[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Want to start out like we talked about last week? There's some books over there in case you'd like more information. There's actually a lot of books available online. Feel free to check the Apologetics Press website and basically just send me an email or we'll have a sign up sheet in a week or two and we just get any of those books that people are interested in. So if you want your own copy again just let me know or we'll have a sign up sheet or something. Also, again, material available on the Apologetics Press website and that's my email there. And the other big thing though that's coming up is our class field trip. Okay. Now this isn't absolutely required, but it's a really fun trip. But basically we're going to go up to the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum.
Those times are flexible. That's the. I'll say that's like the church bus times because I know some people if you're able to leave earlier on Friday, you might want to. Some people don't want to close out the Ark Encounter on Sunday. I don't have to, but basically what we'll be doing is we'll drive up to the try to let make sure I can finish school, finish work, get to the church building. We'll be driving up to the we'll do basically I think we're going to stay near the Cincinnati airport. There's some hotels up there that we got got a good deal on. And then that's Friday night. Saturday we'll go to the Creation Museum all day and then Sunday we'll worship at the Point Pleasant Church of Christ. It's just like five miles from where the hotel is really it's of kind good little congregation though. So we worshiped there before and they do a lot of they actually sponsor some of the same missionaries that we do. And then Sunday afternoon we'll go down the Arkin counter. I think it opens at one in the afternoon on Sunday and then it closes at 6:30. We don't necessarily have to close it out, but we gain that hour on the way home. And so we'll have you all home and bed by midnight. Well, home at least by midnight. So it's. So anyway, that's the plan if you are able to go Kathy Stevens, she's keeping track of the list and she's just. It's a $200 a family. So we tried to make it so, you know, big families aren't penalized and little families are still getting a really good deal. So that's the, that's the idea behind it. And anyway, so just keep that in mind. We would like to, if possible, have kind of have a good count by Sunday so we can start making sure we have enough hotel rooms and enough transportation and stuff. So if you're able to, you know, get that to Kathy by Sunday if you're interested, that's great. Again, not required. Still allowed to come back next week if you don't go. But it is a, it is a really, it is a really fun trip. Okay.
Now one of the things we were talking about a great discussion last week and want to hopefully keep things very interactive like it was last week. And that's kind of like, why do people choose against God? In other words, what does keep people from rejecting Christianity or rejecting the Bible? And so of course, as we talked about, there's really not one answer. And I think we had several really good ones tossed out. So I just wanted to go back and do, I guess you say like an example from the Old Testament. So if we go to Romans 15, 4, it says for whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we, through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. Okay, so we go to the Old Testament and then of course, Ecclesiastes 1:9. I know this, this doesn't necessarily sound hopeful, but in a way it is because it lets us know that we're really not going through anything that people haven't gone through throughout history. And that's Ecclesiastes 1:9. That which has been is what will be. That which is done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun.
So going on from that, again, this is the question the class about evangelism. Why should we have to evangelize? I mean, shouldn't it be someone Hears the gospel, five minutes later, they obey the gospel.
But it doesn't work that way.
So the question is, what are some of the factors there? Well, I think first Peter 5, 8, 9 also gives us some insight, says, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. And so Satan's our enemy. And when it says he's going to devour us, the way Satan devours us is he keeps us out of heaven. I mean, that's his version of devouring us. In other words, if he can either keep us distracted our whole lives, keep us not thinking about God our whole lives, just, we don't have to be. We don't have to hate God. We just have to ignore God and Satan will win. And so that's.
And the Bible tells us, and there's several other sets of verses like this, but that's. We are under spiritual attack. And so that, to me, that's a starting point, is explaining, okay, why don't people very quickly obey the gospel? I think, as I mentioned last week, also I think I was trying to count up is at least 12 years from when I figured out evolution didn't work, you know, and atheism didn't work. It just makes no sense until when we were actually baptized. Okay, so that's 12 years. So whenever I start talking about things about, oh, why do people do this? I'm talking about myself. You know, that's what actually makes it easier to talk about. But I always wanted to get it out in front that I'm talking about myself because otherwise you're like, man, this guy's really, whatever. But no, no, I'm just embarrassed. That's about all. I really am. Because it takes a long time. But whatever reason that is, that's, you know, that's, again, how Satan can devour people. So going a little further, you go back in history, you notice that a lot of very influential and intelligent people can also make really bad choices. And, you know, I'm always careful about using Hitler analogies. And so this is just a strange one. But anyway, think Adolf Hitler was influential and intelligent.
Yeah. I mean, horrible guy. I mean, don't get me wrong, but he was influential and intelligent. Anybody think he was deceived?
Yeah. Anyone think he made poor choices? Yeah. So, okay, so that's. So I'm just calibrating. I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about here, but that's been true throughout history. And so we go back and this is First, Kings 18:19 says, now therefore send and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel. The 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. Okay, so eat at Jezebel's table. And you're talking about hundreds of prophets of BAAL and Asherah.
So anybody remember who Jezebel was?
Queen. Right. Okay, so let's, you know, she was a really bad queen, of course, but that's the queen. I mean, that's a really powerful position. I mean, in this crowd, maybe someone has. But anybody get dinner with the Trumps this week?
Okay, yeah, I haven't. Okay, so you start thinking about it. If you get dinner with somebody, man, that means you got a lot of influence. I mean, a lot of. And so there's hundreds of these prophets, and they're worshiping BAAL and Asherah. And so again, some most influential people in Israel promoted worship of BAAL and Asherah. And now, as we're talking about in this class, a lot of really influential people and institutions world today that promote atheism and evolution. Okay, so I'm kind of starting to draw a parallel here, because there's influential, important people that were deceived then, and there's influential and important people that are deceived now. Now, if someone's deceived, does that mean we shouldn't evangelize them?
No, it's the exact opposite. I mean, if someone's deceived, that's when you go all out trying to evangelize them. And so again, this is not on a personal level, just making observations. Okay, so here's what.
BAAL and Asherah, this is what they were told to do, and they were telling people to do. This is Isaiah 44, 15, 20. And just kind of summarizing it, basically we're saying is what, you need to go out in the woods and you find a log and you cut the log in two, and half of it, you, you build a fire, you cook dinner with it, you warm yourself if it's cold. Okay, that makes sense. You know. You know, a couple months from now, you know, some of us might be doing that. Okay, so that's. That makes a lot of sense. They said the other half, you want to carve it into an idol, bow down, worship it, and pretend it's going to deliver you.
Okay, does that make any sense?
Nah. So it's like Most influential people in their society. But that's what they were telling them to do. Okay, well, let's fast forward 3,000 years. Okay.
Does it make sense to teach this fact that something happened spontaneously again, like we talked about last week, Life arising from non life, unable to duplicate, given our best laboratories, our smartest scientists, and virtually unlimited financial resources?
Not that doesn't make sense either. And then you get in a debate about which makes less sense. Okay. And the ironic thing is, yeah, I've been really blessed to get to go on a lot of mission trips. And so one of the ones, I go to Zimbabwe every now and then. And who did a preacher workshop in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe? And what they do is they'd have preachers coming in from. They call it the bush, you know, so just out in the middle of nowhere, they come in out of the bush, they pay for the bus. They all basically sleep in the church building. But yeah, it's about 70 of them. I mean, they all just love seeing each other. They rarely get to be around each other. So they're on these little villages, and it's just the stereotype. I mean, beyond stereotypical, these villages where everybody's living in huts, there's no water, there's no electricity, and they're preaching the gospel and they're doing a good job. They get a lot of conversions there.
But what they really struggle with is ancestor worship is a big one. You know, worshiping ancestors, worshiping animals is a big one, you know, because. And so.
So that's what they're dealing with when they come in. So I'm giving kind of this talk, and after the talk, one of these guys, he comes up to me, and again, he's just, no water, no electricity, dealing with all this stuff comes up to me afterwards. He says, did I understand you to say that in the United States they teach that the universe and everything in it just made itself.
And I go, yeah. And he goes, I thought you were more advanced than that.
So he just hit the nail on the head. So. So anyway, so we don't need to debate that. But you can just see people were deceived 3,000 years ago, and unfortunately, we're deceived now. Now there's also evidence that this confuses people, which makes sense because, you know, God tells us In Romans, again, 1:20, like we talked about last week, you know, just from looking at God's creation, we know about his eternal power and divine nature. And if we deny that, we're without excuse. Okay? So that's true for Everybody. So people know about God. I mean, they just know there's a God.
But when you have all these very influential, important people telling them, no, there's not a God, and, oh, if you're smart, you won't believe in God and, oh, you should be an atheist or an evolutionist, they get confused. Well, sure enough, 1 Kings 18:21, this is about 3,000 years ago, says, and Elijah came to all the people and said, how long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if BAAL follow him.
Okay, so you got Elijah saying one thing and everybody knows, well, Elijah, he's, you know, profit. No, you got 850 really important, influential people to eat with the queen over here. So what's the best response?
Yeah, Nothing. Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly what they did. So people answered him, not a word. And so again, but we see that a lot today too, because you have a lot of people, most people still, if you ask them, they believe in God, they'll say, oh, yeah, I believe in God. But then if they really, you know, they really letting it sink into the point where, no, this is God that created me, that gave me the choice whether or not to believe in him. You know, created the universe, created the world, you know, gave me a soul. I mean, it's, it's a lot of times when you don't want to judge people, but you're like, is that really sinking in? You know, you are. Because it's not really a flippant, you know, it's not like, you know, just, you know, do you think this Mexican place has good food? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's not, they all do. So it's easy to say, but, you know, it's a.
But, no, they're not really, it's not like it's really sinking in. Well, that's kind of, again, another thing you run into that's basically not answering a word. They might say one thing, they might say something in another poll, but just not answering a word. But the great news is that God always gives us tremendous evidence. So you go forward. 1 Kings 18:38, 39. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. Now, when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, the Lord he is God. The Lord he is God. Okay, so God gave them evidence. In this case, it was, you know, fire of the Lord. I mean, that's you know, that's a lot of evidence.
But instantly, you know, they just kind of like snapped him back into reality. Well, it's not as dramatic, but I would say we have better evidence today because that happened. Everybody knew about it. But you read through the Bible five years later, 10 years later, 50 years later, everybody was just kind of, oh, yeah, yeah, that happened. But, you know, and then. And they're going, they're drifting away from God again. They're drifting away from doing what God wanted them to do with creation. I mean, the more we learn about creation, the more it points to God. You know, true science is catching up with the Bible. So it points to God. It points to the Bible. So we've got that all the time. So it's not like someone can say, well, did that really happen, you know, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, whatever? And we say, no, hey, let's just go outside. Let's talk about that mosquito that just bit you. You know what I mean? You can do. So you've always got God's creation. We can always use it to evangelize. So I think. I actually think we're in a better situation today than they were 3,000 years ago. But again, there's nothing new under the sun.
Any comments, questions on that?
And we'll keep doing this throughout the whole class because this is the whole goal, is how to make this useful. I mean, it's really fun to discuss, but how do you make it useful? How do you apply? And one of that is you got to me at least, is we have to really understand what's people, stumbling blocks, what's really keeping them from obeying the. Basically from obeying the gospel, from becoming Christians. Okay?
So a lot of what you also get is you get false assumptions, basically just, you know, falsehoods that drive us down some really weird paths. Okay? And so in, you know, mid-1800s, late 1800s, this idea of evolution really started to get popularized. And we went through, I think a little bit last week, you know, about how what we know now from true science, no way life could make itself. I mean, in the Middle Ages, they actually thought that you'd.
For example, if you left soup out on the counter for a few days, you would get fuzzy stuff on top. And so obviously the bacteria in the mold that was spontaneously rising from the soup. If you wanted to get more sophisticated, you could make flies by leaving meat out on the counter. And then they get the. Make these little worms first, and then they make the flies.
Of course, science advanced beyond that, but. But still, for whatever reason, late 1800s, people are really still thinking evolution could work, life could maybe make itself. We had. Louis Pasteur had already done his experiments showing that life doesn't arise just spontaneously. But so that led to a lot of things where you had like the French Academy of Sciences saying things like apparently they were convinced there was life on Mars. That was just a given.
Some reports they're offering rewards for people that could find life beyond Earth, but it couldn't be on Mars because we already knew it was there. Right. I mean, so that was their whole premise and it had a lot of things going on. Well, this ended up being the headline in the Wall Street Journal. So a few months from now, we're going to have. What was the biggest story of 2026? Okay, well, the biggest story of 1907, according to the Wall Street Journal, pretty well known newspaper, Wall Street Journal reported that the most extraordinary event of the past 12 months was the proof afforded by astronomic observations that conscious intelligent human life exists upon the planet Mars.
Okay, so I'd agree that's pretty big. Right? Okay, so that was their story in 1907. And it kept going, though it wasn't just the newspaper. Just had something obviously completely wrong, but sensational. This is eight years later, reports of people trying to reinforce this idea that there was a civilization on Mars. It kept going. This was a 1915 edition of the American Museum Journal. So that was a publication of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, says Dr. Lowell. So Percival Lowell was one of the people promoting this idea.
Believes that the numerous line like markings seen there are those of vegetation growing by an enforcedly constructed irrigation system. The two significant effects found by observation support this theory. First, the marked geometric dreadness of the lines. No natural causes can account for them. Second, the characteristic manner which they develop with the seasons and the melting of the snow caps. Okay, so again, it's very eloquently worded, completely wrong. Right, but very eloquently wording, very sophisticated. So you got at least eight years in here when people are being convinced there's people on Mars. And he had of course, the radio play in the 30s. War of the Worlds, won't talk about that one. But it's just, it was a radio play. Apparently every ad they were telling people that no, this is just a radio play. But in between the ads, if someone just tuned it in, you know, listen for two minutes and you're causing a fair amount of panic because everybody's starting to convince all these Martians and you Know, what are the Martians like and everything?
So, and then it's like, it's also kind of like a scientific proof. I mean, here's Percival Lowell. He's got a Harvard University graduate, okay, he's got the degrees. Fellow, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, very wealthy, sent a team down to the Atacama Desert. Now, this is kind of the first clue because he even said it was to observe the canals on Mars. Okay, so again, we talk about atheists with scientific credentials speaking as atheists versus atheists with scientific credentials speaking as scientists. This isn't as blatant, but what he should have told them is just look at Mars and tell me what you see.
But by funding a bunch of people to go down and use the best astronomical equipment they've ever seen at the best observing conditions they've ever seen, and they're supposed to tell them about canals. Hey, I mean, I'm going to tell them about canals.
That was a really good deal.
So they're supposed to observe the canals. And so again, just started building on this. But then you start thinking, okay, if you'd been in a. Say you'd been at a university at work and someone had come in that day and they plunk the Wall Street Journal down in front of you and they say, hey, what do you think about this? Okay, well, the first thing you try to do and it's fine to do is you start thinking, okay, does that contradict the Bible? Does the Bible support that? Can it be. In other words, what does that really mean if there's people on Mars? And so it'd been tempting to not respond right away, which actually can be a very good way to handle it. But you want to respond fairly soon because you'd actually end up with a lot of implications if there had been a civilization on Mars. I mean, why did Jesus come to Earth to die if God also created humans on Mars? I mean, that's a valid question. Are Martian humans sinless? Did he create sinless humans on Mars? And that's why Jesus came to Earth, but he didn't go to Mars. If they are sinless, why are they going to be destroyed with the rest of the universe? Okay, there's a contradiction. Why didn't God tell us that he created humans on Mars? Because we'd obviously just discovered there's humans on Mars. So that's a big deal for us. If humans were created on Earth and traveled to Earth, to Mars, why is there no evidence of their technology? Okay, now this is a fun one. This is A whole other topic we probably won't get into this semester. If the chip occurred pre flood, does that mean it's possible for humans to avoid God's judgment? So you open this whole can of worms if you say, well, maybe there are humans on Mars.
Now what I like about that last one is you think about, okay, Adam and Eve are created. They have perfect brains. Okay, so they're the smartest people ever lived, are Adam and Eve.
They lived a long time, you know, 900ish years. They all spoke the same language.
So the question is, what kind of technology could they have developed in the 1656 years between creation and the flood?
And we think about it a little further, we all speak different languages. We got the printing press, what, 650 years ago maybe. And in 650 years, all speaking different languages, not having as good a brains as Adam and Eve, we've actually made a lot of progress. So just another fun topic. But anyway, so you open up a camera. Of course the good news is the good news, bad news. This is probably 55, 60 years later before everybody really figured out there's no life on Mars. I mean, it's because finally it was Mariner 4 in 1965. We sent a probe orbit around Mars.
It's like, oh boy, you know, that doesn't look very good, right? I mean it looks just, you know, nothing living there.
But even in the 50s you have colliers. That was their color story, you know, is there life on Mars? That was 1954. Disney has some great videos out there. I think they're still on YouTube. Just fun little things in the 50s about, you know, what kind of life are we going to find on Mars? One of them I think says something like, is it going to be, are they going to really be humans on Mars or is it just going to be like rabbits and blueberries and load. If there's rabbits and blueberries, there's obviously nothing there. So then Mariner 4, but then of course, Viking landers, they landed in 1976, nothing.
And the photo there was taken in 1978. We have helicopters flying around.
And so again, we know there's no life on Mars. But she went from proof afforded by astronomical observation to nothing there. Yeah, which is what we know now, goes a step further then people start saying, well, what about aliens? You know, that's always a hot topic. Okay. You know, are there aliens, you know, somewhere in the universe? Well, from the Bible we know that God only created people on Earth. And I think it's also, you know, we would know they wouldn't create any animal with a soul on another planet. You know, in other words, nothing analogous to a person. So, no, God didn't create aliens. And we know that life can't make itself so that from a biblical standpoint, you know, there's no aliens. Now, if you look secularly, we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars. I pulled something up today. Just. Just the equipment, all the. The observatories, the telescopes, the things we have dedicated to looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. I mean, it's just amazing the effort that's gone into that. Found nothing. Okay? And so finally, some people are starting to crack a little bit. This was a study that was done by Oxford University back in 2018, says when we take account of realistic uncertainty replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly confident the galaxy or observable universe contains other civilizations and thus no longer find our observations in conflict with our prior probabilities. Okay, so what did I just say?
Okay, we've been telling you guys there's aliens all over the place. We are seeing absolutely nothing. So we adjusted everything, and now we're right again.
Basically, they're saying, okay, we're not. And what goes on talks about qualitatively similar results, two different methods, but basically they made all these assumptions that they realized were wrong. And once they corrected them, they came up with these numbers. They said, alone in our galaxy up to 99.6% chance. I mean, these are people that were used to tell us that there's aliens all over the place.
Alone in the observable universe up to 85%. Now, Biblically, we know it's 100%, but it's just kind of interesting how those were changed. And they mentioned the Fermi paradox or the Fermi observation. This was a really funny one, because even in 1950, Enrico Fermi was on his way to lunch with some other physicists, and he just said, where are they?
Okay? And it was so funny. The guy was so famous, everybody knew what he meant. What he meant was, hey, we've been looking all over the place for aliens, and we all believe in evolution. So where are they? And he wasn't seeing them. So it's. So that's what they mean. The Fermi paragraph. Well, that's 1950.
You know, we're looking at 75 years later.
It's gotten even worse because we've looked so hard for that.
Okay? So that's kind of the life from non life. The main reason for that last one is at some point, again, it hasn't happened in a while. It used to happen a lot, like 10 years ago. They always say, oh, here's a fossil that proves apes turned into humans. Or here's this, or here's this. And it always get debunked within a few months. It hasn't really happened in a while. It's going to happen again. So just be thinking through.
As science advances, it catches up with the Bible and kind of just think through. If you had that same scenario, but put yourself back in 1907, someone plunks an article down in front of you that's supposedly going to challenge our faith, you know, challenge Christianity. Because hey, that was the Wall Street Journal, and hey, that was Percival Lowell. And hey, the American Museum of Natural History is backing it up with some journal articles. How are you going to respond?
And so it's just something to keep in mind. How do you keep evangelizing in that particular situation?
Okay, and then Genesis 1:26 27. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man his own image. And the image of God, he created a male and female. He created them. Okay, so again, very consistent with being alone in the universe.
Okay, so gonna shift gears. And there's a lot of different directions.
We'll have many follow on semesters that a lot of different times if we want to. But not me teaching. So don't worry about that. But we'll get somebody.
But the next step is, okay, so we have free will. We can make choices. We just went through. Why would someone knowing that only God could give them the ability to make a choice because they need to have a soul. Or why would they choose not to learn about God, not to learn the Bible? In other words, I'm choosing not to learn about the God that gave me the ability to choose not to learn about God. Which is kind of odd.
So we talk about that and then we talked about life can't make itself. So the next thing that you'll run into is people say, well, maybe somehow life did make itself. And actually there was a PBS special on that. It's probably 20 years ago. And they had this really just this real likable grad student and says, well, yeah, we know it's impossible for life to make itself, but we know it happened at Least once. And that's how they address that question. Because it's like, obviously there's no alternative. So if that's granted, then the idea is, okay, how does that life turn itself into all the other life that we see around us? In other words, how could a bacteria turn itself into essentially all the other life that we see on Earth? And that's in a summary. That's what they're trying to say. Well, what you have to look at it as a way to kind of keep the thinking clear is think about as information in the genome. Okay, so God created DNA, and DNA, the molecule, it's an amazing molecule, but it contains all the information needed for all the physical characteristics of all life that we see. So mosquito has DNA, blade of grass has DNA.
You and I have DNA. So that's the molecule that God uses for the physical characteristics. Now, I'll say this several times. Also the important difference between people and animals, not the physical characteristic, the important difference is we are created in God's image and animals aren't. And so that's a spiritual difference. And so that's key.
But there are obviously also physical differences. And that's coded for in the DNA. So you can think of it, that's information.
So where does the information come from? And information you can get in the theoretical arguments, you know, it can't make itself and it can't. But just a few analogies. The first one could be, okay, biblical creation. Basically, God created things, as he says in Genesis 1.
And all of the genetic information for all the physical characteristics of life that we see today could have been in that original creation. And we actually know that's true. Single man, single woman, Adam and Eve, easily in their DNA, you'd have the information needed for all the physical characteristics of all the people alive on Earth today. And we know that, again, true science catching up with the Bible. 100 years ago, that was evidence against the Bible. Well, we all look so different, so we know we couldn't have descended from Adam and Eve. And then science catches up. We study DNA and we're like, oh, wait, you know, very easy. Single man, single woman in their DNA, all the physical characteristics of all people. It seems true for like, dogs and I mean, just, you know, just amazing molecule. Okay, so that's the biblical creation. All that information is there. And maybe a way to think about it is if someone gave you an encyclopedia and said, hey, write a sentence about butterflies. Well, hey, that's pretty easy, right? You know, you just turn to the section on butterflies. You probably have 30, 40 pages on butterflies. Write a sentence, good to go, except the information is there. Now, evolution requires. And when I say atheistic evolution, I'm not picking on. I'm not necessarily picking on atheists. Just there's other people say, well, maybe God just made little, you know, just kept creating things in turn to evolution. So that's the only reason I define that. But anyway, that says given a sentence about butterflies who write a complete encyclopedia. In other words, they're basically saying, you start out with the information and bacteria, and now you got to write, you know, add all the information for all the other life that we see around us. And so that's the evolution version. Well, that's. You're like, okay, how would I do that? You know, where are you going to get the information from? Okay, so that's a good analogy. And what it turns out is if we look in our textbooks, the textbook examples of evolution don't show information being created. They either show. They show change. And they'll even say things like, well, evolution's just change. We see change, therefore, that proves evolution. That's not. You can say, well, that is, that's not the definition of evolution that people talk about. In other words, it's not change. It's changing something like a bacteria into a person is changing one kind of animal into another. So the kind of change when, say, evolution is change that requires new information to be created, that's not in any of the textbook examples. And so they'll also have a term that they sometimes call micro evolution. That's actually a very deceptive term.
Okay, so linguistically, what's lots of micro give you? Well, it's macro, okay? Now it's simple. It's probably a lot more complicated for that. But to me, if someone says, I get micro this, then in my mind I'm thinking, okay, well, boy, if I just added all kinds of micros together, I'm going to get macro. Okay? So the.
And so that's kind of the intent of it. But when they say microevolution, a lot of times it's actually a loss of genetic information. It'd be like a new breed of dog. That's actually always a loss of genetic information. Or some of the ways that bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, say loss of genetic information.
So lots of little losses never give me the big gain that it takes to turn a bacteria into an earthworm, into a bunny rabbit, you know, et cetera. Okay? And that's why it's a deceptive term. But it's in A lot of the textbooks, it'd be like.
Anyone here ever go to an investment seminar?
You can fess up. Okay. Okay. So I've actually never been to one, but I've seen them. And usually when the person gives them the idea, that's when like the whole hallway starts to, you know, everybody starts bailing out of the room. But anyway, so say you're at an investment seminar. And the person says, okay, you know, investment seminar. If I'm the speaker, my job is to get you to give me all your money. Right? I mean, essentially. So the way I get you to give me all your money is I say, hey, I got this way, we're all going to get rich. And so here's the plan. We're going to make machines. And every time we sell a machine, we're going to lose $1. But don't worry, we're going to make it up in volume.
Ok, yeah, good.
And that's when everybody heads for the hallway. Right?
But that's basically microevolution and macroevolution. If we're losing a dollar every time we sell a machine, we're just going to go bankrupt faster the more machines we sell. If microevolution is typically a loss of genetic information, the more microevolution we have. It's actually the faster we go extinct. And so that's, that's what we see. So we'll give some examples. This one is, this was a peppered moth example. It's in all the US textbooks till about 2003 now they've replaced those with what they call Darwin's finches. But it's actually exactly the same thing. Peppered moth. It's the coloration of the moth. Darwin finches is basically the beak shape, but it's the same thing. And all that's really happening is in this case, the genetic information for both of those colored moths was always there.
Depending on the selection pressure, the population density would change. But you never create any new genetic information.
I'll walk you through the story. And again, some people even saying the story was a little bit fabricated, but it was making their point. I think that's why they put it in there. They said this is evolution in action. You see, there's, there's two kinds of moth. So you have the typical form and the carbonaria form. And before the Industrial revolution and the big cities in England, the tree bark, it looked a lot like that moth, the typical form. And so what was happening, the idea was, is that moth would be sitting on the tree and the Birds couldn't see it. Okay, it's really well camouflaged. But some of the moths were born with that coloration.
Well, but that's dark. This nice dark triangle. The birds are going to figure out real quick, hey, those, you know, those taste good, right? And so they're going to start eating the dark ones because they can see them. And 98% of the moths were this form, 2% were that form. Okay, makes sense. Well, then you have the industrial revolution. Apparently the air got so bad that it actually killed the lichen on the tree bark. So that changed the color. And you also even had soot on the tree bark. So the bark gets really dark.
Okay, so what's going to happen? Well, now all of a sudden this moth is very well camouflaged. That moth is easy to see. And so the population density, it actually flipped. So now it's instead of 98% this form, 2% that form. It's 2% that form, 98% that form. Okay, so then they clean up the air. Like 1950, tree bark goes back to normal color, population density flips back. Okay, now it's back to 98 here, 2% there. Okay, so is that evolution in action?
I mean, it was change, right? Evolution, just change.
It's got absolutely nothing to do with evolution because the genetic information was always there and it just changed the population density. Okay, but that was the flagship example. Now it's typically Darwin's finches. Okay, so another example that people talk about a lot is bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics. Okay, so there's three ways a bacteria develops resistance to antibiotics. You develop a basically antibiotic resistant strain of bacteria.
The first way is say I get infected with a bacteria, I take an antibiotic and it's a good antibiotic, kills 999 out of a thousand bacteria. Okay, that's pretty good. Well, if my immune system doesn't kill that last one and it recolonizes my body and it had the ability to resist that antibiotic. In other words, one out of a thousand could resist the antibiotic. Well, if it recolonizes my body now I'm infected with an antibiotic resistant strain of bacteria. But the information was always in the genome because the information resists the antibody. Even though it's only one out of a thousand, it was there. Okay, and so it's just a population density change. Again, you went from one out of a thousand to thousand out of a thousand. But that's all it was. It was just a population, no new information.
Second way is bacteria are so small they can actually bacteria can get close to each other and you can have like little loops of DNA get exchange between the bacteria. And so that becomes a problem is there's some harmless bacteria. A lot of bacteria are actually good for us. You know, we actually have more bacterial cells in our body than we do human cells in our body. And so the, so some are actually good for us and they can be resistant to antibiotics. So normally that's great. Hey, if it's good for me and it's resistant to antibiotics, that's good to have. But the problem is if it gets close to a harmful bacteria, they can exchange little loops of DNA and that can make the harmful bacteria resistant to the antibiotic. But again, the information to resist the antibiotic was always in the genome. So it's kind of information neutral, you'd say. Okay. Third way that bacteria become resistant to antibiotics is they actually have an information losing mutation that keeps them from, for example, being able to absorb the antibiotic or being able to limit the production of certain enzymes that protect them from that antibiotic. And so one way to think about that is with our modern antibiotics, we're trying to be really clever. So what we're trying to do is we disguise the antibiotic to look like a nutrient.
So we take the antibiotic, the bacteria sees it, it looks like a nutrient to the bacteria, so it pulls in that antibiotic. It thinks it's pulling in a nutrient, but it's actually an antibiotic. Kills a bacteria. Hey, pretty clever, right? We outsmarted a bacteria. Okay, but the problem is what if the bacteria has a mutation that it can no longer absorb that nutrient? Okay, so information losing mutation, it's bad for the bacteria. It's not as fit in most environments. But even though it lost that information, it also makes it resistant to the antibiotic.
So it can no longer absorb the antibiotic. It's antibiotic resistant, but it was through the opposite of evolution.
Did that make any sense to anybody?
Got a hand way in back. Okay, sweet. All right. Okay. All right, so, okay, so again, it's.
Now which do you guys think is easier to explain to somebody? Free will, life can't make itself, or what we just did?
Okay, yeah, but there's a good book over there, it's called Genetic Entropy. If someone gets really interested in it and just they'll have to dig a little bit because there's so much, I'll just say, misinformation out there. There's actually one of the teachers editions which is really kind of disgusting. I said it last Week also is, you know, I have a ton of respect for teachers. I mean, they're usually working 16 hour days trying to keep up. They've got a certain material they have to teach their kids, the kids have to pass their class. They got other issues going on with the kids. So tremendous respect for teachers. And so when a teacher's edition puts something in that's blatantly wrong, that just bugs me because the publishers of that book should know better. And so in this particular case, what it said in the teacher's edition, well, if you have a child that's struggling with the concept of evolution, which means basically if a child's figured out that it doesn't work, that's really what they were saying. But if you have this child struggling with the concept of evolution, well just send them to the pet store and ask them if they see a new breed of dog. And if they do, tell them, well, see, that's changed and evolution's just changed. Go through all the stuff that's incorrect and many reasons that's wrong. But new breeds of dogs, new breeds of cats, that's one of the best examples of the opposite of evolution. Okay? And what I mean by that is, you know, we don't.
When you say you turn a like a wolf like dog into a poodle, well you're not generating new genetic information to make the poodle. What you're doing is you're getting rid of all the information out of that big dog that makes it look like anything other than a poodle. Okay? So in other words, you, you get rid of genetic information to create a new breed of dog. And so that's why for example poodles, unfortunately they have like 46 genetic defects. Because in the process of trying to get rid of every piece of genetic information that would make it a non poodle, we also got rid of a lot of genetic information that they need to survive to be healthy. Even some of the healthier dogs, I think like German shepherds, have hip dysplasia. Okay, so that's again, that's a strong dog. Well, how'd they get that? Well, it was, we were removing genetic information. Now we caused a wheat blight in Russia by getting rid of genetic information. We've caused other basically famines because someone would. The wheat blight was caused because we wanted to make the wheat husk. We want to make the wheat easier to process into bread, into B R E A D because I'm going to say they rebred the bread, but nevermind. But you know, to Make. So to make the wheat into bread, we got rid of the husk on it. But the problem is in that selective breeding, we also got rid of the genetic information needed for that wheat to resist a certain kind of blight. So they're having huge crop failure in Russia. We actually went back, you've probably heard of like the ancient seeds and the ancient seed reservoirs. That's not just a touchy feely, you know, nice to have thing. No, that's. We actually went back to that and started breeding, trying to get some of that genetic information back into the wheat because it needed it to be able to resist the blight. So it's so again, it's so we know this happens. But anyway, so new breeds, dogs and cats, very strongly the opposite of evolution. Okay, so we'll end with a analogy about cars because everybody likes cars. So this is just an idea of genomic selection and it's actually, again, it's a pretty tight analogy here. So the idea is I want everybody to imagine the perfect automobile.
So you got the perfect automobile in mind. Okay. And then before you make the perfect automobile, want you to go ahead and make a thousand, make a manual for making the perfect automobile, make a thousand copies of that manual. Okay? So you got a thousand copies of the manual needed to make the perfect automobile. And then what you do though is before you make a single car, I want you to mutate all your manuals. Okay? So suppose you have them all lined up on a word process or something. Each MANUAL Just change 100 words in it. You know, close your eyes, don't look at what word. So each of the thousand manuals has 100 words changed. Now they all have a different word set of words changed. But these have. So that's your mutations. Okay, so now you want to make. You had a thousand manuals. Why don't you go ahead and make 1500 cars? Right? Now, are those 1500 cars, are they going to be perfect?
Okay, now are they all going to be imperfect in the same way?
Correct. Yeah. Yeah, they're going to be imperfect in different ways. Okay, so you made this sports car, and you know, sports car, you don't even need a rear view mirror at all. But just for show, you have a little tiny rear view mirror on your sports car.
You mutate your manual and it's like this big, okay? Right. And you're driving like this. Right. Okay. So do you like that car?
No, I really don't like it. But what if another car has the engine on top of the roof and it's not even connected to the transmission.
Okay, well, you're going to deal with the giant rear view mirror, right? So you go ahead and you do your natural selection. You get rid of the 500 cars that you just, you know, they don't run. There's something big wrong with them. Keep the thousand that you like better than the 500 you got rid of, okay? That's your natural selection, right? So now you.
So the manuals you use to make the thousand cars you kept, go ahead and change another hundred words in those manuals, all random. Make another 1500 cars.
Keep the ones that you know are better than the ones that you got rid of. And that's really all you're doing with natural selection. Keep doing that. You do that 100 times now, you've changed 10,000 words in each of the manuals, okay? So the question is, how long does it take your car to turn into a jet airplane?
Okay? So you're going the other direction. And that's the whole point is when we do mutations in natural selection, and lots of time it sounds fancy, but it just doesn't work. And we know it doesn't work. And so that's a lot of different ways you can look at that. Again, a lot of good material out there, genetic entropy. Actually, the reason they call it genetic entropy is we're basically seeing the genomes degrading. And I think we'll talk about that in a later class. Some people now are saying we're losing 1 to 5% fitness in humans every generation. So every generation, there's enough mutations pass from one generation to the next generation that depending on how you define fitness, at least by those definitions, they say lose 1 to 5% per generation. And that's consistent with what we're seeing now. Of course, God sustains his creation. So you don't start extrapolating. Some people do extrapolate. How many more generations do we have based on that? But God sustains his creation. So there's more to it than that.
But, you know, makes sense when you start thinking about the mutating your car manual, and just the other things that we observe. You know, if any of you work in a chemistry lab, you know, mutagens, you give special care to mutagens.
If you're a nuclear engineer, you don't just go hang out next to the reactor to make yourself better, okay? I mean, it's so we know mutations are bad, and so that's accepted anyway. Genetic entropy is over there, if you're interested. And again, just always want to end on this chart again.
So we just had a lot of fun, went through a lot of stuff.
But again, at some point, if you're just talking to somebody about this, you want them to say, well, okay, you don't believe what's in the textbook. What do you believe? And so what we do is we send them to what we know is God's inerrant word. The only book that we should really be paying attention to, and that's the Bible. And again, Romans 1:16. For I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for his power of God is salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek and then all kinds of great Bible studies out there. But I'd say just have in mind what you'll say if someone actually responds to any way you're evangelizing this way or another way.
All right, well, let's go ahead and close with a prayer.
Heavenly Father, just thank you again for the opportunities we have to be together and to fellowship and to just learn more about your word and about your creation. Just ask that you be with us all always and again, help us to see the opportunities that you give us to evangelize and to lead others to the truth. And please keep us all safe, both physically and spiritually. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
