Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180002A
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00:30 Welcome to "The Creator Revealed."
00:33 I'm Tim Standish, I'm a scientist 00:35 who works for the Geoscience Research Institute. 00:39 And we are so glad that you are joining us today. 00:43 I'm Shelley Quinn. 00:44 I'm here to represent the average person 00:47 who's just going, ooh, when he tells us these things. 00:51 What we do in the first segment, 00:53 the first 15 minutes we will be talking about 00:56 some scientific fact that I think 00:59 you will find fascinating because we'll show 01:02 how God our Creator is revealed in His creation, 01:07 and then we'll come back with the second half 01:10 to have a biblical application, a discussion of this. 01:14 So please stay tuned for the entire program. 01:17 What are we gonna learn today? 01:19 We're gonna learn something 01:20 that many people have an incorrect view of it, 01:24 about fossils. 01:26 People believe that fossils somehow rather 01:31 are irrefutable proof 01:33 of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. 01:36 The reality is actually quite the opposite. 01:40 When we look at those fossils, 01:43 they tell us something about the Creator. 01:46 Amen. 01:47 So before we actually get into that, 01:50 I want to draw your attention to a text 01:54 that was written by the Apostle Paul 01:57 to the people in Ephesus. 02:00 Okay. This is Ephesians 5:32. 02:05 And Paul wrote this, he said, "This is a great mystery: 02:09 but I speak concerning Christ and the church." 02:14 The way I want to apply that text 02:17 with fossils is like this. 02:20 Fossils are remains of organisms 02:23 that lived in the past. 02:26 Unfortunately we can't do time travel 02:30 and go back and actually see what happened. 02:34 So in many ways they are a great mystery? 02:37 They're a mystery. Yes. 02:38 And it's a mystery that is profound 02:40 because we can't go back in time, 02:42 we can't really know certain things about them. 02:46 For example, we don't know 02:48 what sounds fossil organisms made. 02:52 So we don't know how a dinosaur sounded, 02:54 he could have been squeaky. 02:56 He could have been squeaky, he could have been silent. 02:58 He might have hissed like a lizard, 03:00 we just don't know. 03:02 And we cannot realistically know, 03:05 we can speculate and that's all. 03:08 So let's look at a dinosaur. Okay. 03:11 I've got a great dinosaur. 03:13 This is the tallest dinosaur that's known. 03:18 And when you look at that, it's pretty big. 03:22 In fact, it's about 13.27 meters tall. 03:28 Forty feet? About 40 feet, yes. 03:33 Well, a meter is a little bit over a yard, 03:35 it's about 39 inches. 03:38 So we're talking about a very, very tall creature. 03:41 Very intimidating to meet him 03:43 when you're out picking berries, I'm sure. 03:45 Yes, you know, I think, 03:48 I probably wouldn't want to get trodden on by him. 03:50 But the good news is this particular dinosaur 03:53 or like many other dinosaurs, they're commonly vegetarian. 03:57 Obviously, there are meat-eating dinosaurs, 03:59 we all know about T-Rex and dinosaurs like that. 04:03 But this was a vegetarian 04:05 and probably ate an awful lot of vegetables, 04:08 let's put it that way. 04:12 When I look at something like this, 04:15 a word comes to my mind and it's a great sounding word, 04:19 I love the way it comes off your tongue, 04:20 it's teleology. 04:22 It sounds like something you might do 04:23 in the afternoon in England. 04:25 Yes. Yes. 04:26 Morning teleology and afternoon teleology, 04:29 but it means something quite different. 04:32 It's built of the root word tele, 04:35 something out there, 04:36 something a long way away, like a telescope. 04:39 You're looking at something far away. 04:41 The idea with teleology is something that... 04:45 Situation where you have a goal out there, 04:48 somewhere out there and it's moved towards, 04:51 it's a goal, 04:52 an intelligent being has a goal 04:55 and then does work to get towards that goal. 05:00 It could be walking towards it, it could be engineering, 05:03 for example, there's a goal of making something, 05:05 an airplane, or a car, or a computer, 05:09 anything like that, there's that goal. 05:11 Having a design and a plan and... 05:13 Exactly, but it exists first in the brain 05:16 and then in reality. 05:18 Okay, okay. Yeah, so that's the idea. 05:20 Now fossil organisms, like living organisms, 05:23 had complex integrated systems 05:26 that were necessary for their survival. 05:29 Circulatory systems, muscle systems, 05:32 skeletal systems, nervous systems, 05:35 all of those had to work together. 05:37 That's an indicator 05:39 that there was some sort of teleology involved, 05:41 someone was working towards the goal 05:44 of making a dinosaur 05:46 and so somebody anticipated their need, 05:50 the dinosaurs' need 05:51 or the other fossil organisms' need 05:54 and thought of a solution to every problem 05:56 that needed to be solved for them to live. 06:00 That had to be solved first 06:02 before they could come into existence. 06:04 It's not something that 06:05 you could muddle your way towards. 06:07 Once you have the dinosaur, 06:09 you might be able to have it grow 06:11 a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller 06:13 or something like that, 06:14 but the basic systems all had to be in place first. 06:17 Especially for that big dude, if he's gonna pop. 06:23 In our experience only intelligence 06:25 is capable of doing this, 06:26 having that plan and integrating everything 06:28 and making it happen. 06:30 So teleology is something 06:31 we can look at in all living things 06:33 but we can also see evidence of it 06:35 in fossil things. 06:37 So when we talk about that incredibly tall dinosaur, 06:40 we can see there was some teleology involved, 06:43 some intelligence involved in its production, 06:48 in making it, in creating it, and we can do that 06:51 by looking at a modern organism. 06:54 The tallest living animal... 06:57 Giraffe. Giraffe, right. 06:58 Now, a really tall giraffe would hit about six meters. 07:03 So it's pushing about 20 feet, a little less than 20 feet. 07:06 And there are all sorts of things, 07:11 we design things we could talk about with dinosaurs, 07:14 with giraffes. 07:16 But let's look at a problem that they have to solve, 07:19 an engineering problem 07:21 that would also have been solved 07:23 by the dinosaur. 07:25 So let's see how they solve it. 07:27 It's called hydrostatic pressure. 07:29 This is basically the problem that they face 07:31 when they're trying to get blood 07:33 up to the top of their head. 07:36 When you're pumping blood up, 07:38 obviously their heart is down in their body, it's... 07:42 Going against gravity. 07:44 It's going against gravity, it's pumping it up there 07:46 so the blood has to go up about three meters, 07:50 that's about 10 feet, that it has to go, 07:53 that's a lot of weight of blood that you've got to push up. 07:56 So therefore, 07:58 you've got to have very high blood pressure, 08:00 if you want to do that. 08:01 And when you look at the numbers, 08:02 it's quite shocking really, 08:04 280/180 is their normal blood pressure. 08:09 A human being with blood pressure that high 08:11 would not have it for very long. 08:13 Well, exactly, 08:14 our blood vessels would explode under those circumstances. 08:18 So they have to have very strong blood vessels. 08:19 They got very strong blood vessels, right. 08:23 And, of course, that also means 08:25 that they must have a very powerful heart. 08:31 Now, people used to think, 08:33 "Oh, that means they have a really huge heart," 08:35 but they don't, they have a heart that, 08:38 on the outside at least is about the same size 08:41 as you would expect for an animal of their size. 08:44 I've always heard that giraffe's had large hearts 08:45 but that's not. 08:47 But they really don't. 08:48 But what they do is they have very thick walls 08:50 on their heart. 08:52 So the heart is a muscle, right, and the muscle, 08:56 there's a lot of muscle there 08:57 which means that inside that space, yeah, 09:00 the ventricles where the blood is, 09:03 it flows in and then is squeezed out 09:05 under pressure as it's pumped out. 09:07 The ventricles are actually quite small. 09:12 Okay. So that means that... 09:16 Exactly that means every time they squeeze, 09:18 it's just a little bit of blood that goes out. 09:20 So, but they have to put out a lot of blood 09:22 so what can they do? 09:23 Go fast. That's right. 09:25 They can pump faster, 09:26 their heart beats very, very fast 09:28 relative to ours, or other organisms, yeah, 09:31 so they have this rapid heartbeat. 09:33 And then, finally they have a really interesting problem 09:37 because we've been talking about getting the blood up 09:39 to the top, right, up to the top of their head. 09:41 But what happens to that blood 09:43 that went all the way down to the bottom? 09:45 It has to come back up from the tip of their foot 09:49 all the way back up into their body 09:50 and back to their heart. 09:52 So how does it get squeezed back? 09:54 Tight skin. Like pressure hose. 09:56 Like pressure hose, exactly. 09:58 Squeezing the blood back up into their bodies. 10:02 So you can see then 10:04 that however these were created, 10:08 we believe God created... 10:09 It had to be an intelligent creator 10:12 who looked ahead and planned for every step 10:18 for this creature to exist as a species 10:22 that's different than you and I. 10:23 Exactly. Very good. 10:25 Teleology, intelligence, God, 10:30 that's a logical way of moving forward. 10:35 Then we will look at other kinds of fossils. 10:38 What we can see is we can look at living things 10:42 that they are essentially the same as... 10:44 So for example, 10:45 here I'm showing you a nautilus shell 10:48 and a fossil nautilus shell on the left there. 10:51 So about how old but it's supposed to be? 10:55 This particular one, I'm not entirely sure 10:58 but it would be millions of years 10:59 according to... 11:01 And you can see how much evolution has occurred 11:04 over those millions of years, if they were there, yeah. 11:08 We want to clarify 11:09 because I don't want someone writing this today 11:11 that we don't believe it's been millions of years. 11:14 Exactly. 11:15 But that's what many scientists... 11:18 What the fossils do not show is change, I mean, 11:22 this is what a modern nautilus looks like 11:24 but this is a grasshopper, 11:26 we can see it's pretty much the same 11:28 as a modern grasshopper. 11:29 What's this? 11:31 That's a dragonfly and it had four wings. 11:33 That's right, just like a modern dragonfly. 11:36 This one, I love this is a lizard, 11:38 a kind of gecko actually 11:41 and geckos will drop their tail sometimes 11:43 and a new one grows back. 11:45 This ancient one... He's re-growing a tail. 11:47 He's re-growing a tail. 11:48 So the ancient lizard had the ability 11:51 or the ancient gecko had the ability 11:54 that we see in the modern lizards. 11:56 What we don't see is evolution. 11:58 That's amazing. 11:59 Now, we might see things lost 12:02 but we certainly don't see evolution. 12:05 As a shock, I mean, we can recognize 12:07 all of these things but I want to get to this, 12:11 fossil organisms also suggest behavioral complexity. 12:15 It's not just the morphology, the organs, 12:21 and those sorts of things, their behavior. 12:23 The example I want to use is a marsupial. 12:26 Like a kangaroo? Like a kangaroo. 12:27 This happens to be the largest marsupial fossil 12:30 out there, Diprotodon 12:32 but I want to just point out that modern marsupials... 12:38 And these are ones who carry their babies 12:40 in a pouch or pocket. 12:41 Exactly. Okay. 12:43 Here in the United States, we have a marsupial. 12:44 I have 'em on my deck every day. 12:48 A possum, I went running out one morning 12:50 because my dog was barking and I saw this, 12:53 this mother possum 12:55 and she was exhibiting a behavior, 12:58 she had all of her little darlings there 13:01 on her back 13:03 and she was not going to let that... 13:04 How many does she have? 13:06 Let's have a look. 13:07 Can you count them? I don't know. 13:09 What a fabulous mother. You know what? 13:12 I want to have a pet one of those things 13:14 and nobody seems to understand why? 13:16 They're just so gorgeous, lovely, lovely creatures. 13:21 But the point is ancient creatures, 13:24 they had to have behaviors to take care of their young. 13:29 So what does this reveal about the Creator? 13:32 I'm suggesting at least a couple of things. 13:36 First, he encourages thoughtfulness in people. 13:40 As we study these fossils, we need to be thoughtful, 13:44 we have to understand that 13:45 we don't understand everything about them, 13:48 but we can see evidence of their creation 13:53 and they tell us something about God Himself. 13:55 Yes. 13:56 And we see the same wisdom, love and the value 14:02 that God placed on diversity when he did His creation. 14:07 We see it in modern organisms 14:10 and we see it in ancient organisms. 14:12 And it just supports that God is love, 14:15 God is all powerful, 14:16 and we're excited to come back in just a moment. 14:21 We're gonna be gone for 60 seconds. 14:23 So stay tuned because we will come back 14:26 to look at the biblical application 14:28 of these principles. |
Revised 2019-03-11