistics - creation.com The development of languages is nothing like biological evolution - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 182 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 10 – Right Time, Right Number Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: For if God did not spare … the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; …— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. 2 Peter, chapter 2, verses 4 through 9, New International Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we started several weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We are calling this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. So far we have covered 7 of the 10 facts and we have done 2 other episodes to talk about what those facts mean. RD, the purpose of this series is to give listeners 10 solid facts that they can turn to when they encounter narratives in the world that try to cast doubt on the reliability of the Bible. It would take quite a while for us to go over all 7 of those facts, but why don’t you catch us up on our last couple since they relate to our discussion today? For those listeners who want to listen to any of episodes might have missed they are all available on their favorite podcast app or from our website crystalseabooks.com. RD: Well, I would also like to say hi to the listeners joining us here today. And as you mentioned today we are going to build on facts number 6 and 7. Just as a brief review the first 5 facts we covered that every Christian needs to know demonstrated that the popular narratives of Deep Time, evolution, and uniformitarianism don’t possess nearly the quality of scientific support that they are normally assumed to possess. In short, they aren’t trustworthy as a basis for forming a coherent worldview yet so many people today, including Christians, have accepted them without question. So, our first 5 facts gave Christians a solid basis to begin questioning these narratives which are so often used as the basis for doing away with the need for God to explain the physical universe and life. With fact number 6 we moved on to beginning our demonstration that the foundational book of the Bible, Genesis, is, in fact, a trustworthy foundation for our understanding of the universe, life, and human history. Fact number 6 showed that Moses was the author of the Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch VK: The Pentateuch is a collective name for the first five books of the Bible. They are also sometimes referred to as the Torah or Five Books of Moses. By reaffirming that Moses wrote the Pentateuch we are establishing when those books were written. Right? RD: Right. The traditional date assigned to Moses writing the Pentateuch is in the 15th century B.C. Many scholars place the composition starting around 1445 or 1446 BC which is the so-called “early date” for the start of the Hebrew exodus out of Egypt. But even the scholars like the supposed “late date” for the exodus would place the composition of the Pentateuch in the 13th century BC. VK: And those dates are in conflict the dates some liberal Bible critics have tried to assign to those books which has the books being written as late as 400 or 500 B.C. And the reason the critics want to assign those dates is that it allows them to claim that many of the prophecies contained in the Pentateuch weren’t prophecies at all. But instead the alleged writers were writing a sort of pious history to encourage the Jewish people who were then under the dominion of foreign powers. RD: Again, right. The liberal critics can’t stand the thought that Moses, as well as other inspired prophets, wrote accurate prophecies hundreds of years before certain event occurred. Fulfilled prophecy is a powerful argument that an all-powerful, all-knowing God supernaturally inspired the human authors. If the liberal critic can perform literary alchemy and turn prophecy into history they can argue against the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of the Bible. VK: I like that phrase – literary alchemy. The critics do that a lot, don’t they? They have to. If Moses correctly predicted that the Jews descent into idolatry would result in them being conquered and deported from their “promised land,” it is a powerful indictment of those who attempt to dismiss the Bible’s authenticity. RD: So, our 7th fact, that we covered on our last episode, was that we can see from the genealogies contained in chapter 10 of Genesis that Moses gave us an accurate record insofar as the repopulation of the earth is concerned. The Bible tells us that the ark settled on the mountains of Ararat. It doesn’t say Mt. Ararat as sometimes is said, but the mountains of Ararat. Most commentators place that range somewhere in modern Turkey. Since that’s where the repopulation of the earth began you would expect to see the tribes and nations that descended from Noah to fan out from there. VK: And indeed that’s what human history shows us. There are 16 names of Noah’s grandsons contained in chapter 10. And in our last episode of Anchored by Truth we traced the names of several of those grandsons and how their names are embedded in geographic sites or regions as well as in the names of nations. For instance, we pointed out that the descendants of one of Noah’s grandsons, Tubal, began settling the country to the north of Turkey. Today Tubal’s name is commemorated in various places in both the nations of Georgia and Russia. RD: The prophet Ezekiel mentioned Tubal along with Gog and Meshech (Ezekiel 39:1) who are generally regarded as also having settled in territories to the north of Turkey. Meshech is the ancient name for Moscow. Moscow is both the capital of Russia, and the region that surrounds the city. To this day, one section, the Meshchera Lowland, still carries the name of Meshech, virtually unchanged by the ages. Tubal’s name is preserved in the name of the capital city of the nation Georgia whose capital to this day is called Tbilisi. Tubal’s descendants also crossed the Caucasus mountains, migrated due north-east, and gave their tribal name to the river Tobol, and hence to the famous city of Tobolsk, Russia. VK: So, knowing that Moses actually authored the Pentateuch, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, establishes when the book of Genesis was written – most likely in the 15th century BC but certainly no later than the 13th century BC. As part of his record Moses gave us the name of Noah’s sons and grandsons. We can trace the expanding population of the post-flood period by following the names of those grandsons in history and geography. Tracing the settlement patterns of Noah’s grandsons and their descendants shows that Moses’ record was accurate for nations and regions throughout Europe, western Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. We’ve established that through facts 6 and 7 of the 10 facts every Christian needs to know. But you said that today you want to show that the Genesis record Moses wrote is reasonable even when you consider the entire earth. How is that possible? RD: We can demonstrate that Moses gave us an accurate record of the creation of the earth – and its subsequent destruction by a global flood – by taking a look at the current population of the entire earth. The 8th fact that every Christian needs to know is that the Biblical time periods and population sizes are far more reasonable that the alternatives that are commonly believed. By taking a look at the earth’s population we can see not only that the Genesis history is an accurate history but also that the alternate explanation, evolution, is deeply flawed. Bear in mind that the Bible tells us that the universe and earth were created about 6,500 years ago. The deep time and evolutionary hypothesis tell us that the universe is 14.5 Billion years old and the earth is 4.5 Billion years old. The evolutionary hypothesis also tells us that the first human beings came into existence at least a million years ago. There are some historians that will tell us that the earliest humans were using stone tools over 2 million years ago. VK: Well, let’s start with the fact that the Bible tells us that there were 8 people on the ark: Noah, his wife, their 3 sons and their wives. Genesis, chapter 5, verse 32 tells us that Noah had 3 sons – and interestingly they were all born when Noah was over 500 years old. Then Genesis, chapter 7, verse 1 tells us that God told Noah to take his whole family into the ark. And Genesis, chapter 8, verse 18 says, “So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives.” So, we can be very confident of the number of people that were available to begin the repopulation of the earth. There were at least 3 surviving couples and it is possible that Noah and his wife might have had more children. This number is reinforced by what we heard in our opening scripture from 2 Peter. Peter tells us that God “protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven other [people]…” That gives us a very firm starting point. And a quick internet search says that the world’s current population is expected to cross 8 Billion during 2022. So, the question is – can 6 or 8 people grow into a population of 8 Billion in 4,500 years? RD: And the answer may be surprising but it is a firm “yes.” To see why let’s start with the time periods that we get from the Bible. For our purposes today I am going to use the time periods calculated by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, the lead scientist for Creation Ministries International. These periods are available in his commentary on the first 11 chapters of Genesis entitled The Genesis Account. I like this as a source because Dr. Sarfati is not only very detailed in his description but he “presents his work” as they used to say in math class. Dr. Sarfati believes the earth was created in the year 4178 BC plus or minus 50 years. I’m just going to use round numbers and say 4,200 BC. VK: Dr. Sarfati also believes that the flood occurred 1,656 years after creation. That would mean the flood occurred a little more 2500 years before Jesus was born. We live more than 2,000 years after Jesus was born. So, it’s fair to say that we have those 4,500 years since the flood in which to achieve the necessary population growth. RD: Right. The question then is what growth rate is necessary to achieve that level of population growth. And as I mentioned the number may surprise you. VK: So surprise me. RD: In financial management there is a well-known rule called the “rule of 72.” The rule of 72 tells you how long it will take your money – or anything else for that matter – to double. For instance, if you invest your money at 6% per year it would take 12 years for $100 to become $200. You divide 6 into 72 and you get 12. VK: By the same token if you could invest your money and get a 12% return ... RD: Oh, I wish... VK: … yes, you do. Anyway, if you could invest your money and get a 12% return it would only take 6 years to double your money. At 12% interest $100 becomes $200 in just 6 years. All this tells you why people are always seeking a better rate of return – especially in today’s inflationary environment. RD: Exactly. Well, the rule of 72 doesn’t just work for money it also works for people. So, if the world’s population since the flood had grown at an average rate of 2% per year it would have doubled every 36 years. In 4,500 years that means that it would have 125 times. And here’s where the surprise comes in. At an annual average growth rate of 2% today you would have way more than 8 Billion people on the earth. The actual annual average growth rate that you need to go from 6 people (assumes Noah and his wife did not have any more children) to over 7 Billion people in 4,500 years is less than one-half of one percent. VK: Let me repeat that – because as you said that is a surprise. To go from 6 people to over 7 Billion people in a period of 4,500 years you only need a growth rate of less than one-half or one percent. That is a bit of a surprise – and it certainly doesn’t seem impossible. RD: And it’s not. The Encyclopedia Britannica claims that by the time of Christ, the world’s population was about 300 million. It apparently didn’t increase much up to AD 1000. It went up and down in the Middle Ages because of frequent wars, invasions, plagues etc. But the world’s population is thought to have reached 800 million by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1750. That would have been an average growth rate of 0.13% in the 750 years from 1000–1750. By 1800 though it was thought to be one billion while the second billion was reached by 1930—an average growth rate of 0.53% annually. This period of population growth cannot be due to improved medicine, because antibiotics and vaccination campaigns did not impact till after WWII. But from 1930 to 1960 the population reached three billion. The growth rate during that period was 1.36% annually. By 1974, the fourth billion was reached, so the average growth rate was 2.1% from 1960 to 1974. From 1974 to 1990, when the mark hit five billion, the growth rate had slowed to 1.4%. World population reached 6 billion in 1999 and 7 billion in 2011. The increase in population growth since WWII is most likely due to fewer deaths in infancy and improved health care which leads to reduced loss from disease. VK: In other words during those time period for we have much more accurate data we can see that a population growth rate of one-half of one-percent per year is not at all out of the question. At times we seem to have had periods of slower growth in population but at times we have had much faster growth. RD: Right. So, let’s step back and take a look at what this means. Let’s focus on our 8th fact. The 8th fact that every Christian needs to know is that the Biblical time periods and population sizes are far more reasonable that the alternatives that are commonly believed. We have already seen that to get from 3 reproducing couples to 7 to 8 Billion people in a period of 4,500 years you don’t need an outlandish population growth rate – one-half of one-percent a year will do it. So, that raises a huge problem for the evolutionary hypothesis which is the alternative to the Biblical contention. Evolutionists believe that the human race is a million years old or older. So, that raises a big question – where are all the people? VK: What you’re saying is that if the human race really were a million years old the human race would have had a lot more time in which to reproduce. If the human population could go from 6 people to over 7 billion in a period of 4,500 years there should be a lot more people on the earth now if the human race were hundreds of thousands of years older. That’s not an idea you hear being discussed. RD: No. It’s not. Evolutionists claim that mankind evolved from apes about a million years ago. Here are some interesting numbers from an article on the Creation Ministries International website entitled “Where are all the people.” If the human population had grown at just 0.01% per year since then (doubling only every 7,000 years), there would be 1043 people today—that’s a number with 43 zeros after it. To try to put this number of people in context, say each individual is given ‘standing room only’ of about one square meter per person. However, the land surface area of the whole Earth is ‘only’ 1.5 x 1014 square meters. If every one of those square meters were made into a world the size of ours, all these worlds put together would still ‘only’ have a surface area able to fit 1028 people in this way. This is only a tiny fraction of 1043 (1029 is 10 times as much as 1028, 1030 is 100 times, and so on). Those who adhere to the evolutionary story say that disease, famine and war meant the numbers remained constant for most of this period, but that would mean that mankind was on the brink of extinction for over 99.9% of its supposed history. VK: Talk about asking someone to exhibit faith in a proposition that stretches credulity. The Biblical concept is an absolute certainty compared to that. And that of course doesn’t end the problems with the evolutionary hypothesis. We supposedly routinely unearth fossils and bones from tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. The dinosaurs were supposed to have perished 65 million years ago when a giant meteor struck the earth yet we find their bones all the time. And we don’t just find bones from T-Rex sized dinosaurs. We find bones from dinosaurs the size of deer or chickens. So, if mankind had been in existence for a million years –and even if the population was nowhere near current levels – there should be lots of bones of humans lying around. But we don’t find them. I guess besides the question, “where are all the people” we can ask the question “where are all the bones?” RD: Evolutionists claim there was a ‘Stone Age’ that lasted about 100,000 years when supposedly between one million and 10 million people lived on Earth. Fossil evidence shows that even people from primitive ages buried their dead. They often buried them with artifacts. Cremation was not practiced until relatively recent times (in evolutionary thinking). If there were just one million people alive during their supposed Stone Age time, with an average generation time of 25 years, they should have buried 4 billion bodies and a huge amount artifacts. If there were 10 million people alive, it would mean 40 billion bodies buried in the earth. If the evolutionary timescale were correct, then we would expect the skeletons of the buried bodies to be largely still present after 100,000 years, because, as we’ve discussed, many ordinary bones claimed to be much older have been found. And even if the bodies had disintegrated, those artifacts should still be found. But we haven’t found those treasure troves of either bodies or artifacts. VK: Again, the purpose of this “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know” series is to enable people to put a solid intellectual foundation beneath their conviction that the Bible is the inspired word of God. In our day and time we need to ensure that we have that foundation because the Bible is under attack from just about every quarter. We are told by popular culture that the Bible is not relevant because it is not accurate. But as we have been discussing here today the Bible’s continuing relevance is established by the abundant evidence that it is accurate. RD: Yes. Again, let’s step back and see why these last three facts are so important. Our 6th fact, the fact that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, including the book of Genesis tells us when Genesis was written. And a reasonable date for that is the mid 1400’s B.C. Our 7th fact which is that we can trace the lines of descent of Noah’s grandsons through history and geography confirm that the flood story in Genesis is true. So, we can confirm the truth of the Genesis account in the history and geography of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa such as Egypt and Ethiopia. VK: And the fact that the population of the earth is easily achievable from 6 people starting 4,500 years ago shows that, in effect, the entire human population around the world testifies to the accuracy of the book of Genesis, especially the flood account. RD: Yes. One researcher who studies genetics, CW Nelson, has said this. “By comparing DNA from different humans around the world, it has been found that all humans share roughly 99.9% of their genetic material—they are almost completely identical, genetically. This means that there is very little polymorphism, or variation. …” VK: Polymorphism, as related to genomics, refers to the presence of two or more variant forms of a specific DNA sequence that can occur among different individuals or populations. Simply put, the absence of polymorphism means that a given cohort of living creatures displays very little difference genetically. Species that have existed for hundreds of thousands or millions of years would be expected to show some amount of polymorphism because mutation in individuals would gradually lead to perceivable differentiation. But studies of humans don’t show this. RD: The lack of a significant amount of polymorphism is consistent with a recent human origin and the global flood. Evolutionary models of origins would not predict such low human genetic diversity. Mutations should have produced much more diversity than 0.1% over millions of years. Again, this means that pretty much the entire population of humans on the earth provides testimony to the accuracy of the first several chapters of Genesis. Let’s remember that Moses wrote Genesis about 1400 years before Jesus lived. He would have had very little knowledge of civilizations and peoples outside of Egypt and Palestine. Yet far away from where he was writing people were living and developing in exactly the way we would expect if the account he was writing was true. We still see that today. The size of the earth’s population is consistent with a significant bottleneck that occurred about 4,500 years ago. The names of nations, rivers, and even languages give testimony to the first generations that emerged from the ark after the flood waters receded. The lack of genetic diversity among human beings today testifies to a common ancestor. And as we have covered on other Anchored by Truth shows even the bit of DNA contained in human mitochondria gives evidence that people today can trace their ancestry back to 3 female ancestors. VK: The point of this series and today’s discussion is to help Christians guard against the narratives that circulate so widely today. One of those narratives is that the Bible cannot be trusted. So, to push that narrative the critics must cast doubt on the reliability and authenticity of scripture. But reality pushes back on the claim that the Bible can’t be trusted. And that’s what these 10 facts that every Christian needs to know points to. Furthermore, the evolutionary explanations that are offered all come with significant problems. If humans had been around for over a million years we should have countless numbers of additional people alive today. And, at a minimum, we should find billions of remains and the artifacts of those who came before. We don’t find either. Moses could not have known what the population of the earth would be in 2022. But God did. Moses just knew to record the history God gave to him. He did so faithfully and accurately and we see the fidelity of his account all around us today. Sounds like a good time for a prayer. To close, for today let’s listen to a prayer for the missionaries that God sends to bring His word to a world that needs His encouragement. We may not all be called to go to distant lands but we can all be missionaries to our families and communities. ---- PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the New International Version) 2 Peter, chapter 2, verses 4 through 9, New International Version The Date of Noah’s Flood - creation.com Where are all the people? - creation.com Population growth since Flood - creation.com Biblical human population growth model - creation.com The sixteen grandsons of Noah - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 181 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 9 – Noahic Names Remain Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshek and Tiras. … The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan. … The sons of Shem: Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram… Genesis, chapter 10, verses 2, 6, and 22, New International Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we started several weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We are calling this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. So far we have covered 6 of the 10 facts and we have done 2 other episodes to talk about what those facts mean. RD, the purpose of this series is to give listeners 10 solid facts that they can turn to when they encounter narratives in the world that try to cast doubt on the reliability of the Bible. And in our culture people trying to do that is pretty common isn’t it? RD: Well, I would also like to greet all the listeners joining us here today. And yes, our culture constantly feeds us messages that conflict with the Bible. A great deal of the time these messages are dressed up to make us think that they possess some kind of dispositive authority with which we disagree at our peril. Usually, the costumes these messages wear is the garb of supposed science. For instance, in our culture we are told that science tells us that the universe and earth are billions of years old whereas we learn from the Bible that they are really only thousands of years old. We are told that the geological features we see on the earth’s surface result from uniform factors that have been operating these billions of years. And we are told that the living creatures we see all around us were produced by slow and gradual mutational changes that have been going on during that vast pool of Deep Time. These narratives are so pervasive and so compulsive that even many Christians have begun to believe them. But just because they are pervasive doesn’t make them true. And that’s what we are showing in this series. VK: For instance, the presence of detectable carbon-14, which is the radioactive form of carbon, in diamonds is directly at odds with the assertion those diamonds were formed hundreds of millions of years ago. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years. Every 5,700 years or so, the amount of carbon-14 present in anything decreases by 50%. If the diamonds were really hundreds of millions of years old, any carbon-14 present during the formation of the diamond would have long since have turned into ordinary carbon. RD: Correct. So, the 1st fact that we covered in this series is that the scientific evidence for Deep Time is not nearly as compelling as we are regularly told. There is an abundance of scientific observations that cast doubt on the conventional contentions. Similarly, we are routinely told that the features of the earth are the result of uniformitarian processes that have been going on during this Deep Time. But our 3rd fact in this series showed that there are marine fossils found on the highest mountains on earth. That shows that the Himalayas were at one time covered by water. Well, if the Himalayas had been formed by a slow, gradual uplift that lifted those fossils out of the water which took tens of millions of years – then during the those tens of millions of years erosion would have worn away the fossil containing layers if not the mountains themselves. Well, today we want to introduce our 7th fact that Christians need to know. And our 7th fact goes hand in hand with that 3rd fact. Today we are going to show that there is not only geological and paleontological evidence the flood of Noah occurred as described by the Bible but also that there is geographic, historical, and linguistic evidence of the reliability of the text. VK: Today we are going to talk about the considerable evidence that the names of Noah’s grandsons have been preserved in remarkable ways on at least 3 different continents. So, just by way of background, let’s remind everyone that the Bible tells us that when the ark came to rest after the flood waters receded, it landed in a region that is part of modern day Turkey. The Bible also tells us that Noah had 3 sons and 16 grandsons. But the Bible does not tell us that Noah had any daughters or granddaughters, does it? RD: No. It doesn’t. But we do know that Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth were all married before they got into the ark. Undoubtedly, those couples also had daughters as well as sons and the grandchildren intermarried. Remember that this is a time when the human gene pool had not suffered the deterioration that it would later. We have to also remember that this is a time long before the later prohibitions on close family members intermarrying. At any rate, the Bible has preserved the names of Noah’s 16 grandsons and we know from history and geography that those names have been indelibly carved on the ancient world. VK: And we know that because as Noah’s grandsons began to have their families and spread out several things happened. First, people in various areas called themselves by the name of the man who was their common ancestor. Second, those expanding families of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. began calling their land, and often their major cities or rivers by the name of their common ancestor. And, third, in some cases the various nations that were now forming fell into ancestor worship. They abandoned their focus on the True God who had saved their ancestors and began revering the ancestor who was most prominent in their memories. This was particularly true because the first generations after the Flood lived to be very old, with some men outliving their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. This set them apart. When this happened, it was natural for their descendants to almost regard them as being more than human. In some cases, the descendants began to claim their long-living ancestor as their god. What all this means is that the evidence of Noah’s sons and grandsons has been preserved in a way that can never be lost. God ensured that human history would contain evidence of the authenticity of the Biblical account. There is a very good article about this evidence on the website for Creation Ministries International which is creation.com. RD: Let’s take a look at some of this evidence. First, let’s note that Noah’s son Japheth had seven sons: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. Ham had four sons Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. Shem had five sons: Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram. So, let’s start with an easy example – Shem’s son Aram. VK: Noah’s grandson Aram’s [A-RAHM] name is preserved in the history of the people and nation of Syria which is where Aram’s descendants settled after the dispersal that followed the tower of Babel. Aram is the Hebrew word for Syria. Whenever the word Syria appears in the Old Testament it is a translation of the word Aram. In fact, the Syrians call themselves Arameans [AIR-AH-MAY-UNS]. Their language is called Aramaic [AIR-AH-MAY-ICK]. Before the spread of the Greek Empire following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Aramaic was used as the international language. 2,500 years after Aram’s birth Aramaic was still in widespread use. In fact, it was still in use in Jesus’ day as the language of the common people. RD: Here’s another obvious example of how the names of Noah’s grandsons have been preserved by secular history. Asshur is the Hebrew word for Assyria. Assyria was one of the great ancient empires. Assyria is mentioned frequently by the Bible most often as one of Israel’s most dangerous enemies. Because Assyria was an enemy of Israel the prophet Jonah did not want to go and preach in the capital city of Assyria, Nineveh, as God had instructed him. VK: And we all know how that turned out. Jonah’s experience in the belly of the whale – though the Bible just calls it a “big fish” – came as a direct result of his disobedience. Despite the big-fish episode Jonah still wound up going to Nineveh and the whole population converted as a consequence of his preaching. So, in an ironic, providential way, Jonah was converting his distant cousins because both he and the Assyrians were descendants of Shem. RD: Yes. Every time the words Assyria or Assyrian appear in the Old Testament, they are translated from the word Asshur. Asshur’s descendants became a mighty empire and probably because of this he became an example of the ancestor worship that we mentioned. Asshur was worshipped by his descendants. As long as Assyria lasted, which was for many centuries - until 612 BC - accounts of battles, diplomatic affairs and foreign bulletins were daily read out to Asshur’s image. It was said that every Assyrian king held that he wore the crown only with the express permission of Asshur’s deified ghost. VK: So, Asshur [AH-SURE] and Aram were sons of Shem and grandsons of Noah. They founded tribes and nations that are well known even by secular history. And the fact their names are so well known authenticates the accuracy of the text of Genesis chapter 10 where their names appear. This reinforces the fact that there is strong linguistic and geographic evidence that favors the Bible’s description of the Genesis flood and its effects on humanity. How about if we move on and discuss some of Noah’s grandsons that were born to Japheth [JA-PHUTH]? RD: Ok. Let’s start with the very first of Noah’s grandsons that the Bible mentions: Gomer. Gomer is the first listed of Japheth’s seven sons. And Gomer is a great illustration of two things. First, that the geographic spread of Noah’s descendants is exactly what you would expect of a human population that was being rebuilt starting in or around Turkey. Shem’s sons Aram and Asshur founded nations that are both located to the south and east of modern Turkey. Japheth’s son Gomer founded nations that spread to the north and west. VK: The prophet Ezekiel located the early descendants of Gomer, along with one of his sons, Togarmah, in the north quarters (Ezekiel 38:6). In modern Turkey is an area which in New Testament times was called Galatia. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus [FLAY-VEE-US JOE-SEE-PHUS] records that the people who were called Galatians or Gauls in his day (c. AD 93) were previously called Gomerites. RD: Right. And the Gomerites did not remain in Turkey. They migrated westward to what we now call France and Spain. For many centuries France was called Gaul, after the descendants of Gomer. North-west Spain is called Galicia to this day. Furthermore, Some of the Gomerites migrated further to what is now called Wales. The Welsh historian, Davis, records a traditional Welsh belief that the descendants of Gomer ‘landed on the Isle of Britain from France, about three hundred years after the flood’. He also records that the Welsh language is called Gomeraeg (after their ancestor Gomer). Other members of the Gomerite clan settled along the way, including in Armenia. The sons of Gomer were ‘Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah’ (Genesis 10:3). The Encyclopedia Britannica says that the Armenians traditionally claim to be descended from Togarmah and Ashkenaz. Ancient Armenia reached into Turkey. The name Turkey may well come from Togarmah. Others of them migrated to Germany. That connection is supported by the fact that Ashkenaz is the Hebrew word for Germany. VK: But Japheth’s sons didn’t just spread north and west from Turkey. They also spread far to the east. One of Japheth’s sons was named Madai [MAH-DIE]. Along with Shem’s son Elam, Madai is the ancestor of our modern-day Iranians. Josephus tells us that the descendants of Madai were called Medes by the Greeks. This makes perfect sense because every time the Medes are mentioned in the Old Testament, the word used is the Hebrew word Madai (maday). Initially, the Medes were a separate people and nation but after the time of Cyrus, the Medes are always, with only one exception, mentioned along with the Persians. After Cyrus, the two nations became one kingdom with one law. The Bible will often refer to the law of the Medes and Persians’. Later on the combined entity was simply called Persians. Since 1935 they have called their country Iran. The Medes also moved even further east and are thought to have settled India. RD: Another one of Noah’s grandsons and also a son of Japheth’s sons was Javan. Javan is the Hebrew word for Greece. Greece, Grecia, or Grecians appears five times in the Old Testament, and is always the Hebrew word Javan. The prophet Daniel refers to ‘the king of Grecia’ in Daniel 8:21), but what Daniel literally says is ‘the king of Javan’. Javan himself had 4 sons named Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim (Genesis 10:4), all of whom have connections with the geographic region of the middle or eastern Mediterranean region. The Elysians were an ancient Greek people and obviously received their name from Elishah. Tarshish or Tarsus was located in the region of Cilicia which is part modern Turkey. Most people know that Greek and Turkey are located very close to each other geographically. Turkey is just east of Greece. VK: And Tarshish [TAR-SHISH] is famous because the Bible tells us that that was the destination of the boat that Jonah caught before he wound up in the Mediterranean Sea and the belly of the fish. And after the name evolved into Tarsus the city became famous as the hometown of the Apostle Paul. In the book of Acts, chapter 9, verse 11 we hear God telling a man named Ananias [AN-NA-NEYE-US] to go seek out Paul, who at that time was still called Saul. God said to Ananias “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying.” RD: Right. And the geographic connections with Javan continue. The Encyclopedia Britannica says that Kittim is the biblical name for Cyprus. Cyprus is an island that is south of Turkey and near the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Javan’s 4th son, Dodanim is connected to the famous city of Troy. The people who initially settled around the area of Troy worshipped Jupiter under the name of Jupiter Dodonaeus, possibly a reference to the fourth son of Javan. Jupiter may be a derivative of the name Japheth. Jupiter’s oracle was located at a site called Dodena. The Greeks worshipped this god but called him Zeus. VK: So, thus far we see that the geographic territory occupied by Japheth’s [JA-PHUTH] descendants has covered a pretty wide range. We have seen that the descendants of his first son Gomer have been found as far to the west of Turkey as Wales and as far to the east as India. This seems like a remarkable confirmation that God honored the prayer that Noah uttered in Genesis, chapter 9, verse 27, part of which said “May God extend Japheth’s territory … .” RD: Well, let’s take a note of one more son of Japheth: Tubal. Ezekiel mentions Tubal along with Gog and Meshech (Ezekiel 39:1). His name is preserved in the name of the capital city of the nation Georgia whose capital to this day is called Tbilisi. From there, Tubal’s descendants crossed the Caucasus mountains, migrated due north-east, and gave their tribal name to the river Tobol, and hence to the famous city of Tobolsk, Russia. So, this expands the territorial reach of Japheth even more. His descendants stretched over most of the continent of Europe and deep into the continent of Asia. By contrast, the descendants of Noah’s other son Ham are primarily found in the continent of Africa. VK: Ham had 4 sons: Cush, Mizraim [MIZ-RAY-UM], Phut [FHUT], and Canaan. Ham’s descendants are so prominently identified with Africa that the Bible often refers to Africa as the land of Ham. For instance, the name of Noah’s grandson Cush is the Hebrew word for old Ethiopia. The Ethiopia of the Bible is not in the same place as the nation currently called by this name. Biblical Ethiopia is located more in the region of the modern Sudan. This is obviously still on the African continent. Without exception, the word Ethiopia in the English Bible is always a translation of the Hebrew word Cush. RD: Noah’s next grandson mentioned was Mizraim. Mizraim is the Hebrew word for Egypt. The name Egypt appears hundreds of times in the Old Testament and with only one exception is always a translation of the word Mizraim. For instance, at the burial of Jacob, the Canaanites observed the mourning of the Egyptians and so called the place Abel Mizraim (Genesis 50:11). Phut, the name of Noah’s next grandson is the Hebrew name for Libya. It is translated three times in the Old Testament that way. The ancient river Phut was in Libya. By Daniel’s day, the name had been changed to Libya (Daniel 11:43). Josephus tells us that, “Phut also was the founder of Libia , and called the inhabitants Phutites, from himself.” Ham’s final son, Canaan, of course, gave his name to land that we call Palestine. When God encountered Moses at the burning bush, God told Moses that he was sending Moses to bring his people into the land of the Canaanites. For a long time the name Canaan was synonymous with the territory we call Israel. VK: By the time of the Romans that territory was being called Palestine. But even the term Palestine has a connection to Noah’s grandsons. Many scholars see a connection between the Hebrew word that is translated in our Bibles as Philistines. Philistine, in turn came from one of the term “Philistim” [PHIL-IS-STEM] who is one of Ham’s descendants. RD: So, a brief look at Noah’s grandsons reveals several things. First, we see that as Noah’s grandsons founded tribes that grew into nations those nations fan out from the part of the world where the ark is traditionally thought to have landed: modern day Turkey. Some of Noah’s descendants, especially the families descended from Shem, settled reasonably close by in ancient Assyria (modern Lebanon) and Syria. Ham’s descendants moved south into Africa first settling along the Mediterranean coast but ultimately moved further into the interior. Japheth’s sons moved more northerly but they spread widely to the east and west just as Noah had prayed for. Noah prayed that God would enlarge Japheth’s territory and He did. VK: And, of course, it makes sense that it would take longer to reach more distant places but there was another consideration, wasn’t there? In the aftermath of the global flood the conditions were perfect for the Ice Age. The volcanic eruptions beneath the sea had put a lot of moisture into the air and the increased particulate matter would have brought on cooler-for-longer conditions. So, as Noah’s descendants spread they would have been more likely to go south first and waited for improvement in the conditions in the northern parts of Europe and Asia. But once the conditions did improve it would have been ideal for settlement. The plants and animals would have made a comeback and there would have been no competition. RD: The point of all this is that the geographic names that in many cases remain with us today point to the accuracy of the Noahic genealogies that are contained in the book of Genesis. This is confirmation that when Moses made the record he was writing history not some sort of poetical look back at the early history of mankind. VK: This is one of the reasons that we took pains in our last episode of Anchored by Truth to point out the fact that Moses was the author of the first five books of the Bible. Moses obviously wasn’t around when Noah’s sons and grandsons were so God may have given Moses the history He wanted Moses to record or Moses may have worked from oral or written histories still in circulation – likely a combination of both. Moses wrote in the 15th century BC – over a thousand years after the repopulation of the earth had begun. By that time the tribes and nations that found their origination in Noah’s grandsons had been well established but Moses would not necessarily have possessed all the information that we do. We can rely on information sources that Noah did not have access to like the treasures of clay tablets that would be found thousands of years later in Babylon, Nineveh [NIN-UH-VUH], and other sites. RD: So, again this points to the reliability of the record that Moses prepared. Moses probably had very little, if any information about how far the Gomerites had spread into France or Germany or the fact that Javan’s descendants were forming city states in what we call Greece. Moses was recording names that were relevant to tribes and peoples of which he was completely unaware. But the accuracy of his record would be confirmed by a great many later historians, even ones from other nations, and archeological finds that would only emerge into widespread view 3,500 years later. Through far-away names and places God would leave an indelible imprint of the accuracy of the record the Holy Spirit was inspiring Moses to write. That’s a pretty phenomenal thought. VK: Again, the purpose of this “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know” series is to enable people to put a solid intellectual foundation beneath their conviction that the Bible is the inspired word of God. In our day and time we need to ensure that we have that foundation because the Bible is under attack from just about every quarter. We are told by popular culture that the Bible is not relevant because it is not accurate. But as we have been discussing here today the Bible’s continuing relevance is established by the abundant evidence that it is accurate even to such small details as the names of one man’s grandsons who lived thousands of years ago. RD: Yes. People sometimes chafe at the Bible’s genealogies. I suspect most people skip right over many of the lists of names of who begat who when they read the Bible. Even faithful Christians may think that it is more important to read the chapters on family relationships, doctrinal proclamations, or subjects such as love and peace than it is to spend any time on the genealogies. But the simple truth is that the genealogies give us strong evidence that the Bible is the inspired word of God and help us make sense out of God’s actions within world history. Without that evidence we would have no good reason to invest our trust in what the Bible tells us about the other things like salvation, financial matters, family relationships, etc. The big takeaway here is that God gave us each and every part of the Bible for our benefit. We can learn from and benefit from even the parts of the Bible that at first glance may seem to be less relevant to the heart of our faith – the salvation available through Christ alone. VK: The point of this series and today’s discussion is to help Christians guard against the narratives that circulate so widely today. One of those narratives is that the Bible cannot be trusted. So, to push that narrative the critics must cast doubt on the reliability and authenticity of scripture. Only an almighty, omniscient God could have enabled Moses to provide the genealogies that are validated by history, linguistics, and geography. By doing so God gave us powerful evidence that even those genealogies are inspired revelation. To close, for today let’s listen to a prayer that God would sovereignly bring the renewal and restoration so greatly needed by our churches and our hearts. ---- PRAYER FOR RENEWAL OF THE CHURCH VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the New International Version) Genesis, chapter 10, verses 2, 6, and 22, New International Version The sixteen grandsons of Noah - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 180 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 8 – Moses the Author Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: Don't think that I will be the one to accuse you to the Father. You have put your hope in Moses, yet he is the very one who will accuse you. Moses wrote about me, and if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me.” Gospel of John, chapter 5, verses 45 and 46, Contemporary English Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we started a few weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We are calling this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. So far we have covered 5 of the 10 facts and we have done 2 other episodes to talk about what those facts mean. RD, last time we pointed out that the reason we are doing this series is to begin to give Christians a factual foundation for being able to reject some of the false narratives that circulate widely in our culture. Before we get into our 6th fact that every Christian needs to know why don’t you remind us of how you differentiate between primary and secondary narratives? RD: Well, I would also like to say hello to all the listeners joining us here today. As listeners are well aware today we are bombarded by political and cultural messages from every side. It’s gotten so bad that corporations even embed these cultural dictates in the commercials they use to sell their products. Most of the messages we see, though, are what I call secondary narratives. They are messages about the environment, family structures, marriage, politics, etc. What most people rarely think about is that these secondary narratives are dependent on other more foundational narratives which I call primary narratives. In our culture these primary narratives include ones such as Deep Time (the universe and earth are billions of years old), uniformitarianism (the present is the key to the past), and evolution (living organisms gradually changed over hundreds of millions of years to produce the biosphere we see today). But the overarching result of these primary narratives is that we don’t need God to explain the earth and universe as we know and see it. VK: So, another primary narrative that has taken hold of much of society is that since God is no longer necessary to explain life and the physical universe man is free to act as he wishes. This narrative is sometimes labeled homo mensura which means “man is the measure.” If God isn’t around man may organize his life and his communities in any manner that suits him or her. RD: Correct. The problem with this whole scheme, obviously, is that just because man has invented explanations for why God isn’t necessary does not mean that God went out of existence. God is still very much in existence and much to the chagrin of modern man – sovereign over the affairs of creation, nature, nations, and individuals. Truth is that which corresponds to reality not that which corresponds to our convenience or preferences. And the stubborn, unrelenting truth is that God has always existed and is still in control. The only question is whether or not we will acknowledge His existence and sovereignty. VK: We want to make it clear that God exists and is sovereign regardless of whether any or all acknowledge that. Our acknowledgment of that fact is for our benefit not God’s. And that’s the point of this “10 facts every Christian needs to know” series. We want Christians to have a solid foundation of fact that they can use to support their faith. The facts we are presenting in this series help demonstrate that the primary narratives that are circulating in our culture are flawed – fatally flawed. So, if we put our trust in them we are building the houses of our lives on sand that is ultimately going to wash away. Even if that sand does not wash away to our detriment in this life it will all be gone when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ. RD: Exactly. The ten facts that we are covering help people begin to chip away at the hold those primary narratives have over their lives. Now the first five facts demonstrated that the scientific support for Deep Time, uniformitarianism, and evolution is not nearly as strong as most people believe – and not nearly as strong as is taught in most educational settings. We’ll let people revisit those episodes to see why. But today we want to move on our 6th fact – because we want people to understand that while our first 5 facts help demonstrate the need for God to explain the existence of the universe and life these next five facts will help show that the Bible contains incontrovertible evidence that it is the inspired word of God. VK: So, what is fact number 6? RD: Fact number 6 is that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. VK: The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Another name that is often given to these books is the Torah. So, Torah means the same as Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses. In the Jewish tradition these books are sometimes referred to as the Written Torah. You would think that calling these books “the Five Books of Moses” would sort of settle the question of authorship. RD: And the question of the author of the Pentateuch was essentially a non-question for over 3,000 years. But in the last couple of hundred years liberal Bible critics have begun to postulate that Moses was not, in fact, the author of the Pentateuch. Instead based on supposed linguistic analysis liberal critics have said that there were multiple authors who wrote the first five books of the Bible. Even more than that, these critics have asserted that the Pentateuch was not written during the period of the Exodus and 40 years in the wilderness. Instead the critics date the production of the books to dates that vary between 900 BC or so to around 500 BC. VK: The traditional dating for the Pentateuch is that they were written either in the 15th century BC or at the latest in the 13th century BC. The variance in the dates depends on whether the scholar supports either the “late date” or the “early date” for the time of the Israelites departure from Egypt that is described in the book of Exodus. Probably, the most widely accepted date is the early date which would place the departure of the Hebrews around 1445 or 46 BC. So, the assertion that the books of the Pentateuch were written between 900 BC to 500 BC places it in a difference of several centuries. That’s not a negligible difference. So, if the liberal critics do not believe that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible who do they believe wrote them? RD: One common hypothesis is the so-called JEDP hypothesis. It’s called that because this hypothesis says that there were at least 4 different documents that were combined to create the Pentateuch. The “J” document supposedly used was created by a writer who preferred to use the term “Jehovah” as the name for God. Jehovah, of course, is the Greek version of the Hebrew term “Yahweh” which most people know means “I am.” VK: This name was made famous in Moses encounter with God at the burning bush when God declared that His name was “I am who I am.” In Exodus, chapter 3, verses 13 and 14 we have this exchange. “Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” RD: Right. So, the hypothesis says that the “J” document writer liked the name Jehovah for God but the “E” document writer used the name “Elohim” for God. The Elohist author(s) supposedly lived around 700 – 750 BC and lived in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. VK: This would have been after the kingdom of Israel which had been unified under David and Solomon had been divided under Solomon’s son. The Northern Kingdom was called “Israel” and the Southern Kingdom was called “Judah.” RD: The “D” stands for Deuteronomy because it is supposed that this document writer or writers wrote most of this book. It is also usually assumed that this was the book that was referred to in 2 Kings 22:8 and was found in the temple in Jerusalem in 621 BC. Then the “P” refers to one or more “Priests” who supposedly lived during the period of the Babylonian exile or immediately after. It is supposed that these priests wanted to compile a sort of pious fiction to either encourage the people … VK: Who obviously would have been very discouraged when they were either in exile in Babylon instead of in their homeland in Palestine – or still recovering from the exile even after they returned back to their homeland after the Persians conquered the Babylonians. RD: … yes. Or they were writing a book because they wanted to compose a kind of holiness code for the exiles or returnees and so compiled a final set of books from existing earlier documents and wanted to imprint them with a form of authority so they ascribed their authorship to the most famous Jewish figure ever: Moses. VK: The problem of course is that if this hypothesis is true it immediately discredits a number of other scriptural passages that refer to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. There are references to Moses as the author in the books of Joshua, 1st and 2nd Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Malachi in the Old Testament. And there are more references to Moses as being the author of the Pentateuch in the New Testament such as our opening scripture from the Gospel of John. RD: Right. And of all of these scriptural references to Moses as being the one who received the law from God and transmitted it to the Israelites the reference from John 4:45 & 46 is certainly one of the most troubling – if Moses didn’t actually receive the law. It is Jesus speaking in John 45 & 46. In these verses Jesus unequivocally states “that Moses wrote about me.” VK: When he said this, many commentators believe Jesus was referring to passages such as Genesis, chapter 3, verse 15 and Genesis, chapter 49, verse 10. But Jesus was also likely referring to Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 15 where Moses wrote, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.” RD: Right. If Moses did not write the books of Genesis and Deuteronomy then Jesus was mistaken. Moses had not, in fact, written about Him. This would not just be a problem. It would be catastrophic for our salvation. In order to be our Savior Jesus must be both fully human and fully divine. A fully divine being cannot sin or make errors – even errors pertaining to historical fact. So, if Jesus was mistaken and Moses did not write the Pentateuch it threatens the whole basis of Christianity. VK: Well. I guess that tells you what’s at stake with fact number 6 – that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. So, what evidence is there that Moses did write the first five books of the Bible? RD: Well, we don’t have time today to get into all the lines of evidence but there are several of them. But let’s start with this. The JEDP hypothesis and others like it all depend on some form of linguistic analysis to declare that the Pentateuch was not the work of a single author. The fundamental claim is that the use of multiple names for God indicates that the books must have come from one writer. But while linguistic analysis is the basis for the JEDP hypothesis linguistic analysis also destroys the hypothesis. VK: How so? RD: Supposedly under this hypothesis the JEDP documents were being produced between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Well, during that time period many other books of the Bible were being written. We know for certain then that the most popular name that was being used during this time period was a different term from “Jehovah” or “Elohim.” It was the term “Jehovah Sabaoth.” The English translation of this term is the title “the Lord of Hosts.” The term “hosts” here equates to the term “armies.” VK: According to Dr. Jonathan Sarfati’s commentary on the first 11 chapters of Genesis entitled The Genesis Account, the term “the Lord of Hosts” “occurs about 67 times in Isaiah (late 8th century BC), 83 times in Jeremiah (turn of the 7th and 6th centuries BC), 13 times in 2 chapters of Haggai (late 6th century BC), and 51 times in Zechariah (turn of the 6th and 5th century). That is, this title for God was used the whole time the Documentarians claim the Pentateuch was written. But this title is not in the Pentateuch at all, most strange for redactors.” RD: Right. So, supposedly linguistic analysis tells us that there was not have a single author for the first five books of the Bible but linguistic analysis also tells us that during the very time period in which the Pentateuch was supposedly being fabricated the priests doing the fabrication never used the title for God that most commonly being employed for over 200 years. Said slightly differently, the principle reason the critics use to criticize Mosaic authorship actually demonstrates that the Pentateuch was created long before the period during which they want to ascribe creation. VK: That seems like a relevant point. Are there any other reasons for believing that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch? RD: Plenty actually. But here’s one that’s fairly easy to understand. It is pretty obvious from reading the books of Genesis through Deuteronomy that whoever wrote them was very familiar with the land of Egypt but had only very limited familiarity with Palestine. Dr. Gleason Archer in The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties provides these observations. The climate and weather that is cited in the book of Exodus as illustrated in the crop sequence in Exodus 9:31 & 32 is typically Egyptian not Palestinian. The trees and animals referred to in Exodus through Deuteronomy are all indigenous to Egypt or the Sinai Peninsula but are not common to Palestine. VK: This is relevant because according to the books themselves they were written during the period in which they were leaving captivity in Egypt and heading for the land that had been promised to Abraham – Palestine. The book of Genesis covers the period from creation until the Israelites left Palestine to settle in Egypt because of a severe famine. While in Egypt the nation grew from just about 80 people to a nation of close to two million. The book of Exodus, of course, describes Moses confronting Pharaoh and the initial period after the Hebrews left Egypt. For the next 40 years they wandered in or around the Sinai peninsula. So, for instance, Dr. Archer notes that the acacia [AH-KAY-SHUH] tree which figures prominently in the construction and furnishing of the tabernacle described in Exodus is found widely in Egypt and the Sinai but is only found in Palestine in the region around the Dead Sea. He also notes that the hides that were supposed to furnish the outer covering of the tabernacle came from an animal called a dugong [DOO-GAAHNG]. The dugong is a form of marine mammal that is similar to a manatee. It is found in the seas adjacent to Egypt and the Sinai but is unknown in Palestine. RD: And the lists of clean and unclean animals that are contained in Leviticus chapter 11 and repeated in Deuteronomy chapter 14 include a number of animals that are peculiar to the Sinai but are not found in Palestine. It’s hard to know how a group of priests who had been living either in Palestine or the territory around Babylon which is far to the east of Palestine could or would have constructed such a list. Even if they familiarized themselves somehow with a group of animals completely foreign to them the people to whom they were writing would have had no way to relate. Bear in mind the supposed date the documents that supposedly formed the basis for the Pentateuch were written hundreds of years after the Exodus. VK: Dr. Archer also notes that all of the geographic references in the first five books show someone who is very familiar with Egypt but not familiar at all with Palestine. In Genesis, chapter 13, verse 10 when the author is trying to describe what the vegetation is like in the Jordan River valley he compares it to a well-known region in the Eastern part of the Nile River delta. This reference would have made no sense to a group that had lived in Palestine or Babylon but made perfect sense for a people who, at that time, had lived in Egypt for hundreds of years. Remember that after Jacob went with his family down to Egypt they stayed there for over 400 years. By that time the descendants would have forgotten all about what Palestine was like but would have been very familiar with Egyptian geography. RD: And another thing that makes perfect sense for the view that Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy during the period immediately after the Egyptian captivity was the emphasis that is placed in the books on the tabernacle. The tabernacle was a large tent that was built according to very exacting specifications. The specifications are exact about size, materials, structure, organization, and furnishing. It is an extraordinary focus on what is essentially an elaborate tent set up. There is no other example in ancient literature of so much attention paid to a mobile worship center. There is so much detail provided that even the weight of the base sockets for the pillars that hold the sides of the tent is specified. VK: If the JEDP hypothesis were true the readers of the assembled documents would have been living in a time well after the construction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Solomon’s temple was magnificent in every way. Even if the final documents were put together during or after the Babylonian captivity all the Jews still remembered or know of the glory of Solomon’s temple. Solomon’s temple lasted for hundreds of years in Jerusalem before it was destroyed by the Babylonians. Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem had been the center of Jewish life for hundreds of years by the time the purported documents were written. It’s hard to see why any group of writers would have thought that elaborately describing a tent that had no relevance to their readers would have inspired them or induced them to more holy living. But the descriptions of the portable tabernacle would have made perfect sense to a group of desert wanderers who would see that tabernacle as the center of their lives and worship for the next several decades. RD: So, again the view that was accepted in the church for nearly three-thousand years – that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible during the 40 year period while the Hebrews were wandering in the desert – makes sense of the reason so much attention was paid to the tabernacle. It makes no sense in the JEDP hypothesis. VK: And we should make one final point for today. At one time it was thought that one reason Moses couldn’t have written the Pentateuch was that 19th century scholars were dubious that writing was being widely used at the date of the Exodus in the 1400’s BC. But today we know that writing was commonplace in Palestine at this time, don’t we? RD: Yes. There have been numerous discoveries of clay tablets which show that even the common people in and around the Sinai were literate. There was a group of tablets discovered in Serabit-el-Khasim in the region where the Egyptians operated some turquoise mines during the 2nd millennium BC. The tablets contained records of mining quotas and some religious declarations. But the significant thing is that the writing was in an irregular style quite different than would have been done by a professional scribe. So, as Dr. Archer says, “Already back in the 17th or 18th centuries BC even the lowest social strata of Canaanite population, slave-miners who labored under Egyptian foremen, were well able to read and write.” Well, certainly if slave-miners could, Moses who had been educated in Pharaoh’s household would have been capable of preparing the books attributed to him. VK: When it comes down to it the reason the critics resist Moses’ authorship of the first five books of the Bible is because those books contain prophecies which we now know have been fulfilled. Fulfilled prophecy is strong evidence that those five books, as well as the rest of the Bible, were inspired by a supernatural God. Critics try to late-date books until after prophecies were fulfilled in the hopes that doing so makes it seem like the writer was writing history disguised as prophecy. Moses, among other things, prophesied that if the Hebrews didn’t remain faithful to their God they would wind up going into captivity. That happened when the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and the Babylonians destroyed Judah in the early 6th century BC. RD: The point of this series and today’s discussion is to help Christians guard against the narratives that circulate so widely today. One of those narratives is that the Bible cannot be trusted. So, to push that narrative the critics must cast doubt on the reliability and authenticity of scripture. The bad news for the critics is that the Bible can withstand those attacks provided Christians arm themselves with relevant facts and knowledge. Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he uttered prophecies that would be fulfilled a thousand years later and others that would be fulfilled 500 years after that. Only an almighty, omniscient God could have enabled Moses to do that but by doing so He gave powerful evidence that those 5 books were only the beginning of long line of inspired revelation. VK: When we start taking a hard look at the available evidence our brains confirm what our hearts already know – there is no coherent explanation for the universe, the Bible, and the events of world history that doesn’t include God. This sounds like a great time to go to the Lord in prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer that God would intervene to stop one of the most pernicious evils that has ever existed in our world: human trafficking. Sadly, this evil is not confined to far-away places but even occurs where we’d least hope – in our own community. ---- PRAYER FOR COMBATTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the Contemporary English Version) Gospel of John, chapter 5, verses 45 and 46, Contemporary English Version Genesis in clay - creation.com New archaeological find affirms Old Testament historicity - creation.com Debunking the Documentary Hypothesis - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 179 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 7 – Declining Narratives Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we started a few weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We are calling this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. So far we have covered 5 of the 10 facts and we have done that over 6 episodes. RD, let’s do a quick review of the first 5 facts and maybe take a quick look at where we are and where we’re going. RD: Well, I would also like to say hello to all the listeners joining us here today. I do think it is a good idea for us to do a status check at this point because I think that this is one of the most important series that we’ve ever done on Anchored by Truth. VK: Why is that? RD: Well, to say our society is in a mess today probably a bit of an understatement. I don’t want to spend too much time listing the litany of social and cultural issues that are afflicting us because they are apparent and well known. But one of my observations has been for a long time is that while we normally talk about economic problems, social problems, health problems, political problems, etc. – all of those really stem from a spiritual problem. And the heart of that spiritual problem is people turning away from the only source of truth and light that can make a difference in the human heart – the Bible. Over the last 75 years or more there has been a steady decline in the United States and in just about all western cultures in Biblical literacy. Most surveys tell us that far less than 10% of Americans have any real depth of knowledge about the Bible. VK: And you believe that one reason for that is that today in America and the west most people have come to regard the Bible as either being only partially true at best and outright myth and fairy tale at worst? And part of what has caused this profound doubt is the counter Biblical narratives that have arisen over the last 150 plus years. These counter Biblical narratives have become so deeply embedded in our society that the counter narratives hold much greater sway over our population than the transcendent truth of the Bible. And so far we have talked about an unholy trinity of those narratives: Deep Time, uniformitarianism, and evolution. Geological uniformitarianism played key role in convincing people like Charles Darwin that the earth was millions or billions of years old. This, in turn, allowed Darwin that to extend those uniformitarian ideas beyond geology to biology which turned into the General Theory of Evolution. So, those three ideas became instrumental in creating widespread doubt or indifference to the Scripture. RD: We pointed out last time that the most prominent atheist of the last 3 or 4 decades is Richard Dawkins. Lest anyone think that this dark, despotic chain of decline … VK: Uh, that’s easy for you to say … dark, despotic chain of decline … RD: … not really. Just so that listeners don’t think I’m being unduly melodramatic even Richard Dawkins has connected Darwin and a lack of faith in God – what I am calling a dark, despotic chain of decline. Dawkins has written that “Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In other words Dawkins admits that without Darwin, or at least his ideas, someone who wanted to be an atheist was continually confronted with some very troubling question that his belief system couldn’t answer. Without God where did everything come from? Without God who created life? Without God who made a creature so different from all of the other creatures we see about us on the earth? VK: The Bible clearly tells us that “God created the heavens and earth.” The Bible tells us that God created man in His image. And the Bible describes God’s original creative activity as taking place thousands of years ago – not millions or billions. So, to replace God as being necessary to the world as we know it, these counter narratives had to be created, circulated, and adopted. And they were … so successfully, that if anyone dares suggest that the earth is only thousands of years old they are immediately attacked or ridiculed. And you think that this “10 Facts” series is important because it represents the launching point for knocking that unholy trinity of dark, despotic narratives off of their high, exalted perch. RD: Exactly. Right now most of our attention gets focused on what I call secondary narratives. The narratives we notice, such as the prominent social and political narratives, are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion or same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, increased government control and regulation over our daily lives, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. Primary narratives are the overarching paradigms so embedded in the culture that they are not even noticed any more. As we said last time, these primary narratives are like the framed art prints on your wall. Initially you see them and think about them, but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only notice them when a visitor comes in and makes a comment about them. Deep time, evolution, and uniformitarianism - among others - are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. VK: So – as we mentioned last time - briefly put Deep Time, along with its close cousin the Big Bang, does away with the need for God as Creator of the universe. The General Theory of Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. Biological uniformitarianism provides the mechanism we need to explain the amazing biodiversity around us and does away with God as Sustainer and Multiplier. And geological uniformitarianism explains why the earth’s surface looks the way it does. And, in doing so, geological uniformitarianism does away with God as the Administrator of justice. The big lesson that came out of the Genesis flood is that if you practice evil continually God will wipe you off the face of the earth. That’s a pretty potent lesson in how seriously God takes sin. The sum of these parts is that we have now done away with any need to acknowledge God since we can explain the universe, life, and the surface of the earth without Him. And … since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. RD: Right. So, these primary so-called scientific narratives give rise to another primary moral or ethical narrative that I want to spend some time on today – a narrative that is sometimes phrased homo mensura. VK: According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary homo mensura [MEN-SUR-AH] is a doctrine first propounded by the Greek philosopher Protagoras which holds that humankind is the measure of all things. It is sometimes simply stated “as man is the measure.” This means that everything is relative to human apprehension and evaluation, and that there is no objective truth. We’ve talked before on Anchored by Truth that we live in a post-modernistic world that not only denies that we can know absolute truth but also that it even exists. RD: Right. Nature abhors a vacuum. Once we did away with God we had to have something to fill the void so man stepped up and stepped in. So, as you’ve already noted this freed man up to begin to redefine any of the transcendent standards that God had established for man. Man felt free to do away with the Ten Commandments because supposedly science had done away with the Being who sent the commandments down the mountain. VK: The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. And we are seeing all around us the reality of what happens with man starts to see himself as, in fact, being the only measure by which all standards should be established or moral or ethical judgments be made. RD: There’s an old saying that “ideas have consequences.” We can now see the consequences these primary narratives have on communities and societies and I think many people are waking up to the fact that they don’t like these consequences. But … and this a big but … these primary narratives are so deeply embedded within our culture we have moved past the point where we can simply dismiss them out of hand. It’s no longer enough just to say, as the old bumper sticker used to read, “The Bible says it. I believe it. End of discussion.” That may be true for many people. They do believe the Bible and that’s great. But when you simply proclaim but fail to “explain” you have given the other person no reason they should accept your proclamation. VK: And even Jesus modeled this approach in providing a witness to the watching world. In the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 11 Jesus said, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. If not, believe because of the things I do.” That’s from the Good News Translation. RD: Right. The predominant result of the primary narratives supposedly coming from science – Deep Time, evolution, uniformitarianism - was to get rid of a perceived need for God. This gave rise to a primary narrative that man was now the highest and only judge for how life was to be lived, how the universe was to be explained, and how the affairs of man were to be governed. So, if we are going to get back to a world in which God’s transcendent truth supplants homo mensura we can’t just dispute the child we must begin to engage the false parent. VK: So in this “10 Facts” series we are challenging the so-called truth of those primary narratives that we supposedly get from science? And we’ve gone through 5 of the 10 facts so far? RD: Right. But rather than moving on to fact 6 today I want to take a little time and give a broader overview of what we are trying to accomplish. With the first 5 of our “10 facts” we have challenged the prevailing view of what might be termed natural history. With the next 5 facts I want to shift from talking just about natural history to talking about human history. I specifically want to talk about how what we know about human history is not only consistent with the Bible but how certain events within human history actually help confirm the Bible’s supernatural origin. VK: We have often said on Anchored by Truth that any book that claims to be the word of God must possess at least attributes. First, the book must be consistent with what we know from making observations about the world around us. And I’ll add that we’re not just talking about observations of the physical universe but also what we know about the history that has preceded us – both natural history and human history. Second, that book would have to give evidence of a supernatural point of origin. These criteria are important. You obviously wouldn’t want to trust a book claiming to come from God that is manifestly inconsistent with observations you can easily make. Why trust a book’s depiction of heaven if you can easily verify it can’t even accurately tell you about earth? Why trust a prophecy about the future if what that book tells you about the past is inaccurate? RD: Yes. So, with our first 5 facts we demonstrated that the natural history related by the Bible is reliable. In saying this we are not trying to turn the Bible into a history or a science textbook. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, the principle purpose of the Bible is “primarily teach what we are to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of us.” In other words, the purpose of the Bible is to tell us about God and to transmit God’s expectations for us to us. But as the Bible accomplished its purpose it has to necessarily relate observations about the world and the people upon whom it reports. If those observations weren’t accurate we would have valid reasons for not accepting the reliability of the Bible. VK: And, notwithstanding man’s attempts to dispute with the Bible, the observations the Bible reports about natural history are accurate when we are honest with the science and honest with the Bible’s literary constructs. The Bible does contain poetry, allegory, and even romantic poetry. No responsible Bible interpreter tries to construe non-historical sections literally. But one section of the Bible that does contain history is very often maligned. That is the opening chapters of Genesis. The opening chapters of Genesis contain a significant amount of material about natural history. And the point of our first 5 facts was to demonstrate that contrary to current attempt to defame that history, the natural history in the opening chapters of Genesis remains stubbornly accurate. RD: The first fact that we discussed was that every Christian needs to know is that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old. This confirms the age of the earth we can calculate from the genealogies in Genesis. The second fact we covered was that the complexity of life makes it impossible for life to have arisen as a result of the random collision of atoms and molecules – even if you could explain the existence of the atoms and molecules to begin with. This confirms the Bible’s record of God creating all life beginning on day 3 of the creation week. Fact number 3 is that there is solid scientific evidence that the tallest mountains on earth were underwater at one time. This confirms the account of a worldwide flood in chapters 6 through 8 of Genesis. VK: The 4th fact we discussed is that the fossil record does not support any kind of gradual development of the many different types of plants and animals we see on earth. Instead, life on earth is fundamentally discontinuous at both a biochemical level as well as at the level of visible morphology. The first fossils we see in the rocks show plants and animals fully formed and functional and even those phyla that are supposedly hundreds of millions of years old so closely resemble their modern counterparts they are easily recognized. The 5th fact we talked about is that the dating methods that are used to assign dates to rocks or fossils all depend on assumptions that are unproved and unprovable. Moreover, those methods have been shown to dramatically misdate certain specimens when we know when a particular sample of rock was formed by volcanic eruption. RD: Right. So, in our first 5 facts we have concentrated on showing that the natural history related by the Bible is entirely reasonable when compared with empirical observations of the world we live on. We now want to turn out attention to showing that Bible is equally reliable when it comes to the facts that it chooses to relate about human history. VK: Can you give us a preview of what we will be talking about? RD: Well, I don’t want to give away too much right now but let me just touch on one subject that will be relevant - geography. Just about every good study Bible has one or more maps as a part of it. VK: I think most people know that. RD: I think they do too. I think they take them for granted. But in taking them for granted what they are unconsciously doing is acknowledging the reliability of the underlying historical text. Remember, that those maps are being produced by modern users of the Bible. None of the Bible writers created maps and inserted them into their scroll, clay tablet, or codex. It’s not that they couldn’t have. Maps have been around for thousands of years. But that wasn’t their purpose. They were simply preparing records or accounts initially for the Jewish nation. But in the course of making their record they described names, dates, and places. Now calendar systems have changed down through history. So, we have to “translate” their dates into the Gregorian calendar that we use today. And names have a certain amount of variation. The same man might be called Richard, Rick, or Dick and no one in our society would think anything about it. The same thing was true in ancient times. King Uzziah was also known as King Azariah. VK: But geographic places don’t change. That doesn’t mean that the boundaries of a particular kingdom or nation won’t vary over time. The United States started out as 13 colonies but today is 50 different states. But it is distinctly the same nation. But even while the nation is changing New York City is still in the same place today as it was when the Dutch first bartered for the right to the property. But New York City was originally called New Amsterdam. The name was changed in honor of the Duke of York following the British acquisition of it from the Dutch. And that is a phenomenon that we also see in the Bible. Name of places will change although the place is obviously still in the same geographic location. RD: Right. And the fact that we can know with a high degree of confidence what places those ancient names applied to means that modern scholars can construct accurate maps. But they couldn’t do that if the ancient Bible texts were unreliable. This reliability and accuracy distinguished the Bible from many other books that claim to be the word of God. VK: I see what you’re saying. Biblical scholars often have discussions about the exact route that the Israelites took when they left Egypt. There are often 3 possible routes that are discussed: the Northern Coastal route, the Bitter Lakes route, or the Suez route. But the fact that they can discuss various possibilities at all means that the description of the route in the book of Exodus is accurate enough that it corresponds to the known geography of that region. It corresponds well enough that there are multiple possibilities that could satisfy the described path. I suppose people might say that since we can’t identify the exact route that casts doubt on the accuracy of the text. RD: But that makes as much sense as a friend asking how you went from Macon, Georgia to Chattanooga, Tennessee and wondering whether you went straight through Atlanta or took the beltway around it. You reply you don’t know because you were asleep and someone else was driving. Your friend wouldn’t say that you couldn’t have made the trip because you weren’t sure which route you took. The Bible record is proven to be true and accurate regardless of which of those 3 possibilities, or another one, is true. The point is that the Bible texts are accurate enough to permit scholars to identify the location of Bible events on modern maps. This, then, is a testimony to the accuracy of the text that we have received. VK: So, one of the points that we will be making in the next 5 facts that we will be covering is that we can have confidence in the reliability and accuracy of the Bible’s text. And that is true of both the Old and the New Testaments. The book of Exodus which is in the Old Testament is accurate when it relates information pertaining to the geography of modern day Israel and Egypt. The book of Acts is equally accurate when it relates information pertaining to the Roman Empire of the 1st century AD. The books of Exodus and Acts are separated by approximately 1,500 years in terms of their time of preparation. But both books display the concern of the inspired Bible writers for accuracy and fidelity. RD: Right. So, this example helps reinforce the fact that the Bible is accurate when it relates human history as well as natural history. And that’s a point we want to reinforce in the next 5 facts. But in our next 5 facts we are also going to introduce a couple of facts that demonstrate that the Bible also has a supernatural point of origin. VK: Many, many writers would be competent at relating history. There is an abundance of ancient historians and while their reliability varies there are still many of them who prepared very accurate accounts of certain historical events or people. But the Bible contains evidence that its writers weren’t just working with their human gifts as impressive as some might have been. The Bible contains evidence that there was a supernatural Presence superintending and inspiring the records they were preparing. When God directed the individual writers to pick up their pen or stylus He provided them information that would have been impossible for them to discern unless He was choosing to give them supernatural insights. RD: The point of this series and today’s discussion is to help Christians guard against as the Apostle Paul put it “Satan’s wiles.” Ever since the Garden of Eden Satan has used the same strategy. First Satan casts doubt on God’s goodness. Then He denies God’s truth. The next he elevates the self-importance of man. Finally, he establishes a replacement for God’s truth in the mind and heart of men. That’s what we see with these primary narratives we’ve been talking about. The Bible tells us the earth is thousands of years old. But then someone got the idea that the topographic features of the earth needed millions of years to form. Then that idea was extended beyond geology to biology. Then we invented dating mechanisms based on unprovable assumptions but asserted that anyone who doubted them must be doubting science. Then after God was deemed no longer necessary all that was left was to decide that man was the measure of all things. VK: As you said it’s a dark, despotic chain of decline and it’s been going on for a long time. But in the 150 years since uniformitarian ideas began to seize popular culture the decline has accelerated and one of those primary narratives has become that science has proven that our world and universe can exist just fine without God. But when we start taking a hard look at the available evidence our brains confirm what our hearts already know – there is no coherent explanation for the universe that doesn’t include God. This sounds like a great time to go to the Lord in prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer that we and our friends and neighbors would set aside all of the narratives that our culture pushes and instead return to the inerrant, infallible, and inspired worship of the One True God. ---- PRAYER FOR RESTORATION OF THE WORSHIP OF THE ONE TRUE GOD VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the New International Version) 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version Immeasurable Age - creation.com Radio-dating in Rubble - creation.com Dinosaur footprint treasure trove found in Britain - creation.com The Bright Angel Trail trackways - creation.com Flat gaps - creation.com Dinosaur and mammal tracks found together - creation.com Genesis in clay - creation.com New archaeological find affirms Old Testament historicity - creation.com Debunking the Documentary Hypothesis - creation.com Noahs Flood - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 178 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 6 – Age Irregularities Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we started a few weeks ago on Anchored by Truth. We are calling this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. He is the one picking the facts we are covering in this series. RD, we’ve covered 4 of the 10 facts so far in this series. How about if we do a quick refresher on those four facts? RD: Well, I would also like to say hello to all the listeners joining us here today. We’re very grateful for those who have an interest in deepening their faith by thinking carefully about the Bible and the truth that it contains. The first fact that we discussed was that every Christian needs to know is that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old. The second fact we covered was that the complexity of life makes it impossible for life to have arisen as a result of the random collision of atoms and molecules – even if you could explain the existence of the atoms and molecules to begin with. Fact number 3 is that there is solid scientific evidence that the tallest mountains on earth were underwater at one time. And the 4th fact every Christian needs to know is that the fossil record does not support evolution. VK: So, briefly put the first fact helps dispel the assertion that “Deep Time” is supported scientifically. Said slightly differently, the conventional idea that the universe and earth are billions of years old does not possess the scientific support that is commonly supposed. The 2nd fact dispels the idea that living creatures could have risen by chance through the random, chaotic interaction of inanimate matter. The 3rd fact points out that the earth as we see it today reflects at least one previous catastrophic flood sometime in its history. And the 4th fact reveals that there is no direct scientific evidence that evolution as conceived by Charles Darwin ever occurred. RD: Yes. Just to amplify what we are talking about with that 4th fact, Dr. Pierre P. Grasse’ who was one of the world’s greatest living biologists, in his book Evolution of Living Organisms said that “the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms. A knowledge of paleontology is, therefore, a prerequisite; only paleontology can provide … the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms.” In other words Dr. Grasse’ plainly said there is no scientific evidentiary mechanism that can make up for the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. And, David Kitts, a professor of geology at the University of Oklahoma said, “Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them.” VK: These facts taken together really point out that so much of what is normally taken for granted in our culture – primary narratives as you call them - really rests on an untenable foundation. You like to distinguish between primary and secondary narratives because you think that that understanding that distinction is very important to Christians being able be salt and light to the culture. What do you mean by primary and secondary narratives? RD: Primary narratives are overarching paradigms so embedded in the culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed art prints on your wall. Initially you see them and think about them, but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only notice them when a visitor comes in and makes a comment about them. Deep time, evolution, and uniformitarianism - among others - are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice, such as the prominent social and political narratives, are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion or same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, increased government control and regulation over our daily lives, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. VK: Why is that? RD: Because most people need to believe that there is at least a modicum of consistency in their worldview – their value set. Before the appearance of these primary narratives it was far more difficult for people to simply side step God and His authority. But Deep Time and the Big Bang did away with the need to see God as the Creator of the physical universe. Widespread belief in evolution did away with the need to have God as the Author of Life. Uniformitarianism replaced catastrophism as the dominant view for how the topographic features of the earth was produced. Catastrophism was the belief that the physical features of our planet were largely shaped by one or more catastrophes such as the Genesis global flood. This did away with the previously widespread narrative that God had not only created everything but that he was also the Administrator of Justice. Genesis makes it pretty clear that the global flood was caused because of sin. VK: Genesis, chapter 6, verses 5 through 7 say, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” RD: Right. So, notice that the predominant result of these primary narratives – Deep Time, evolution, uniformitarianism - was to get rid of a perceived need for God. Before the General Theory of Evolution came around even atheists admitted that they had no adequate way to explain the existence of the created order and life. VK: Probably the most prominent atheist of the last 3 or 4 decades is Richard Dawkins. Even Dawkins has written that “Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In other words Darwin gave a level of respectability to an idea that previously was widely and easily dismissed – the idea that living creatures did not need a Creator to explain their existence. Before Darwin it’s not that evolutionary-type theories didn’t exist, but they had no hold or approval in popular culture. RD: Yes. So, once our modern culture got rid of the common-sensical notion that God exists the post-modernists were free to redefine a value set free of God. This included the definition of family, the suitability of various sexual practices, man’s dominion over nature, the distinction among religious truth claims, etc. We replaced a value system characterized by the 10 commandments with a value system characterized by humanist principles. VK: So in this “10 Facts” series we are challenging the truth of those primary narratives, aren’t we? I think this is part of what Jesus meant when he said, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” That’s John, chapter 8, verse 32. So, what truth do we want to focus on today? What is fact 5 of the 10 facts every Christian needs to know? RD: Fact 5 is that the conventional dates assigned to the age of the earth and universe do not possess the scientific support normally presumed. VK: What you’re saying is that when we hear on various tv shows and internet videos that the universe is 14.5 Billion years old and the earth is 4.5 Billion years old – there is really very little, if any, scientific support for assigning those dates. I think you better elaborate on what you’re thinking. RD: In our first fact of this series we began our disabuse of the notion of Deep Time by citing 3 lines of evidence that show that the earth and universe are thousands of years old – not Billions. In our second episode we added a fourth line of evidence. VK: And those episodes are available on our website, crystalseabooks.com, or their favorite podcasting app for anyone who wants to review them. RD: Today, rather than focusing on evidence that the earth is “young” I want to focus on the problems associated with the way conventional science has assigned those long dates. To begin with we need to recognize that there is no way for scientists, or anyone, to “measure” the age of the earth and universe – even though that idea circulates widely in our culture. No scientist has measured the age of the earth. They can’t because it is impossible to measure age. The age of events that extend beyond our recording ability are always calculated – they are not measured. VK: What do you mean that the ages are “calculated?” RD: There are 3 and only 3 ways of determining the age of anything. If we have the right records we can simply go to the records and determining how much time has passed between the start of the event and the end of the event. VK: And that’s how we usually determine our own age. We know our birthdate and the current year and we simply subtract one date from the other. For some of you that’s getting harder day by day. RD: Right. At my age counting on fingers and toes doesn’t cut it any more. Going to the records works provided we have reliable records. Another way of determining age is to compare something of an unknown age with something of a known age and determining how they compare. VK: An example of this approach might be if a doctor was trying to determine the age of a child and didn’t have the child’s records or history. The doctor can tell how tall the child is, how much they weigh, the kind of teeth the child possesses, etc. Doctors have good ideas of how fast children normally develop and so can probably make a reasonably accurate determination of a child’s age based on their stage of development. But this kind of an approach assumes that the child is about average and didn’t have any conditions that affected their growth and development. These assumptions might be wrong and would produce an incorrect age. The comparative approach is often used and works well in archeology. Archeologists can compare a new find from a new site and see whether there are any existing artifacts that resemble the new find. If we know that a particular piece of pottery came from the 1st century AD in Israel and we find an unknown piece of pottery we can compare the two and see if the new piece looks similar to previously identified artifact. But again, this assumes that the first artifact was dated correctly. RD: Right. And the third way of determining age is by measuring the rate of some process, and the amount of product that process produces, and working out how long it would take to produce that amount of product at that rate of production. Said differently, the age is calculated by determining or knowing the rate of change associated with a process and then using that rate and changes in the state of an object or creature based on that rate to infer the passage of time. This process can be very accurate. For instance, forensic scientists may use this kind of an approach in helping decide when someone died. The forensic scientists may know that the presence of certain stages of insects around a dead body can reveal how long it has been since death occurred. This approach can also be accurate where we know with certainty the starting nature of the object or element we are dating and that there have not been material changes either in the rate of change or the introduction of external contaminants. Unfortunately, using processes and rates of change, especially radioactive decay, is the most common way scientists try to approach dating the age of rocks and the earth. VK: And that is, of course, where uncertainty enters the picture. For example radioactive uranium naturally decays into lead. Scientists can measure how fast this is happening now. They can then measure how much lead is present in a rock, and calculate how long it would take for uranium decay to produce that much lead. But in making this calculation the scientist is making several assumptions. They must assume that all the lead came from uranium, that no uranium or lead entered or left the rock since it was formed, and that the rate of decay of the uranium has remained constant. All these assumptions are unprovable and some are unreasonable. What this example illustrates is that using process and rate change to calculate the age of the earth must, by necessity, involve making lots of unprovable assumptions. And this weakness adheres to radioactive decay determined ages regardless of the scientific sophistication involved in actually taking measurements. RD: Right. We have no way of knowing what the initial state of the rock was because no one was, or could have been, there to examine the rock at the time it was formed. But what we do know is that there have been some pretty spectacular errors made in dating rocks when we do know when the rock was formed. VK: You’re thinking about one of your favorite examples of the rocks that were taken from the Mount St. Helens volcano. Like all erupting volcanoes it created a great deal of new rock and the accumulating rock has formed a fairly large dome. The current dome is three-quarters of a mile long and 1,100 feet high. The current dome started growing after the volcano’s last explosive eruption on October 17, 1980. There were 17 so-called dome-building eruptions that stretched from October 18, 1980 to October 26th 1986. A thick pasty lava oozed out of the volcanic vent like toothpaste from a tube and because the kind of lava that was oozing it was too thick to flow very far. It simply piled up around the vent forming the mountain-like dome. There’s a good article about the dating of the rocks from Mount St. Helens on creation.com the website for Creation Ministries International. RD: Yes. The article points out that one geologist sent samples of the rocks formed during the eruption and from some mineral concentrates that were taken from the rock. When the lab dated the rock and the samples the dates they assigned were around 350,000 years old for the rock and 2.8 Million years old for the mineral concentrates. The dating method used at Mount St Helens was the potassium-argon method, which is widely used in geological circles. It is based on the fact that potassium-40 (an isotope of the element potassium) spontaneously ‘decays’ into argon-40 (an isotope of the element argon). This process proceeds very slowly at a known rate, having a half-life for potassium-40 of 1.3 billion years. In other words, 1.0 gram of potassium-40 would, in 1.3 billion years, theoretically decay to the point that only one-half gram was left. VK: So, using this method the lab that was assigning the dates assigned dates of a few hundred thousand years old to over two and a half million years old. But we know that all the samples that were being dated had been formed between 1980 and 1986. Right? RD: Right. And this example illustrates the problems with using radioactive decay processes to assign dates to rocks or geological material. Contrary to what is generally believed, it is not just a matter of measuring the amount of potassium-40 and argon-40 in a volcanic rock sample of unknown age, and calculating a date. To be accurate we need to know the history of the rock. For example, we need to know how much ‘daughter’ element was present in the rock when it formed. In most situations we don’t know. Since we can’t measure the proportions of parent and daughter elements scientists have to make assumptions. They have to guess. It is routinely assumed that there was no argon initially. But even if we knew the starting proportions we would also need to know whether potassium-40 or argon-40 has leaked into, or out of, the rock since it formed. Again, there is no way of knowing, so assumptions have to be made. It is routinely assumed that no leakage occurred. It is only after we have made these assumptions that we can calculate an ‘age’ for the rock. And when this is done, the ‘age’ of most rocks calculated in this way is usually very great, often millions of years. VK: And this example of errant dating of recently formed rocks is not limited to Mount St. Helens. In his book “The Greatest Hoax on Earth” Dr. Jonathan Sarfati cites a similar example of misdated rocks from a New Zealand volcano. The volcano erupted in 1949, 1954, and 1975 but the dates assigned by potassium-argon dating ranged from 250,000 years old to three and a half million years old. RD: The point of this discussion is not to cast aspersions on science or scientists but to illustrate the limitations that all observers face when they are trying to make determinations about what happened in the distant past. All any observer can do is to examine the current evidence – the evidence before them – and then apply analysis to determine what the evidence tells them. Now here at Anchored by Truth we are well aware that the vast majority of scientists would disagree with what we are discussing today. But truth is not determined by majority opinion. It is determined by correspondence to reality. VK: And the reality is that no one alive on earth was present when the earth was formed. But we do have eye witness testimony that comes to us from one source, don’t we? The Bible gives us a report of the creation of the earth and the universe. So, the way Biblical creationists determine the age of the earth is by going to that report – that record – and seeing what it says. But, as we mentioned earlier, for us to rely on a record we must be sure that that record is accurate. But that is what we do on Anchored by Truth. We continuously present evidence that supports the reliability and authenticity of scripture. RD: Exactly. The fact that we are discussing today - that the conventional dates assigned to the age of the earth and universe do not possess the scientific support normally presumed – is simply that. It’s a fact. Despite the lengthy presentations that are made about the scientific method behind making dating determinations the simple fact is that those defenses tend to talk a lot about methodology while ignoring the underlying assumptions. But the assumptions are inescapable. As we illustrated the person assigning the dates must make those assumptions because without the assumptions they cannot apply their methodology. And those assumptions are unprovable. VK: Not only are the assumptions behind radiometric dating unprovable but their most basic assumption – uniformitarianism - is called into question by the possibility of a global flood. A flood of the type described in Genesis would have affected every aspect of the earth including its topography and geology. So, if the Genesis flood occurred, and we strongly believe that science supports that it did, then uniformitarianism has to be dismissed as a starting point. RD: Yes. And that was the point of using our opening scripture from 2 Peter. 2,000 years ago the Apostle Peter foresaw the day when begin to mock the idea that Christ was going to come again by saying, “that’s silly. Everything is just going along the way it always has.” What Peter prophesied we now see around us daily. VK: So, our 5th fact reinforces our 1st fact. The 1st fact is that there is affirmative evidence such as lunar recession that shows that the age of earth is very unlikely to be in the billions of years. The fact we discussed today make the same point from the opposite side. The so-called science that is used to assign billions of years dates for the earth and universe rests on inescapable and unprovable assumptions. The two facts work together to disperse the legitimacy of the conventional view about the age of the earth. RD: Exactly. Empirical observations of our earth cast a great deal of doubt on the conventional view. Biblical creationists offer a competing view. So, the question then is which view is better supported by the evidence and whether the observer is going to follow the evidence? VK: Or whether they are going to adhere to their starting axioms even when those axioms are at odd with the evidence? RD: Yes. I understand that when listeners first encounter these kind of choices it can be startling, even disturbing. We all read the high school and college texts with the thick covers and full cover graphics that assured us that the earth is billions of years old and that there is overwhelming evidence that demonstrates that. But the reality of it is that as you probe beneath the surface you find out that most of those science textbooks only presented one side of the argument – they were selective about the evidence they included. They had to be. If they had featured or even given time to the alternate explanation they never would have been published. That’s why we’re doing this “10 facts every Christian should know” series. We are drawing people’s attention to the evidence for the alternative and then inviting people to investigate further on their own. Sadly, that is not an invitation that is issued very often in the chemistry or physics classrooms in schools or colleges across this nation. VK: Well, we won’t dwell too much on the political commentary except to say this. As you pointed out the social narratives that circulate today depend on certain underlying primary narratives. And for over 150 years one of those primary narratives has been that science has proven that our world and universe can exist just fine without God. But our hearts tell us this isn’t true and when we start taking a hard look at the available evidence our brains confirm what our hearts already knew. This sounds like a great time to go to the Lord in prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer for the people and institutions that oversee our children’s education – the school boards. And let’s remember that God’s word calls on us to pray regularly for our government leaders. We should pray for them to make wise decisions and if they are not we must pray that God would lead them into a recognition that they are ultimately accountable to Him. ---- PRAYER FOR SCHOOL BOARDS VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quote from the New International Version) 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version Immeasurable Age - creation.com Radio-dating in Rubble - creation.com Dinosaur footprint treasure trove found in Britain - creation.com The Bright Angel Trail trackways - creation.com Flat gaps - creation.com Dinosaur and mammal tracks found together - creation.com Satan’s Strategy • Cast doubt on God’s goodness • Deny God’s truth • Elevate self-importance • Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth Cultural Narratives One way to look at narratives is that there are primary and secondary narratives that circulate in our culture. The primary narratives are so embedded in our culture that they are not even noticed any more. They are like the framed prints on your wall. Initially you see them but as time goes by you notice them less and less. Eventually you only know they are there when a visitor comes in and remarks about them. Deep time, evolution, uniformitarianism, and the equality of all religious viewpoints are now primary narratives in our culture. Only fools and the suspect disagree with them. The narratives we notice (such as the prominent social and political narratives) are secondary ones - the acceptability of abortion, same sex marriage, the difference between "green" energy and fossil fuels, "public" education, increased government control and regulation, etc. The secondary ones emerge from and are dependent on the primary ones. • The Big Bang/deep time does away with the need for God as Creator. • Evolution does away with the need for God as the Author of life. • Uniformitarianism does away God as the Administrator of justice (become evil continually and God will wipe you off the face of the earth). Since we've done away with God we now create our own standards for what constitutes "personhood," family, man's dominion over the earth, etc. The problem is, of course, we didn't do away with God or His truth. And the house built on intellectual sand falls when the river of reality hits it. So, we will proclaim the truth to try to save some and maybe by God's grace many or most. People who doubt the inerrancy of scripture never think about any of this but they should. The line from that which they doubt the Word to a life they don't want to live is very straight. The line grows even more straight as it uncoils - just like the hangman's rope.

Episode 176 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 4 – A Flood of Facts Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: For 40 days the rain poured down without stopping. And the water became deeper and deeper, until the boat started floating high above the ground. Finally, the mighty flood was so deep that even the highest mountain peaks were about seven meters below the surface of the water. Genesis, chapter 7, verses 17 through 20, Contemporary English Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very glad to be with you today as we continue the series we recently started on Anchored by Truth, that we are calling “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books and he is the one picking the facts we are covering in this series. RD, why did you entitle this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know?” I’m sure many listeners would think that there are far more than just 10 facts that are pertinent to the Christian faith. There are surely thousands of facts that are important to a thorough understanding of Christianity. Just on what we’ve covered here on Anchored by Truth we’ve probably talked about hundreds or thousands of facts that help demonstrate that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. RD: Well, I would also like to say hello to all the listeners joining us here today on Anchored by Truth whether they are listening to the broadcast or the podcast. You’re absolutely right that there are thousands or maybe tens of thousands of facts that are relevant to the Christian faith. But I’m not sure a series entitled “1,000 facts you need to know” would be very appealing to most listeners. Most people today are so busy that they really need help with sorting through the huge volume of information that comes at them through a media-charged, internet-driven world. So, that’s what we do on Anchored by Truth. We sort through a lot of information and try to select items that listeners can grasp readily and hold onto to build their faith. VK: We know that for many people today just getting to work and dinner on the table can feel like an accomplishment. And we know that there are a lot of Christians who have a sincere desire to strengthen and deepen their faith but the urgencies of life can derail those intentions. We want to help people fulfill that ambition of growing in their faith while they continue to keep up with all of their other priorities. RD: And as we talked about last time not all information, not all facts, have an equal bearing on important faith matters. For instance, the Bible tells us that there were 70 descendants of Jacob that went down into Egypt at the start of the Israelites sojourn there. That’s just a simple historical fact we learn about from Exodus, chapter 1, verse 5. The Bible also tells us that God created the heavens and the earth – again a straightforward historical fact. Both of those facts are relevant to our faith but I don’t think most people would regard them as being equally relevant to our understanding of God. The most important historical fact of all time is unquestionably the fact of Jesus’ resurrection because the validity of the entire Christian faith is dependent on that one fact. The point is that we have to be discerning when we look at, and especially when we communicate, our faith. It’s good to know about the Hebrews period of captivity in Egypt and subsequent deliverance, but it’s more important for everyone to know that Jesus died for their sins and that He rose from the dead proving the Father was pleased with His sacrifice. VK: What we want people to understand is that there are certain facts that are critical to them understanding and having confidence in their faith. At one point in our history people accepted much about the Christian faith without much controversy. But those days are past. Today, just about every substantive point of our Christian faith is being attacked by somebody somewhere. And there is no book of the Bible that is attacked more than the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It’s become very plain over the past 200 years that part of Satan’s plan is to destroy confidence in God as Creator. Satan knows that if he can get people to doubt God as being necessary to the existence of the universe he can then get people to doubt God in every other meaningful way. That’s why Satan has been unrelenting in promoting the idea that universe could spring into being from a “big bang” and that life could spring into being by the random collision of inanimate particles. RD: Yes. But the bad news for Satan is that the truth is opposed to him. And more and more people are waking up to that fact. Empirical observations of the universe tell us that the assumptions behind the big bang aren’t tenable and the assumptions behind random, chaotic activity produced the specified complexity of life aren’t either. That’s why we began with the first two facts that we did. VK: The first fact that we discussed that every Christian needs to know is that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old. The second fact that we covered was that the complexity of life makes it impossible that life could have arisen as a result of the random collision of atoms and molecules – even if you could explain the existence of the atoms and molecules to begin with. We started with those two facts because they get to the heart of whether the opening chapters of the book of Genesis – which are the opening chapters of the Bible – is, in fact, true. So, where do you want to go next? What is fact number 3? RD: Fact number 3 that Christians should know is that there is solid scientific evidence that the tallest mountains on earth were underwater at one time. Ammonite fossils (squids with coiled shells) are found in limestone layers, high up in the Himalayas in Nepal, near the top of Mount Everest. This, of course, supports the Biblical account of the global flood described in the Bible. Now the fact that marine fossils are found near the summit of Mt. Everest does not mean that Mount Everest was there before the flood. So, the ocean waters didn’t have to rise to over 29,000 feet (8,840 m) above current sea level to cover it. Instead, the sedimentary layers now making up the Himalayas were first deposited on the continent during the flood. Those layers then buckled and uplifted at the end of the flood to form the towering Himalayan mountains seen today. VK: Fossils are one of the best evidences of a global flood, especially when you consider where many fossils are found. For example, we don’t find marine creatures, such as fish, clams, and corals, buried and fossilized on the sea floor where they once lived. Instead, we find most of them buried in sedimentary rocks on the continents and even on high mountains. For that to happen, the ocean waters had to totally flood the continents. And that’s exactly what the Bible describes during the global flood. But, the mere fact that fossils of marine creatures are found high in the Himalayas does not mean that all geologists accept the idea of a Biblical, worldwide flood, does it? RD: No. It doesn’t. Secular geologists will acknowledge that the Himalayas were underwater at one time. They really can’t deny that. But they have an entirely different hypothesis for why we find marine fossils on Mt. Everest. VK: And that hypothesis would be... RD: Secular geologists explain the presence of the Everest marine fossils something like this. The marine creature fossils on Mt Everest were formed in a shallow part of the ocean during the Ordovician [OR-DUH-VI-SHUN] Period – that is over 400 million years ago. Conventional scientists say the Ordovician Period lasted for almost 45 million years, starting around 490 million years ago. And they believe it ended 445 million years ago. During this period, the belief is that the area north of the tropics was almost entirely ocean. They believe that most of the world's land was collected into a southern supercontinent called Gondwana [GUN-DWAH-NAH]. VK: And many scientists believe that the area that contains the Himalaya mountains today was once attached to that supercontinent, right? RD: Right. Many scientists believe that the area that the land that comprises the Himalayas formed under the ocean on the northern margin of India when it was still attached to Western Australia as part of Gondwana. Then, the theory goes that about 130 million years ago, India began drifting away from Gondwana and drifted northwards until it collided with Eurasia between 55-34 million years ago. VK: And the scientists believe that the collision of those continents resulted in a massive uplift of the earth’s crust. So, they think that the sedimentary rocks that formed part of northern India were pushed upwards by these colossal tectonic forces. These sedimentary rocks contained the fossils that are now found on top of Mt Everest. And, in fact, NASA believes that the presence of limestone and marine fossils lifted from the once shallow sea bed to the top of the Himalayas is evidence that plate tectonics is a viable explanation for why the earth’s surface appears the way it does. Geologists also say the Himalayas continue to rise as a result of the colliding tectonic plates. RD: Yes. So, the views by conventional, secular geologists and the views by Christian geologists agree in certain respects. Both groups agree that the Himalayas were at one point under water. Both groups agree that there are tectonic plates that support the earth’s continents that have moved in the past and likely still move. There is general agreement that at one time there was a much larger land mass in existence that has now separated into what we call continents. Both groups agree that the Himalayas were formed by uplift forces. The chief areas of disagreement are on the time frames and the proximate causes of the uplift. VK: Secular geologists believe the tectonic and geological activity that formed the current continents and the Himalayas occurred over tens or hundreds of millions of years. Christian geologists believe that the Genesis flood accounted for the separation of the supercontinent when - as the New International Version puts it -“springs of the great deep burst forth.” That’s Genesis, chapter 7, verse 11. Many Christian geologists believe in what is called “Catastrophic Plate Tectonics.” One implication of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics is that the movement of the tectonic plates would be substantially faster than today. RD: Yes. We don’t have time today to go into the mechanics of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics but anyone who wants to investigate it further can get a copy of Dr. Jonathan Sarfati’s commentary on the first 11 chapters of Genesis which is called The Genesis Account. One consequence of this much faster tectonic plate movement is that the continents we see today would have arrived in their current positions in a much shorter period of time and the uplift forces would be acting on material that was still soft enough to be pushed upward relatively quickly. VK: It’s called Catastrophic Plate Tectonics because in comparison with the things we see going on around us today the forces in play, the activity on the earth’s surface, and the movement of rocks and sediment would have been truly catastrophic – both in size and timing. Of course a lot of this movement was going on under the water so an ocean liner sized ark would have still been able to float and remain a refuge for its passengers. RD: And we can also note that the phenomenon of high-altitude marine fossils isn’t unique to the Himalayas. Whale fossils and evidence of other marine animals have been found in many other mountain ranges such as high in the Andes, for example. VK: So, we have these two competing views of how these marine fossils could be found close to the top of the highest mountain on earth. Is there any way to determine which of the views is most likely to be correct? RD: That’s an excellent question. VK: Thank you. I’m good with questions. RD: In fact, that is THE QUESTION because it goes straight to the heart of the reason we’re doing this “10 Facts Every Christian Should Know” series. As in so many cases we are faced with competing truth claims. The Bible tells us about a global flood but the secular contention is that there was no flood and the earth’s features we see were produced slowly, gradually, and uniformly. VK: Uniformitarianism says that the present is the key to the past. The rate of uplift and tectonic plate movement we see today is the same rate that has always existed. RD: Exactly. So, let’s go back to the time periods we heard about earlier. The secular notion is that the fossils themselves were formed in shallow water over 400 million years ago and then moved to their current location approximately 35 to 55 million years ago. That’s what conventional scientists tell us. But there is a huge problem with the conventional view. VK: And that is? RD: Erosion. VK: Erosion can be defined as “the group of natural processes, including weathering, dissolution, abrasion, corrosion, and transportation, by which material is worn away from the earth's surface.” Erosion simply means that every day every inch of the earth’s surface is being scoured or scraped and eventually all of that material will wind up in a body of water somewhere. While wind and mechanical activity produces some erosion, Water is the main culprit that dissolves many minerals, and loosens soil and rock from the landscape, transporting them to the ocean. Day after day, year after year, like an endless procession of freight trains, the rivers of the world cart unimaginable tons of decomposed rock across the continents and dump it in the ocean. By comparison, the amount removed by winds, glaciers and ocean waves pounding the coastline is small. RD: Water can do its eroding work once it falls as rain or snow which will eventually collect in a drainage basin. By sampling the mouth of the river, we can measure the volume of water discharged from the basin and the amount of sediment it carries. It’s not easy to measure exact volumes of erosion but, nevertheless, sedimentologists have researched many of the world’s rivers and calculated how fast the land is disappearing. The measurements show that some rivers are excavating their basins by over 3 feet of height in 1,000 years, while others move less than a tenth of an inch in 1,000 years. The average height reduction for all the continents of the world is about 2.4 inches) per 1,000 years. VK: There’s a good article about the problem erosion presents for the idea of continents or land masses being hundreds of millions of years old on creation.com – the website for Creation Ministries International. That article points out that if erosion has continued at the average rate the North American continent would have been levelled in 10 million years This is a ridiculously short time compared with the supposed 2.5-billion-year age for the continents. Even at the slowest estimated rate of four one-hundredths of reduction per 1,000 years, the continents should have vanished long ago. Continents have an average height of about 2,000 feet. And erosion will be faster in areas where there are steep slopes and deep valleys such as mountain ranges. RD: These rates not only erode the idea of billion-year-old continents but also crumble the concept of ancient mountains. Erosion rates of 39 inches per 1,000 years are common in the alpine regions of Papua New Guinea, Mexico, and the Himalayas. One of the fastest recorded regional height reductions is 750 inches per 1,000 years from a volcano in Papua New Guinea. The Yellow River in China could flatten a plateau as high as Everest in 10 million years. Mountain ranges in western Europe and the Appalachians of eastern North America are even harder to explain because they are not as high as Everest, yet are supposed to be several hundred million years old. If erosion has been going on for this long, these mountains should not exist. VK: So, if erosion is a problem for even explaining the existence of mountain ranges at all it’s a bigger problem for how delicate structures such as fossils could still exist near the tops of very high mountains – such as the shellfish fossils near the top of Mount Everest. RD: Yes. And the problems for the conventional explanation just keep compounding. One explanation for how high mountains could still exist even after 10’s or hundreds of millions of years have passed is that uplift activity is still occurring. But this doesn’t help with the assertion that the shellfish fossils which are embedded in sediment layers began being lifted out of the ocean 30 to 50 million years ago. Even the secular scientists believe these fossils were initially formed in a relatively shallow sea. They had to be covered by sediment. Otherwise they would have disintegrated long ago. But even if uplift had been going on steadily for 50 million years keeping Everest at the same height the sediments containing the fossils would have eroded long ago. Under that scenario the mountains might be there but the fossils wouldn’t be. VK: The point is that when we’re trying to decide whether the conventional, secular explanation for the existence of shellfish fossils on Mount Everest or the Biblical explanation is more likely the secular explanation has one huge problem that the Biblical explanation does not: erosion. Uniformitarianism says that the present is the key to the past and things are taking place today the way they have always taken place. But if that’s true then erosion has been taking place the entire time at the same rate that it is today. But erosion taking place for tens of millions of years poses enormous questions for things that we see around us today – like high mountains with crisp, sharp peaks and marine fossils near those peaks. RD: Exactly. But erosion poses no problems for the Biblical explanation. Biblical geologists believe the Genesis flood occurred about 4,500 years ago. The fossils were formed when vast amounts of dirt, rock, and mud being moved around by the flood waters were laying down sediment layers very quickly all around the world. And fossils aren’t the only evidence that confirms the Genesis account of the global flood. An article on the Answers in Genesis website points out that there are countless billions of plant and animal fossils are found buried in extensive graveyards around the world. For example, billions of straight-shelled, chambered nautiloids of all different sizes are found fossilized with other marine creatures (crinoids, corals, brachiopods, gastropods, and bryozoans) in a 7 foot thick layer within the Redwall Limestone of Grand Canyon. This fossil graveyard stretches for 180 miles across northern Arizona and into southern Nevada, covering an area of at least 10,500 square miles. To form such a vast fossil graveyard required 24 cubic miles of lime sand and silt, flowing in a thick, soup-like slurry at more than 16 feet per second to catastrophically overwhelm and bury this huge, living population of nautiloids. VK: Every continent contains sedimentary rock layers laid down by the catastrophic flood conditions. Many of these sediment layers can be traced all the way across continents and even between continents. For example, the chalk beds of southern England, well known as spectacular white cliffs along the coast, can be traced west and north across England and appear again in Northern Ireland. In the opposite direction, these same chalk beds can be traced across France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, southern Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe to Turkey and as far as Kazakhstan. The same chalk beds with the same fossils and the same distinctive layers above and below them are also found in the Midwest USA, from Nebraska to Texas, and from Alabama and Arkansas to Colorado. They also appear in the Perth Basin of Western Australia. RD: Similarly, the sedimentary rock layers exposed in the walls of the Grand Canyon are not unique to that region. For almost 60 years, geologists have recognized that these strata belong to three very thick, distinctive sequences of sedimentary rock layers that can be traced across North America. The lowermost horizontal sedimentary layer in Grand Canyon is the Tapeats Sandstone. Along with its equivalents the Tapeats Sandstone covers much of the USA and parts of Canada and Greenland. But they can also be traced across North Africa and beyond to Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Only ocean waters rising to sweep across the continents in the Genesis flood can explain these continental-scale sedimentary layers. VK: All of those lines of evidence demonstrate the same thing. The highest mountains on earth were at one point under water. Of the two competing explanations for how that happened – the secular or the Biblical – the secular suffers from a major unanswered question. How could sedimentary layers persist in a hostile erosion environment for tens of millions of years? This challenge does not plague the Biblical explanation. Yet, the secular explanation is far and away the one that is chosen by most geologists today. RD: And as we have said many times in this series that goes back to the compulsive power of a person’s starting set of axioms. Most scientists look at the age of the universe or earth from the starting point that it is billions of years old. That’s what their training and education have led them to believe. That’s what they had to believe to get their degrees, their funding, and their approval from colleagues. So, when they come to evidence that doesn’t agree with their starting axioms they start trying to find a suitable explanation for how their axioms can remain in place regardless of whether there is a reasonable explanation that fits the evidence but not the assumptions. VK: Ideas have consequences. And one of those consequences is that certain ideas retain compulsive power over people’s minds and souls even when that idea is at odds with reality, with the truth. That’s why we must ensure that we are well-grounded and informed. First to ensure that we can sustain our own faith in times of trial and second to serve as the salt and life for a culture that dies without the light of truth. This sounds like a great time to go to the Lord in prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer for our Christian brothers and sisters who live in lands that are hostile to the gospel and to their faith. And let’s remember always to pray regularly for them because the Bible assures that God hears and responds to the sincere prayers of His faithful children.. ---- PRAYER FOR PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quotes from the Contemporary English Version) Genesis, chapter 7, verses 17 through 20, Contemporary English Version Global Evidences of the Genesis Flood | Answers in Genesis High & Dry Sea Creatures | Answers in Genesis Eroding ages - creation.com Satan’s Strategy Cast doubt on God’s goodness Deny God’s truth Elevate self-importance Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth

Episode 175 – 10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know 3 – Facts about Facts Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 18, English Standard Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re excited to be with you today as we continue the new series we recently started on Anchored by Truth, which we are calling “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know.” In the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books and he is the one picking the facts we are covering in this series. RD, why did you entitle this series “10 Facts Every Christian Needs to Know?” I’m sure many listeners would think that there are far more than just 10 facts that are pertinent to the Christian faith. There are surely thousands of facts that are important to a thorough understanding of Christianity. Picking 10 seems a bit counter-intuitive. After all, here on Anchored by Truth we’ve probably talked about hundreds or thousands of facts that help demonstrate that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. RD: Well, I’d first like to start by thanking everyone for joining us here today. And you are absolutely right that there are thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of facts that are relevant to the Christian faith. I have wanted to do this series for a while to highlight a couple of key points. But, not all facts are equal and that’s something I want to talk about today. One of the ways we can be confident about the truth of the Christian faith is that Christianity permits us to test it by examining its principle source – the Bible – through the lens of logic, reason, and evidence. Relevant facts are a major part of the evidence that can help us in our examination. But just as in other situations - say a court case – not all facts bear equal weight in helping settle the truth of the major claim at issue. Some facts are informative and in conjunction with others help frame how the jury may view the decision they have to make. But some facts aren’t just informative. They are dispositive. VK: One definition of the term “dispositive” that we found on “yourdictionary.com” says that dispositive means “That disposes of, or settles, a dispute, question, etc.; conclusive; decisive.” Dispositive can mean facts or evidence that are pertinent to the outcome of a legal case but in the law it quite often refers to facts or evidence that – as the definition says – settles the matter. But I think you’re going to need to give us an example of to tell us what you’re trying to get at. RD: Well, let’s say that I was accused of robbing a bank. VK: But you’re innocent, right? RD: Yes. I’m innocent. But the police were given a description of someone who roughly matches my height and weight. And they said the bank robber was wearing an old brown coat and hat and they heard from my neighbor that I have an old brown coat and hat. When the police talk to me they tell me the bank was robbed on the 13th. But I can prove that on the 13th I was in Montana giving a speech to a crowd of 500 people at the exact time the bank was being robbed. The fact that I was thousands of miles away would be dispositive in demonstrating that I was not the one who robbed the bank. Now there may be other facts that might also be equally dispositive but all I really need is one. VK: You mean that there may be other facts that are equally strong in ruling you out as a possibility for the bank job. Maybe the robber was 6 feet 8 inches tall but you’re a foot shorter. Maybe the robber had a physical deformity like a missing finger on one hand but you still have, thankfully, all of your fingers. Maybe a bank guard shot the robber and they know that your blood type doesn’t match his. In other words there might be many facts that rule you out as a suspect but you’re saying you really only need one to settle the matter. I suppose they could say you had an accomplice. RD: They could and that is a great illustration of another point that we need to talk about. All of us, every single one of us, views the world and any particular set of facts through a set of starting axioms. That’s true for Christians and it’s true for non-Christians. And therefore when we present conclusions we very rarely simply present a set of sort-of bare facts. When we talk about conclusions we have almost always applied some level of analysis to a set of facts. We have filtered facts through our set of starting axioms, hopefully applied valid logical principles, and drawn a conclusion either deductively or inductively. VK: Deductive reasoning is reasoning from the general to the specific. Inductive reasoning goes in the opposite direction – from the specific to the general. Inductive reasoning starts with specific observations or facts, looks for patterns, and then formulates a hypothesis or conclusion based on the determination of whether a pattern exists based on those specific observations. Someone who notices that every time they eat dairy products they have some unpleasant gastric experience might come to the conclusion they are lactose intolerant. They arrived at their conclusion inductively. Conversely, if a mother told her daughter that everyone in her family is lactose intolerant the daughter might test the idea that she is lactose intolerant by exposing herself to specific dairy products and then see if she has the same problems. The daughter started with a general premise that she was likely lactose intolerant and then confirmed that premise with specific observations. The daughter reasoned deductively. RD: Yes. The point is that arriving at reasonable hypotheses or conclusions requires not just facts but also the application of valid logical processes. But we all begin that process with a set of starting axioms. So, we need to be aware of those starting axioms and we need to be sensitive to whether or not, as we evaluate facts and apply logic, whether those starting axioms are remaining valid. VK: What you’re saying is that it is possible that as we gather evidence and apply logic we may come to realize that our starting axioms are themselves in jeopardy. And, unfortunately, we have examples of people who adhere to sets of starting axioms long past the point where those axioms have remained valid. RD: Exactly. And that is particularly prevalent in the debates that swirl around the Bible and critical portions of the truth that the Bible presents. And there is no more glaring example of where some people adhere to starting axioms than when it comes to the history that is contained in the book of Genesis – which is why we started with the first two facts that we did in our “10 Facts” series. VK: The first fact that we discussed that every Christian needs to know is that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old. The second fact that we covered was that the complexity of life makes it impossible that life could have arisen as a result of the random collision of atoms and molecules – even if you could explain the existence of the atoms and molecules to begin with. We started with those two facts because they get to the heart of whether the opening chapters of the book of Genesis – which are the opening chapters of the Bible – is, in fact, true. RD: Yes. So, let’s take that first fact – that science provides solid evidence that the conventional idea that the universe is 14 Billion years old is untenable. So, when we did our episode on that fact, which was the first episode in this “10 Facts” series – we pointed out 3 lines of evidence that are a real problem for the conventional view on the age of the universe: the presence of soft tissue in dinosaur remnants, the faint young sun paradox, and lunar recession. VK: And anyone who would like to get a more in-depth understanding of those lines of evidence can review the podcast version of that show which is available from most podcast apps or our website, crystalseabooks.com. RD: So, in that show we cited three lines of evidence that the conventional supposed-age of the universe is wrong. But there are dozens of other lines of evidence as well such as the presence of carbon-14 in diamonds. Carbon-14 is a radioactive form of carbon and it decays very quickly. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years. That means that after 5,730 years the amount of carbon-14 present would decrease by half. After 11,460 years only a quarter of the original amount would be left. After 17,190 years only an eighth and so on and so on. If the entire earth had started out as carbon-14, which it didn’t, in less than a million years there wouldn’t be enough carbon-14 left to be detectable. VK: This does not mean that the earth is a million years old. It is simply a way of putting an extreme upper limit on the age of the earth. Because we find trace amounts of carbon-14 in diamonds it means that the earth cannot be anywhere near a million years old. RD: Right. Now we know that carbon-14 can be produced by cosmic rays entering the upper levels of the earth’s atmosphere but this would not account for the presence of detectable carbon-14 in diamonds. Diamonds are essentially a closed system so there is no way carbon-14 formed in the atmosphere today could penetrate a diamond so it would be detectable within one. But scientists have detected carbon-14 in diamonds. The point is that this is yet another line of evidence that the earth is nowhere near the 4.5 Billion years old that conventional science claims it to be. The presence of detectable carbon-14 in diamonds is evidence that the earth is thousands of years old not millions or billions. The presence of detectable carbon-14 in diamonds is devastating to the whole idea of a billions of years old earth and therefore devastating to the entire evolutionary hypothesis. VK: In our last episode you said “Deep time is the root of the evolutionary weed.” Deep time is the idea that the universe is 14 Billion years old and the earth is 4.5 Billion years old. Evolution needs deep time because without it the whole idea that the random collision of unintelligent atoms and molecules could have produced life – let alone atomic physicists or molecular biologists – is ridiculous. So, what you are getting at is that the fact that science confirms that the universe and earth are thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old is dispositive in the destruction of the evolutionary hypothesis. Without deep time evolution dies as an hypothesis even worthy of contemplation. RD: Exactly. And that’s why in this episode of Anchored by Truth I wanted to take a break from the presentation of the 10 facts themselves and ensure that we were focusing listener attention on why these facts are so important to their faith. We are not doing this so much to provide an apologetic or evangelistic tool as we are to ensure that our listeners are able to be confident in their faith. Recently, I had a conversation with a young believer – much younger than me anyway – and he told me that before his conversion the one question that he kept asking himself was how can you be sure which faith is the true one? Well, properly understood and presented Christianity can answer that question clearly and comprehensively. And it’s the only faith that can with an answer that covers all of the various disciplines by which we discern truth. VK: Your point is that Christianity, by means of the Bible, answers all of the big questions. Where did the universe come from? How did life begin? Where did man come from? Why is there pain and trouble in the world? Why can people still be hopeful in the midst of a troubled world? Why do people feel a compulsion to distinguish between right and wrong in such a way that they frame moral and ethical systems and standards by which they live and want others to live? And why does mankind have a near universal apprehension of the divine – the sense that has pervaded every culture regardless of location, time in history, or other traditions that there is a supernatural realm that lies outside our physical senses? RD: Yes. Christianity can give meaningful, intelligent, and reasonable answers to those questions. And the answers that Christianity gives are consistent with what we know about the physical order in which we live (physics, chemistry, biology, geology) and the revealed history of humanity (history, archeology, sociology), and also provides verifiable evidence of the supernatural by means of fulfilled prophecy. But to be able to give those answers intelligently Christians must have a basic awareness of how facts, evidence, and logic are applied when sorting through competing truth claims. VK: Our lives today are lived in a world where truth claims that compete with Christianity assault us on a daily basis. Supposedly science tells us that the universe started with a big bang billions of years ago and life arose randomly and chaotically by the undirected collision of inanimate particles. Supposedly human beings resulted from a lengthy series of genetic mutations that transformed carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sodium, and other non-living chemical elements into a being that can write sonnets, invent telescopes that can study galaxies billions of light years away, grieve over their failures and yet pursue future greatness. And even for those people who are willing to acknowledge that physics and chemistry alone cannot produce biology they must contend with hundreds of claims about how the supernatural world is ordered and what supernatural beings may or may not exist. And those messages come to us through just about every show that arrives on a television or computer screen, is playing at a local theater, or is transmitted through radio waves or the internet. When you think about it, it’s enough to almost make you want to stay in bed in the morning. RD: But in the midst of all that Christians can turn to Deuteronomy 31:8 and hear God telling us “I will never leave you or forsake you.” And we can turn to the Gospel of John 16:33 Jesus tells us that “in this world we will have tribulation” but that we can remain at peace because he has overcome the world. Well, one of the biggest ways Jesus has overcome the world is because He has the truth on his side. He is, in fact, THE TRUTH. He made and sustains everything so truth is actually dependent on him and not He on the truth but that is a subject for a different day. For today, we need to focus on the fact that one of the reasons Christians can be confident that their faith is the true faith is because the Bible gives abundant evidence of being true. VK: The Bible simultaneously proclaims the truth but in its unmatched reliability, fidelity, and accuracy it contains evidence of the truth of the claims. But to be able to use that truth we must understand the relationship of facts to sorting among competing truth claims. And one of the most interesting things I have heard you point out is that when we have dispositive facts at our disposal we may have one or many, but all we really need is one. Can you explain that a bit more as it applies to our principle concern about 10 facts every Christian needs. RD: Sure. Let’s go back to the fact the General Theory of Evolution needs lots of time to even be worthy of attention. That’s why Charles Darwin’s views didn’t flourish until another Charles, Charles Lyell, popularized the idea of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the idea that “the present is the key to the past.” Lyell is often called a “Scottish geologist” but his actual training and educations was as a lawyer. Before Lyell most scientists subscribed to some form of catastrophism – the premise that most of the features we see on the earth’s surface were the result of previous catastrophes such as Noah’s flood. But Lyell postulated that rather than a Biblical flood carving features such as the Grand Canyon it was actually done by slow erosion over eons. VK: And Darwin was well aware of Lyell wasn’t he? RD: Yes. Darwin had a copy of Lyell’s book, Principles of Geology, with him in the infamous voyage of the British 10-gun brig named the Beagle under the command of a Captain FitzRoy. Lyell’s idea that there were eons of time available on the earth allowed Darwin to posit that biological changes may have occurred in the same way Lyell posited that geological change had occurred – slowly and gradually. But Darwin had no idea of, for instance, the complexity of a living cell. In Darwin’s day they knew about cells but cells were thought to be simple blobs of protoplasm. VK: Darwin wrote long before the explosion in knowledge of molecular biochemistry which didn’t occur until the middle of the 20th century – about a 100 years after Darwin wrote The Origin of the Species. But today we are well aware that far from being simple structures living cells are, in fact, complex micro-systems. The complexity of the simplest living cell dwarfs the complexity of any mechanical device invented by man. The irreducible and specified complexity of living cells and creatures is dispositive evidence that such a system could have been produced by random and undirected activity. RD: Yes. And we covered that in greater detail in our last episode of Anchored by Truth. But back to the point that we were covering – that the General Theory of Evolution needs billions of years to work. Well, we’ve now covered 4 lines of evidence, facts if you will, that demonstrate that the earth is more likely thousands of years old than billions. We’ve talked about lunar recession, the faint young sun paradox, the presence of soft tissue in dinosaur remains, and the decay rate of carbon-14. Any single one of those facts is dispositive evidence that evolution does not have billions of years to work with. Said differently, they do not all have to be true to show that the earth is only thousands of years old. Any one of those lines of evidence is sufficient to do the trick. VK: I see what you’re saying. All of those lines of evidence demonstrate the same thing. But if one or two were somehow shown to be in error that doesn’t save the evolutionary time frame. All of them would have to be false to save the evolutionary time frame. And not just those 4 lines of evidence are available to show that the time needed for evolution to be conceivable isn’t available. Creation Ministries International has a single article that contains 101 lines of evidence that show that the earth is far more likely to be on the order of thousands of years old. But given that this is true why do most conventional scientists continue to support the idea that the earth and universe are billions of years old. RD: That goes back to the compulsive power of a person’s starting set of axioms. Most scientists look at the age of the universe or earth from the starting point that it is billions of years old. That’s what their training and education have led them to believe. That’s what they had to believe to get their degrees, their funding, and their approval from colleagues. So, when they come to evidence that doesn’t agree with their starting axioms they start trying to find a suitable explanation for how their axioms can remain in place but account for the evidence that doesn’t fit. In the case of lunar recession they might say the moon has not always orbited the earth – that at some distant time in the past the earth “captured” the moon as it was flying by. In the case of the faint young sun paradox they say that the faint young sun could keep the earth warm enough for life because the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 1,000 times greater than it is now. To account for the problem the varying evidence presents they have to invent explanations. VK: But if the moon was “captured” by the earth or the level of carbon dioxide was much higher in the past those ideas violate their presumption that all of the forces operating today have been operating in the same way in the past. In other words to save deep time they have to sacrifice the idea of uniformitarianism. Right? RD: Right. And that’s the beautiful thing about the Bible and Christianity. The time frames that we learn from the Bible don’t require any of that. This is not to say that the Biblical time periods don’t have some challenges they must address with respect to dating. There are some and Christian scientists routinely work on solutions to those problems. But this all goes back to the basic point. There are facts, a great many of them, that help that young Christian get an answer to his basic question of “how can I know which religion is true?” VK: And that includes the most widespread religion of our day which might be termed “secularism.” If belief in God is a “religious” viewpoint, then not believing in God is also a “religious” viewpoint. It’s the opposite position on the same question. In our culture we like to label a belief in God as being religious but we don’t put that same label on not believing in God. And that has led to a lot of mischief hasn’t it. RD: Yes. In our culture we have said that we must separate “church and state.” But when we interpret that phrase to mean we must expunge religion, especially Christianity from our public institutions, we have not become religiously neutral – we have become religiously hostile. We have replaced religious tolerance with secular coercion under the label of neutrality. But this is also a discussion for another day. For today, the point we need for people to remember is that not all facts, not all lines of evidence, are of equal value in arriving at valid conclusions. So, when we come to facts that apply to our faith we need to become aware of, even master, certain facts that are in conflict with the substructure for secularism in our culture. And that subculture is the theory of evolution. Without evolution the culture has no credible alternative to God as creator. VK: The General Theory of Evolution has two Achilles heels: time and complexity. Without deep time no one contends that there would have been enough random activity to produce one fortuitous event of the first so-called “self replicating molecule.” But as we now know life consists of far more than just one molecule. Life consists of millions of molecules all working properly and all working together. The simplest cell will not work if its component parts don’t function properly individually and collectively. The same is true for body systems that those cells build. That’s irreducible complexity. The cells and body systems must be organized in very specific ways. They must exist as systems that have utility, function, and purpose so they must have been developed and must be maintained in very specific configurations. In other words, they are specified in their design and function. That’s specified complexity. RD: Right. The first two facts we have covered in our “10 Facts” series are dispositive in demonstrating that the conventional view that God is not necessary to explain life has fatal flaws. VK: Life is complex – irreducibly, specifically, and informationally. But let’s hasten to add that as complex as it is to us, it presents no challenge to an omniscient God. Today let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for our Creator God. The complexity of life tells us that only an omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite God could create it. And the fact that He gave us the ability to appreciate His creation tells us that He genuinely wants to have a personal relationship with each of us so that for all eternity we can enjoy fellowship with Him and proclaim His unmatched glory. ---- PRAYER OF ADORATION FOR THE CREATOR VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) Psalm 139,verse 14, New Living Translation Diamonds: a creationists best friend - creation.com C14 dinos - creation.com Satan’s Strategy Cast doubt on God’s goodness Deny God’s truth Elevate self-importance Establish a replacement in the mind and heart for God’s truth

What is time? Does the past still exist? How did the universe begin and how will it end? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Why doesn't anyone ever get younger? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? According to Sabine Hossenfelder, it is not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy have become the go-to explanations of alternative healers, or that people believe their deceased grandmother is still alive because of quantum mechanics. Science and religion have the same roots, and they still tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? The area of science that is closest to answering these questions is physics. Over the last century, physicists have learned a lot about which spiritual ideas are still compatible with the laws of nature. Not always, though, have they stayed on the scientific side of the debate. Shermer and Hossenfelder also discuss: theories of everything • quantum flapdoodle • Is math all there is? Is math universal? • Uniformitarianism and the laws of nature • theories of aging • Emergent properties, or why we are not just a bag of atoms • Is knowledge predictable? • Free will and determinism from a physicist's perspective • Do copies of us exist? Could they ever? • Consciousness and computability • Does the universe think? • Why is there something rather than nothing? • What is the purpose of life, the universe, and everything? Sabine Hossenfelder is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany, and has published more than eighty research articles about the foundations of physics, including quantum gravity, physics beyond the standard model, dark matter, and quantum foundations. She has written about physics for a broad audience for 15 years and is the creator of the popular YouTube channel “Science without the Gobbledygook.” Her writing has been published in New Scientist, Scientific American, the New York Times, and the Guardian (London). Her first book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, appeared in 2018.

In this week's episode of 'The Matt Lohmeier Show', Matt welcomes the renowned Randall Carlson, master builder and architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, geological explorer and renegade researcher as his first guest on the podcast for a multi-part interview series.Randall shares his early history and what sparked his interest in the geological record. Matt and Randall also discuss ancient mega-floods, the gradualist vs. catastrophist worldview, and climate change. In part two of this series, Matt and Randall share their perspective on something particularly relevant to the Space Force community: the potential threat that we face from cosmic impactors. Key Takeaways - The role of catastrophic events in Earth's history (00:00)- The one challenge all Space Force members face (01:40)- Randall's background and life journey (06:04)- Why understanding ancient mega-floods is critical (13:37)- Uniformitarianism vs catastrophism (27:05)- The connection between science and religion (33:04)- The paradigm shift currently happening in Geology (44:32) Additional Resources- Connect with Matt- Learn more about the Irresistible RevolutionThis episode is brought to you by One Sunrise.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please share and follow it on your favorite platform.

On this edition of The Virtual Bible Study we looked at 2 Peter 3 for areas where we should not assume will continue as they have in the past.

Episode 43 In this episode, GOTR takes the skeletons out of their closets and goes on a deep into all things forensic geologies, the mysterious interface between geology and forensics. While there was no exact date when scientific methods were first introduced to solving murders, there is no doubt geology had an early influence. Uniformitarianism is a concept that establishes a crucial link between geologists and forensic scientists, where the use of clues are used to work out a past sequence of events to determine what happened. We go through how a crime scene might be controlled for, and clues are handled. We then cover the various types of evidence forensic geologists might find helpful while finding tangential paths to travel down. Between the bars of our main discussion, we present to you another mineral minute, and on the back half, we close things out with a case full of drugs, government coverups, and murder! So grab your favorite whiskey or drink of your choosing and enjoy! Whatever you do, remember to be cool, stay tuned, and keep it on the rocks! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/geology-on-the-rocks/support

Did you know that thinking scientifically in terms of long ages and deep time is actually a construct developed only within the last few hundred years? Prior to then, almost everyone accepted the biblical account of earth history as fact! Here's why that's important.

On today's ID the Future host Emily Reeves talks with geologist and intelligent design theorist Casey Luskin about his PhD. Luskin says his dissertation wasn't focused on intelligent design at all; but the knowledge he gained and the methodology he employed well might provide him grist for ID-oriented work down the road. The wide-ranging conversation takes Luskin and Reeves from his geological work in Africa and the method known as uniformitarianism to plate tectonics, paleomagnetism, crustal recycling, and some books on how Earth appears fine-tuned for life. Luskin also tells about some astonishing beauty that lies hidden right under our feet, and how we can discover it for ourselves. Source

Uniformitarianism (long shown by creationists to be an inadequate way to explain observable strata worldwide) was once the foundational ‘doctrine' of the modern geologist. This has now changed to ‘Neo-catastrophism' for many. Why, and does this theory fare any better?

Click Here for the Sermon PowerPoint Slides Uniformitarianism appeared first on South Franklin church of Christ.

We consider uniformitarianism in natural history, the parable of the faithful and the wicked servants and consider our calling to tithe. Is it biblical?

If the earth is as young as the Bible indicates, then how do we account for our empirical observations of the world around us which imply a much older universe? Uniformitarianism, catastrophism, the fossil record, the Ice Age, evidence of tropical landscapes under Antarctica and the rest of the world... how does any of this make sense? --- Preacher: Rand Cho saviorcommunity.com

Nate Loper, with Canyon Ministries, will discuss the mechanisms of the Global Flood as evidenced in the Grand Canyon in part one of our two-part series on the Grand Canyon! He also shares more about Canyon Ministries and the various tours that they give. If you would like to support our ministry...1. Give online at http://www.paypal.me/engageapologetics2. Make a check out to Coronado Baptist Church and write in the memo "Engage" and mail it to P.O. Box #12523, El Paso, Tx 79913Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/engageapologetics)Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/engageapologetics)

A new MP3 sermon from Little Sandy Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: To Uniformitarianism and Beyond Subtitle: 2 Peter Speaker: Tim S. Wright Broadcaster: Little Sandy Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 11/19/2020 Bible: 2 Peter 3:3-6 Length: 24 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Little Sandy Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: To Uniformitarianism and Beyond Subtitle: 2 Peter Speaker: Tim S. Wright Broadcaster: Little Sandy Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 11/19/2020 Bible: 2 Peter 3:3-6 Length: 24 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Little Sandy Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: To Uniformitarianism and Beyond Subtitle: 2 Peter Speaker: Tim S. Wright Broadcaster: Little Sandy Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 11/19/2020 Bible: 2 Peter 3:3-6 Length: 24 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Little Sandy Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: To Uniformitarianism and Beyond Subtitle: 2 Peter Speaker: Tim S. Wright Broadcaster: Little Sandy Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 11/19/2020 Bible: 2 Peter 3:3-6 Length: 24 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Little Sandy Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: To Uniformitarianism and Beyond Subtitle: 2 Peter Speaker: Tim S. Wright Broadcaster: Little Sandy Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 11/19/2020 Bible: 2 Peter 3:3-6 Length: 24 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Little Sandy Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: To Uniformitarianism and Beyond Subtitle: 2 Peter Speaker: Tim S. Wright Broadcaster: Little Sandy Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 11/19/2020 Bible: 2 Peter 3:3-6 Length: 24 min.

Ian Juby breaks down some of the evidence for the global flood and the problems with Charles Lyell's uniformitarianism. He is a member of Mensa Canda, founder of the first Creation Museum of Canada, and a Science and Tech instructor. This is an episode that you do NOT want to miss! If you would like to support our ministry...1. Give online at http://www.paypal.me/engageapologetics2. Make a check out to Coronado Baptist Church and write in the memo "Engage" and mail it to P.O. Box #12523, El Paso, Tx 79913 Music from https://filmmusic.io"Crossing the Chasm" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/engageapologetics)

Hey Eavesdroppers, this week we are joined by globetrotting blogger, photographer and podcaster, Gary Arndt from https://everything-everywhere.com/ Gary was a great guest with knowledge of all sorts of different subjects that we touched on during the conversation. Thanks to Gary for sparing some of his time to spend with us, were sure you'll find it as interesting as we did. Please check out Gary's website https://everything-everywhere.com/ You can find his podcast Everything Everywhere Daily on your favourite podcast platform. Also, lots of Gary's photography is on display at his Instagram profile https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/?hl=en Topics covered with Gary...Island Hopping, Leaving the Rat Race, Commuting, Capital Cities, New Yorkers, Local Knowledge, British Currency, Origins of Football, Mayan Ruins, Tourism, Civil War Pensioners, English Longbow, Eurasian Steppe Horse Archers, Genghis Khan, Church of The Holy Sepulchre, Jordan, The Dead Sea, Sea-level Rise, Marine Archaeology, Graham Hancock, Universal Flood Myths, Continental Drift, Plate Tectonics, Uniformitarianism, Randall Carlson, Ice Age Termination, Ancient Migration, Vikings, Dawn of Agriculture, Modern Western Diet, Refined Carbohydrates, Weight Loss, Overkill Hypothesis, Ancient Handbags, Axum, Ark of the Covenant, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Recycled Architecture and The Carnivore Diet....    We went a little long during the post-match debrief, Bank Holiday weekend and all, we sorted some Housekeeping and went over some of the latest Covid developments, chaos in the US and other silly stuff in the usual way. Producer Credits for episode 147: Anne Lulunny, Adam and Serfiel, C.A.Alexa, Chad Rickman, VeraLynn, Gav Scott, Full Metal Keto AF and Anonymous.   Message us here....follow, like, subscribe and share. (comments, corrections, future topics etc). We read out iTunes reviews if you leave them.   theamishinquisition@gmail.com https://twitter.com/amishinqpodcast https://www.facebook.com/amish.inquisit.3 https://www.instagram.com/theamishinquisition/?hl=en https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmv8ucrv5a2KpaRWyBWfBUA   Find out how to become a Producer here... http://www.theamishinquisition.com/p/phil-1523918247/   The Amish Inquisition is 100% supported by YOU.  NO Ads, NO Sponsorship, NO Paywalls. We really don't want to suckle at the teat of some faceless corporate overlord. But that is only avoidable with your help! Join your fellow producers by donating to The Amish Inquisition via the PayPal button on our website, simply donate whatever you think the show is worth to you. If you find the podcast valuable, please consider returning some value to us and help keep the show free and honest.

Continuing with Earth in Upheaval, we first loop back again to the section on Charles Lyell and the beginnings of Uniformitarianism in geology, re-read some of the quotes of Lyell, and parse them more carefully, just to make it clear exactly what this man was saying about early geologists and their "indolent" tendencies. We then skip ahead to where we left off last episode, continuing forward with more mass depositions of fossil bones of enormous amounts of animals, all packed into relatively small areas, caves, tar pits, and strata. We talk about mountain ranges moving miles across plains, about huge uplifts that must have happened relatively recently, and end with a discussion of the Altiplano in Peru, and Lake Titicaca, where the ancient and anomalous Tiahuanaco is located. Brothers of the Serpent Episode 135 Your browser does not support the audio element.

Continuing with Earth in Upheaval, we first loop back again to the section on Charles Lyell and the beginnings of Uniformitarianism in geology, re-read some of the quotes of Lyell, and parse them more carefully, just to make it clear exactly what this man was saying about early geologists and their "indolent" tendencies.We then skip ahead to where we left off last episode, continuing forward with more mass depositions of fossil bones of enormous amounts of animals, all packed into relatively small areas, caves, tar pits, and strata. We talk about mountain ranges moving miles across plains, about huge uplifts that must have happened relatively recently, and end with a discussion of the Altiplano in Peru, and Lake Titicaca, where the ancient and anomalous Tiahuanaco is located.Brothers of the Serpent Episode 135 Your browser does not support the audio element.

We continue our deep dive into Velikovski's excellent book, Earth in Upheaval, first backtracking a bit from the last episode to go over the "beginnings of Uniformitarianism", the early study of mass ice movements in places around the globe, and some of Charles Darwin's observations of the evidence for the catastrophic extinction of species. Then we move forward in the book to look at more instances of enormous amounts of plant and animal remains that are found broken, shattered, and crammed into caves and crevices around the world, where they are found fossilized today.Also, in the second segment of the show, we interview Marc Young, an archaeology student from Australia who has been helping George Howard assemble a bibliography on the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis on the Cosmic Tusk website. We talk to him briefly about how he became interested in archaeology and how he got involved with George.We then spend a lot of time talking with him about his work in Northern Mongolia, where his University has been doing some archaeological work on ancient cultures, and how Marc began to recognize the geological signs of catastrophic events that must have taken place in the relatively recent past. He then takes us on a fascinating Google Earth tour of the area, showing the path of meltwater and the signs it has written into the landscape.Anyone interested can follow his placemarks by clicking here and opening the file in Google Earth or Google Maps.Enjoy!Brothers of the Serpent Episode 134 Your browser does not support the audio element.

We continue our deep dive into Velikovski's excellent book, Earth in Upheaval, first backtracking a bit from the last episode to go over the "beginnings of Uniformitarianism", the early study of mass ice movements in places around the globe, and some of Charles Darwin's observations of the evidence for the catastrophic extinction of species. Then we move forward in the book to look at more instances of enormous amounts of plant and animal remains that are found broken, shattered, and crammed into caves and crevices around the world, where they are found fossilized today. Also, in the second segment of the show, we interview Marc Young, an archaeology student from Australia who has been helping George Howard assemble a bibliography on the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis on the Cosmic Tusk website. We talk to him briefly about how he became interested in archaeology and how he got involved with George. We then spend a lot of time talking with him about his work in Northern Mongolia, where his University has been doing some archaeological work on ancient cultures, and how Marc began to recognize the geological signs of catastrophic events that must have taken place in the relatively recent past. He then takes us on a fascinating Google Earth tour of the area, showing the path of meltwater and the signs it has written into the landscape. Anyone interested can follow his placemarks by clicking here and opening the file in Google Earth or Google Maps. Enjoy! Brothers of the Serpent Episode 134 Your browser does not support the audio element.

What kind of narrative is Noah's Flood? Is it history or myth? Or are we, by even asking such a question, imposing our modern concepts on ancient Scripture? We welcome once again Dr. John H. Walton—Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, Illinois—for a conversation on the fascinating book he co-authored with Dr. Tremper Longman III—Distinguished Scholar at Westmont College—entitled The Lost World of the Flood : Mythology, Theology and the Deluge Debate. Prior to his current position as Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, Dr. Walton was Professor of Old Testament at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for twenty years. Among his many publications (some co-authored with colleagues) is the "Lost World" series, which includes: The Lost World of Scripture, The Lost World of Genesis One, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (which he joined us back in 2016 to discuss), and The Lost World of the Torah. For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com

What kind of narrative is Noah's Flood? Is it history or myth? Or are we, by even asking such a question, imposing our modern concepts on ancient Scripture? We welcome once again Dr. John H. Walton—Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, Illinois—for a conversation on the fascinating book he co-authored with Dr. Tremper Longman III—Distinguished Scholar at Westmont College—entitled The Lost World of the Flood : Mythology, Theology and the Deluge Debate. Prior to his current position as Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, Dr. Walton was Professor of Old Testament at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for twenty years. Among his many publications (some co-authored with colleagues) is the "Lost World" series, which includes: The Lost World of Scripture, The Lost World of Genesis One, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (which he joined us back in 2016 to discuss), and The Lost World of the Torah. For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com

What kind of narrative is Noah's Flood? Is it history or myth? Or are we, by even asking such a question, imposing our modern concepts on ancient Scripture? We welcome once again Dr. John H. Walton—Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, Illinois—for a conversation on the fascinating book he co-authored with Dr. Tremper Longman III—Distinguished Scholar at Westmont College—entitled The Lost World of the Flood : Mythology, Theology and the Deluge Debate. Prior to his current position as Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, Dr. Walton was Professor of Old Testament at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for twenty years. Among his many publications (some co-authored with colleagues) is the "Lost World" series, which includes: The Lost World of Scripture, The Lost World of Genesis One, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (which he joined us back in 2016 to discuss), and The Lost World of the Torah. For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com

Rune Soup host, filmmaker, & author Gordon White drops by to argue his original yet ageless take on our prehistory. Some topics examined in part 1: How was ancient mind different? What are the main approaches to Genesis & how do they differ? Why is consciousness crucial to History & Mythology? What errors in Empiricism, Uniformitarianism, & Alternative palæontology? What are the 3 socio-cultural ages of man? Ancient Magic vs Exotic Science? What's the truth about Antediluvian mankind? What did Dr. Witzel discover? Is the Civilizing Trickster our oldest deity? Why's Neanderthal Man slandered? + was Gordon a weird child?   :: :: :: ::   All programs are gratis & listener funded. Please consider supporting our work and help cover costs by donating, subscribing to our channel, liking & sharing our posts. Subscribing to our website (https://www.forumborealis.net/contribute) gives you direct access to all shows before public release + various bonus & backstage clips. Our shows are chronologically arranged in different series collected in separate playlists.   :: :: :: ::   * Stars, Music, & Magic - A New Model of Prehistory (Pt. 1 of 2) - A conversation with Gordon White (S02P38A)   * © Forum Borealis. May not be reproduced in any commercial way.   * Guest: Host Gordon White (https://www.forumborealis.net/guests)   * Recorded: 28 September 2018   * Bumper music used with cordial permission from © Loopus.net   * This Program is part 34 of our second series called EVIDENCE FOR ANTEDILUVIAN CIVILIZATION (Playlist: http://www.forumborealis.net/series)            

When we look at the Grand Canyon, and the rest of the world, we see layers of rock made up of sediment. Evolution says that all these layers took millions of years to slowly be laid down. Uniformitarianism says nothing has changed for millennia. However, when you look at the observable evidence you see a very different picture. We find evidence that this sediment had to have been laid down rapidly. This points to the bible and the global flood described in Genesis. Join us as we look at the observable (visual) evidence for the rapid deposition of sediment layers. Due to limitations on the episode description section I cannot post the pictures for you here. However, you can go to my website and see all the pictures and links. I have given you a link to go directly to this information. https://www.centraltexascreation.com/624-episodes

By popular demand, we welcome back Dr. Tim Ball—a "retired" lecturer in geography and historical climatology at the University of Winnipeg, and now perhaps the most entertaining and informative after-dinner speaker on the planet—for a second conversation on his "new adages for the technocratic era". During the last conversation, Dr. Ball said that maybe we would need a second programme to cover his adages adequately. Many listeners picked up on that, and asked me to invite him back for a second chat. So I did, and here it is—another fun, wide-ranging and provocative conversation. "Adages are proverbs, or short memorable statements, expressing a general truth, usually based on experience. Many have no relevance to the modern world, such as "Don't look a Gift Horse in the mouth", but many are still useful: “Where there is smoke there is fire.” What we need are new adages for the modern technocratic age."--Tim Ball, "New Adages for the Technocratic Era". For show notes please visit http://themindrenewed.com

By popular demand, we welcome back Dr. Tim Ball—a "retired" lecturer in geography and historical climatology at the University of Winnipeg, and now perhaps the most entertaining and informative after-dinner speaker on the planet—for a second conversation on his "new adages for the technocratic era". During the last conversation, Dr. Ball said that maybe we would need a second programme to cover his adages adequately. Many listeners picked up on that, and asked me to invite him back for a second chat. So I did, and here it is—another fun, wide-ranging and provocative conversation. "Adages are proverbs, or short memorable statements, expressing a general truth, usually based on experience. Many have no relevance to the modern world, such as "Don't look a Gift Horse in the mouth", but many are still useful: “Where there is smoke there is fire.” What we need are new adages for the modern technocratic age."--Tim Ball, "New Adages for the Technocratic Era". For show notes please visit http://themindrenewed.com

Our fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality, history, etc., will inevitably show up in our exploration of those things. But how do these assumptions affect our results? The answer to this question is the subject matter of today's podcast lesson. We realize that, in order to do science, one must assume the uniformity of […]

...and the people chose to believe in Uniformitarianism. What is it- Is it still a belief in our society today- Please listen to the sermon -The Promise of His Coming- by Jamie Hawkins.

- Competitor paradigms in early geology, their conceptual and thematic relationships to Noah's Flood.    - Catastrophism and its inverse, uniformitarianismHutton, in some circles (especially Anglo-American ones) considered the father of geology, was a curious hybrid (from our point of view, anyway) of philosophical convictions. On the one hand, and what makes him famous and venerated among geologists today, is his methodology and core assumption that processes happening on the contemporary Earth are the same processes that have shaped it throughout its history. This idea was worked up and spread broadly by Lyell.    On the other hand, he expressed a thoroughgoing sense of teleology...that the world was set up in such a way so as to maintain its surface condition fit for animal life.Controversy between "catastrophists" and "uniformitarians / actualists"    Cowper, "The Task": "[God] was mistaken in the date he gave to Moses" (Cowper himself is castigating these scholars)    The putative tension that people like Cowper, Steno, Pascal, even arguably Aquinas felt between science,        mathematics, philosophy and their faith    How has this played into the widespread notion that faith and reason are opposed?    Cf. the tension between being Christian and being a soldier        "Deists" like Werner and Hutton discard the rigid post-Reformation sola scriptura straitjacket, yet they become just as dogmatic about their own theories.

Mr. Bruce Malone, founder of Search for the Truth Ministries, visits to share his wisdom concerning the age of this wonderful rock we call Home. Is it meeeeellions of years old? Hardly. I used to be an old-earth creationist, but I switched sides several years ago. It's easy for us humans to arrogantly impose our ill-informed ideas on the scriptures and imagine that they will synchronize. I fell into that trap—trying to make excuses for the Bible so that it wouldn't step on any scientific toes. Don't get me wrong, I love Science, but the real thing, not the God-rejecting belief system that uses the label to bring respectability to its foolish agenda. So I've invited a scientist to the show to tell us why the "scientific" version of history is bunk. Mr. Malone is a chemical engineer who holds 17 patents with Dow Chemical. He has a sharp, analytical mind, and it was that mind, when engaged in a study of the Word of God, that led him to the conclusion that geological and archaeological evidence supports the biblical notion of a young Creation. Since then, Bruce Malone has spent 30 years bringing the scientific evidence for creation to churches and colleges at seminars throughout the United States and 12 foreign countries. He has also authored six books on the evidence for creation with over 500,000 copies in print. I highly recommend the materials available for order on Search for the Truth's website. Two items you should be sure to check out are The Rocks Cry Out and Have You Considered: Evidence Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. In this episode you'll learn: The definition and importance of the term uniformitarianism How analysis of recent geological processes supports a global flood How the Flood would have drastically altered the planet What we can deduce from the existence of copious amounts of coal beneath the earth Why the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones is a big deal How to engage and combat those who bend scripture to cram it into a modern scientific worldview

Message from Jay Mosser on May 7, 2017

On a casual reading of Scripture we can assume the earth is young. Consider that in modern science, there are claims made but no money to reexamine them and they would not stand if the experiment was done over again. There are problems within science all by itself. On a casual scientific investigation of the world, it looks like the earth is very old. On a casual reading of Scripture it looks like the earth should be young. Uniformitarianism is the idea that what is now is what it was like before. Consider that the Big Bang Theory with the accelerated expansion of the inflation period defies Uniformitarianism. Why should "the earth looks old and is young" be abhorrent to us theologically? If God holds us responsible to believe the earth is young, and God intentionally made the earth look old, then there is a serious moral problem with what God is doing. Explore the Scientific Method as it relates to Romans and how God reveals himself. The Scientific Method is a reasonable and rational way to approach things. Consider that there is a difference between God's nature and character being declared, and God's specific actions being revealed. Romans 1 speaks more of God's character than the specific actions God has taken. Consider that our faith is very much predicated upon real historical events. Evidence, eyewitnesses, and truth about what happened in history is a big part of Christianity. Explore the idea of God making Adam a fully formed human. Consider generalized skepticism or the withholding of commitment on the topic of creation.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that natural disasters have had a significant influence in moulding the Earth's geological features. In 1822 William Buckland, the first reader of Geology at the University of Oxford, published his famous Reliquae Diluvianae, in which he ascribed most of the fossil record to the effects of Noah's flood. Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology challenged these writings, arguing that geological change was slow and gradual, and that the processes responsible could still be seen at work today - a school of thought known as Uniformitarianism. But in the 1970s the idea that natural catastrophes were a major factor in the Earth's geology was revived and given new respectability by the discovery of evidence of a gigantic asteroid impact 65 million years ago, believed by many to have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. With: Andrew Scott Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London Jan Zalasiewicz Senior Lecturer in Geology at the University of Leicester Leucha Veneer Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester Producer: Thomas Morris.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that natural disasters have had a significant influence in moulding the Earth's geological features. In 1822 William Buckland, the first reader of Geology at the University of Oxford, published his famous Reliquae Diluvianae, in which he ascribed most of the fossil record to the effects of Noah's flood. Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology challenged these writings, arguing that geological change was slow and gradual, and that the processes responsible could still be seen at work today - a school of thought known as Uniformitarianism. But in the 1970s the idea that natural catastrophes were a major factor in the Earth's geology was revived and given new respectability by the discovery of evidence of a gigantic asteroid impact 65 million years ago, believed by many to have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. With: Andrew Scott Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London Jan Zalasiewicz Senior Lecturer in Geology at the University of Leicester Leucha Veneer Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester Producer: Thomas Morris.

What does the Bible say about uniformitarianism vs. catastrophism? Does the earth show signs of catastrophe or signs of continuing in the same manner throughout history?

Interpreting historical geology inside a Biblical Framework. Sin distorts thinking. The pagan concept of “continuity of being” has existed from ancient times. Sedimentary rock is formed under water and is consistent with a high-energy, water-based catastrophe that changed the world (the global flood). Uniformitarian-based geology versus flood-based geology.