Did humans come from monkeys? How old is the earth? Should we interpret the Bible literally? Does any of it matter? In this episode, we discuss creationism and evolution, a recurring topic at Randy and Kyle's church Q&A's.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Driftless Glen bourbon.
If you're local to Milwaukee, check out our friends at Story Hill BKC.
The books and resources for further reading that we recommend at the end of the episode are:
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
Did humans come from monkeys? How old is the earth? Should we interpret the Bible literally? Does any of it matter? In this episode, we discuss creationism and evolution, a recurring topic at Randy and Kyle's church Q&A's.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Driftless Glen bourbon.
If you're local to Milwaukee, check out our friends at Story Hill BKC.
The books and resources for further reading that we recommend at the end of the episode are:
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
00:00
[Music]
00:14
welcome to a pastor and a philosopher
00:16
walk into a bar
00:17
the podcast where we mix a sometimes
00:19
weird but always delicious cocktail of
00:21
theology
00:22
philosophy and spirituality
00:29
so i googled creation versus evolution
00:33
and 278
00:37
million results came up that's a lot of
00:40
results that's a lot
00:42
of debates and conversations about
00:45
creation and evolution and friends we
00:47
are excited to add
00:49
another one a 278
00:52
and 1 million i don't know if that's
00:54
even the right way you say that
00:55
but we're going to do it we're going to
00:56
add to the 278 million
00:59
conversations and we're talking today
01:01
about creation
01:02
and evolution how they work do they work
01:04
together
01:05
all that business it's gonna be fun
01:08
exciting
01:10
elliot yeah i got the drinks today all
01:12
right let's do this
01:13
tell us about it so i picked this up
01:15
because i i think i had it
01:16
uh with a friend and enjoyed it but
01:19
maybe this isn't the same one so either
01:21
it's
01:21
either it's really good or maybe it's
01:22
just like yeah this might be really bad
01:24
too we'll see this is this is driftless
01:26
glenn
01:27
uh which is a wisconsin-made bourbon
01:32
which uh isn't real common or
01:36
possible do you know what part is
01:37
wisconsin baraboo baraboo so this is
01:40
the glaciers kind of pushed through
01:41
wisconsin they flattened most of the
01:43
state and
01:44
and baraboo is the part where it all
01:46
wrinkled up
01:47
and so there's there's a lot going on
01:49
and now you don't really believe that
01:51
elliot do you
01:52
that uh millions of years ago glaciers
01:55
were in wisconsin
01:56
there was a no no no no this was there
01:58
was a flood
01:59
there's a flood sea
02:00
[Laughter]
02:03
oh boy i didn't really think about
02:04
glaciers in the bible
02:07
it begins so this is a bourbon uh this
02:10
is
02:11
uh 48 alcohol says 96 proof
02:15
color is really dark really really oaky
02:19
really inoffensive on the nose yeah yeah
02:21
it is it's not
02:23
super outstanding nose or complex but
02:26
good
02:31
yeah okay not a lot of complexity but
02:37
tasty it has all the standard uh flavor
02:39
notes that you want in a bourbon
02:44
it's a it's a burnt wood for me it's
02:47
like there's a there's a
02:48
yeah almost a charcoal type of yeah
02:51
i like that and last time i chewed on
02:53
some charcoal i remember this flavor
02:54
emerging
02:55
no yeah i mean distillers will vary
02:58
their toast on the inside of the barrel
03:00
so that makes sense
03:01
it is very oaky i gotta take another sip
03:05
yeah it's got some sweetness on the back
03:07
of the tongue a little bit new it's got
03:09
some good spice to it
03:10
actually um yeah i was trying to it's
03:12
not it's not like black pepper though
03:13
either it's a
03:15
no but close i would say i mean it's
03:17
just
03:18
it's almost like effervescent on the
03:20
tongue after it goes down
03:22
and that's where you feel the spice
03:24
that's good excuse me
03:25
i don't love it but i like it and it's
03:28
fun that it's local
03:29
yeah i put a little bit of water in it
03:31
and it seemed to help
03:33
okay i like that actually the bottle is
03:37
probably my favorite part
03:38
it's this kind of squat squared bottle
03:40
like really thick glass and then on
03:42
either side there's a
03:43
the fingerprint of of the founders what
03:46
do you call edge
03:47
or embossed or something it's like in
03:49
the class oh that's cool
03:51
really really pretty yeah yep awesome
03:53
well
03:54
support baraboo distilleries and
03:57
purchase some driftless glenn yeah
04:01
thank you elliot yeah thanks healthy
04:02
pour too appreciate that
04:03
[Laughter]
04:04
[Music]
04:09
so when i was a kid i grew up in
04:13
rural kentucky and everybody in rural
04:16
kentucky is a creationist
04:18
i probably knew two or three people as a
04:20
kid that weren't creationists but i
04:22
didn't know they weren't
04:23
until until later uh there was
04:26
yeah well you know be careful with that
04:28
language but i mean honestly there is
04:30
something like that kind of experience
04:32
around this issue in the rural south
04:35
uh if you have if you have doubts about
04:37
creationism you keep them to yourself
04:40
if you want to be accepted in the
04:42
evangelical church community
04:44
or sometimes even by your family uh you
04:47
keep those doubts to yourself
04:49
and in kentucky there's actually a huge
04:52
creationist presence because of
04:54
an organization called answers in
04:56
genesis
04:57
and they for whatever reason chose
04:59
actually i know the reason
05:00
tax breaks were the reason they chose
05:02
kentucky
05:03
for their ark encounters what they call
05:07
it so
05:07
you know christian capitalists yeah they
05:09
built a life-size
05:11
replica a life-size based on these very
05:14
specific dimensions
05:16
of the ark that you get in genesis so
05:18
they built a life-size
05:20
replica and a whole park to go along
05:22
with it so you can go and tour this
05:24
thing i haven't done so but
05:25
complete with uh animatronic dinosaurs
05:28
and
05:28
humans and long detailed explanations
05:32
of how everything fit on the ark and how
05:36
humans and dinosaurs lived at the same
05:37
time and how that all worked out
05:40
i don't mean to laugh they have gone to
05:42
great uh
05:44
astonishing lengths to make it all make
05:47
sense and to
05:48
answer all the skeptics and this is the
05:50
environment i grew up in and
05:53
then i went to college and it took one
05:56
no
05:56
not even one it took half of one biology
05:59
course
06:00
to completely dismantle that view
06:04
really it was that easily so so easily
06:07
uh now it helped that my uh biology
06:11
professor had written a book
06:13
uh on evolution specifically and was
06:16
well acquainted with the creationist
06:18
arguments
06:18
and so took explicitly took time in his
06:21
lectures to rebut
06:22
some of them so that was probably a part
06:24
of it like a good catholic school
06:25
probably
06:26
so this was a liberal arts state school
06:29
yeah these are the ones they warned us
06:30
about yeah for sure
06:32
but he was very nice about it i mean he
06:34
wasn't mean or
06:35
vindictive or anything like that so that
06:37
helped um and then just talking about it
06:39
with some thoughtful friends and
06:41
and so i remember very specifically it
06:44
raised all these questions in my mind
06:45
and i thought man i need to get to the
06:47
bottom of this because
06:48
if you listen to the creationist side of
06:49
things
06:51
there's so much importance placed on
06:53
this topic if you
06:54
if you give up the specific view of
06:57
creation
06:57
then you give up the whole thing you
06:59
might as well you know if we call this
07:01
part into question
07:02
what about the rest of it jesus all of
07:04
it goes away and so
07:06
i was kind of struggling with that for a
07:08
little while and so i remember i
07:10
i asked my creationist friends which
07:11
included my pastor at the time
07:13
for a reading list i said give me the
07:15
best books that you know that argue for
07:17
the creationist point of view
07:19
and then i emailed two or three
07:21
professors
07:22
in the biology department and i said
07:24
give me your best books
07:26
on evolution and if you know anything
07:28
specifically about evolution and
07:29
creation give me your best books on
07:31
those
07:31
and i remember sitting in my room in
07:33
college with two stacks of books on
07:34
either side of me i had this beanbag
07:36
chair that i would sit in to read
07:38
and i had one stack on my right side of
07:40
creationist books and one stack on my
07:42
left side of evolutionist books and i
07:44
would read those all summer long
07:46
what a eager beaver holy mother i mean
07:48
it was important to me and i remember
07:50
i had a roommate at the time who
07:53
very well meaning pulled me aside one
07:56
day as i was sitting there reading
07:57
through my evolutionist books
07:59
and gave me a quote word from the lord
08:02
that i love that that this was a
08:04
dangerous path
08:06
and that i needed to repent and stop
08:10
that that was the culture i grew up with
08:14
it's one of a handful of words from the
08:16
lord that i got in that time frame
08:19
and uh it's interesting that one of them
08:20
was about
08:22
this issue what to believe about
08:24
evolution
08:26
so this has been on my radar for a large
08:28
part of my my christian life
08:30
but it hasn't been important to me
08:34
for a long time but because of how
08:36
important it was at one point i think
08:38
it's an important issue that we need to
08:39
to address
08:41
every time you and i do a q a at our
08:43
church this comes up
08:45
people are still grappling with it for
08:47
sure
08:49
absolutely and i wouldn't say you know
08:52
it's creation or evolution i would
08:55
i would guess that all of us believe in
08:58
creation that
08:59
god created the world it's the method
09:03
at which that happened and the when that
09:06
happened and how that happened
09:08
yeah but i would say probably i would i
09:10
would guess kyle that you agree that
09:12
if you believe in evolution you believe
09:14
that god
09:15
set in motion the process of evolution
09:17
for it to in and that's how he created
09:19
the world
09:20
yeah so i think what um what my sincere
09:23
christian friends were worried about
09:27
is that i would reject the idea that god
09:29
had anything to do with nature
09:31
that somehow it all happened and there
09:34
was no explanation for it and isn't that
09:36
just atheism
09:38
but if you read the nicene creed for
09:40
example
09:41
you don't see anything in there about
09:42
how god did anything
09:45
that he created the world is in there
09:46
and that's a doctrine that all
09:48
christians hold
09:49
if you're not an atheist if you're a
09:50
theist of any kind you think god had
09:52
something to do with nature
09:53
he's responsible for it in some way but
09:56
the methods
09:57
well that's a different question right
10:01
yeah and so i mean it was a huge part of
10:04
your journey and your process
10:06
in being able to reconcile the science
10:09
with what you've
10:10
what you grew up with what you were
10:11
given and for me as a pastor this is
10:13
a very constant question this is a very
10:16
regular question of
10:18
maybe people coming out of
10:20
fundamentalism in a
10:22
young earth you know uh world view
10:25
and being having that challenged or
10:26
maybe people more and more people
10:29
basically are
10:30
just can't buy and think young earth
10:32
creationism is silliness
10:34
and they they pick up this little
10:37
tension between christianity and science
10:41
and that's my my issue that's where i
10:43
get a little
10:44
i i feel tension in there is that
10:48
there is no need for tension between
10:50
christianity
10:51
and the science scientific community the
10:53
reason that it's there is because we
10:55
christians have put it there we've
10:56
introduced this hostility we've we've
10:58
become so insecure
11:00
probably because of the enlightenment
11:02
and we live in a post-enlightenment
11:03
world
11:04
where we feel like we have to have an
11:05
answer for everything if science comes
11:07
with a different answer it's dangerous
11:08
right and that insecurity is so
11:11
unhelpful
11:12
and i would say younger people
11:15
particularly are so done with that
11:17
narrative there there are some there are
11:19
many people who have
11:21
tossed the whole dang thing done the
11:23
opposite of what the christians say
11:24
they've tossed the whole dang thing
11:25
because if you
11:26
believe that the earth is really 10 000
11:28
years old or whatever they say
11:30
that is a farce and i can't believe it i
11:31
just can't do it i know my
11:33
11 year old son who's very into science
11:35
dreams of being a scientist
11:37
if i were to tell him that the earth is
11:40
10 000 years old he'd think i'm crazy
11:42
and he's just in fifth grade right like
11:44
he i think we have a whole
11:46
large group of people in a growing group
11:49
of people who that just doesn't sit well
11:50
with they can't deal with it they can't
11:52
they can't swallow it and we need to
11:55
actually talk about this because i don't
11:56
think it's in our bible
11:58
yeah i don't think that's what genesis
11:59
warns cards a little bit here
12:02
but if you don't think this is a
12:03
necessary tension why do you think it
12:06
persists
12:07
why is this still an issue for so many
12:09
christians
12:11
well i think we've many christians have
12:14
been groomed and
12:15
grown and taught in this world that that
12:17
is insecure
12:19
that says evolution in textbooks and
12:22
science books is of the devil
12:24
and we need to do what we can to get
12:26
intelligent design in
12:28
in science books right so we've grown up
12:30
with this combative world view
12:32
and we put so much stock into this
12:33
argument that we've made it so that
12:36
if we if you take that away it's
12:38
everything goes away and everything
12:39
slides away
12:40
which is a really i'm just not
12:43
comfortable with that argument that
12:44
our interpretation of this ancient text
12:48
is actually what everything rests upon
12:50
yeah yeah and we're definitely
12:52
going to talk more about that kind of
12:53
literal approach to things
12:55
um so maybe it's best because i know
12:57
some listeners are
12:59
wondering so maybe it's best if we just
13:00
lay out right at the beginning what our
13:02
current views are just just put our
13:04
cards on the table
13:05
be transparent so people know where
13:07
we're headed here so what would you say
13:09
is your current view about this issue
13:10
randy and has it changed for you and if
13:12
so in what ways
13:14
oh yeah absolutely it's changed i
13:16
definitely grew up in
13:18
a young earth creationist home
13:21
always held that went to a lutheran
13:23
school for the most part
13:25
so i had that affirmed i didn't read the
13:27
public school
13:28
stuff similar to you in kentucky and
13:30
then went to university and
13:32
i kind of thought it was all i was very
13:35
skeptical of the evolution in biology
13:37
classes i was not like you i didn't
13:38
i didn't swallow it but yet i was
13:40
uncomfortable with it and then in
13:42
college
13:43
ministry i had a couple of friends who
13:45
believed in evolution
13:46
and that really intrigued me
13:50
and what it did to me it didn't actually
13:52
introduce this
13:54
crisis it actually said oh that's
13:56
interesting that christianity
13:58
i can have like i know this guy's a
14:00
christian he's beaut he's a wonderful
14:02
man
14:03
and he believes in evolution that's
14:05
that's kind of cool like first of all
14:06
that's gutsy of him i remember thinking
14:08
that
14:09
and the second of all interesting so
14:11
that was my gateway into just
14:13
allowing myself even to imagine a world
14:16
view that doesn't involve a young earth
14:17
creationism
14:19
and then i would go and morph and say oh
14:21
i believe in microevolution not
14:23
macroevolution you know that's
14:24
you can't deny what does that mean
14:26
microevolution being that of course
14:28
things change slowly over time that's
14:31
like christians can allow that into
14:32
their
14:33
creationist worldview macroevolution
14:35
that it's
14:36
you know everyone came from a species
14:38
similar to a monkey
14:39
that's a bunch of hogwash you know and
14:41
then eventually it just
14:42
but of course as as we all know micro
14:44
evolution is the gateway drug to macro
14:46
evolution
14:47
exactly it was for me so it was halfway
14:50
in like
14:51
micro to macro evolution but it was also
14:53
in i started
14:55
to understand the bible a little bit
14:57
more in a critical fashion
14:58
and not critical in critiquing it but
15:02
actually unders
15:02
we started understanding the bible as an
15:05
ancient text
15:06
that an ancient people group who thought
15:08
way differently than i do
15:10
and would have read this way differently
15:12
than i did and and
15:14
filter it way differently than i do that
15:17
was the thing that put me over the edge
15:19
was actually let's think about what the
15:20
original listeners the original audience
15:23
the people who the
15:24
this text was talking to how they would
15:26
have taken it
15:27
and that really just kind of said okay
15:29
this is not what i thought it was
15:32
and so now i'm basically if you ask me
15:35
what i believe about the origin of the
15:36
universe i would say
15:38
i believe the big bang was an explosion
15:40
of divine love
15:41
that set into events
15:44
this beautiful process of the love of
15:47
god being shared
15:49
and and creating this universe and the
15:51
cosmos and
15:52
in all things out of nothing
15:55
and all things that exist exist because
15:58
god created them because he wanted them
16:00
to
16:00
to be created but that that process
16:02
happened through
16:04
what we know as evolution yeah
16:07
what about you kyle uh so
16:10
for my own part i mean i i would happily
16:12
describe myself as
16:14
an evolutionist i'm much happier with
16:16
that language now than i am with any
16:18
kind of creationist label in fact i
16:20
prefer not to add the creationist label
16:22
at all if i can help it
16:24
just because it has so much baggage it
16:26
brings so many connotations
16:28
along with it and there's so many
16:30
different kinds of creationists and
16:32
everybody's wondering which kind you are
16:33
if you include that that term we'll talk
16:35
about that in a minute
16:37
so for for my part i'm just happy saying
16:39
you look i accept the
16:40
the consensus the overwhelming consensus
16:43
of the scientific experts on this issue
16:45
for the last 150 years there's no reason
16:49
to question it as far as i can tell
16:51
all the all the reasons to question it
16:53
come from the bible
16:55
and in my view none of those are good
16:57
reasons anymore
16:58
and we're definitely going to dive into
17:00
that so
17:01
i prefer to just avoid the label
17:03
creationist altogether
17:04
uh and just say that i accept accept the
17:07
theory and see no tension whatsoever
17:09
between that and my christianity
17:11
but it took me a long time to get to
17:12
that place several years
17:14
and i like you i went through stages
17:16
right for a while i was
17:18
an old earth creationist because i
17:19
realized well oh man the
17:21
the the physical and geological evidence
17:24
and physical by physical i mean
17:26
the evidence from physics and
17:27
astrophysics and such it's just
17:29
overwhelming i mean the earth is
17:30
obviously billions of years old
17:32
but i need to hold on to the creationist
17:34
thing i need i need
17:35
the bible to be accurately describing
17:37
nature and so there's all sorts of
17:39
interpretive tricks
17:40
and exegetical tricks that you can do to
17:42
to make genesis fit
17:43
an old earth model and so for a while i
17:45
was an old earth creationist
17:47
and then i was a a different kind of
17:49
creationist for a while and
17:50
eventually you just get tired you get
17:52
tired of jumping through the hoops
17:54
and you say well maybe i'm trying to
17:56
make the bible be something it's not
17:58
yeah so that's that's kind of where i
17:59
ended up yeah and
18:01
god bless you i can't do it i love the
18:04
the word creationist way too much and
18:07
the idea of
18:09
god creating the universe in love it's
18:11
just too intoxicating for me to get so
18:13
there's a there's a group of people
18:14
that nowadays call themselves
18:16
evolutionary creationists
18:18
and their view is probably almost
18:21
indistinguishable from my view
18:22
yeah i'm done with that i just don't i
18:24
don't like the label
18:26
and and part of it and we'll get to this
18:28
later part of it is
18:29
uh i i tend to think that science and
18:32
religion
18:33
should be kept apart but we can we can
18:36
talk more about that not entirely but
18:37
there's a there's an important sense in
18:39
which they should be kept apart and so
18:41
that's kind of why i don't like the
18:42
label so much all right well kyle can
18:44
you
18:45
you you're you're way more well-versed
18:47
you little eager beaver with your stacks
18:48
of books on each side of you
18:50
that's so cute um but think praise the
18:52
lord you did it maybe that was divine
18:54
providence i'm not a calvinist but maybe
18:56
the lord was like you're gonna need this
18:57
for that podcast that you do
18:59
you know in 15 years oh that was for us
19:01
exactly
19:02
exactly so um go into the science of it
19:05
a little bit
19:05
kyle yeah now i should say i'm
19:07
definitely not a scientist i'm certainly
19:10
no
19:10
biologist and there's so many volumes
19:13
excellent volumes on this and at the end
19:15
we're going to recommend some so
19:16
but a good philosopher nitty gritty a
19:18
good philosopher does think he's an
19:19
expert at everything right or she
19:21
well can i just say you're you're next
19:25
an expert about abstract things it says
19:27
you're good at
19:28
putting together a whole picture but the
19:30
minutia that's
19:31
that's somebody else's job it's so
19:33
refreshing to hear somebody acknowledge
19:35
that they're not a scientist
19:39
especially these days it's so rare yeah
19:42
so here's my non-expert
19:45
perspective on what evolution is
19:48
basically
19:49
this is the 40 000 foot view basically
19:53
when darwin came along uh he was not the
19:55
first to think up evolution so
19:58
the idea that humans developed that
19:59
nature itself developed over a really
20:01
long process of piecemeal steps is a
20:03
very old idea it goes all the way back
20:04
to ancient greece
20:06
but darwin was the first to be able to
20:07
confirm it with experiment and
20:09
really flesh out the theory and also
20:11
propose a mechanism
20:12
for how it happened so evolution in the
20:15
darwin
20:16
sense is very simply all living things
20:19
have a common ancestor
20:21
which means if we were to get in a time
20:23
machine and just sort of trace their
20:25
development back to the beginning
20:27
we would find the same beginning for
20:29
everything that is alive
20:30
so anything that's currently living on
20:32
the earth started in one place
20:34
that happened a very long time ago about
20:37
four billion years ago
20:38
and here was darwin's unique proposal
20:42
he said i can tell you how that happened
20:44
i can explain how it happened in a way
20:46
that explains why everything looks like
20:48
it was designed for a purpose
20:50
but actually was natural natural meaning
20:53
it didn't need to be guided to be that
20:55
way
20:55
it didn't need anyone to reach into the
20:57
system and make it that way
20:59
it happened on its own and that is the
21:01
theory of
21:02
natural selection so that's what darwin
21:04
contributed
21:05
that's why he's famous uh and that was
21:08
very controversial for a while but
21:09
eventually
21:10
it won over pretty much all the
21:13
scientists
21:14
and today all the biologists as i
21:16
understand it will recognize that
21:18
some some version of natural selection
21:20
still has a huge role to play
21:21
in evolutionary theory but we also have
21:23
to be honest about the fact
21:25
that biology has left darwin behind a
21:27
long long time ago
21:29
so one thing i realized when i was
21:31
reading those two stacks of books is
21:33
that
21:33
the creationists were often objecting to
21:36
a version of evolution that had been
21:38
given up decades before
21:40
they were poking holes in specific
21:41
arguments of darwin when modern-day
21:44
evolutionists had recognized those
21:46
problems and then solved them
21:48
a long long time ago so just like any
21:51
other
21:52
scientific theory it progresses in
21:54
stages and there's falsification and you
21:57
do
21:57
experiments and you find more evidence
21:59
in this case you find more fossils and
22:00
then you develop genetics and everything
22:02
changes
22:03
so while all evolutionists today all
22:06
evolutionary biologists today would say
22:07
yeah darwin was super important
22:09
and really right about a lot of stuff he
22:11
also missed a lot of stuff
22:13
so the the the average person's
22:15
understanding the average christian's
22:17
understanding of evolution is usually
22:18
pretty weak
22:20
uh so you you see you know claims like
22:22
well do you really believe that humans
22:24
came from monkeys isn't that stupid
22:27
don't you i mean look at that monkey you
22:29
think you think that turned into you
22:31
but that was never that was never part
22:33
of evolutionary theory not even darwin's
22:35
version
22:35
and if human beings came from monkeys
22:37
why are there still monkeys yeah right
22:39
exactly they turned into us gotcha
22:42
yeah um when of course the theory was
22:44
always that
22:46
they had a common ancestor that a long
22:48
time ago there was something
22:50
that had a little bit of what they have
22:52
now and a little bit of what we have now
22:54
and over
22:55
long periods of time through lots of
22:57
natural steps
22:58
it became the things that we have that's
23:00
hard to believe i understand why that's
23:02
hard to believe
23:03
but the evidence is just overwhelming
23:06
sure
23:07
it's genetics alone
23:10
is sufficient to establish this beyond
23:12
any
23:13
any reasonable doubt but even prior to
23:16
the development of genetics we had all
23:18
sorts of independent lines of evidence
23:20
to confirm this many of which weren't
23:21
even available to darwin
23:23
and then on on that evidence we were
23:25
able to make predictions
23:27
about what we would expect to find in
23:29
the genetics once we did develop
23:31
genetics and what do you know
23:32
those are exactly the sorts of things
23:34
that we found when we looked into the
23:35
genetics so the genetics really just
23:36
helped us to flesh out
23:38
the so-called tree of life in a great
23:40
deal more detail than we could prior to
23:42
it but we didn't find anything to really
23:44
surprise us the basic story that we
23:46
already had was confirmed more or less
23:48
by
23:49
genetics so we could do a whole separate
23:51
episode on specifics of the science but
23:54
just very basically evolutionary theory
23:56
tells us that everything alive came from
23:58
a single
23:59
common ancestor and that that was a
24:03
natural process
24:04
there are lots of different mechanisms
24:05
that drove it
24:07
things that darwin didn't foresee but it
24:09
was a natural process
24:11
and that the raw material of that
24:13
process
24:14
is what's called genetic mutation so
24:16
when genes replicate themselves
24:18
sometimes they do it perfectly sometimes
24:20
they do not when they do not that's
24:22
called a mutation
24:23
most mutations are neutral meaning they
24:25
make no difference to
24:27
the expressed characteristics in the
24:29
offspring
24:30
sometimes they're negative which means
24:32
they make the offspring
24:34
less fit which means less able to
24:37
reproduce themselves
24:38
and those tend to die out and then
24:40
sometimes those
24:41
genetic mutations are adaptive which
24:44
means
24:45
the the creature with that mutation does
24:47
a little bit better
24:49
at something than the other creatures
24:51
that didn't have that mutation
24:53
and because it does it a little bit
24:54
better it's a little more successful
24:56
than the other ones at passing on its
24:58
genes
24:58
in other words at mating reproducing
25:01
itself
25:02
so from a purely scientific perspective
25:04
the point of evolution if we can
25:07
use that phrase is simply to reproduce
25:09
yourself successfully
25:10
and sometimes genetic mutations help
25:12
with that and when they do
25:14
they continue in the species and then
25:16
you extend that story
25:18
to four billion years and you get
25:20
enormous complexity
25:22
and that's what we see around us and
25:24
it's super well confirmed in the fossil
25:25
record
25:26
the idea that we don't have transitional
25:28
fossils is just a myth
25:29
go to any museum that has a natural
25:31
history section and look at all the
25:33
transitional fossils
25:34
so super well confirmed no serious
25:37
biologist doubts it
25:39
haven't for 100 years and
25:42
if that's all true then the christian is
25:45
left in the awkward position
25:46
of uh wondering how this squares with
25:49
their understanding of the biblical text
25:52
right which means we need some we need
25:55
some different science
25:56
yeah all right that's a good way to go i
25:58
suppose that's the way some have gone
26:00
you know they set up their own
26:01
quote unquote creation science
26:02
institutes many yeah
26:05
do their own version of science yep
26:06
absolutely homeschool that's what it's
26:08
all about um
26:10
run away from culture that's why i look
26:11
at elliott left because
26:13
they're homeschooling their kids
26:17
nothing against home there are better
26:18
and worse ways to do homeschooling
26:20
absolutely
26:21
yes uh so so because of this
26:24
overwhelming consensus
26:26
and just the weight of the evidence for
26:27
evolution often
26:29
you will hear scientists refer to
26:31
evolution as a fact
26:33
and then sometimes the creationists will
26:34
say well whoa
26:36
it's a theory and sometimes they'll say
26:38
it's just a theory
26:39
which unfortunately is not how
26:41
scientists actually think about what
26:43
either fact or theory
26:45
means so within a scientific perspective
26:48
a theory is simply a story that we tell
26:52
that accounts for all of the data that
26:55
we have
26:56
and we get data through observation and
26:58
experiment we literally go out and we
27:00
dig in the dirt and we find these bones
27:02
and then we use our microscopes and we
27:03
look at genes
27:04
and all this stuff we gather all this
27:06
data and then we try to tell a story
27:07
that makes sense of all the data
27:09
and there are always competing theories
27:11
in science what darwin did was give a
27:13
theory
27:13
and it's a theory that so here's the
27:15
thing that a lot of a lot of
27:17
creationists don't
27:18
quite seem to get when you get a theory
27:21
in science
27:22
your response is not to go oh finally
27:24
we're done
27:25
we've got our theory we've understood it
27:28
we can move on
27:29
that is the beginning of the process you
27:32
get a theory and then your goal as a
27:34
scientist
27:34
is to show that that theory is false so
27:37
this is called
27:38
falsification and it's a huge part of
27:41
doing
27:41
science you come up with an explanation
27:43
of your data and then you design
27:45
experiments to prove that explanation
27:47
wrong
27:48
why would you want to prove your own
27:50
explanation wrong well because
27:52
if you fail to prove it wrong if a bunch
27:55
of smart people in a lot of different
27:56
contexts try really hard
27:58
and they can't prove the theory wrong
28:01
then that gives you pretty good reason
28:02
to think the theory is true
28:04
and people have been trying to prove
28:05
evolution wrong
28:07
for 150 years and it is still
28:10
universally ascended to be
28:12
the best account of what we have to the
28:14
point that
28:15
every biologist is willing to say
28:18
this is established this is a fact
28:21
now technically speaking the
28:23
creationists are kind of right
28:25
you can never prove and in the strict
28:27
sense of proof
28:29
a scientific theory but that's not the
28:31
point of scientific theories
28:33
the point of them is to try to falsify
28:35
them until you can't anymore
28:37
and then you say it's confirmed to the
28:39
point
28:40
that we might as well accept it as a
28:42
fact and that's where we've gotten to an
28:44
evolution and that's why a lot of
28:45
scientists speak that way
28:47
they think it is just an objective truth
28:48
about the world because we've tried for
28:50
so long to prove that it's not
28:52
and we have failed
28:53
[Music]
28:55
so that's the science but the science
28:58
is not really the main reason that
29:01
creationists
29:02
are creationists if they weren't already
29:05
committed to a particular reading of the
29:07
bible
29:08
there just wouldn't really be any reason
29:10
to question the scientific
29:12
consensus so randy you're you're a
29:14
pastor
29:15
you know more about the bible than me
29:16
what is it that what is it about the
29:18
bible
29:19
that leads people to want to be
29:21
creationist that that
29:22
that makes them want to reject this
29:24
scientific consensus that i just
29:26
described
29:27
[Music]
29:28
well i mean that's a big question i
29:31
would think
29:32
you know our holy sacred text has a
29:35
creation story
29:36
in it and so we've just said well this
29:38
is the answer and not just well this is
29:39
the answer
29:40
for a vast majority of human existence
29:44
we took creation stories you know ours
29:47
being
29:48
in the book of genesis in the hebrew
29:50
hebrew scriptures as being
29:53
it this is the explanation this is how
29:54
the world came to be and
29:56
science you know in the last 150 years
29:59
150 years sounds like a lot to us
30:01
that is a heartbeat in the history of
30:04
the world and so we've just
30:05
as humanity have been trained to think
30:08
that this is this is the
30:10
this is the science book this is how
30:11
things worked this is how exactly how it
30:13
went
30:14
and therefore it was incompatible to
30:16
hear this word that
30:18
actually there's a different process
30:19
behind it and that might not be literal
30:22
um we had no grid for that and then all
30:23
of a sudden you have
30:25
all of this data coming in from the
30:27
scientific community and the
30:28
enlightenment so the church gets really
30:30
constricted and says nope we gotta we
30:31
gotta come up with
30:32
our our own science and we've gotta
30:34
counter what they're telling
30:36
us with what's really true and so you
30:37
get really defensive and then you
30:39
that's when you're it's really easy to
30:40
form these little like
30:43
weird beliefs about the scriptures and
30:45
that's when you start putting this
30:47
inerrancy thing on the bible to say
30:50
everything it says is true 100
30:52
as it as it lies you know and that's
30:55
when you start getting these
30:56
these ideas and really what i would say
30:59
has happened is people have
31:00
turned the bible into something that it
31:02
is not the bible is not
31:04
a science text it's just not it's not a
31:07
science book that's not why god
31:08
wrote it that's not why people got their
31:11
hands all over it that's not how the
31:13
that's just it's just not that at all
31:15
and so when we put that
31:17
on the text then all of a sudden we get
31:18
into all sorts of troubles and we got
31:20
eggs on our face and we haven't done the
31:23
good biblical reflection as well that's
31:25
what
31:26
that's what brought me to this point of
31:28
saying oh
31:29
that's not what this is talking about
31:30
because the ancient people had
31:32
very different sort of understandings of
31:35
what even the word creating something
31:37
meant right so if you talk about
31:39
creation when we think about creating
31:41
something
31:42
we think about the course of making it
31:45
like i'm
31:46
creating this music or i'm creating this
31:49
chair and all of the the work that goes
31:53
into it is part of the creation and
31:55
there it is it's done i've created it
31:57
for an ancient near eastern person
32:00
to think about this and i didn't come up
32:01
with this i'm not i'm not smart enough
32:02
but i've relied on biblical historians
32:04
and just historians of ancient near east
32:06
in general
32:07
when an ancient near eastern person
32:08
would talk about something being created
32:10
they didn't talk about it as when it was
32:12
materially
32:14
created that's when it existed they
32:17
would say actually
32:18
when it's when something becomes
32:19
functional
32:21
that's when it's actually been created
32:24
when it's functional when it's useful
32:27
and when you look back
32:28
on genesis 1 it makes perfect sense
32:30
because when you get to genesis 1
32:32
even in genesis the first two verses of
32:35
genesis you find that there was a
32:37
formless
32:38
chaotic world that already was in
32:40
pre-existence it already existed
32:43
as our sacred text jumps into it right
32:46
and then it goes on and tells how the
32:49
story isn't about
32:50
god creating it out of nothing because
32:52
it was already there
32:54
it goes on and tells about how god
32:56
brought function
32:58
in order to this function-lesson
33:01
orderless
33:02
chaotic world that he already had
33:04
created does that make sense
33:07
yeah it's so interesting that uh when
33:09
you when you read
33:10
genesis with a creationist background it
33:12
just seems obviously to be the case
33:15
that god is starting out of nothing
33:17
brand new doing it in six days day
33:20
obviously means 24 hours what else could
33:22
it mean
33:22
but when you try to set aside that
33:24
framework and rec
33:26
and just really read the text read the
33:28
first verse
33:29
right and ask yourself what it means now
33:31
the earth that's not the best
33:32
void yeah it's where everything begins
33:35
and every time i say that whether it's
33:37
in a sermon
33:38
or in conversation people's eyes get
33:40
wide like
33:41
i never actually read that like richard
33:43
rohr would say it's their hiding in
33:45
plain sight right so
33:47
it just that there is enough to tell me
33:49
that there's something to this idea that
33:51
the ancient near eastern people groups
33:55
saw creation as bringing function and
33:57
order
33:58
to something and so that's what the
34:00
story of genesis 1 really particularly
34:02
in genesis 2 even
34:04
is about the ancients would have seen
34:06
and read
34:07
genesis 1 as both bringing function to
34:10
to god's world but also they would have
34:13
seen it as a temple narrative
34:15
if you really get into it yeah what what
34:18
does that mean
34:18
a temple narrative i mean this is not
34:20
unique to the
34:22
hebrew scriptures this was something
34:24
that was common to the in the ancient
34:25
near eastern
34:26
creation narratives that and that might
34:29
be hard for some people to understand or
34:31
to
34:31
to reckon with but our creation
34:33
narrative is similar to other religions
34:35
ancient near eastern religions
34:37
creation narratives ours is unique and
34:39
it's beautiful the imago day just blows
34:41
my mind continually
34:42
but there are other ones and the temple
34:45
motif when a
34:46
when an ancient near eastern person
34:48
would have read that god created the
34:50
world in six days
34:51
right and brought function and order to
34:53
it and then rested on the seventh
34:55
they would inherently the scholars would
34:57
say and again i get this from scholars
34:59
not myself
35:00
they would inherently say oh that you're
35:01
talking about a temple there
35:03
he rested on the seventh day you're
35:04
talking about god's creating a temple
35:07
oh and then you read genesis 2 and god's
35:10
putting humanity this
35:12
man and this woman adam the human one
35:14
and eve
35:15
in his temple in kind of a priestly role
35:18
right he they're they're there to
35:20
to steward it to care for it so to love
35:23
it to name
35:24
things to to really be priests
35:27
in this temple actually and then all of
35:30
a sudden you get this really big
35:32
beautiful like
35:32
whoa there's something way more to the
35:35
creation narrative that i
35:36
ever imagined and this is where some
35:39
peop some christians get
35:40
get a little hot and bothered when you
35:43
look at the
35:45
creation narrative as myth
35:48
that word myth trips everybody up all
35:51
the
35:51
all the good christians and says well
35:53
that means you're saying it's not
35:54
literal it's not true
35:56
and no there's actually something to
35:58
myth where there there's something
35:59
that's
35:59
so big so cosmic so otherworldly so
36:02
mysterious
36:03
so unknowable and unimaginable that myth
36:06
is the
36:07
only way you can communicate the deep
36:09
truths of it
36:10
and that's what i think we have in
36:11
genesis one and two is
36:13
the deepest some of the deepest truths
36:15
you can ever imagine the foundations of
36:17
the cosmos
36:19
and so of course it's going to be spoken
36:20
in a way that the ancient near eastern
36:22
people
36:22
understood and it would awaken their
36:24
imagination and they would see their
36:26
role as a priestly role
36:28
in god's good creation that he's
36:29
declared as good over and over and over
36:32
again that he's delighted himself in
36:34
and that's the story that makes me fall
36:37
in love again you know what i mean
36:38
yeah starting to preach a little bit
36:40
here sorry
36:42
so i noticed you said when you mentioned
36:45
adam and eve you didn't say adam and eve
36:47
you said something else can you can you
36:50
flesh out why you did that why you
36:51
why you said it a little bit differently
36:53
than most well because that's the hebrew
36:54
right i mean the
36:56
atom we have is a nice
37:00
white person's name for their children
37:02
um
37:03
but in hebrew it's adam the human one
37:06
and so again to me that's pointing that
37:09
this
37:09
is a story that god is telling
37:13
about humanity and his relationship with
37:16
humanity that he's
37:18
put hit god's image i won't say his but
37:21
god's im
37:22
god's own image in the human one
37:25
and and poured himself into and it's
37:28
talking about god and humanity in
37:30
bigger levels than just this guy named
37:32
adam i also and i'm not a hebrew scholar
37:34
here so i could be wrong about this but
37:36
i remember reading that
37:37
it also has kind of a connotation of
37:39
being of the earth
37:41
so i saw a scholar one time say we could
37:43
kind of translate
37:44
adam or adam as earthling something like
37:47
that
37:48
from from the dust kind of and then eve
37:50
you know has the connotation of life
37:52
so i heard about a theology professor
37:55
one time who
37:56
when he was teaching through genesis
37:57
with his students he would start
38:00
the class by reading an excerpt from
38:02
like a science textbook
38:04
so they'd get a feel for that style and
38:06
then after he did that
38:08
he would read the beginning scroll from
38:11
star wars
38:12
nice long time ago in a galaxy far far
38:14
away
38:16
and then he would read genesis 1
38:20
and instead of adam he would say the man
38:24
and instead of eve he would say life
38:27
and then he would ask his students which
38:29
does that seem more like to you
38:32
is it more like the science text or is
38:34
it more like the star wars stuff super
38:36
interesting
38:36
and any reasonable person who presented
38:39
it in that way you know would say
38:42
it's a little more like the poetic uh
38:46
i mean you you almost have to be primed
38:49
to not see it that way
38:50
right right you have to be given a
38:52
framework in which it seems scientific
38:54
yeah yeah i mean it just it just makes
38:57
sense to me i mean if we're talking if
38:59
we're using
39:00
genesis as science
39:03
the bummer is is that 2000 years ago
39:07
they had really bad science right like i
39:10
mean like really bad
39:11
they actually thought the atmosphere
39:13
this firmament
39:14
quote unquote was actual thick physical
39:17
layer
39:18
above the sky they thought that that's
39:20
where water you know comes from they had
39:22
all sorts of bad science they thought
39:24
that like the
39:26
your what your thinking comes from your
39:28
guts they thought i mean
39:30
they they had all sorts of crazy science
39:33
because
39:34
they were ancient people and if we were
39:37
married to the the bible as a science
39:39
book then science goes got to stop there
39:41
there is no room for scientific
39:42
development because that's
39:44
which is funny because this is a
39:46
pre-scientific culture so
39:48
exactly if we want to be really precise
39:50
we'd have to say they didn't have bad
39:51
science they had no science
39:52
because science is a methodology that
39:54
wasn't invented until the 17th century
39:56
sure
39:57
they just had a really bad one what they
39:58
had was they had a metaphysics that
40:00
wasn't very well fleshed out yeah um
40:02
until at least the scholastic period so
40:06
yeah looking to that for our
40:07
understanding of human origins or
40:10
the cosmos or you know nature
40:13
itself i mean those concepts literally
40:15
didn't exist when the bible was written
40:16
but looking at it as this beautiful
40:19
story
40:20
this parable like jesus here's another
40:23
reason why
40:24
this always shocks me why christians
40:25
can't handle myth
40:28
when we're talking about truth is that
40:30
same god
40:31
who i believe created the universe in
40:32
the cosmos and all that's in them
40:34
and used this parable or this myth to
40:37
tell us this beautiful story about
40:39
how what was in god's heart and how he
40:42
brought function and order to this
40:43
chaotic world that he created all that
40:45
stuff
40:46
it makes sense to me that that same god
40:49
who created the universe and told this
40:51
beautiful
40:52
story about his god's relationship with
40:54
humanity
40:55
that god then comes in jesus christ in
40:58
the men jesus and the incarnation
41:00
and how does he communicate the truths
41:03
about the kingdom of god
41:05
but in stories in parables he just tells
41:07
parable after parable because to me
41:10
in my mind god himself jesus is saying
41:13
you can't you don't get it like if i
41:15
told you really
41:16
in just brass tacks terms about my
41:19
kingdom and what god's like
41:21
your mind would explode i have to tell
41:23
you in stories
41:24
it doesn't make it less true the parable
41:27
of the prodigal son
41:28
is the truest story about who god is
41:32
even though it's a parable do you know
41:33
what i mean so for me that
41:35
it's not therefore a jump to say that
41:37
same god when he's talking about the
41:39
creation and origin of the universe is
41:40
going to tell this beautiful story to
41:42
draw us in
41:43
it's romantic it's poetic it's beautiful
41:46
that's good so so one way that that some
41:50
christians today who accept evolution
41:52
some of them would call themselves
41:54
evolutionary creationists one way they
41:56
like to describe this and get your
41:58
thoughts on this
41:59
is they say it's like god gave us two
42:01
books
42:02
he gave us the bible and the bible had a
42:05
specific purpose the bible's purpose was
42:07
something like
42:08
giving us all the information we need to
42:10
be right with god
42:11
interpersonally but that's not the only
42:14
book he gave us he also gave us nature
42:16
they call it the book of nature that's
42:18
very franciscan of you
42:20
really i don't know anything about that
42:22
well yeah that's where they drew it from
42:24
i don't know
42:24
franciscans call nature the natural
42:28
world
42:29
the second creation story or the the
42:31
second scriptures basically the other
42:32
scriptures because you get to see who
42:34
god is through his creation
42:36
interesting i went to a jesuit school so
42:38
i don't know anything about
42:39
they're great too they're great too so
42:42
that's cool maybe that's where they get
42:43
this i don't know
42:44
and then they'll say the books need to
42:46
be compatible
42:48
god gave us both of them they shouldn't
42:49
conflict and
42:51
we shouldn't put all the weight on one
42:52
at the expense of the other
42:55
so if if reason and nature tells us one
42:57
thing
42:58
about god's creation and the bible tells
43:01
us a fundamentally different thing about
43:02
god's creation
43:03
then god has contradicted himself and
43:06
that's a problem
43:06
which might make us wonder if we're
43:08
reading the books accurately
43:10
does that make sense yep yep so i i
43:12
think a lot of uh creationists have
43:14
found that helpful
43:15
uh helpful way to frame things the the
43:17
challenge of course is to see nature and
43:19
science
43:20
as equally authoritative or
43:23
as comparable to the biblical text
43:26
that's going to be a struggle i think
43:27
for a lot of creationists
43:29
yeah but it helps to point out as you
43:31
have done
43:32
that you don't have to reduce your trust
43:35
in the bible you don't have to think
43:36
it's less authoritative
43:38
you just have to read it as it was
43:40
intended to be written right
43:41
you have to read it in its historical
43:43
context don't expect more from it than
43:45
it was intended to give
43:46
yeah i mean the idea that the ancient
43:49
people
43:50
the original audience thought the same
43:53
things
43:54
that we think when they read genesis 1
43:55
and 2 is absurd it's just actually
43:57
actually absurd because of what we know
43:59
and what they didn't so
44:01
so i think we can see then that what a
44:04
lot of creationists
44:06
and and honestly a lot of atheists it's
44:08
funny that that they kind of agree about
44:10
this
44:10
they they claim that religion
44:12
specifically christianity
44:14
is incompatible with evolution the
44:16
creationists and the atheists seem to be
44:18
agreed on that point or some of the
44:19
atheists anyway seem to be agreed on
44:21
that point
44:22
that if you believe science you can't
44:23
believe the bible and vice versa
44:26
uh so hopefully we've begin to drive a
44:28
wedge into that kind of view
44:30
hopefully we've got some reasons now
44:31
that we can see maybe they're not
44:33
necessarily incompatible
44:35
maybe if we read the bible appropriately
44:38
and carefully
44:39
and in its context we don't have to come
44:42
up with a view that is fundamentally at
44:43
odds with what science tells us
44:45
absolutely so
44:49
maybe this is because maybe this is
44:51
unique to me because of my particular
44:52
philosophical
44:54
perspective the type of philosophy i do
44:56
is called epistemology
44:57
which means i write about knowledge
45:00
and a large part of that is how
45:03
confident should we really be
45:04
in the knowledge that we have something
45:06
i think a lot about
45:08
and so a huge aspect of this debate if
45:11
you want to call it that
45:12
to me that is often overlooked is
45:15
that most of the people having the
45:17
debate and
45:19
i'm confident in saying most because i
45:20
spent a lot of time reading
45:22
and watching this debate most of the
45:24
people in the debate
45:26
do not know what they're talking about
45:29
the people on the creationist side
45:31
defending particular views of the bible
45:33
are not biblical scholars most of the
45:35
time absolutely the people
45:37
the people even on the atheist side the
45:39
people
45:40
saying that the bible and christianity
45:42
are false because
45:43
evolution they're almost always not
45:47
evolutionary biologists serious
45:49
evolutionary biologists by and large
45:50
don't care about this and many many of
45:53
them are christians
45:54
a minority but many of them are and the
45:57
the ones who are like outspoken atheists
45:59
or a tiny tiny minority
46:01
and so a huge part of this for me is
46:04
well what do the actual experts on both
46:06
sides
46:07
the biblical interpretation experts and
46:10
the evolutionary biology experts what do
46:13
they
46:14
think about their domains of expertise
46:17
i'm not an expert i'm not a biblical
46:19
scholar i've read them and i kind of
46:21
understand what they say
46:22
and i'm not a scientist i've read them
46:24
and i can't understand what they say
46:26
but at the end of the day my
46:27
responsibility it seems to me is just to
46:29
believe what the experts say
46:31
where there is a consensus and it turns
46:33
out on this issue
46:34
there is a consensus on both sides
46:37
there's an overwhelming consensus on the
46:38
scientific side
46:40
and there's a pretty strong scholarly
46:42
consensus on the biblical side to
46:44
support the sorts of things that you
46:45
were just describing about
46:46
appropriate ways and inappropriate ways
46:48
to read the bible
46:50
so it seems to me that as an individual
46:52
if i'm wondering what i should believe
46:53
about this
46:55
the answer is just given to me i should
46:57
believe what the experts say
46:59
and then i should ask are they
47:01
compatible
47:02
and we're in the happy circumstance that
47:05
they are compatible
47:07
they might not have been it might not
47:08
have turned out that way
47:10
it might have turned out so that they
47:11
would be incompatible and then i would
47:13
be in a real bond we got trouble
47:14
as a christian that's just not what
47:16
happened uh
47:18
the experts said one thing about nature
47:20
the experts said another thing about the
47:21
bible
47:22
and there's just no conflict and it
47:23
works yep absolutely
47:25
that's encouraging that's that's
47:28
extremely encouraging yet
47:31
friends before we continue we want to
47:32
thank story hill bkc for their support
47:35
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and their food is seriously some of the
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if you're in milwaukee you'll thank
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yourself for visiting story hill bkc
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and if you're not remember to support
48:02
local one more time that's storyhillbkc
48:07
there is still some theological
48:10
concerns some theological worries that a
48:12
lot of christians might have
48:14
and these these are what i would
48:16
consider legitimate worries
48:17
so they're not the result of reading the
48:19
bible poorly for example
48:21
not necessarily anyway if we accept that
48:24
the evolutionary picture of nature is
48:25
true
48:27
and we accept that the bible tells us
48:30
the truth about god and our relationship
48:32
to god
48:32
there are still some outstanding
48:34
theological concerns
48:36
that we might have so randy what do you
48:40
think
48:40
some of those concerns might be some
48:43
legitimate
48:44
theological issues that christians might
48:46
have to
48:47
wrestle a little bit with if we accept
48:49
evolution as true
48:51
sure i mean some people probably see
48:54
hear what i had to say about the
48:57
scriptures in about genesis 1 and 2
48:59
being
49:00
a story a parable myth even
49:04
a story about god bringing function in
49:07
in order to a functionless and orderless
49:10
creation
49:11
then the question is what about adam and
49:12
eve like we were talk taught a lot about
49:14
adam and eve adam and eve are really
49:15
important people to christians
49:17
if they aren't real then what does that
49:19
mean right that's that's a theological
49:21
issue but i don't think it's a
49:23
insurmountable issue
49:25
i i have a i have space for
49:29
believing or maybe making room for that
49:31
the reality that adam and eve were real
49:33
people i can do that
49:34
i really can't i don't i don't believe
49:36
it but i think you can believe that and
49:38
not be crazy
49:39
i think that's okay i i happen to
49:42
believe that adam and eve were
49:44
names and in part of the story that god
49:46
used to tell the story of god and
49:48
humanity
49:49
there's something about humanity that
49:51
has this beautiful
49:52
imprint of god in them and god wants to
49:55
have this
49:56
his story connected with humanity in a
49:58
unique way
49:59
that's bigger than just two people for
50:01
me and that's fun
50:02
and then adam and eve become like when
50:05
you talk about paul okay well then if
50:07
paul's come talking about jesus as the
50:09
second adam so if adam wasn't really
50:10
real then what does that mean about
50:12
jesus you don't have to go there
50:15
adam can be an archetype right adam
50:18
adam an archetype for humanity and jesus
50:21
coming as the second adam
50:23
romans five is one of my favorite
50:25
passages of all the new testament
50:27
talking about jesus is the new adam and
50:30
death came through adam now life has
50:32
come to
50:32
through jesus paul is using adam in an
50:35
archetypal way there
50:36
in a way that's using adam symbolically
50:40
for all humanity and then jesus right so
50:43
i don't think
50:43
that i don't think that really creates
50:45
any unsurmountable issues
50:48
what are some other issues that kyle
50:50
that you think it could bring up
50:52
yeah so speaking from sort of a more
50:54
philosophical point of view
50:56
philosophers for a long time have been
50:57
discussing the problem of evil
51:00
uh and probably eventually we'll have a
51:01
whole episode on this but
51:03
specifically the problem of natural evil
51:05
is a really hairy aspect of that
51:08
that issue and that would be evil that's
51:10
just part of nature that's not caused by
51:12
any person
51:13
so you can't explain it away with free
51:15
will so for example
51:16
an earthquake happens and kills 100 000
51:19
people in haiti and
51:20
nobody chose to do anything that caused
51:23
that earthquake to happen that's just
51:24
how
51:24
nature works and it causes all this
51:27
needless
51:28
point seemingly pointless suffering
51:30
right and so if we accept the
51:31
evolutionary picture of the world
51:33
we have to admit that that kind of thing
51:35
has been happening for
51:37
four billion years that
51:40
that there's been death and suffering
51:43
for four billion years
51:45
prior to humans even existing and it
51:48
just seems to magnify that problem
51:50
uh just makes makes it a little more
51:52
difficult to understand than it was
51:54
before
51:55
why god would have chosen to do it in
51:56
that way so that's a sincere theological
51:59
and philosophical problem that you could
52:00
really wrestle with and
52:02
eventually i hope we'll have an episode
52:03
about that i'm not certainly not going
52:05
to answer it here
52:06
and then also related to that really
52:09
is the idea that death somehow
52:13
precedes god giving life to humans
52:16
in genesis now
52:19
going back to what you just said kyle i
52:21
mean to me again
52:23
there's a lot of answers in genesis 1
52:25
and 2 just
52:26
in and of themselves in the beginning
52:28
god created the heavens and the earth
52:30
now the earth was formless and void
52:33
empty
52:34
darkness was over the surface of the
52:36
deep and the spirit of god was hovering
52:38
over the waters
52:39
other translations call it chaotic right
52:43
for me i think the bible is setting up
52:46
the story of
52:48
chaos and functionless
52:51
and purposeless and
52:55
void in the spirit of god is hovering
52:57
over it all and
52:58
and you can that can be a beautiful
53:00
metaphor for
53:01
all of life in some ways so i don't
53:04
think we again have to
53:05
divorce that natural evil like god is
53:08
bringing order and beauty and life
53:10
to a disordered world that he created
53:12
and and it's going
53:14
along this trajectory towards order
53:16
towards life
53:17
towards beauty and i think that's
53:19
compatible both with the scriptures and
53:20
with
53:21
evolution so that that's that's a fair
53:23
point uh it won't solve the
53:25
philosophical issue of
53:27
evil itself like how we can square
53:28
square that with good god
53:30
but it's definitely helpful in pointing
53:33
out that that problem exists in the text
53:35
too
53:36
that the text itself is aware of that
53:38
and includes it in its
53:40
in its framework yeah it's incredible
53:41
when we recognize the truth of evolution
53:43
we're not recognizing something that's
53:45
not already in the text yeah
53:46
so you mentioned kyle this you know
53:49
rebut that creationists say that
53:51
death can't lead to life that that's not
53:53
godly that's not in scripture is if
53:55
death you know
53:56
and that's what evolution does again for
53:58
me
53:59
that is not a problem scripturally
54:01
because
54:02
i follow a god who was perfectly and
54:05
fully revealed in the man jesus christ
54:08
who accomplished salvation and
54:11
redemption
54:11
for all of humanity through death
54:15
and that death brought life and this is
54:17
this is a
54:18
motif you see throughout the scriptures
54:20
not just in jesus
54:22
but all over the place that death comes
54:24
and life comes from it
54:26
death comes and life comes from it this
54:28
is what god does he turns
54:30
he turns takes ashes and he makes them
54:32
beautiful this is
54:33
this is the one of the most beautiful
54:35
common themes through
54:36
all of the scriptures that actually yes
54:39
life comes from death
54:40
jesus the most possibly the most common
54:43
thing that he said
54:44
while he was on earth in the gospels is
54:46
if you want to live you're gonna have to
54:48
die
54:48
you're gonna have to die to yourself
54:50
you're gonna have to doubt yourself in
54:51
all the ways
54:52
if you want to follow me you're gonna
54:53
have to crucify people and crucify
54:55
yourself and then
54:56
pick up your cross and follow me so for
54:58
me
54:59
i just say have you not read the bible
55:02
like don't you don't you see this theme
55:05
that jesus preached
55:06
that jesus lived and died and then rose
55:08
again that
55:10
that paul talked about death into life
55:14
death and resurrection that's just the
55:16
way of god that's the way that god is
55:19
to me it's just like the way god has set
55:21
things up
55:22
life through death yeah and then i guess
55:25
lastly an issue that comes to mind i've
55:28
i kind of wrestled this myself when i
55:30
was making the transition from a kind of
55:32
creationist to
55:33
accepting evolution i wondered for a
55:36
while if it would make god seem more
55:37
distant or uninvolved or something like
55:40
that
55:40
because you know in genesis you have he
55:44
forms humans out of the dust of the
55:45
earth and then he forms eve out of the
55:47
rib of adam and it seems very intimate
55:50
and then he walks with them in the
55:51
garden and that seems very intimate
55:53
and taking this billion-year-long view
55:57
of humans developing through a natural
55:59
process can seem distant
56:01
it can seem more like deism almost than
56:04
than christianity
56:06
what do you think about that i hear you
56:09
um and i hear that but
56:12
again genesis 1 and 2 are
56:16
beautiful and also authoritative texts
56:18
for me and so i look at genesis 1 and 2
56:21
and it tells me that if science is
56:24
telling me
56:25
and it's not dissonant with the
56:26
scriptures that evolution
56:29
is a court is a thing that is real and
56:31
has happened and we can back that up
56:32
then genesis 1 and 2 is telling me
56:36
god was intimately involved in that
56:38
whole 4 billion years
56:39
god was god was breathing his creative
56:43
imagination into these molecules
56:47
separating and and at atomic things
56:50
going on and
56:51
in the marriage of quan you know all of
56:53
these things that are happening
56:55
that the scientists can tell us about
56:57
genesis 1 and 2 is telling me that that
56:59
was an act of love that god was right in
57:01
it the whole time that that was
57:04
very intentional very celebratory
57:07
very very fun for god that's what i hear
57:10
in genesis 1 and 2
57:11
and i have to take that and say okay
57:13
that's that's got to be the way that god
57:15
created the world through that
57:16
evolutionary process with a lot of fun a
57:19
lot of joy a lot of celebration a lot of
57:21
a lot of intentionality and intimately
57:24
involved and then when i think of the
57:25
story of
57:26
human beings that like you reference
57:28
walking with
57:29
adam and eve in the garden and talking
57:31
and this beautiful connectedness and
57:34
talking about the trees to me that's
57:36
just the story that god has been
57:39
enamored with human beings since the
57:41
very beginning
57:42
and and it's a story of god and his
57:44
people and he has this dream in his
57:46
heart and
57:47
again it doesn't have to make it more
57:49
distant or less real
57:50
it's actually just talking about how god
57:52
is saying i've been with you
57:54
guiding this thing the whole time
57:56
pouring my intention
57:57
pouring myself pouring my life it just
58:00
might not look
58:01
like exactly the way you thought it did
58:03
right and that's okay
58:06
for me that's that that works for me
58:09
so kyle i keep coming back to the stacks
58:12
of books that you had
58:13
i've got to believe that among those
58:15
stacks along the course of time you came
58:17
across a couple of books that you think
58:18
would be helpful for our
58:21
amazing listeners to dig into
58:24
sure yeah i'm going to keep it real
58:26
brief i don't expect everybody to dive
58:29
in in the way that i did
58:30
so the book that i normally recommend to
58:32
people who want
58:33
a kind of introduction to the scientific
58:35
evidence for
58:36
evolution itself as a theory and this
58:39
might be a surprise to some of our
58:40
listeners but the book that i recommend
58:42
is called the greatest show on earth
58:44
it's by richard dawkins
58:46
that's funny anything about richard
58:47
dawkins you know
58:49
that he is a hostile atheist and he
58:53
he has no time for christians he thinks
58:55
we're all irrational or immoral or
58:58
dumb or whatever um but he is a talented
59:02
biologist and he's a talented writer and
59:06
when he's writing about biology he's
59:07
very compelling
59:09
now you will have to put up with some
59:11
snark in this book
59:13
he cannot resist taking the occasional
59:15
jab at christians
59:16
but if you want a compellingly written
59:19
and really
59:20
vividly imagined story of
59:23
the history of evolution this is an
59:26
excellent text it brings together all
59:28
the different strands of evidence that
59:29
we have
59:30
and presents them in a way that the
59:32
average person can really get into so
59:34
that's what i recommend on the science
59:36
side uh knowing that you'll have to take
59:38
some of it with a grain of salt on the
59:41
theology or biblical side there's a book
59:43
called the evolution of adam
59:45
by peter inns an old testament scholar
59:49
yep
59:49
also one of the creators of the bible
59:51
for normal people podcast which we both
59:53
love
59:53
absolutely and this is a this is a great
59:55
book it's it's very good at explaining
59:57
the whole issue with adam for sure and
59:59
how we can deal with that theologically
60:00
but also primarily at setting up
60:02
the ancient near eastern context that
60:04
you were describing
60:05
earlier on and how the bible fits into
60:08
that whole historical context very
60:09
excellent
60:10
but probably the place that i would
60:11
recommend a listener who is still
60:15
still hung up on some of the the
60:17
creationist stuff still want
60:19
still isn't willing to quite let go of
60:20
some of the interpretations of the bible
60:22
that they've been given
60:24
by their tradition the place i think
60:26
they should start
60:27
is a website uh so you don't have to
60:29
commit to a whole book
60:30
just go to this website biologos.org
60:34
that is b-i-o-l-o-g-o-s
60:36
dot org and we'll have that in the show
60:38
now so many yeah we'll put all of this
60:40
in the show notes
60:41
so many resources on that website now
60:43
these are this is run by people who call
60:45
themselves evolutionary creationists
60:47
which is not a label i would use but
60:49
they more or less overlap with my view
60:51
and there are many serious scientists
60:53
and several serious biblical scholars
60:54
and even a philosopher
60:56
on their staff and all of their articles
60:58
are good they have lots of video
61:00
resources they really really make it
61:01
accessible
61:02
and they try to be super friendly super
61:06
irenic which means peace building
61:09
they're really friendly to all the other
61:11
sides of the debate so i would recommend
61:12
starting there
61:13
i love biologos really really good and
61:16
my recommended reading would be two
61:18
books by the same guy john walton
61:20
john walton is basically widely
61:24
seen throughout evangelicalism in
61:26
christianity really
61:28
as the i would say the foremost scholar
61:31
uh on genesis he's brilliant he's
61:35
historian he's a biblical scholar and he
61:38
wrote two books one called the lost
61:39
world of genesis 1.
61:41
and that is just brilliant
61:44
it's so so good in the second book is
61:46
the lost world of adam and eve
61:48
and in those two books he just goes into
61:50
how an ancient person would have read
61:51
this and how
61:52
how an ancient person would have
61:53
processed this and what did certain
61:55
terms
61:55
mean in the ancient world and the it's
61:58
it's mind-blowing about how
62:00
how myopic we are when we read the bible
62:03
when we
62:04
when we approach the scriptures we do it
62:06
completely from our perspective
62:08
and that's not the way these this was
62:11
written
62:11
so john walton he's just a rock star i
62:14
love him i'd love to have him on the
62:17
podcast one day but the lost world of
62:18
genesis 1 in the lost world of adam and
62:20
eve
62:21
so as we began this episode
62:24
realizing that there's 278 million
62:27
search results for creation and
62:29
evolution hopefully this just starts a
62:31
journey
62:32
or continues a journey or is a little
62:35
point
62:35
in your journey thinking through this
62:37
for yourself
62:39
pondering having questions with friends
62:40
this is sacred stuff that we're talking
62:42
about
62:43
that we're thinking about that we're
62:44
processing through in prayer so
62:46
as you do that dear listeners we bless
62:48
you
62:48
[Music]
62:58
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63:00
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63:35
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walk into a bar