good evening I'd like to introduce our first speaker dr. Hugh Ross dr. Ross received his PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral research fellow for five years at Caltech he founded reasons to believe in 1986 and has spoken at hundreds of universities and council in in conferences around the world bridging the gap of science and faith let's welcome dr. Ross well thank you and let's see we can get this keynote presentation up here here we go thank you yeah if you want to get some of our free resources now you can do it through your smart phone just text Q to three one nine nine six and that will get you several free videos book chapters articles and a lot more if you don't have a smartphone we're actually giving some away at her book table out front but as an ounce my topic is cosmic reasons to believe in the Jesus Christ and I was an astronomer first and then then a Christian and my studies in astronomy began when I was 7 years of age that's when I was reading five books in astronomy in physics a week and the first book I read in cosmology was by Sir Fred Hoyle nature of the universe and the book is very anti-christian however there was a single sentence in the book where Fred said there's a good deal of cosmology in the Bible it is a remarkable conception and I didn't pick up a Bible until it was 17 years of age but when I did I discovered that what Fred said was true that the Bible actually has ten times as much to say about the origin and history of universe than all the rest of the holy books of the world's religions combined and it makes four points repeatedly number one that the universe can be traced back to a singularity beginning now that's an Astrophysical term it means an actual beginni of all matter energy space and time and then the Bible talks about how the universe continuously expands from the beginning under laws of physics that don't change where one of those physical laws is a pervasive law of decay a law that applies to the entirety of the universe and what I'm gonna do in the next few minutes is show you where in the Bible these cosmological statements are made and how the latest discoveries and astronomy and physics establish that what the Bible stated about the universe thousands of years ago indeed is correct and I find that the matter where I speak in the world people are aware of the first sentence of the Bible in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth they may not be aware that the Bible actually makes that kind of comment repeatedly Hebrews 11:3 the universe that we can detect did not come from that which we can detect and when it talks about the heavens and the earth and Biblical Hebrew there is no word for universe but they have this phrase Shumway on arrests were the definite articles used nine times in the Bible and always refers to the totality of physical reality and the word procreate means to create something brand-new that did not exist before and actually includes not just all matter and energy but space and time itself in fact the Bible is explicit that God created space and time when he created the universe now I was studying the Bible for the first time when physicists in Britain were beginning to develop the space-time theorems of general relativity and today we have over 30 of those theorems probably the most well known is the one by board Abe Lincoln and Alan Guth which states that any universe that expands on average has a spacetime beginning which implies a causal agent outside a space and time who creates space time matter and energy now these individuals actually came up with models of the universe that did not have the space-time beginning but every one of them was a model that would not permit the existence of physical life physical life requires a universe that expands on average from its beginning and Alexander Vilenkin who himself is not a theist wrote in a book a couple years later about this theorem and he said quote with the proof now in place cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past eternal universe there is no escape they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning and the problem he was referring to was the proof of a space-time beginning implies a causal agent beyond space and time who creates her universe of space time matter and energy and that is your definition of the God that we see described in the Bible or as many physicists have pointed out some kind of God therefore must exist even Lawrence Krauss in his book a universe when nothing concedes that deism is something that cannot be taken off the scientific table because of the force of these space-time theorems and what I've noticed in this scientific literature with physicists and astronomers that take a non theistic worldview that debate is no longer about the existence of God but whether or not the God that created matter energy space and time is a personal God so Stephen Hawking denies that Roger pardon me Lawrence Krauss denies it so deism but not theism so it raises the question this God that created matter energy space and time is this God personal and did he design the universe and the earth for the sake of human beings well what impressed me when I first began to look at the Bible at age 17 as much as a set about the beginning of the universe it actually says much more about the expansion of the universe you won't find it in Genesis but you will find it in the oldest book of the Bible there's good textual evidence that the book of Job predates the content of the book of Genesis and sin joke 9 8 where it says God alone expands universe or as some translations put it out he stretches out the heavens and these are the texts that actually use the Hebrew verb not aa which means expansion and I've actually debated Michael Shermer the skeptic Society four times and university campuses this subject always comes up and his comment is Hugh these are not literal talking about the expansion universe they're figurative texts what I was able to respond and say if you actually look at these 11 texts the bird gita' shows up on all three Hebrew verb forms which means that literally is speaking about the continual expansion of the universe and it's not just me a 21st century astronomer who's reading this into the text Jewish theologians centuries ago also saw this in the text this is significant because no book outside of the Bible even hinted that we live in a continuously expanding universe until the 20th century that as the Bible stood alone for more than 2,500 years as being the one text that says one characteristic of the universe is that it continuously expands from a space-time beginning now I've written an entire book the Creator necause moze laying out the most compelling scientific evidence that indeed we live and it continuously expanding universe I don't have time tonight to give you the best evidence but I will give you one visual demonstration thanks to the hubble space telescope what you see in the left are galaxies located 12 billion light-years away which means we're seeing them as they were 12 billion years ago contrast there was another part of the universe we're looking at galaxies two billion light years away seeing them as they were two billion years ago and I put both of these images to the same spatial scale so you notice that 12 billion years ago galaxies are jammed so tightly together they're tearing spiral arms off one another whereas we move forward another 10 billion years the galaxies have expanded far enough apart from one another where this a phenomena is now rare and again if you go on NASA's website you can see dozens of images that demonstrate this photo album history of the universe demonstrating that indeed it continuously expands and only in a continuously expanding universe is even physical light possible seven places in the Bible it tells us the laws of physics don't change Jeremiah 33 God says that the Jews you change your mind all the time I'm a God that never changes as evidence that had never changed look at the laws I created the govern the heavens and the earth as they don't change I don't change and this is something we astronomers have now been able to confirm literally 216 places the decimal we measure the laws of physics and distant stars and galaxies they measure to be exactly the same as we measure in the lab today and one of those laws is this pervasive law decay Ecclesiastes speaks about this several books of the Bible discusses Romans 8 says the entire creation all of creation is subject to this bondage of decay now I did a Veritas forum several years ago at the University of California Santa Barbara and we had a panel of science professors respond to my message and the physics professor said I want to see a biblical prediction of a future scientific discovery where I can test it with real measurements and numbers and so this is what we presented say okay we have the Bible saying the universe has a singularity beginning of space and time continuously expands from that beginning under a pervasive law of decay that never changes which means the universe according to the Bible will cool down in a highly predictable way it's the same principle of your car engine when the piston chamber expands the temperature goes down and the gasoline stops burning while that print Cybil applies to everything in the universe so his universe expands it gets colder and colder but we astronomers can now actually measure the past temperature of the universe and this is what it looks like and what I've done there is actually put actual measurements we astronomers have made for the past temperature the universe overlaying it with the biblically predicted cooling curve for the universe understanding that the age of the universe is 13.7 9 billion years and what you see is how perfectly the measurements fit the biblically predicted curve and today we actually know what's most responsible for this continual expansion of the universe it's dark energy now the mass of the universe is also a factor but today dark energy is the most dominant component governing the continual expansion of the universe discovered in 1999 we now know it makes up about 71% of all the stuff of the universe and the way dark energy works is that if you've got more it causes the universe to expand more rapidly and you got less that it causes it to expand less rapidly and it must be fine-tuned because if you expand universe too quickly from the cosmic creation event gravity will not be able to collect the three more deol gas of the universe and condensed it into galaxies stars and planets and life would be impossible on the other hand if you have the universe expanding too slowly from the cosmic creation event then gravity will collect all that primordial gas and compress it and then nothing but black holes and neutron stars where the density exceeds two billion tons per level teaspoonful a density so extreme that molecules are impossible atoms are impossible even electrons and protons are impossible and of course life is impossible and what astronomers have done has actually determined the degree to which dark energy must be fine-tuned to make possible the existence of life and the answer is it has to be fine-tuned to one part in 10 to the 120 second power that's a hundred and twenty two zeros after the 1 and to put that in context there's only ten to the seven nine protons and neutrons in the entirety of the observable universe now we've done it reasons to believe is try to give you a comparison to understand the philosophical significance of this extreme fine-tuning by comparing the degree of fine-tuning design we see in dark energy to make possible the existence of life with the very best example of human inventiveness creativity and engineering design and my peers would would agree with me that the best example most likely is the gravity wave telescope the LIGO instrument that's operating in the state of Washington and the state of Louisiana that was responsible for being able did he actually detect gravity waves a couple years ago if we compare the very best example of human fine-tuning design to the fine-tuning design we see in dark energy we notice that our best human achievement ranks 10 to the 97 times inferior which allows us to draw some conclusions about this causal agent beyond matter energy space and time that at a minimum this causal agent is 10 to the 97 times that is 10 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more intelligent and more knowledgeable than the Caltech and MIT physicists who invented this thing and designed it now I was on the Caltech faculty for five years these individuals are not dumb they're brilliant and they're highly knowledgeable but nowhere near as brilliant and knowledgeable as the one that designed this dark energy to make our existence possible or I could put it another way the one that designed this dark energy for our benefit is at least 10 to the 97 times better Londyn than the US government that made the construction of these amazing instruments possible and I think you can get where I'm going with this we're not just talking a deistic creator we're talking a theistic creator because the attributes of intellect knowledge creativity and power are attributes that only a personal being can benefit so this is a scientific way we can establish that indeed we need a creator who's not just able to create space time matter and energy but one who's able to be personal in fine-tuning the universe for our existence now I think you would expect that someone like myself who is a Christian astrophysicists would be moved to draw these conclusions what's interesting it's also being drawn by theoretical physicists who are committed atheists and I've got the research paper and my briefcase but let me just pull you a couple of quotes from these three astrophysicists who have written on this subject and when they published their paper that caught the attention of Philip ball who's the physics editor for the British journal Nature and himself and hey theists he interviewed these three theoretical physicists about what they wrote concerning dark energy here's one of the quotes in the interview arranging the universe as we think it is arranged that is with dark energy says the team would have required a miracle and here's a second quote from the article an unknown agent namely beyond space and time intervene and the evolution that is a history the universe for reasons of its own which explains the title they've put on their paper disturbing implications of a cause of logical constant which is another term for dark energy as a theist theoretical physicist they said if dark energy is real it implies there must be this agent beyond space and time performing miracles for reasons of his own and hence we find very disturbing and they wound up concluding their research paper with this final sentence perhaps the only reasonable conclusion is that we do not live in a universe with a true cause logical constant they concluded their paper by saying dark energy cannot be true because of its true it implies 'as agent performing miracles for reasons of his own now the irony of this research paper is that it was published just months before astronomers came up at nine independent observational demonstrations that not only is dark energy real it's the dominant component of universe and I've written like a two-page article on each of these nine demonstrations you'll find them on our reasons org website and is based on the following astronomical observations galaxy cluster x-rays maps of the cosmic background radiation I won't go into all of this but there's a URL there which actually takes you to those articles and takes you to sixteen more because today we have 25 independent astronomical demonstrations that dark energy is real and the dominant component on the universe which means we really are stuck with an agent beyond space and time performing miracles for reasons of his own now if you to ask me as a scientist where do you think we find the most spectacular measurable evidence for fine-tuning design I would say dark energy but it's not the only one there are hundreds of others and so for example you'll find on our website articles giving similar examples of this extraordinary level of fine-tuning design so for example for light to be possible you have to fine-tune the ratio of the gravitational force to the electromagnetic force to better than one part in 10,000 trillion trillion trillion otherwise no life is possible in fact star stable stars wouldn't be possible and the list goes on and you can go to reasons org slash fine-tuning it'll pop up for a come Pentium which lists these and actually gives you citations of the scientific literature where you can read the research papers for yourself but here's how we can put our biblical creation model to the test if this is really evidence for the God of the Bible the Bible tells us the more we learn about nature the more we'll see evidence for the supernatural handiwork of God and so what our scientific team did starting in 1991 was to survey the scientific literature and say okay where do we see the scientific evidence than we did that every year thereafter and this table here demonstrates indeed how the list of these extraordinarily fine-tuned features of the universe and the laws of physics grew with respect to time so in 1990 117 we're able to discern from the scientific literature today the list is well over 200 of these features and again you can see the documentation that reasons org slash fine tuning now that's where typically the literature on the fine-tuning design for the benefit of life and the secular literature stops they simply look at the universe as a whole what our scientific team had reasons to believe is done is say okay we see it at the level of the whole universe we're probably also going to see it at lower size scales so looking at the cluster of galaxies our galaxy our star and what we discovered is you don't need just a highly fine-tuned universe you have to have a highly fumed fine-tuned cluster of galaxies tens of thousands of clusters of galaxies but only one do we see has the fine-tuned features that would make life possible and we haven't be living in that galaxy cluster our Milky Way galaxy is to 200 features plus that must be fine-tuned to make our existence possible you need a just right star we now know that every planet in our solar system must be fine-tuned even Mercury and Mars must be fine-tuned to make a human life possible here in Planet earth and of course our planet must be fine-tuned 22 different features of her moon must be fine-tuned and we did the same thing with the galaxy and the solar system and we did with the universe starting in 1995 surveying the scientific literature we found 41 different features that show this extraordinary level of fine-tuning design meaning that if he even if the universe contained a trillion trillion planets the probability of finding one without invoking divine miraculous interventions that would make primitive life possible bacterial life possible less than one chance in ten to the 31st power but notice how that probability has become progressively more remote with respect to time so at the end of 2006 the probability that you could find a body in the universe that would be able to sustain bacteria less than 1 chance in 10 to the 556 power now if you look at that last column what you notice is that the more we learn about the universe in our Milky Way galaxy and planetary system with respect to time and deed the stronger the scientific case becomes for the supernatural handiwork of the Creator and it becomes stronger at a minimum have a factor of 1,000 times per month so when I speak on university campuses to skeptics I'll say if you're not convinced today wait one month and read the scientific literature and see which way it goes and again it's not just me making this point numbers of physicists who are not Christians like I am also draw the same conclusion for example we got Freeman Dyson saying in his book disturbing the universe the more I examine the universe the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming now I've only got a couple of minutes left what I want to share with you is that we've written several books on this subject probably the one that's mostly accessible is why the universe is the way it is like we have it out there on the table but the latest one is improbable planet which makes the point that we see enormous ly greater fine-tuning design evidence for human beings than we do for bacteria literally by a factor ten to the six hundred times more MORE but the greatest jump we see is not just to have a planet which humans going to exist but a planet and which billions of humans can exist at one time and develop the technology where this kind of news about the creator and his desire to form a redentor relationship with us can be spread in a relatively short period of time and the conclusion I draw an improbable planet literally every component of the universe earth and Earth's life plays a critical role in being fine-tuned designed to make possible the existence of billions of human beings with technology on this planet within the universe so you can check that out and thank you for listening well thank you dr. Ross for a very inspiring talk on cosmology I love the topic so I just want to thank you for that talk our next speaker is dr. Joshua Swami das dr. Swami das received both his MD and his PhD from the University of California Irvine his research focuses on computational methods to solve problems at the intersection of medicine chemistry and biology those are all your favorite topics right there's no physics in there what happened he blogs at peaceful science org finding confident faith in a scientific world so let's thank dr. Swamy das [Applause] I'm just going to set up with a computer here there we go so I was asked to respond to our humans special but following that show I also was thinking a lot about Hugh Ross I don't know if you know but he is he's a very significant person in this conversation and it's a real honor to be here Louis Mike what my talk is gonna be how we're focused on this question about are humans special and and Hugh Ross comes into this from the point of view as an astrophysicist I come at it from the point of view of a biologist a physician and also as a Christian as he does - I have to tell you as I was thinking about this question over the last few weeks there's two photos that I wanted to show you that just came to mind over and over and again ok here's the first one you can recognize someone there right it's who Ross it's me and it's James tour James tours another good friend of mine here and so I think about humans being special I think in one sense that's just self-evidently true humans are special and these are actually two people that are special to me and explain to you why I'm a Christian but I'm a very I'm a bit of a different sort of Christian than Hugh Ross I'm a Christian that affirms evolution I believe that's how God created us and for reasons that I have a hard time understanding all the time this is a very contentious issue among Christians and if you're not a Christian you might have our time understanding it - I certainly do who doesn't affirm that there's a lot of people that really respect him but one thing that I found out about him that has just endeared me to him in a way that's that's hard to explain I'll try right now is that he he's treated me with respect as a as a family member and never had never been unkind to me and even when he's found people or heard of situations where people haven't treated me well he's actually stood up for me it's it's he's one of those people that even though at times were different sides there's real disagreements we might even see some disagreements come out today I'll tell you that that I have I have a love for him he's a person who's really special to me it was James Forrest talking about I'd be able to tell you the same things about him when we sit on separate sides of the conversation - but I'll say that for all of our differences that we are all three of us are scientists and the church and Christians in science and we found the commonality there and then and there's something special about that and I don't think anyone can plausibly deny that specialness of these these people here or and more than that you have that experience - there are people that are special to you so clearly humans are special and if you were here yesterday you'll remember that I'm going through a time of grief right now my my father unexpectedly died of a heart attack on Saturday night and there was questions about were there not even be here today and you know there was this thing where you have a plane you're going on and you get blindsided by something unexpected it was just suddenly I mean and it's had me deeply in thought and one of the pictures that I'm constantly thinking about for a reason that is obvious but not controllable is is this picture it's the last time I saw my father with my son it's it's three generations of Swami died that's the plural form and caleb is 2 years old and he was just enjoying and just loving you know throwing bread out to the Ducks and yeah my father is special to me our human special of course they are is this Caleb special of course he is now I know I know what some people are thinking here but wait a minute this is skirting the question in a sense you're right because we're trying to figure out is there something distinctly special beyond just like what the value that we assign to it I think a good way of rephrasing the question is this are we special to anyone greater than us so yes my father is special to me but I'm not actually greater than my father I'm certainly not greater than he Ross but is there anything that Hugh Ross and my father and me is there anyone greater than us like truly greater than us to whom we're special I think that's a fundamental question I think it's a better question than asking is there something special about our abilities because when you get right down to it yeah we it's also self-evident that humans have special abilities in many ways compared to the animal kingdom and people will get hung up on that especially if as a biologist that's often when I'm had to talk about and we talked about that a little bit yesterday but ultimately I think humans are special in a way that's independent of our abilities think about that for a moment I believe that if my son gets injured in an accident and loses his mental capacity he's still special that there's still something different about him that I'm gonna place higher value on that and I also believe my answer to this is that maybe there is someone greater than even me who places value in him even if he doesn't have ability like our value my value his value is not defined by his ability so yeah even though humans do have different abilities I don't know if that's really what makes us ultimately most special so I'm a scientist though and for me I was raised as a Christian but that wasn't enough for me I wasn't going to follow my parents faith I have to really see you know is there any evidence behind this phase cuz yes I would say that God thinks that that were each individually special but it's not just the story we tell ourselves is that just what I was told when I was a child my parents believed it and so therefore I believed it I wasn't comfortable with that and so there's a philosophical term I want to introduce an epistemological term which is warrant I really went through a period where I wanted to know what's the warrant for my faith though I was a I was a junior higher at the time so I didn't know what warrant was but that's really what it was is that search for confidence that this could be more than something that could be best described as a purely man-made religion is there anything here that could tell me that there was a God that exists that's good and that wants to be known and cares about me and I sifted through many things and in this faith and I came to one thing that seemed like I could not dismiss as a man-made thing this is that thing here comes from first Corinthians 15 3 through 7 I'm gonna give you the clearest explanation here and come back in a couple different ways my summary of this passage is according to prophecy Jesus died he was buried and rose from the dead and was seen by many and that is how I know but from this act of God in history to reveal himself that God exists he's good and wants to be known according to prophecy Jesus died he was buried he rose from the dead and was seen by many this act of God in history reveals that God exists as good and wants to be known so this gets the idea of the resurrection Christians often talk about Jesus dying on a cross but that was never enough for me and in fact Lee that's not even really what the scripture says the gospel is because many people died many people died on crosses what makes us wonder if there's something more that happened here is a claim that people made at that time that Jesus rose from the dead I wanted to I want to draw your attention to a couple things I'm gonna go deeper on - from a scientific side first of all the claim is to be clear that Jesus Jesus was a historical person with a physical body that was crucified he died he was executed and then he physically rose from the done only be clear that there's no physical mechanism claimed and that this is a place where the laws of physics were broken notwithstanding the claim that the laws of physics won't change this is a place where I don't think that there is ever going to be a good account for this from biology as we know it if I also tell you the biological conclusion the clues room and medical medicine is that if you die you stay dead if I put you into a grave for three days you're not coming out I cannot foresee a moment where that's going to change that's what it seems like the way the world works but that's the point that's the way the world works everyone knows that even the ancient world knew that and that's the place where God chose to do something different to make it known that he is not subject to the to the laws that were subject to I want to point out that this is not a scientific claim because this is about God action it's not about gods about physics laws or whatever but it is an evidential claim what I'd say is there's actually a great deal of evidence for this and the first time I really discovered this is when I read more than a carpenter by Josh McDowell but then later on I was reading on Pascal this is in high school he writes this he says there's those that have claimed to know God and prove him without Jesus Christ they had only weak proofs but in proof of Jesus Christ's we have prophecies which are solid and palpable proofs I know this is the sensitive issue and I have a great deal of respect for Hugh he has had a real role in my life personally which is really special because I should remember reading his book for the first time in high school actually - and it had an impact on me you know I I think so much of what he says I agree with but in the end I'm left feeling like there's something missing and what that piece is that's missing for me is the proof that I find in the resurrection that I don't see as clearly other places now I don't I don't disagree with many of the things that he said but if that's the case you know most of my colleagues are not Christians there's something there's nothing in science that gives me into a clear belief that God exists and that it's Jesus I have to look elsewhere and I think what's going on here is that the God that I find through Jesus is a God that we can't really fully get to on our own it really requires him to reach down to us and if you saw how large and vast the universe is and how old it is this is a very vast God he's a god that's grander than anything we can imagine that the idea that we could reach him on our own effort is actually preposterous the only way we would expected that God to be reachable by us as if he reached down to us and I think the way he did it is this and Pascal mentions prophecies as a key evidential piece of this and I would say that the evidence for this is only increased so this is an example of us I'd encourage you to read all of Isaiah 52 if you're curious it starts a little bit before size 52 to 53 had the exact verses there but but this is the passage that was written about for two years before Jesus was on earth and he says that he was gonna grow up this person the servant of Lord is gonna grow up before us like a tender shoot like a root out of dry ground who's gonna lead like lamb to the slaughter he'd be assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death if you read the actual Gospel accounts you know exactly what that means that ends up being fulfilled to the T and he suffered and after he suffered he'll see the light of life and be satisfied this is a prediction of the death and resurrection of Jesus this I see as evidence of an intelligence behind our time reaching into our story letting us know that he exists because he knows something's gonna happen in the future and he's giving us all the evidence we need to be able to recognize it when it comes now in your Bibles you'll see this little footnote that I've put here too and it's hung up on this word the light of life and it says the Dead Sea scrolls and also the subduer and these are two ancient texts have light of life but the Masoretic text does not and you might wonder what's going on there well what's going on there is that for a long time we're talking about for close to 2,000 years people who did not believe in the resurrection would say well you know that whole light of life thing that was added by Christians later on as a post diction to make it seem like the Bible predicted Jesus was right from the dead but it never really did they're not being honest with you in some extent we knew that wasn't exactly right because the Septuagint was from before that time and it includes that that terminology too but we know didn't really have the original text so we didn't know until our parents generation two thousand years ago by and we discovered this this is the great Isaiah school scroll it was discovered in a pot in a cave in Palestine isn't that crazy they've just been sitting there for 2,000 years and it comes available and this is made out of a material that has carbon in it it turns out that we can date things with carbon and we can also ask is that word there and when you can look at the text and we can find out in this version of the Isaiah it includes the word light of life you can actually do carbon dating on it this is the paper that does it you can see there where I circled in red that is the date the black line is the date at which it dates the great Isaiah scroll and the dash boxes is how you date it would would based on the shape of the script it turns out that that's a way to actually date it too and it's actually consistent and we can see it's about 200 years previous to when Jesus comes is that interesting it means we have scientific evidence that this is a prophecy that was made before Jesus came that's a good I'd say that this is evidence now maybe we don't agree with it maybe we ultimately come to a different conclusion but this is evidence of an intelligence beyond their time reaching out to us now I'm a physician to I'm not just a scientist I'm also a physician one of the more puzzling features of the narratives you see in Genesis and these are eyewitness accounts this is one reason well at least they're derived from eyewitness accounts as a better way to put it one evidence of that there's like these weird features that don't make sense in the ancient world that they would say it this way but now it actually makes a bit more sense so what they say is that when that when Jesus was on the cross he didn't die in the normal way usually people died one way but he didn't die that way he end up being stabbed with the spear and that water and blood came out and that's a very puzzling thing and there's this paper that was written and it was actually published in JAMA which is one of the leading one of the leading medical journals and they actually looked at that question of what is actually going on what actually happened during the physical death of Jesus when you actually look at those accounts and make it sensible with medical science and one of the things that they noted was how is it that there could have actually been water and blood that came out it turns out that that is a very bizarre thing that's not normal that would happen in any case and what they think happened is that the spear went in and that there was an abnormal amount of fluid that was collecting around his heart or his lungs and when a peer said that water came out and also blood came out and not and the thing about is if a wound like that happened we would be certain that person was dead there's no way to be stabbed through your heart and live secondly the people at that time had no idea that that's the case because if you stab most people in the heart you only get blood what's going on is this is a very unique situation where it's not normal but what happened is there was a lot of fluid that collected there and it was water that came out then blood and the people seeing this notice that they thought it was weird and so they wrote about it but they didn't know what I'm in you know from our point of view understand how the body works now it makes a bit more sense it makes sense as people just trying to accurately represent what they saw the best they could and that this is actually something we can understand it's pretty clear evidence that he really died of course many people died how do we know he rose from the dead and to be honest when people who are Christians come to me and want to know the clear evidence for evolution I'll tell them a few things but honestly the truthful answer is that there's just so much out there that's involved that you if you really want to know you need to spend some time and devote yourself to really getting to the truth of this and not trust what people say about it but actually look at it for yourself and I say something is true about that here the first place I'd point you if you if your question when I'm saying anyone oh is that really true what he's saying is there really evidence for the resurrection I would actually start by looking at what the historical accounts are and Matthew Mark Luke and John read them just asking could this be a truthful account then I point you to Josh McDowell who I'll call the regular guy that's a very accessible book I read it when I was in junior high where he really lays out why it is that he came when he looked into this to really conclude that there was a reason to believe that God revealed himself through by raising this person Jesus in the done well there's a couple other places I'd point you to for those that really want to go into this you want more than a children's story one is did the resurrection happen by Gary Habermas and Anthony flue and I want to tell you something about this a Gary Hamas this is his academic effort he's a history professor and during the 80s or so I might get the dates wrong here because I'm not a historian but he as people were really looking at what who's this historical Jesus Gary and his academic work really looked into it to really clarify what is it that we actually get from the historical record and he actually makes a case that doesn't even rely on scripture or a holy book to make the sense of the case that there's a couple key facts that every historian agrees to happen in first century of Palestine and the grand question were faced something happened then what is it he had a debate with Antony flew I think this book is really helpful and really clarifying what's going on here what is the questions at stake why is it that so many academics are convinced that something extraordinary happened there there's also empty right I'd point you to he wrote a book that's phenomenal it's 800 pages the pong once again this is an academic piece of work gets into the what's actually going at that time all the negative controls of what's going on how do people at the time see death how are they talking with they're really making this claim if you want to go hear that this is something you could lose yourself in and actually make your entire career on studying this is deep I can't give you a full summary except to say there's an immense amount of evidence that points that direction it really invites us to wonder if this is how God revealed himself to all people now I know what there's a question going on around in the back of many people if humans are special is our humans really special though if evolution is true and I'll tell you absolutely none of what I've said changes if evolutions true or false and I'll point to a couple things I'm not the only Christian that came to experience this presence of Jesus that's a living presence that's connected to that I mean I would even go far say though I didn't see the physical body of Jesus like the original disciples claimed to have I have seen a presence in this world and I that makes sense with this there's others too so Francis Collins is the head of the NIH she's one of the leading biologist though most biologists are sometimes antagonistic to Christians and there's a lot of reasons for that dr. Collins affirms evolution and he when he wrote this book a lot of Christians were uncomfortable about how he talked about about evolution maybe in some of the way how some of the Christians aren't comfortable how about how I'm talking about it now but half of his book is actually more written to his colleagues explaining how I came to faith and like most scientists he came to faith as he encountered Jesus and there was nothing in evolution that dimmed the light of Jesus I'd also point you to praveen set the path II he's a good friend of mine maybe you can invite him back next you may invite him here next year Cornell geneticists he's Indian I was raised Christian and I'm Indian he's Indian he was raised Hindu and he came to encounter the same Jesus that I found that's what's so remarkable about this is that you know it's not like I'm pre-programmed this way I find people with so many different backgrounds that all come to the same place and some people are still wondering but did God specially create humans independent of evolution and this is where things get really interesting and if this is something that's a question that's important you don't encourage you to come to this talk tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. one thing that's really important to scientists is not just understanding what the evidence tells us but if you talk to scientists we're really also wanting to clarify what the evidence doesn't tell us and while it really seems that our ancestors never dipped down to a single couple and it really seems that we sharing ancestry or the comment with the great apes and I'll even show you some of the evidence for that tomorrow at the same time we have to ask what type of ancestry is really important from a theological point of view is it genetic ancestry even though the Bible never mentions G&A or is it genealogical ancestry and when you start to reframe the questions in that sense looking at genealogical ancestry well you find out that there's no evidence against or for but there's no evidence in science from genetics or archeology against the notion that Adam and Eve were specially created from the dust in a rib ten thousand years ago in Mesopotamia and a divinely created garden at where they fell and started in their offspring interbred with the surrounding population and thereby they became the descendants of all of us all that really modern science presses on theology it seems is by telling us the story of the people outside the garden I find that really interesting and I can't get into it now but I'll just say that science tells us the story about the population it doesn't tell us the story about all the individuals it tells us the story of the entire race of humans but it doesn't tell the story of me my father and my son and in the end it's not usually in the grand generalities that you find meaning it's usually in in the personal stories the stories that I can't even tell you because they're too personal about my father and my son so yeah humans are special I think we know that I think the hard part is sometimes articulating why the humans are special we know that and I hope the way I put words to it make some sense I think that there's someone greater than us that thinks we're special - thanks a lot [Applause] well thank you dr. Swamy Dallas at this point I would like to invite both of our speakers to come out and we'll have a little bit of a dialogue between them and you can text in your questions it looks like people already are so that's a good sign to the slide Oh calm address well lots and lots of interesting thoughts and different perspectives certainly coming from the two different fields that you work in one one thing that came to mind for me Josh is is there evidence for fine-tuning that dr. Oz's talked about in evolutionary biology well first of all I would say about the fighting area but I agree actually with a lot of what he was said a lot of particulars isn't impressed I see my area some people will dispute details but I think the general picture is true I think most people say that there's something very peculiar about our universe I think maybe the place where were different places on it is I think that that's most convincing to people who've already encountered that presence so I think it's most convincing to people who are already Christians or already theists even though I'm not really sure if I can equate those things I think it's not as convincing for people who are already starting from a point of view of not really getting there maybe it raises a question but doesn't give the answer and so well I don't disagree and the way I would frame it is it's not so much an argument for God but it's definitely something that makes sense if there is a God in a different way that should be very comforting to people who believe there's a God because the world certainly makes sense in light of Jesus how would you put that yeah my experience is quite different because I wasn't raised in a Christian home and the fine-tuning argument had a big impact on my realizing that there was a Christian God behind the universe and I've also seen many research scientists from a non-theistic background similarly respond positively and consequently come to faith in Christ so I don't think it's just an impact on people or Christians I see it having a huge impact on people who have had little or no exposure to the Christian faith yeah you know maybe it is the difference between astrophysics and biology too so maybe if biologists just don't have enough first-hand experience of what you're talking about well I could put it this way it's easier to see the fine-tuning design and the simple sciences that is to see it in the more complex sciences so for example when I'm gauging biologists I'll talk about say the physics of the Sun and the moon and the earth how it changes with time and how that impacts what we see happening in biology so kind of start with a simple sciences where the fine-tuning design I think is really obvious and then move them step by step where they can see it in the more complex sciences yeah I mean so it's be clear I mean III have a great deal respect for for you I mean I guess I just found Jesus more compelling in the end for me I mean to be clear I found a lot very compelling about fine-tuning right now and I think a lot of people would agree fine-tuning is among the best arguments for the existence of God yeah and Josh I'm not disputing what you're saying about the resurrection I would argue that is the best apologetic argument for the Christian faith my experience in dealing with non-christian Americans and Europeans for example is we need to start with something that's current and bring them to the traditionals kind of what we do it reasons to believe is we take the latest news scientific evidences for the God of the Bible and use it as a bridge to bring them to the traditional evidences because I bring up the resurrections like hey that's 2,000 years ago I want to talk about what's happening and so we need to find a bridge to bring him to the evidence that they may not initially be willing to listen to yeah that's interesting maybe it is a context difference so so I kind of I couldn't I mean clearly well let me just say I don't think you're misrepresenting what you're saying I really believe that I guess I would just say that I've also seen I mean it is a different context to among biologists like like you said it's not as clear the fine-tuning and biology and I would agree with that I would also say that um I just found a lot of scientists that are really curious about Jesus and they actually are very much interested in starting they're all they're interested in starting their great that's where you go but there are a lot of scientists who aren't ready to go there so I need to find a bridge to get in there and it's not that far apart so we're not you basically pick up people where they are they want to but they're willing to talk about Jesus and resurrection go for it if they're not there yet I need to find some way to get them there do to your question about fine-tuning isn't yours all you wanted to do or you want your the next question let's go to the next question sure because you can bring up fine tuning again there's actually two ways that two types of fine tuning and one is those constants that determine the laws of physics such as you know the strength of gravity or the the electronic bonds that determine you know how the atom is formed right those things and the second is in random processes and so you know there's billions of Suns out there and this one happens to be special to us and you know but there's there's a sort of sense of there's a lot of random choices where that Sun could have resulted in the universe and yet you use the word fine-tuning for that process as well and so I'd like to understand how fine-tuning applies in a random process yeah kind of the way I phrase it is with the universe we got a measurable sample size of one whereas say with stars we got a measurable sample size of a trillion trillion and so you can look at all those stars and say okay based on we see here what is a probabilistic argument we can draw so it's like okay what's the fine-tuning compared to the known population size and what impresses me I think I tried to do this in my talk whatever size scale we choose to examine we see overwhelming evidence for this fine-tuning design I stopped at the earth and the moon but we could have gone all the way down to your specialty particle physics and no matter how big you go or how small you go you see that fine-tuning designs like every size scale you look it's there so that's another maybe you could jump in so just be clear about the imbalance here like Hugh Ross is like famous for the fine-tuning argument so that's my situation here to be clear yes it's not but I'll say like give me not I'm sympathetic to the argument because I believe that God created the universe all right but I'm also sympathetic to the atheist that isn't convinced so I know the counter-arguments and I I think I think what you're saying is correct however I can see other ways of saying it that I can't evidentially rule out I can't yet evidentially rule the man either so I guess I'm sympathetic to the atheist that isn't convinced on that so and I and I think I know how you're gonna respond to them and and Maddie I'm not even gonna defend these because I'm not even saying that these are the correct points of view but I think there is an internal logic to them that I'm sympathetic to so one is like we don't even really know how many trials there are in this universe we talk about the size of the universe being the observable universe even in this universe I'm not saying it's infinite we don't have to go that far but it could be a really really big like much bigger than what we observed right and that starts to make it actually consistent with the fact that we don't see if it was like very unlikely and we saw a whole bunch of like human livable planets in a very closed area that would be evidence of God fine-tuned it in a way so there be a whole bunch of ways for us to be interstellar or something right but the fact that we only see one earth one place and then complete desolate places in hospital the humans seems to be very consistent with the notion this is a very random event and maybe we just calculated the size of the universe wrong and that completely actually makes sense given we know with cosmology because it could there could be much larger beyond that now I know I'm talking not I'm talking about things beyond the evidence here I understand I think they are too it's I don't think they can use that as a defeater for your argument well I don't think that boxes the men at that point it does because one of the characteristics to get a planet like Earth the universe must be precisely a particular mass and age and size and so if you made it bigger you're in trouble they make it smaller here in trouble it's got to be exactly the size the mass and the age that it is just to get one and there's a debate that's going on amongst Christian astronomers is God so compulsively creative that he's going to make lots of planets and which there's life now we all agree that it is doing at each case is a supernatural event or is his goal to perform as few miracles as he needs to perform to achieve his redemptive purpose and so there are astronomers who argue given that theological perspective God would do it only once and therefore we to expect to see hostility everywhere except the earth and the scientific evidence so far is leaning in that direction away from the view that hey God has done it multiple times I would say that actually are the faith that I find in Jesus is consistent with either view right it is I would but the notion that that it's a random process that produced just the right factors long all right place is only consistent with one of those - it's only consistent with the notion of a single earth that's hospitable followed with desolate why sling so that actually becomes to be something that is more consistent because like our point you can go consistent either way and so I mean I look I'm and I and I can't actually access assess for myself the claims you're making maybe you're right and I'll be happy look at that more but I'm also a biologist well I'm a physicist so but I guess I'm sympathetic to the atheist well were the atheist was gone I remember speaking on this in the early 1980s basically saying this fine-tuning evidence is becoming so compelling eventually atheists will have nowhere else to go but to propose an infinite number of universes with an infinite variety of characteristics but it says they're not going to go there willingly because they recognize that that's the weak philosophical argument what I notices they didn't go there until they had nowhere else to go and you know there are very good reasons why this is not a favorable argument that we talked about it over dinner how there is it both a negative reputation and a positive reputation well you know honestly I feel like we need to grab a beer afterwards if you drink that is I think we're losing the crowds I do I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too far because it does seem like you have a lot that you agree about as to a personal God and even why we are special maybe to that God and so maybe we can come up with now I've got to use a cell phone I'm not familiar with oh there it is mmm if it's writing over the words to some of the student questions if in the beginning there was nothing where did God come from why would you why would he not need a beginning and I guess that's something for both of you - maybe briefly respond - well I've actually written books on that subject so so what's the title you would recommend well I addressed that and why the universe is the way it is but in three other books as well and actually had a debate on that at Imperial College in London where that was the sole question of the debate basically making the point well you're making it a category ere the universe and all life in the universe is constrained to a single dimension of time but the space-time theorems tell us that God created time when he created this universe of space and time so unlike us he's not constrained in time any entity constrained to a single dimension at time that can't be stopped or reversed must have a beginning or some ultimate creation event but the one that can create space-time dimensions that will is not so constrained so I was able to explain to Lewis Wolpert you can watch us for free on YouTube that if you have a god that can create time dimensions that we'll just consider two dimensions of time in two dimensions of time you can have an infinite number of time lines running in an infinite number of directions so you could have God offering in a time line infinitely long that never crosses or touches a time line of a universe as such he has no beginning no ending and is uncreated and of all the holy books and religions of the world only the Bible says that and only the Bible says that God can arbitrarily compressed time or expand time something that's mathematically possible only for a being that has access to at least the equivalent of two dimensions of time and Lewis said hey I've never heard that before and that really makes sense so well I would just say that like a simpler way that I would put it is that sometimes people isn't comes down to the our wort used to the word god and so God is something that means a lot of different things to different people so this question is asking why is it that God doesn't have a beginning well well I'm not talking about a generic God we're talking about actually Hugh is not talking about generic God either I don't actually make arguments for theism I don't even call myself a theist because I think there's a lot of danger in a belief in a generic God it causes a lot a great deal of harm in this world but what I would say is the God that I find in Jesus is a God that created all things he's the thing that doesn't have a cause or a beginning that's actually the fundamental claim that everything this world has a beginning except for that now that's what we're meaning when we're saying god somebody has the power to create all things has no beginning and the work that those particular Tzar not randomly picked out of anywhere it's because it's through this experience we had by encountering Jesus that we come to those particulars and it's not and so I mean I agree there's nothing else we can point to that has no cause and I would argue the space-time the theorems establish your very point well that's cool I now I have some mathematical proof but I'm playing but but I'm just saying that that that's all we're saying so I mean we're not trying to assess any generic God because there's some versions of God that don't make any sense we all agree with that and maybe ours doesn't make any sense but you but let's start with what we're actually saying and we're talking about a god that has no beginning that has a different quality to himself than everything that was created and we're generally interacting with things that are created well for example the gods of Hinduism and Buddhism create within space and time that he turn aliy exists the God of the Bible creates independent of space and time space and time don't exist until he creates so you're right we're talking a specific God the God of the Bible well here's another one more on the evolution question if evolution is true at what point did human beings become distinguished as in God's image in the way that our clothes animal relatives are not that's a very good question and the reason why it's important to some of the things that I even brought up yesterday when I was talking about injustice in this world and reading about Martin Luther King and our society we've come to the point of view that the way how we think about God's image this is a grounding a theological grounding for universal rights the universal of dignity it's the reason why we think everyone has value and so this is something that's very important to people what I would say is that well we're talking when those things that are really important as we're talking about the world as we see it now in science there isn't a clear way to define what human is there's actually a great deal of debate about that particular term we see a smooth transition of forms so for example there's a debate even among creationists about whether or not Neanderthals are human or not Hugh has particular view on that and his view is actually pretty valid I mean it's not there's actually scientists that hold that view so I'm not at all going to say they're wrong the issue is that it's hard to actually determine from evidence at what that point that is and to some extent it's arbitrary and in the same way it's very hard to determine when the image of God somehow comes upon people and even what that is if you look historically and what the image of God is there's never been agreement to bunk theologians about what that is there's been a whole wide range what we say is that there's something transcendent that was put on us and not anyone else but we don't even really know what it is or how to define it honestly it's very much like one of those grand questions of what is the image of God we're gonna have a large range of views on it I think as long as we're all agreeing that everyone bears the image of God and everyone has you know you know has I mean it were affirming of universal rights and Universal dignity and we're not saying that one race is lesser than the other I think that there's some there's some space for for a conversation and diversity and and different opinions on them well I think one area where theologians do have some agreement as we look at Genesis 1 it uses the word bara 3 times first for the universe that's the physical creation creation day five for the soulish animals and in creation day six last of all for human beings basically saying we're different and that we're body soul and spirit and so at a minimum the image of God means that we are spiritual beings with a capability of engaging in philosophy theology and asking questions like why am I here why is the universe here what is my role and purpose is there a god I mean the non-human animals on this planet really aren't concerned about the existence of God that seems to be unique to us yeah well so I would agree with you that there are no chimpanzee Veritas forms yes and that they're not lost in the question of what does it mean to be an orangutan and yeah they're not wondering what the ultimate origin of a macaque is alright rant you that but but but there's a deeper question here about what actually is a match of God so yes we're very different in those regards you know what I'm saying so there's a difference of opinion of mine theologians so I agree with that I'm just saying at a minimum I think that's where there's a consensus I would argue there's more to the image of God than just that and that's where I think there's a variety of debate well it's the one place is sorry yeah we're going yeah yeah there's there's another question that's kind of related to that so let me insert it in here is the you know and I think this one's for Hugh is the universe tuned for us are we or are we tuned for the universe yeah it's tuned for us related it's not just tuned for us it's tuned for our Redemption and so I think that really makes the point yeah it's really focused on us and the fact that we see that the fine-tuning evidence goes exponentially up when you go from bacteria to plants and exponentially up when you go to animals and exponentially up when you go to humans and the greatest exponentiation as humans that can come into a redemptive relationship with a creator yeah so that's a good question so I guess maybe so I agree that God created us and I think it's us I think we could actually say it both ways we could say we're made for the University and verse is made for us like we were compatible yeah we're in the universe and I and I agree though it's it's tuned for those things however I guess the part where I disagree is not actually in the conclusion it's I don't know if science gets us there I think maybe the difference is that I just don't trust science as much as you well again we're in different disciplines physics is a discipline where we can measure things to fifteen or twenty places the decimal where we know the systematic errors my friends and the life sciences are saying we're envious we just simply don't have that and I'm saying yeah because you're studying something enormous Lemoore complex or way to discover when I became a parent I can develop differential equations to predict the future behavior stars but it doesn't work on my teenage sons yeah that's a nice warning for me and Caleb I can't predict him yet yeah I mean I guess I I guess I'm just gonna in a cot in a place where I'm actually pretty sympathetic to your point of view I'm also very sympathetic to where the atheists are coming from this I actually agree with you ultimately but I just don't think I'm not as convinced science gets us as far and and then what is science science is just a human effort to study nature and I've just found God's effort to reveal himself to just be much more convincing maybe and not since I'm a bit of a revelation Asst well I'm encouraged that the biblical text says so repeatedly looked to nature it will show you the handiwork of God and how we're all without excuse before God because of how clearly he's revealed himself through nature which tells me science really will reveal not just the handiwork of God but his actual personal attributes and actually I'll even read written reveals his redemptive plan yeah once again like so I think there's many ways to study nature I think one thing that we would agree on that modern science as we know it didn't exist when those words were penned by Paul and yet without science they found enough confidence to face the Lions knowing that their faith in our faith we're finding something that's worth trading everything in this world for well I'm a bit sympathetic to the ancient humans they weren't as urbanized as we are and it's like when I speak in rural areas of the world everybody believes in God as those of us who live in cities were isolated from nature or they haven't seen the Milky Way galaxy manna retro paper in science how sixty percent of the world's population has never seen the Milky Way said that that's where we're getting for the things so it says in that passage that this has been clear since the beginning yes so I'm actually much more amenable to the notion that when you go out into nature as many people here it's do that even people who don't believe in God sometimes have a sense that there's something greater and that's a kind of built into us I agree with that I think that's how she was talking about because that's something that's been clear since the beginning however modern science is anything but clear well what I do is why not but it's not really it's not really that study of nature that Paul could have been referring to because it didn't exist yet yeah I think that lack of clarity is because we can't get them out of their lab so what I do so for example when I was at Caltech I would actually take my peers out of the Robinson Laboratory in Pasadena take him up on the High Sierras and they would have a spiritual experience because for the first time they're actually in contact with nature okay so that that you know we actually might agree more than you know we thought but I think that's the study of nature that that Paul is talking about it is I agree not modern science per se not that modern science is inconsistent with God because it's studying the world that he created but but I think he's talking about someone's available since the beginning something that exists before we find science well I think part of trying to encourage people to become Christians is getting them outside you know look at what is true but in slow we have a coastal fog which makes us strong there's another question here for dr. Swami das how can you be a Christian that affirms evolution with the lack of transitory fossils in the theory of evolution right I think it's fossil record yeah so so that's a common argument that's leveled that I believed really strongly for a long time and I and so the statement is like how do you affirm evolution if you don't see transitory fossils and and like I believe that argument for a long time I just found I wasn't nearly as strong as I I thought and in fact I started to actually go look at for myself and start to see lots of transitory fossils part of it comes down to an artifact of language because if we're gonna see two different types of animals we're gonna call them different things and there's no like way to label something 50 50 between two different things you use one label for it another label for it and so just when you look at the taxonomy animals there's gonna be a discreteness to it however when you start looking into the details you find that that's actually not a very good model for how biology works that there's actually a lot more blurriness in the data and and with that it just you know a lot of the things that look like they're no transitory fossils there's actually there's actually examples that you know they really do look like transitory fossils and then it's not nearly as discreet as I'd been led to believe and I'll tell you I was I was surprised by that but I can see why you may not believe me because it takes a lot of time to get into that and find I mean probably the best example to see that is when if you look at whale evolution you can see real clear evidence of transitory fossils and also the other place where it's really clear is in human evolution because it was very recent we have really good examples of transitory fossils now that being said I don't actually think that's the strongest evidence I think the strongest evidence comes from where I ended up spending a lot of my time studying because there's a mathematical approach to getting at this which is looking at genetics I think when the human genome was sequenced when I graduated undergrad in 2000 and then the chimpanzee genome was sequenced in 2005 when I was in graduate school I think I think that really was data that I didn't I mean I'm not really a paleontology ontology I'm not I don't pretend to be the same I don't pretend to be an astrophysicist but I am a computational biologist I am trained to study biological information and to assess that and when I looked at that closely one thing to say maybe evolution isn't true and God just created everything to know though but he did it in a way that looks like evolution it at least looks that way and at the very least and I remember distinctly coming to this conclusion in 2005 when I was actually using a computer program to look at the chimpanzee genome when it first came out at the very least God isn't concerned about disproving evolution as I am because he could have made it really clear but I think there's a good reason why it looks the way it does from a creation perspective the faint son paradox you got the son getting progressively brighter and brighter as nuclear fusion becomes more efficient in the core of the Sun and so this is going to mandate that a God who wants to maintain a planet that has abundant diverse life for the longest possible period of time so that we humans can be maximally equipped with bio deposits is going to want to have life on planet earth that keeps in step with the changing physics of the Sun and so I can understand why people who aren't familiar with the astrophysics look at the fossil record and say it sure looks like there's a smooth transition going on but that's exactly what you would need from a creationist perspective and I find interesting what it says in Psalm 104 it's a property of all life to die off but God recreates and renews the face of the earth which is exactly what you would need to compensate for the changing physics of the Sun but I don't disagree that the question is how does he recreate and so I think we both affirm creation that God's doing the question is how does he do it and this is actually a mechanistic question and could he use common descent as part of that and well what I'm saying isn't actually inconsistent with that passage in that view and the thing about it is that might explain the transition of forms to some extent but I'm not entirely but I won't get into that but the bigger issue is for example humans and chimpanzees are just two percent different but mice and rats are 10 or 20 percent different by that same measure so they're there it's what we see is this weird puzzle we see over and over again in biology where function does not correlate with the amount of difference and you know if God really want to make it too clear to us that we were different that we didn't you know evolved from a common ancestor chimpanzees he could have at least made us as different as myself from rats well he didn't he made it he did it in a way that fits this evolutionary formula rate times time yeah but again you're looking at the genetic differences as opposed to the morphological differences woman reasons but my green that we're fun any different right and so that's a well-chosen control I'm using so mice and rats aren't that different so I'm agreeing that we're very different I'm not saying that we're just chimpanzees I'm learning with image of God they don't well you mentioned transitional forms I think that's a good place where you can actually figure okay exactly how is God bringing about these changes of life on earth and you bought up the example of whales and what strikes me about whales is if we're talking a naturalistic explanation for those transitional forms that's like the worst possible set of species you could choose because they have enormous body sizes they're mammals low populations very few progeny per adult the probability than generating these transitional forms from natural each perspective is very low but the probability of been going the extinct on a fairly rapid basis is high and so that leads me to believe it's God that steps in and creates all these the difference is that this is my area so I trust you stomachs on that and I'm a computational biologist so I actually approach this so I know there's qualitative arguments that I'm much more interested in the mathematical arguments well I mean and I spend I spend a lot of time getting into this and I guess it's it's not gonna be really possible to work out here but I'm just telling you that I'm not convinced that that's implausible and this doesn't mean God wasn't involved it just means that this seems to be the way how he did it yeah doesn't it find a puzzling for you though then we look at say cockroaches and other insects we see very few transitions but we see a whole bunch for whales we see a whole bunch for primates that's like hey we're talking a naturalistic answer it should be the opposite and yet this tells me there's something going on beyond the natural that we need to bring into the equation I mean maybe I'm working from a different model of evolution than you because I wouldn't have said that that's more expected I would have said differently I'd say what we see is actually what we expect well what we're trying to do it reasons to believe is integrate these evolutionary models with real time field experiments you know conservation biology experiments which basically tell us hey if you're talking mammals with adult body sizes bigger than 7 pile the models tell us they go extinct before they can undergo any significant evolutionary change which I find consistent what I see in Genesis for six days God creates on the seventh day he stops and so I think biology in the seventh day from a biblical perspective be different from biology in the six days and I find it interesting that the scientific evidence appears to be bearing that out things are different before humanity than after humanity yeah so I guess I don't know forgot you gonna be able to resolve this one well but I think that's okay because I think the way how science works is that it's actually very hard to resolve them in some sort of public debate and then that's okay right well if you take paleontology I mentioned paleontology and you take these conservation biology experiments from a biblical perspective we're gonna see a difference and so we can go out and actually do the research and say do we actually see that difference so that's very where I think we can resolve some of our differences yeah I'm not sure because it when you do a human experiment there's one thing that's really missing in those experiments that we can't inject into it which is you know an unobservable amount of time and also a different starting point so there so there's going to be a difference so it's but you got long term evolution experiments working with microbes yeah so once again I don't understand why a lot of these experiments or these reference I mean honestly I was a young earth creationist for a long time I moved to being an old earth creationist I was also really caught up in intelligent design too I was convinced by these things until I actually got to look at the quantitative data for myself and really start to understand how scientific testing of hypothesis worked with genetic data and so it's really that that ability to not actually go from a high-level view of things at a morphological level but to actually look at the data from the genetic point of view with a mathematical model and that's where it starts I mean it just unequivocally looks that way and it doesn't have to that way and like I said maybe God still made things separate I'm gonna say that that science can't really speak a lot God does it doesn't really consider that question but then I think we're just left in this place where he did it in a way that is just so easily mistaken for looking like evolution so the very least it wasn't his goal to disprove evolution at the very least that wasn't his design goal when he did it well I mean we do both agree life has been here for 3.8 billion years started simple and got complex the question is how I think we both agree natural process is a factor but I'm taking the position it's not just natural process God as supernaturally intervening you may agree with that - maybe our differences is exactly how does God supernaturally intervene well so what I would sorry they send that we actually need to wrap up pretty soon so I was wondering if you would just take like one minute to kind of summarize give us a thought to take away for tonight for both of you and maybe yeah this is actually been really helpful because I want to thank you for for being here you didn't have to be it's I'm really honored to have you here I would say that you said this before too that different people in different camps have different points of views right like it's not like it's a unified thing I do affirm evolution but and and sometimes it's thought a lot of people who from evolution deny the idea of God intervening and things or deists in some ways some people might say I would say that I took a bit of a different view I'm a bit more of an agnostic and not I think God can do whatever he wants he could have intervened to do these things I'm just not sure how to prove that from science I think that's outside the purview of science and knowing what I know about genetics I don't even think it would be observable but God can do whatever he wants and I'm I think the only way I would really know is that she made it clear somehow and he never talks about DNA in Scripture so that's why I'm not sure how he providentially governs evolution but I'm very open to the idea that he intervenes well I take an integrative approach it's like hey it's not just enough to study Genesis we need to look at all 66 books of the Bible and when I do that I see there's a pervasive appeal the book of nature it will reveal God his characteristics and his redemptive plan but it's basically telling us to look at all of the record of nature so I think to resolve some of these complex questions we have to integrate across the scientific disciplines and that's one thing we've done it reasons to believe this takes scientists out of academia and given the freedom to do the interdisciplinary research and likewise with our theologians give them the freedom to go through the entire book of the Bible rather than just several chapters and I think when you do that you really do see the handiwork of God at work not just for existence but to make it possible for us to eventually enter into an eternal relationship with him and he this is just the beginning what I find unique about Christianity it's a two creation model God creates this universe to be a tool to eliminate evil but he's got a brand new realm in Vault which will have different physics different dimensions where evil will never exist again this is just a pathway so based on that I don't think we've solved all the problems that we came here to discuss and I really think that we've addressed things in a new in a different way than we've been able to in the past and for that I'd like us all to thank our speakers you
