Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180005A
|
00:31 Welcome to The Creator Revealed.
00:35 I'm Tim Standish, I'm a scientist. 00:38 And being a scientist, 00:39 I was taught not to believe in the Creator, 00:44 but when we look at the creation, 00:48 we not only come to the conclusion 00:50 that there is a Creator behind it all, 00:54 but it tells us the most fascinating things 00:57 about His nature, His personality, if you will. 01:02 Absolutely. 01:03 You know, that's what Paul wrote to the Romans 01:05 that in Romans 1:20, 01:07 he says, 01:09 "That God's invisible attributes 01:11 are seen in the things that He made." 01:15 And we're so glad you're joining us today. 01:17 This is already becoming a very popular program. 01:21 In our first segment, 01:22 you're going to get just a little bit of science. 01:25 And in the second segment, 01:26 we'll be giving you a practical application. 01:29 And I'm just very thrilled. 01:31 What are we talking about? 01:33 We're talking about relationships, 01:34 relationships between organisms and their environment, 01:40 and relationships between one kind of organism 01:44 and another kind of organism. 01:45 All right. 01:46 I'm ready to learn. 01:48 All right. 01:50 I love this topic 01:52 because it tells us 01:57 so many beautiful things 01:59 about not only ourselves but also God who created us. 02:05 This photograph, 02:07 I took one day on the campus of Loma Linda University. 02:12 These poppies are such beautiful flowers, 02:15 and it's fascinating 02:17 to watch the bees buzzing around them. 02:20 The thing that struck me, when I was looking at these, 02:25 was these two organisms are working together. 02:31 They are not in some kind of struggle to the death 02:34 with one another. 02:36 Right. 02:37 Everything is cooperative there. 02:42 Yeah. 02:43 And it got me thinking about what the... 02:47 Not only cooperative but dependent really. 02:49 Interdependent, they are interdependent. 02:51 Yes, the bee gets obviously sugar, 02:54 ultimately, from the flower. 02:57 And the flower is pollinated by the bees. 03:01 So there's a nice trade off here, 03:03 both of them are benefiting in a beautiful way. 03:07 So as a biologist, I, you know, started thinking about things 03:12 because one of the things 03:14 that I was taught over the course of my education 03:18 was that a central principle of life is competition, 03:24 competition not cooperation. 03:27 So organisms 03:28 that are in this kind of struggle to the death... 03:31 A survival of the fittest. 03:32 That's right, the survival of the fittest. 03:35 But in reality, I started to think about... 03:38 In reality, could life even exist 03:43 if that was really the principle? 03:46 When we look at living things, we see cooperation, 03:49 interdependence all over the place. 03:54 When it comes to bees, 03:57 let's say, 04:02 how do you get a bee? Where does a bee come from? 04:05 How does a bee exist? 04:08 There's a relationship between bees 04:10 and their environment obviously. 04:12 Without air, the bee wouldn't be able to fly. 04:15 Without atoms to be made out of, 04:17 the bee couldn't exist. 04:20 Really, in my thinking, it sort of walked me 04:23 all the way back to the universe. 04:26 Without a universe, the bee couldn't exist. 04:31 But the universe has to be a just right universe. 04:34 There are all kinds of factors 04:38 that have to be just precisely right 04:41 if you want to get a bee, or a puppy, 04:43 or a human or a puppy for that matter. 04:46 You mean, just to sustain life, 04:48 when you're talking about all these factors, 04:50 to sustain life, we've got Mars that they're saying, 04:53 you know, perhaps they're learning a little more, 04:56 but we are a planet on which everything 05:00 comes together perfectly to sustain life. 05:02 Oh, yes. 05:03 This planet is a very, very special planet, 05:06 that's becoming quite obvious from the study of these planets 05:11 that they're finding out there in space. 05:13 Ours is special, it's a very special planet, 05:16 there's no doubt about that. 05:17 But I'm going bigger than the planet. 05:18 Okay. I'm going the whole universe. 05:21 The whole universe operates by laws. 05:24 And we're not going to talk about all of them, don't panic. 05:27 But let's talk about one of them, gravity, 05:29 because gravity is something that we all understand. 05:32 It turns out that gravity is just right 05:37 so that our sun can exist. 05:39 Our sun is actually a great big hydrogen bulb 05:43 up in the sky. 05:45 It's made out of primarily hydrogen, 05:47 and gravity pulls that hydrogen together 05:51 so that in the center of the sun, 05:53 the pressure is so high 05:56 that the hydrogens are fusing together, 05:59 and when they do that, 06:00 they release enormous amounts of energy. 06:03 And that's what's going on up there. 06:07 It's just right. 06:09 If gravity was a bit stronger, 06:12 you would think, "Well, that might be good, 06:14 because we could somehow rather have a hotter sun 06:18 or something, it'd be more nuclear fusion going on there." 06:21 But the problem is that if we sped up that fusion, 06:26 so much energy would be coming off the sun... 06:29 We'll burn up. That we would burn up. 06:32 Not only that, the orbit of the earth would change, 06:36 the earth would have to be adjusted 06:38 in many, many different ways. 06:40 But there probably isn't a way of adjusting things 06:43 so that life could possibly exist. 06:45 If it was strong, the earth would be orbiting closer, 06:47 we'd actually have to rearrange things 06:48 and put the earth a long way away. 06:50 But it's not just the amount of radiation light coming off. 06:55 It's also the kind of light. 06:59 There are certain kinds of light like X-rays. 07:01 We don't see it, 07:03 but we know that those can do a lot of damage to us. 07:06 So that would be a problem as well. 07:08 Getting everything to work with stronger gravity 07:10 might well be and probably is impossible 07:13 for life to exist. 07:15 So what would happen 07:16 if we made it a little bit weaker? 07:18 What if we made it 07:22 so that the fusion is not going on 07:26 so rapidly inside the sun? 07:28 Well, then the sun would be too cold, 07:30 and we wouldn't have enough light energy hitting the earth, 07:33 the earth would freeze. 07:35 Ice Age. Yeah. 07:37 We'd be in a permanent Ice Age. 07:39 And again, the bee couldn't exist, 07:41 and neither could the flower, neither could the human being, 07:43 neither could the elephant, 07:45 no life could exist if gravity wasn't just right. 07:48 That's amazing. 07:50 So bear in mind, yeah, 07:51 it takes a universe to make a bee. 07:55 This is just one of many things 07:58 that need to be just exactly right. 08:00 So that's a relationship thing. 08:03 For the relationship to exist between life 08:06 and the rest of the physical universe, 08:09 things have to be just right. 08:11 We've got to get them exactly perfect. 08:14 Now, let's get back to this business 08:16 of how organisms relate to one another. 08:20 Charles Darwin wrote about that, 08:22 and here is what he thought. 08:23 This is in the Origin of Species, 08:26 his most famous book, he wrote, 08:28 "It is the most closely allied forms, 08:31 varieties of the same species and species of the same genus 08:36 or related genera, 08:37 which, from having nearly the same structure, 08:40 constitution and habits, 08:41 generally come into the severest competition 08:45 with each other. 08:47 Consequently, each new variety or species, 08:50 during the progress of its formation, 08:52 will generally press hardest on its nearest kindred 08:56 and tend to exterminate them." 09:02 That's a solemn thought, isn't it? 09:03 You can see, by the way. 09:05 You can see why it is that 09:06 people regularly take this kind of thinking, 09:09 and Charles Darwin 09:11 also spells it out quite clearly 09:13 and apply it to human beings 09:15 and say, "Well, there are other human beings 09:16 who need to be exterminated, 09:19 because we're in competition with them." 09:21 And that's not a hypothetical situation, 09:25 that is something that has been acted on 09:28 over the course of history. 09:31 But think about it. 09:32 The most closely related are the ones 09:35 that are in the severest competition 09:36 according to this way of thinking. 09:38 There is no competition... 09:40 Sorry, no cooperation. 09:43 That's a coincidental thing that, you know, whatever, 09:48 but the rule is competition, the rule is struggle, 09:52 the rule is survival of the fittest 09:55 in that particular way of thinking. 09:56 And you can see that in some ways 09:58 like in a lion and a pride 10:01 where the dominant male will kill his cubs 10:06 or something like this. 10:08 So there's sometimes that if you look at that 10:11 in that isolated incident, that may be true, 10:14 but not overall. 10:16 Well, here's the interesting thing 10:17 about something like that. 10:19 Don't you viscerally respond to a situation like that? 10:23 Oh, yes. Absolutely. 10:24 Isn't it awful? 10:26 Isn't a terrible thing? 10:27 Haven't we all seen nature programs 10:31 where lions are not just killing each other, 10:33 they're killing all these other gazelles. 10:35 And the gazelles are beautiful creatures. 10:37 Why it that we know 10:40 that there is something wrong about that? 10:44 The secret is actually... 10:46 It's not a secret, it's stated quite plainly in the Bible. 10:50 We know that that is wrong. 10:52 We know that's wrong, because that wasn't God's plan. 10:54 Yes. 10:56 God did not create lions 10:58 to tear gazelles to pieces and eat them. 11:02 This is the fall, this is the result of sin. 11:06 And the good news is, in the new earth, 11:09 the lion and the gazelle will lie down together. 11:11 Exactly. 11:13 So let's look 11:14 at another example of cooperation 11:17 that's evident there in nature. 11:19 Of fungi, 11:21 we usually don't think of fungus as doing anything 11:24 other than breaking down dead stuff. 11:27 But in fact, 11:28 they play a very important role in nature. 11:31 They also taste good if you eat mushrooms. 11:34 But when you see a mushroom, 11:36 what you're seeing is really the tip of the iceberg. 11:39 So let's go way back 11:40 to the very beginning with mushrooms. 11:43 And we need to start looking at the tips of roots. 11:47 These could be tree roots or any other plant root. 11:51 What you commonly find there, way out of the root tips, 11:55 is that there are things called mycorrhiza 12:01 that are growing into the root tips. 12:04 Those are fungi. 12:07 When you look at a mushroom, that's the tip of the iceberg. 12:12 The rest of the organism is this hair-like structure 12:19 that's growing down there in the soil 12:21 into the roots of plants. 12:24 And people thought, "Oh, those must be parasites 12:29 stealing stuff from these poor plants." 12:31 In fact, the opposite is true. 12:33 When we start looking at 12:37 what the plant gets from these fungi, 12:41 it's quite amazing. 12:43 First of all, they get water, 12:44 and obviously water is very important for plants. 12:47 It increases the size of their root system, 12:50 the surface area, 12:52 so they can absorb water, pass it on to the plant. 12:54 In addition to that, 12:56 the fungi help to absorb minerals 12:59 that the plants need to grow, 13:01 and they give protection to the plant. 13:04 They stop other things 13:05 that might come in and want to eat the plant or. 13:09 And finally, and this is one of the most amazing things, 13:12 they actually have a communication system 13:16 that they use from one plant to another 13:18 through these mycorrhiza. 13:20 I see fungus all the time at the root 13:23 or at the base of our oak trees. 13:25 Didn't realize they were doing the tree some good. 13:28 Quite possibly they are. 13:29 It depends, obviously, if the tree is dying, 13:32 the fungi will help to break it down 13:34 and recycle it. 13:36 But when everything's alive and thriving, it's great. 13:40 So what does the fungus get? 13:41 It gets sugar from the plant 13:44 and that's mostly it. 13:47 But they are interdependent somewhat. 13:49 So they are interdependent. 13:50 This is an exchange that they're making. 13:54 This brings to mind this text in Proverbs. 13:58 "There are three things that are too amazing for me, 14:02 four that I do not understand. 14:03 The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, 14:07 the way of a ship on the high seas, 14:09 and the way of a man with a young woman." 14:12 So all relationships. 14:13 All relationships, the bird and the air, 14:17 the man and the woman, cooperating, working together. 14:23 So what does this ultimately tell us 14:24 about the Creator? 14:26 The Creator loves these beautiful relationships, 14:30 relationships between bees and flowers, 14:33 those sorts of things. 14:34 He gets joy 14:35 from these cooperative relationships 14:39 that we see in ecology, 14:40 and His desire for cooperation with humans 14:44 and the rest of creation is evident 14:47 in the interdependence we see among all things, 14:51 the living part of the universe 14:54 and the inanimate universe. 14:58 So ultimately, the created things 15:01 reveal the Creator's desire for harmonious relationships. 15:05 And that is exactly what we want to talk about 15:09 in the second segment. 15:11 So we ask you to stay tuned with us. 15:13 We'll be back in 60 seconds. |
Revised 2019-03-14