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It Is Written Canada

Designed With Purpose

Chris Holland

Water

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

It is written sharing messages of hope around the world.

Have you ever wondered why our Earth is not covered by oceans of oxygen?

Now, if you were paying attention in chemistry class, and I know it may have been hard for some of us to pay attention, but it probably crossed your mind at some point.

In our atmosphere, the oxygen molecule composed of 2 oxygen atoms.

Now, I know I'm getting a little technical, but stay with me.

When those 2 oxygen atoms are joined together, it's a gas.

But if you put 2 hydrogen atoms together with an oxygen atom, of course you get liquid water, H2O.

The water molecule is much lighter than the oxygen molecule.

Now, why is the heavier molecule a gas and the lighter molecule water?

How would our world be different if there were no liquid water to help me answer those questions and their implication on faith?

Standish, I was talking about things that were getting me a little bit outside the realm of my expertise.

You are an expert in this area of water because of course you are a biologist.

You hold a PhD in environmental biology and public policy.

You have a master's in biology, an undergraduate degree, a bachelor's of science in zoology, and you're the senior scientist at the Geoscience Research Institute.

Standish, just to help our audience get a little more familiar with you, What do you do on a daily basis for the Geoscience Research Institute?

The great thing about working where I work is that every day is different.

Some days I come in and I write for much of the day.

There are always constant interruptions and things like that.

I work with graduate students who are working on graduate degrees in the sciences.

On a good day, I get to do some work in there.

And then, of course, there's a lot of work outside of the office where we travel, teach classes, give presentations at various kinds of meetings.

Well and you you work in a place where every day is different.

The Geoscience Research Institute, just to help folks, what is it dedicated to?

What's kind of the mission of the Geoscience Research Institute?

The reason for the institute to exist is to explore the relationship between science and faith.

What is a good, productive, reasonable understanding of the biblical record of history and the current claims of science?

Most of the time, there are no tensions there.

The Bible talks about a place called Jerusalem.

Hey, we can go and see Jerusalem, and there it is.

But there are these occasional areas where there's some kind of tension.

Where might there be something new that we need to find out?

Those are questions that we ask, and sometimes if we can come up with 1 that we might be able to address, we may actually go out and work on doing science to see whether a given way of resolving things might in fact be a possibility.

And if someone wanted to maybe read more about your work or some of the work of the Geoscience Research Institute, where would they find information?

Probably the best place to start is our website, which is www.grisda.org.

I encourage people also to get onto our Facebook page.

You can just do that by looking for Geoscience Research Institute.

And there's constantly changing information there.

On the website itself, we have a constant news feed where we put up links to articles, not necessarily articles that we all agree with, but articles that are coming out in the literature that address these issues that we're interested in in some way.

Now we've opened, we've talked about water and I'm sure someone might be wondering what does water have to do with faith?

But let's just talk about water because we're going to get there.

We're gonna tie this into the biblical faith.

What makes water so different than other molecules?

We already talked about how it's a relatively small light molecule but it exists as a liquid at room temperature.

Now the interesting thing is There are not many things that actually do exist as liquids at room temperature.

There are certain oils, but oils are big molecules.

Some alcohols, ethanol and methanol and these, they are liquids at room temperature but they're significantly heavier also than water itself.

But things that are liquids at room temperature are kind of unusual.

So that's 1 special thing about water and the big question is why?

What that means is it's got an area that is a little bit more negative on it with a little bit of a negative charge And it has slightly positive charges out where the hydrogen atoms are on the molecule.

And because of that, the positive and negative charges attract 1 another.

And so the water molecules stick together and they remain a liquid at room temperature as opposed to pretty much anything else that is that kind of molecular weight.

But the fact that it's polar then means that water has some other really interesting characteristics to it Have you ever tried dissolving salt in in cooking oil?

It just doesn't happen at all Yeah, Water will dissolve all kinds of different things.

Sometimes people call it a universal solvent.

It isn't truly universal, but because there are things obviously that you can't dissolve in water, But it is amazing the way that it can dissolve all kinds of different ions like salt.

It can dissolve alcohols, it can dissolve sugars, it can just tons of stuff which is really useful for living things.

Because those are the sorts of things that we need to move around in our bodies.

Well we can use water to move things like salt and sugar and so on around inside our bodies because our bodies are made primarily of water.

When we talk about living things frequently we get obsessed with carbon and carbon-containing molecules.

Water, when you weigh yourself, it's mostly water.

Now, obviously, there are other things that weigh something in you.

But If we were to dry ourselves out, we would lose a huge amount of weight.

Losing water is the quickest way to lose weight for a human being.

Don't do it, because you need that water.

Another amazing thing about water, in fact, some people have contended that life might not be possible on Earth because of this 1 property.

And that is that water, when it freezes, expands.

Now most things, the colder they get, the more they shrink.

It’s All Just a Bunch of Gas

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

Thank you so much for watching It Is Written.

We are in the midst of a series designed with purpose.

And today we're gonna take further look at this issue of design, and we're going to look at nitrogen.

Now before you say nitrogen, that doesn't sound very exciting.

You are gonna be thrilled with the conversation today because nitrogen is an essential part of the proteins that we are made of as well as our DNA.

And we're going to look at why the role of nitrogen in the atmosphere is so important and how it is taken from the atmosphere to be used in biological molecules.

To help us with this discussion and its implication On our faith, I want to welcome again Dr.

Yes, and I'm sure glad you're here because if I was gonna have a discussion on nitrogen, that would be a very, very short discussion, Dr.

Standish, you have a PhD in environmental biology and public policy.

You are the senior scientist for the Geoscience Research Institute.

Standish, what are you doing on a daily basis in this world of biology and its implications on faith?

Well, there are lots of things that we do at the Geoscience Research Institute.

1 of the things that I enjoy doing is actually working on documentary films that help to explain design in the natural world.

It's a little bit outside of the normal activities of a scientist, but trying to get both the facts straight, but also convey the amazing information that we know about our world.

Obviously, I'm particularly interested in the environment and how ecology works in such a way that life can exist.

So If I was to tell you this is what I do on such and such a day in my office, I'm afraid I couldn't tell you because I'm not a prophet.

It's something different every day, but this media work is certainly enjoyable.

Standish, if someone wanted to find out more about some of the documentaries that you're working on Some of the work of the Geoscience Research Institute, where would they go to find out about this information?

Well, actually I'd point them to 2 different web pages.

First of all, there is the Geoscience Research Institute web page, which is g-r-i-s-d-a dot o-r-g, grizzda dot org.

No space, just I-l-l-u-s-t-r-a-m-e-d-i-a dot com.

And that's where you'll see Another 1 is illustramedia.com.

No space, just I-L-L-U-S-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-A.com.

And that's where you'll see some of the documentaries that I've had the privilege of working on, and others that have also been produced by Illustra Media, they are fantastic.

Fascinating, and all of those videos having to do with design and creation in the world of nature, seeing how God is working, seeing, using the terminology that we've used in some of our previous shows, seeing the plan, which points to the planner, that planner being Jesus Christ himself.

Now, today we're going to have a little bit of a conversation about nitrogen.

And so maybe let's just start right there and make it really basic to kick off with.

Nitrogen is the most exciting element out there.

And I know that that's an extreme statement.

Yes, I'm wondering if we might have some folks ready to argue with you.

That's right, there may be people who disagree with me, but they are people who had no fun in high school.

Nitrogen is, you know, an atom that you find in many different kinds of explosives.

These are explosives that people are familiar with.

It's the nitrogen in there that is Contributing that huge amount of energy that's released when these explosives explode So that it's it's really an exciting element and yet it exists in our atmosphere as probably the most boring molecule imaginable.

2 nitrogen atoms joined together to make something called N2, nitrogen gas.

It's really, really important that it's there.

Well, and that's what I, now, so you said, first you said nitrogen was exciting, but now you're saying nitrogen is boring.

And so if nitrogen's that boring, what would happen if we just replaced all the nitrogen in our atmosphere with oxygen, which seems a whole lot more useful.

Well, things would get a lot more exciting, let's put it that way, if you did that.

What that means is it doesn't really react with anything.

We know that because when we burn things up, it's using up oxygen, it's the oxygen that's oxidizing whatever it is that's burning away there.

So, if you took out the nitrogen and replaced it with oxygen, what you would have is an awful lot more burning.

And in fact, this experiment has been done accidentally.

Actually, apparently quite a few times over the years.

My father was a was a doctor and back in the olden days If a patient had trouble breathing, 1 of the things that they would do is put them inside an oxygen tent This was basically a cover and they raised the amount of oxygen inside that tent, which was important for the patient because they needed more oxygen and they were having trouble getting oxygen into their body.

However, if that patient happened to light up a cigarette inside the oxygen tent, it was a conflagration.

And my understanding is that my father was not the only doctor who had a patient do that.

But yes, because the cigarette, instead of burning slowly as it does in our normal 80% nitrogen atmosphere, Would burn like an inferno for a very short period of time inside the oxygen enriched atmosphere.

So it's very important that we have some kind of inert gas that takes up most of the atmosphere.

Otherwise, we simply would not be able to control fires.

Okay, so maybe help me a little bit here.

So, nitrogen gas in particular is very important in its role in the atmosphere, and nitrogen is important to life, but if it's inert, why is it found all over in explosives and Why is it so exciting, so to speak, when it's not a gas?

The secret lies in the triple bond that exists between 2 nitrogen atoms when they go together and form the nitrogen gas that we see in the atmosphere.

So to separate nitrogen N2 into individual nitrogen atoms, you have to put in a huge amount of energy to break those 3 bonds apart.

You can have a fire in nitrogen and the nitrogen won't make any difference in that situation.

But if you take nitrogen apart, you put the energy in, right, to split it apart, what's going to happen if you put it back together again?

All of that energy that was put in to pull it apart is going to be released as you reform that triple bond.

And That's how explosives that contain nitrogen work, which is basically most explosives that people work with.

The nitrogen on trinitrotoluene is held apart on this organic molecule called toluene.

If you break that molecule so that the nitrogens can get back together again, boom, they release all that energy as they reform the triple bond and become nitrogen gas again.

And so you've got all this nitrogen, all this energy, and that is being released when you're putting it back together.

It’s All About the Genes

Thank you so much for choosing to watch It Is Written.

We are in the third part of a three-part series designed with purpose.

Did you know that every cell starts out with long strands of deoxyribonucleic acid?

Now, we more commonly call this huge molecule DNA.

It is essential for life to exist as it serves as kind of a chemical paper on which the plans for all our proteins as well as much of the other information necessary for our bodies to exist.

That information is divided into units called genes.

And if that sounded confusing to you, here to help us sort it all out and help us understand it and its implications for our faith is Dr.

Standish, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you so much for having me and I am excited to talk about genes.

Standish, we've had a number of times together.

We've actually known each other for quite a while.

We met 20 years ago at Andrews University where you were an associate professor of biology and I was a student studying theology.

And your career has taken you far and wide in many different places.

You, before coming to Andrews, you were an associate professor of biology at Union College there in Lincoln, Nebraska.

You have a PhD in Environmental Biology and Public Policy, a Master's of Biology, and a Bachelor's of Science in Zoology.

And now you're the Senior Scientist at the Geoscience Research Institute.

And that sounded really big and confusing.

And so unraveling this confusion, before we unravel the DNA confusion, let's kind of unravel that confusion that I all talked about.

Yeah, sometimes I don't think I know what I do.

But I listen to my wife and then I know immediately.

Now, I work for the Geoscience Research Institute and this is an institute located in Southern California.

We're interested in how the Bible and the information that's recorded in there and science interact with 1 another.

Most of the time they're in complete agreement.

Sometimes there's some tension between the claims of science and the record of scripture.

And that's where we think, you know what, there's something interesting to find out there.

And so you spend a lot of time researching, exploring these tensions, finding ways in which these tensions can either be explained or actually, maybe they're not even a tension, or maybe this tension is actually a complementary and intentional tension.

Somebody wanted to read more about the things that the Geoscience Research Institute is doing, if someone wanted to read maybe some of the research papers that you have written, where could they find that information?

The best place to start would be at the Geoscience Research Institute website, which is just grisda.org.

Stanish, we opened the show talking about DNA.

So that means that it's a structure that's made up of lots of atoms all joined together.

Now, most molecules are very small relative to the scale of things that we deal with.

You can't see molecules typically with the naked eye.

But DNA has 2 really interesting properties, just on a global scale.

First of all, it is really a big molecule.

That doesn't mean that you can necessarily see it with your naked eye.

You have in pretty much all of your cells 46 chromosomes.

And the DNA is a major component of those chromosomes.

If you just took the DNA from those chromosomes, so that's all 46 of them, and stretched it out straight, it would be about 6 feet, a little over 6 feet, approximately 2 meters long.

So my DNA, if I just sort of lined it up, all those bits of DNA inside my cells would be about as tall as I am when I'm standing up.

So, and just to make sure I understand correctly, is it the DNA in all of your cells or the DNA in just 1 cell that is about 2 meters long?

And we have lots of cells throughout our body.

So you're talking, if you took all the DNA that's inside of us, You're talking about something that's huge.

Oh yes, you have something on the order of approaching a trillion human cells in your body.

And so yeah, there's a lot of DNA in there, at least in terms of length.

Wow, so you're talking about almost 2000000000000 meters of length in just 1 human body.

So let's talk a little bit more about this DNA.

The information is probably the most interesting thing about the DNA.

I mean, the structure of DNA itself is very elegant and beautiful.

It's that sort of double helical twisting structure that you see showing up when people wanna talk about science kind of things.

They frequently have a picture of DNA in there.

And finding that structure was a very, very big deal.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick, along with a couple of other people, but they've been the big sort of movers and shakers with this, they published a paper that got them this Nobel Prize in nature.

Interestingly enough, the paper itself is only about a page long, but it reported this double helical structure.

In terms of recording the information or storing the information in there, you can think of the DNA language as being spelled out in just the same way that we spell out words ourselves.

Instead of using letters, it uses slightly different flat molecules that are attached to the, So what sticks into the middle of that sort of twisted ladder structure, those are the parts of the molecule that contain the information.

And each 1 of those is like a different letter.

There are only 4 different letters in the DNA alphabet.

So we frequently symbolize them as ATG, and C.

And I know when I first saw that I thought, wow, How can you spell very much using only that many letters?

And so, the key to DNA is that it encodes information, holds information.

And it's a very good molecule for doing that.

Yes, why is it such a good molecule for doing that?

I mean, how does it get that information?

Okay, let's first talk Just a little bit about why it's a really good molecule for storing information.

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Series

Designed With Purpose

Water

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Parts

Water

29m

It’s All Just a Bunch of Gas

29m

It’s All About the Genes

29m

Sound Doctrine