Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180002B
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00:03 Welcome back to "The Creator Revealed."
00:05 I was telling Tim, 00:06 I don't know if it is his doctorate in biology 00:10 or if it's his accent 00:11 that makes him look so intelligent but guess what? 00:14 We've got his boss with us today 00:16 and now you've got some competition. 00:19 There we go. 00:20 Well, you know, it's fun 00:22 working at the Geoscience Research Institute 00:24 because I have a group of colleagues 00:28 who are so interesting and know so much, 00:32 trust me, we keep one another humble... 00:35 I bet. 00:36 And it's enjoyable to discuss the very things 00:41 that we are talking about in this 00:45 The Creator Revealed series. 00:48 Now, up until this point 00:52 in this particular episode, 00:54 we've been talking about design in fossils, 00:57 but I've been concentrating mainly on dinosaurs 01:02 and the idea that 01:06 hey, you know, we find organisms living today, 01:08 they look designed and we find fossils 01:10 of those same organisms... 01:13 Designed the same way. 01:14 So we'd expect that they, 01:15 you know, it's just sort of reasonably consistent 01:18 to believe that in fact, 01:21 those fossils represent designed organisms as well. 01:26 Dr. Gibson has made a study of a kind of fossil 01:32 called an ammonite. 01:34 Now, that sounds like something from the Bible. 01:35 Yeah, it does. 01:37 But let's let him explain these to us a little bit. 01:40 Welcome, Dr. Gibson. 01:44 Thank you. 01:45 I just happened to have here with me 01:48 a fossil ammonite shell. 01:51 It's a interesting... 01:53 That looks sort of like a snail. 01:57 Yeah, except it's kind of flat. 02:00 There's some flat snails too, yeah. 02:03 It's almost like a snail is. 02:06 Notice that it has a spiral shape to it. 02:10 You notice that spiral there, that's kind of cool. 02:13 I kind of like the shape of this. 02:14 Reminds me of a chambered nautilus, 02:16 but you probably have heard about not long ago. 02:20 There's some differences between the nautilus 02:22 and the ammonite. 02:25 So there are different kinds of things 02:27 but there's a lot of similarity too. 02:33 I just have this little toy here 02:35 that illustrates what the thing looked like. 02:38 If I can get it here where you can... 02:40 So it looks little bit like a squid or an octopus. 02:42 Yes. 02:44 Yeah. 02:45 In fact it is a lot like a squid 02:47 or an octopus with a shell on it. 02:50 It's kind of an unusual thing, 02:52 but notice that spiral shape again 02:55 and I kind of like that spiral shape, 02:57 It's interesting. 03:00 And one of the interesting things about it is, 03:04 it has a mathematical basis. 03:06 There's an actual, you can write an equation for a spiral. 03:11 Well I think, 03:12 well, that got created 03:16 by a great mathematician. 03:19 It's great to think though, 03:20 that God is such a genius at mathematics, 03:24 not just because of the spiral of this, of course, 03:27 but because mathematics is found throughout nature. 03:30 Yeah, that's true, 03:31 it's really kind of a remarkable thing. 03:33 That in all living things, 03:36 we find that mathematics can describe things that... 03:41 Yes. 03:42 That why do they have to... 03:44 Why does it have to be that way? 03:45 Well, it probably doesn't. 03:47 It's just that mathematics 03:51 is the basis of the universe apparently 03:54 but also in living things quite, quite incredible. 03:58 Yeah. So I think it tells us something about the Creator. 04:02 He's a mathematician. 04:04 He invented mathematics, I guess. 04:07 Well, the beauty I should say the interest 04:12 and I think it's beauty too, interest in that shell, 04:16 a spiral shape is kind of interesting. 04:19 In fact, I think, it's okay to say that it's beautiful. 04:23 And that beauty that I see in the ammonite shell, 04:27 I see it in the nautilus shell, 04:29 the chambered nautilus and other things. 04:32 It makes me wonder why should nature be beautiful, 04:38 and why am I able to appreciate that beauty? 04:43 I know, 04:44 I've got a couple of house cats. 04:47 I don't see them admiring beautiful things. 04:51 I haven't noticed other animals doing that, why me and you? 04:55 Why do we appreciate beauty, and I think it's because 04:59 we were created in the image of a God 05:04 who Himself appreciates and loves beauty. 05:08 And I find that interesting. 05:12 It is interesting that again... 05:14 The creator God. 05:16 An unnecessary correlation really, isn't it? 05:19 The creation is beautiful and we have minds 05:23 that are capable of appreciating that beauty. 05:28 It doesn't seem like it would have to be that way 05:30 because of the laws of physics 05:33 or maybe some other explanation like natural selection. 05:36 Why? 05:38 Why would it be that way? 05:39 Well, if you believe 05:41 that the character of the Creator 05:43 involves beauty 05:48 and wanting to give pleasure to other beings, 05:54 then it makes an awful lot of sense. 05:57 But if you're not talking about something 05:58 like the God of the Bible, 06:00 it makes no sense at all. 06:01 That's true. 06:04 If we go back to that... 06:06 I'm sorry, go ahead. 06:07 If we go back to that ammonite and take a look. 06:11 You'll see he's got an eye. 06:14 And look at now, of course, this is just a toy. 06:18 But it's believed that the eye of the ammonite 06:20 did look a lot like that 06:21 and part of the reason for that, 06:23 of course, is by comparison of the chambered nautilus 06:25 where we can see the eye 06:27 and see that it's quite technically advanced, 06:31 quite sophisticated. 06:33 So there's another thing we can learn about design 06:37 in the ammonite. 06:39 The eye is carefully crafted 06:42 with not only physical parts 06:46 that are put together in a functional sequence 06:49 but molecular machines that are in the, 06:53 you know, where we can't see them particularly 06:55 but the idea of vision is spectacular. 06:59 Our engineering feat, 07:03 and I see the Creator must be an engineer 07:06 beyond our experience. 07:08 Yeah, when you start looking at organisms, 07:11 you gonna appreciate them all the way down 07:13 from the gross structure, the environment they live in, 07:18 all the way down into the actual molecules 07:21 that they're made of. 07:22 Quite remarkable. 07:23 So what's inside that shell? 07:26 What's going on with it? 07:29 Well, if you split the shell open 07:32 you'll find... 07:33 And here's an example of an ammonite 07:35 with its shell split open. 07:38 It's very beautiful. 07:40 You I'll see that it has a series... 07:42 You can see that spiral very clearly there 07:45 and you can see that has a series of chambers, 07:49 the little lines dividing the chambers, 07:52 it seems that the animals started out living 07:55 in the smallest one at the center of the spiral 07:59 and then as it outgrew the chamber, 08:02 it added another one and so, in a spiral, 08:06 so the spiral grew as the animal grew, 08:10 leaving a series of chambers behind it, 08:14 the animal living in the outermost chamber. 08:20 That is kind of cool. 08:22 And so when you have those empty chambers, you might ask, 08:28 well, is there anything you can do 08:30 with those empty chambers? 08:32 And the answer is yes, 08:35 you can fill them with gas or water, 08:38 pumping them back and forth through a little tube. 08:43 And by doing that 08:45 you can regulate the density of the ammonite 08:49 and then it can move up or down in the water. 08:54 And so it could control the buoyancy, 08:57 its ability to move up and down the water 09:00 by controlling the amount of gas 09:03 in these little chambers. 09:05 So basically, go ahead, I'm sorry. 09:07 I was just gonna say, 09:08 there's a definite function to the design 09:11 and that's what we see in everything God created. 09:15 What's interesting to me is the combining 09:18 of this very practical thing that allows this organism 09:23 to decide where it's going to be in the water 09:25 by adjusting the amount of gas inside these chambers 09:30 and yet the beauty as well. 09:33 It's not an ugly thing. 09:35 It turns out to be a beautiful and practical thing. 09:39 Form and function going together. 09:41 Yeah. Yes. 09:43 And then if you could imagine 09:45 this shell with an animal in it, 09:47 the animal living near the end here in the... 09:51 Probably in a chamber that isn't preserved here. 09:55 But, and that means all these other chambers 09:58 are filled with gas. 10:01 So that would tell you that the chamber's filled with gas 10:04 with the upper most in the water. 10:07 So you could predict that the animal would be 10:09 floating around something like this, 10:12 with it, most of the chambers above it 10:14 and the animal on the bottom side. 10:16 Fabulous, so it's actually orienting itself 10:19 as a result of it. 10:20 But that would also be a protective designing, right? 10:23 I guess so. Yeah. 10:24 Well, thank you, thank you. 10:25 Because its position. 10:27 Okay. 10:29 Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Gibson, 10:30 It's been a real pleasure. 10:32 That makes me want to go out and get my own, 10:34 my own fossil ammonite. 10:36 Enjoyed talking about the ammonite. 10:37 Thank you, Dr. Gibson. Thank you very much. 10:41 You know, it's just so fascinating to me that 10:44 what makes us different than animals? 10:46 We've already discussed that animals and humans 10:49 were made of the dust of the ground. 10:52 We both have the breath of the life in us, 10:56 but what makes us different is that God created us 11:00 with a specific function. 11:03 And we see that 11:04 everything God creates has a function and a form 11:08 and this is really fascinating. 11:09 Yeah. 11:11 Well, in the case of human beings 11:12 what I love is, 11:14 He gave us this particular role in His creation 11:17 and function in His creation 11:19 and He equipped us for that role. 11:22 So our ability for example to do mathematics, 11:25 this complex abstract mathematics, 11:28 is useful to us as we care for the creation, 11:34 as we study the creation 11:36 and we learn so much more about God's wisdom 11:42 and God's character from these incredible things. 11:45 Even these fossils where the design is so clear 11:51 and so beautiful at the same time. 11:54 He is an amazing God. He is the artist. 11:57 Yes. 11:58 Well, I want to thank our audience for joining us 12:02 for this particular episode. 12:04 If you're fascinated by fossils, 12:05 well then you're a lot like me. 12:07 But we are talking about all sorts of different things 12:11 in this Creator, 12:14 The Creator Revealed series of programs. 12:18 I hope that you'll join us for future episodes. 12:22 We've certainly enjoyed spending this time with you. 12:25 God bless you. |
Revised 2019-03-11