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It Is Written Canada

How Old is Old?

Chris Holland

How Old is Old?- Part 1

God's book, the Bible, still relevant in today's complex world.

It is written sharing messages of hope around the world.

The great questions of life, philosophy, science, Many have asked the question, how old are we?

Not when we were born in a hospital, but really, what is the origin of all things?

I am thrilled to have with me in studio, Dr.

Standish is a friend of mine and he is a friend of the show.

Standish, I want to welcome you again to It Is Written to have a discussion on origins.

Standish, for those who are watching maybe for the first time and not familiar with who you are, you are a senior scientist with the Geoscience Research Institute.

Then you have a PhD in environmental biology and public policy from George Mason University down in Virginia in the States.

And that's a lot and a big mouthful, but maybe just as a bit of a review, what is it that the Geoscience Research Institute has dedicated itself to?

What is the mission, and what are you doing with the Geoscience Research Institute?

Well, The mission of the Geoscience Research Institute is to seek out understandings that make sense of the Bible and science.

Now, most of the time, if you look at most things, I mean, the Bible and science are not necessarily in conflict with 1 another.

The clear statements of scripture really don't conflict with what science has discovered.

Occasionally you find things that are remarkable congruences there, particularly in archeology.

However, there are also some areas, a surprisingly small number of areas, where there's some tension between the way that scientists, at least traditionally, have been interpreting the data from nature and the clear claims that are made in Scripture.

So where that tension exists is really where we are interested.

There's something interesting going on there.

We're also all PhD scientists who remain active in our disciplines.

Sometimes we think we come up with good answers.

Sometimes we have to say, you know what, we don't have answers yet.

Any exciting project that you're working on right now?

Well, there've been a number of things that I've been working on.

Probably the thing that I'm most excited about is a paper that 1 of the graduate students I worked with, published as a senior author, obviously I'm on it, that deals with Something that seems very obscure, I know, but it's the mating habits of a certain kind of sea turtle that's endangered.

This particular 1 isn't super endangered, but we study a species that is not in critical danger and see if we can't find out things there that then we can apply with with those that are more threatened.

And we're able to use molecular genetics as a way of figuring out some very interesting things about the mating habits of these sea turtles.

Standish, as a scientist, you've made a decision, and that is your decision is that you believe there is a divine force, God, who has caused creation.

Why have you come, and this is a big question that could take long hours for us to go through.

But fundamentally, why is it that you have come to that conclusion, which is vastly different than a great deal of the scientific community?

Well, of course, my first question back was gonna be how long is this show?

There are several reasons that I would draw to your attention.

First of all, of all of the accounts of origins, To me as a scientist, the 1 that makes the most sense is the biblical account of origins.

That doesn't mean that I don't recognize that there are some tensions in there.

There are some difficulties, and I don't have all of the answers, but the tensions with other views of how things have worked out are so much greater that I have faith that the tensions that exist there between the claims of scripture in terms of origins, the relatively small number of issues offer greater hope of resolution to me than the massive problems that I see, particularly with Darwinism, but also belief systems like theistic evolution and so on.

We don't have all the answers on these things, which is what makes them interesting.

Sometimes I speak at churches and I meet people who do have all the answers, and they must live boring, sad lives.

We don't have all the answers, but I go with the Bible because it makes rational sense and because it does line up with the data very well, of course that's obviously there's still a step of faith there.

The other, another, well 1 other reason is that the Bible gives hope.

It gives us hope for the future, the new creation.

It also gives us hope in the moment as well.

And I believe that He is active in the lives of human beings and in His creation.

And so from your observation, you've come to this conclusion that the biblical model is the best model.

And so here's the question that I have for you.

When you look out in the world, when you read, there are many people that talk about, write about origins.

And for lack of a better word, the seeming go-to model is an evolutionary model that takes millions of years to produce complex organisms and then eventually human beings.

My primary problem is that ultimately I don't see it as being a scientific undertaking.

There are a number of reasons again for that.

Number 1, we see this kind of theory from long before the emergence of modern science, so for example if you go back to the Roman writer Titus Lucretius Charis, okay, He actually lays out a theory of evolution in which the atoms move around randomly without any guidance from the gods and through unguided interactions they form the earth, the sea, the sky and the generation of living creatures.

So before the time of Christ, these ideas were around.

They didn't have the methods of trying to date things that we have today.

But another thing that really bothers me as a scientist is that everything, all the really heavy lifting is put way back in the past where it's unobservable and untestable.

So a lot of what is postulated to have happened is philosophically necessary, given the presuppositions that are being started with, but they are not evidence-based things.

Now, there is some evidence out there that can be well interpreted within that Darwinian model.

So, we don't want to pretend that that's not the case.

However, I believe that The majority of the evidence is not well interpreted within that model and is far better interpreted within the view that is presented in Scripture.

Now, I need to kind of put my mind around this.

You know, when I grew up, I grew up in school being taught that this model of millions and sometimes conversation even of billions of years, and The catchphrase for this model is survival of the fittest.

Why aren't you seeing survival of the fittest?

Charles Darwin came up with a theory of evolution based on the idea of natural selection.

Now natural selection was kind of paraphrased as survival of the fittest.

And this is a term that's commonly used and it does capture some of the meaning of it.

The idea is that certain individuals produce offspring and others don't.

And that that is not a purely random thing.

The ones that produce more offspring have something about them that can be inherited, that is passed on to their offspring, that somehow or other causes them to make more babies.

So he who has the most babies wins in this model.

How Old is Old?- Part 2

Dear friends, I'm so glad that you've joined us for part 2.

Not when we were born, but the origin of the earth, the origin of the universe.

Standish, So glad that you are joining us once again to have discussions on how old is old.

And yes, I bought some show and tell with me too.

Yes, we're gonna get into the show and tell.

Standish, you are the senior scientist for the Geoscience Research Institute.

Geoscience Research Institute is out of California, Southern California.

What are you doing these days at the Geoscience Research Institute?

Well, obviously, we're a research institute, so that means that we engage in a fair amount of research activity.

We have major projects going on in Peru, which is maybe surprising to some people, studying the geology and also the fossils in 1 of the driest places on earth.

And particularly fossil whales there, which is particularly interesting.

We also have a major project going on with the granites that are found there in Southern California, asking questions about how they formed.

So those would be 2 major projects that we're involved with currently.

Are you just there to spend a little time in Peru and be out in the sun in Southern California?

Well, obviously none of these things is done for 1 reason.

But the ultimate reason is to understand the past.

We want to know what occurred to produce those fossil whales.

What occurred to produce those large granite structures in Southern California.

What does it tell us about the history of the earth and possibly how does it inform our understanding of history as it's recounted in the Bible?

And that's very interesting because that's really where we ended.

We kind of left on a little bit of a cliffhanger last week.

We talked about this issue of nature, observing in nature, and just as a review to those who maybe didn't catch the show last week, we talked about this issue of natural selection, which a lot of people call survival of the fittest.

And as we talked a little, we actually saw that in nature, we actually don't observe this constant fight for survival, but rather we observe a harmony and interaction.

I believe you called it an interdependence.

And what we saw in that interdependence, or maybe let me ask you Dr.

Stanish, when we see that interdependence, the bee and the flower working together, the bacteria in the stomach and a human being working together.

There was a plan that was in place so that all these various parts of nature would work together in a coordinated way that benefits all of the organisms that are involved.

It's a beautiful set of relationships that we see out there.

See, this is the ecologist in me coming out.

A beautiful thing to see that wonderful cooperation that's going on between organisms that's necessary for our survival.

And we kind of drew to a conclusion last week that seeing that there's a plan, well in order to have a plan, there must be a planner.

And ultimately that planner that has generated the plan is the God of the Bible.

Now, we've got this harmony, plan, planner.

And you have some rocks there, and we're going to talk about those.

But we have a little bit of a problem, Dr.

Or maybe I'll say, I have a little bit of a problem, Dr.

We see that harmony, but we see death, we see dying, we see lions chasing antelope.

We see that things aren't all harmonious.

And the lions don't just chase the antelopes.

Most people look around at the world and they understand there's something wrong here.

There's a kind of profound injustice in what's going on.

And rabbits, they're pretty harmless creatures.

But they're not doing anyone any harm, really.

And yet, they are the prey for different kinds of cats and also eagles and other birds of prey, foxes, everything seems to go after the poor little rabbits.

And what the Bible tells us, sort of within the biblical world view, this problem of evil in nature is not ignored.

What we are told is that this was not God's plan.

When God did the creation at the beginning, it was very good.

I can't imagine an ecology working without death.

And then human beings were left in charge.

God said, you will be my stewards to human beings.

Human beings made the decision to go with a different plan.

And that's what we see playing out today.

And not to make light of a very important subject, but it seems that that is kind of something that can be observed throughout history.

When human beings are put in charge, we tend to kind of mess things up.

Human beings choose a plan other than God's plan.

If you're watching today and you have questions about this, We actually did a whole series on Noah where we talk about this problem of sin and the entry of sin.

If you'd like to get that program, you can go to our YouTube page youtube.com forward slash IIW Canada and get some in-depth answers.

How Old is Old?- Part 3

It is written, sharing messages of hope around the world.

Fred, thank you so much for choosing to watch It Is Written.

We're in the third part of our series, How Old is Old?

Not when we were born or when our last birthday was, but asking the question of origins.

And to help me in this conversation, I want to welcome again, good friend, Dr.

Standish, thank you so much again for being here with us.

You know, I'm having fun with this and I hope that everybody's enjoying just digging into these questions a little bit.

We don't have all the answers, but you know, there are some great answers there, both in science and in the Bible that can really, I believe, build our faith and give us hope for the future.

And, and speaking of that, you work for the Geoscience Research Institute as a senior scientist and part of your mission is to look at this relationship between faith, the Bible, and science.

What are some of the projects that you're working on right now as a group to look at that relationship between faith, science, and the Bible?

Well, I will tell you that 1 project that we're looking at right now has to do with the problem of evil.

How do, what really does the Bible say about this?

How does the Bible explain things in nature that look designed, but look like they're designed for an evil purpose?

So, for example, how do we explain Things like the envenomation system that you see in rattlesnakes.

You know, that's a system that's designed to kill.

How could a good God have made something like that?

We're actually taking a step back with some other with some other colleagues because we don't work in isolation we work with with other academics looking at what the Bible actually says about these things.

So we're taking actual, real, scientific examples.

And comparing them with what the Bible says to see, hey, Is there something there that actually makes sense?

Is there something that works in all of this?

And if somebody wanted to kind of follow that research, read about other research that the Geoscience Research Institute is doing, Where might they find some of that information?

And certainly I encourage them to visit our webpage.

We have a huge collection of excellent papers and articles on science and faith we have a constantly updating series of links to articles that deal with questions relating to science and faith.

So it's an interesting, constantly changing page.

Some things are very academic, other things are for a more broader audience.

Standish, we have been having conversations about this issue of how old is old, what are our origins?

You have a PhD in environmental biology and public policy.

You have a master's of science in biology.

You have a bachelor's of science in zoology.

You've taught as a professor of biology in 2 different universities.

So when we look at this issue of fossils, of rocks, why are they so important?

Well, The most important thing, for me at least, about fossils is that they allow us to do the closest thing we can to time travel.

Because we can't go backwards in time, we have to look at whatever record is there.

Obviously, the best thing is a written record by somebody who actually witnessed something.

But the fossils reveal to us important information about organisms that lived in the past.

And what we talked about in our last show was patterns.

We see these patterns and probably most importantly the pattern that is absent from the fossil record is organisms such as the trilobite which we talked about shows up in the Cambrian layer but before that you don't have organisms that look like they're becoming trilobites and eventually developing trilobites.

And we talked about those patterns, and those patterns point to a plan, a design, a planner.

And actually this fossil record, although a record of death, although a record of the marring of creation because somewhere along the line creation kind of set off on a different plan, the fossil record shows that there is a God, a master designer behind it.

Now, here's my question though that we need to get into today Because that's wonderful that the fossil record shows patterns.

A lot of science literature, when I took science class in junior high, high school, talked a lot about fossils.

In fact, I fell in love with dinosaurs when I was very young.

When we read the literature, when we hear scientists, when we look at our science textbooks, most of them are talking about fossils being millions, if not billions of years old.

Well, first of all, isn't that a horrifying thought?

For millions and millions and millions of years, hundreds of millions of years, by most accounts, Innumerable organisms have been dying, suffering and death, suffering and death for hundreds of millions of years.

Now there are a few fossils that are supposed to be billions of years old.

It's really fossils that show up in that Cambrian layer which is supposed to start about 540 million years ago where all of a sudden you see lots and lots and lots of fossils.

However there's a recent paper that is very fascinating when it comes to these things and that bears on this issue of time.

Okay It turns out that the carbon that you find in living things has a slightly different isotopic ratio.

It has a little like a chemical signature that's a little bit different from carbon that's just out there and didn't come from a biological source.

Now the interesting thing about that is they find carbon with that biological signature in it that is in rocks, little zircon crystals.

Little zircon crystals that are supposed to be older than 4000000000 years.

Because even in the conventional dating scheme of things, it means there was no time for life to evolve.

Basically the way Things are supposed to have worked as this.

About 4.5 billion years ago, bear in mind, I do not believe these numbers.

4.5 billion years ago, dust and stuff all glommed together to form the planet Earth.

Nothing could live on the surface of molten rock.

And supposedly it took half a billion years for the earth to cool enough to have a crust on it.

So what that means is, rocks that are older than 4000000000 years, barely the first rocks formed when the earth cooled enough to get a crust on it.

There's no time between being a molten ball and this organic carbon for life to actually evolve.

Now, somebody will probably figure out a way of inserting a few years in there.

But the point is that even when you take these numbers, for what they claim, There are major, major problems with the development of life.

Giving life enough time to develop from chemicals, It's hard to imagine that happened in an instant.

We haven't observed it happening in several thousand years.

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