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Delve into a thought-provoking discussion on the boundaries between science and spirituality as Dr. Rupert Sheldrake questions materialism's resistance to the existence of non-physical phenomena. Listen as he argues that consciousness might be embedded not only in human brains but possibly in stars, electromagnetic fields, and the cosmos at large. Engage with his insights into how this perspective could reshape our understanding of reality, offering a profound connection between the physical and spiritual realms.
SPEAKER 05 :
Please stay tuned for the conclusion of our interview with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and his theories on everything from dog intuition to a conscious sun and stars to the mind's influence on health.
SPEAKER 02 :
and DNA Scholars can't explain it all away Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keepin' it real
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, maybe what would help our audience on your hypothesis is some examples of what supports it, you know, some evidence that supports the idea of morphic resonance. And I think you've had examples of like how you can train rats to do something and then somehow rats across the globe learn the same thing without it being taught. It was taught locally and yet globally rats kind of learn this technique or this new thing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, there was an actual experiment started at Harvard where they trained rats to escape from a water maze. They had to swim to the right exit. And it took them to start with more than 250 trials before they cottoned on and got it. Within about 25 generations, it only took them about 25 trials to learn. This rate of learning speeded up tenfold. They assumed that it was because of the inheritance of acquired characters, or what we now call epigenetic inheritance. But when this was checked out in Australia and in Scotland, they found their rats started off where the Harvard rats had left off, with about 25 arrows, and they got better and better. But not only did the rats descended from trained parents get better, but all the rats of that breed were getting better. Now that's what I'd expect with morphic resonance. If a lot of animals learn a new trick, all around the world it should be easier for others to learn it. If lots of humans learn something new, like programming computers, playing video games, surfboarding, snowboarding, it should get easier for others to learn it. And one line of evidence comes from the rather amazing fact that Average intelligence in intelligence tests improved all over the world by about 30% over the course of the 20th century, not because people were getting 30% smarter, but because the tests were getting easier to do. And I think the tests were getting easier to do because so many people had done them. And right now, I have an experimental project going on to find out whether it gets easier every day for people to do the New York Times five-letter word puzzle, Wordle. Every day there's a new puzzle. Millions of people do it. Is it getting easier to do in the evening compared with the morning? Well, we don't know yet, but there's a student looking into this here in Britain at the moment, and she's going to measure the first, when it's first published in New Zealand, then it sweeps around the world with the day and the last people doing it in Hawaii. So she's getting the scores from New Zealand and Hawaii, which would be right to an extended day to see what's going on. Now, this also applies to crystals. If you make a new chemical and crystallize it for the first time, it may take a long time to crystallize. But if you keep making the same chemical, it should get easier to crystallize all over the world as a new habit develops. And that seems to be what happens. Chemists find that new compounds often get easier to crystallize. So these are all examples of morphic resonance.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, and I want to jump in real quick. Dr. Sheldrake, the examples you just gave, they seem to terrify materialists. I watched your debate with Michael Shermer, and at the very early stages of the debate, as soon as you mentioned anything... I can't remember the exact phrase, but you mentioned something immaterial, and Michael Shermer immediately crossed his arms, and pretty much for the rest of the debate, he sat in this defensive cross-armed position, and I've read a number of the criticisms of your experiments online, and it seems to me that there is some measure of actual hysterical fear on the part of materialists whenever you get into mentioning things like this that cause them to attack your methods. Rather scrupulously, I must say. They do attack your methods rather scrupulously. What do you think is the source of the fear that is obvious in their hearts and in their eyes when they're confronted with this idea that there may be things outside of the material universe that are worthy of consideration?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, some materialists have made materialism into their worldview. It is a kind of religion for them. It's an anti-religion. I mean, it's an atheist worldview. And if you look at the actual personal history of many materialists, they're people who themselves or whose parents or grandparents have rejected a religious worldview, usually Christian, sometimes Jewish. But Christianity is the religion that generates the largest number of atheists. Islam isn't so atheist-generating as Christianity. Christianity is like a kind of engine for generating atheism. Now there's an interesting concept that we should look into. That is profound. Well, I think it's a very important fact, and we need to recognize it. You see, I think what happens with materialists is that they've personally rejected Christianity or Judaism for various reasons. I mean, Oliver Sacks, the Jewish neurologist, was a militant atheist. He rejected Judaism because he was gay. And when he was a teenager, His Jewish family told him that God was against everyone who was gay, and he was utterly condemned for being gay. So he decided he was against God. And so, if God was against him because he was gay. So he found a ready basis for that in materialist atheism, putting his faith in science. Some people reject Christianity because, you know, for a variety of reasons, they've had oppressive puritanical upbringings, etc. And if they take up materialism, then it provides them with an alternative worldview that seems to explain everything with no afterlife. So no need to be, if you've been brought up to be afraid of hell, then you don't need to be afraid of hell anymore because there's no such thing as any afterlife. If you've been brought up to feel guilty about sex, no need to feel guilty about sex. But above all, the big payoff for materialists is the feeling that if they become materialists, they're smarter than everyone else. They've seen through the dogmas of religion. They've seen through these childish beliefs that have held back humanity for centuries. They've seen through all that, and they've risen above it. And basically, their stance is they're smarter. So materialism is very important for them because it justifies their atheism and their self-satisfaction at being smarter than everyone else. And what happens, why I get a lot of flak, is that, you know, I'm a scientist, I've studied at Cambridge, I've studied at Harvard, I got a PhD, I've published papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature and the Proceedings of the Royal Society. And they can't dismiss me as being someone who's just ignorant and stupid, who doesn't know these things, who hasn't studied science. So I get under their skin. And then what I'm basically doing is trying to point out, as in my book, The Science Delusion, called Science Set Free in the US, the ten dogmas of materialism, which are part of their belief system. actually are not very well supported by science. They're not supported by science at all. It is a dogmatic belief system. And they're very, very resistant to that being pointed out because basically their whole sense of personal identity would collapse without it. So it does trigger off anxiety, anger, fear, because it is essentially a dogmatic belief system. They like to portray religious people as dogmatic believers and taking everything on faith and authority, but actually nowhere is that more true in the modern world than among materialist atheists. Most of them actually don't know very much science, and when they say they put their trust in science, basically they put their trust in what the high priests of science tell them, They haven't personally gone to the Large Hadron Collider and conducted experiments or personally sequenced DNA or personally analyzed genes or anything. They've just taken the whole lot on faith. So I think that is the real reason they get so upset and angry and why they're so immune to evidence. I mean, in the debate with Michael Shermer, he showed not the slightest interest in evidence for anything that went against his point of view. He just thought it must be rubbish.
SPEAKER 05 :
yeah yeah so instead they do things like ban your talk on ted tv i mean was that i guess that really was banned i know you can watch it it was uh we've played clips of it before well they tried banning it but um they the thing is that you can't really ban anything nowadays and when word got out they were planning to ban it people cloned the talk and put it up all over the internet
SPEAKER 01 :
Actually, they did me a good turn. You see, I think Providence works through atheists as well as through Christians and believers. And, you know, before my talk had been planned, it had about 30,000 views. It's now had about 8 million in various formats on different websites. By far the most successful thing I've ever done in terms of exposure. And that would not have happened without a helping hand from the militant atheists.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well said, well said.
SPEAKER 04 :
It goes back to the truism that God's Word never returns void. And God's Word, whether the atheists want it to or not, God's Word does govern everything to a certain degree. Now, you had mentioned earlier, when I asked you about spiritual versus physical things, It seemed like you implied that spiritual is necessarily separate from nature. Is that your belief? Can you clarify that? Is the spiritual necessarily separate from the natural?
SPEAKER 01 :
No, actually I think the spiritual underlies the whole of nature. As I was saying, I think the energy in nature is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. So I see God as sustaining the whole universe from moment to moment, underlying all reality, not just setting up a universe in the first place, pressing a start button, and then having it all go on automatically like a machine. I think that God is sustaining all things. So in that sense, the Spirit of God pervades all nature all the time. But as we experience the spiritual, I think we experience it through our consciousness. And I think we experience our consciousness is not the same as the material activity of our body. It's obviously permeates the body and depends on it. But the distinction I really make, which I think is important, is between the bodily, the psychic and the spiritual. You know, because when St. Paul says, the natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God, the natural man in Greek is anthropos psychikos, the psychic man or the ensouled man. And I think there's a realm of the psychic. which includes telepathy, premonitions, and what some might call the sixth sense, which is part of animal nature as well as human nature. I've done a lot of research, as you know, with psychic dogs, as in dogs that know when their owners are coming home. And I think the psychic level is to do with survival abilities and skills. I think wolves know what other wolves are doing when they're miles away. It's part of the way they coordinate the social group. Dogs become part of a human family and pick up our intentions, our thoughts. I don't think these are spiritual powers. I think they're to do, they're like the senses. I mean, smell, taste, touch, vision. I think they're like a kind of invisible sense, like a sixth sense, which, like everything in nature, has a spiritual underpinning, but it's not in itself spiritual. So I think I distinguish between psychic and spiritual. Now, this is one area where I run into problems with our friends, the materialists, because they don't believe in psychic phenomena. They don't think telepathy and things are possible. They don't think dogs can possibly pick up their owner's intentions and so on. And the reason they're so down on psychic phenomena is they think that if you let in any invisible influence at all, then God's going to come back through the back door. And so they feel they have to deny all these psychic phenomena. I spend a certain amount of time speaking to skeptic groups. If they invite me, I accept their invitation. I go and address them, you know, atheist organizations. And one of my messages to them is you don't need to be afraid of telepathy and psychic powers because these are part of nature. They're natural, not supernatural, normal, not paranormal. They're just something science hasn't dealt with yet, but they're part of nature. Whereas spiritual things are somewhat more different. They're about choice. They're about the most fundamental choices we make. They're about morality. They're about our connection with the divine, our openness to God and the influence of God. And they're not quite the same as totally survival instinct level. This is something of a different level of consciousness. So, I think all of them, everything is ultimately pervaded by the spirit. But I think there's a distinction between body, psyche, and spirit in our own lives, which is important to recognize.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Well, that's interesting. So, this gives me a better picture of this morphic resonance. And you've got… Isn't there evidence, for example, of like dogs who kind of react when their owner's on the way home? So there is evidence. It's not just a thought and an idea. And one of the things about science is a hard currency of science is predictions. And I love that you're doing that test with that dog. Werbel? Is that the name of it?
SPEAKER 01 :
I don't play it. W-O-R-B-L-E.
SPEAKER 05 :
Werbel, yes. Okay. And, you know, I will have to say anecdotally, it's not working on my dad. He's still terrible at those games, no matter what time of day it is. But, wow, that's really interesting. And I know you've even talked about... And I know this is going to be foreign to a lot of people, but maybe even the sun and the stars, they have a consciousness about them. And that somehow plays into this morphic resonance, that there's a third element. It's not just matter and energy, that somehow there's an interaction. And I'm curious, because I've heard you talk about that. Would you believe that that's kind of tied together electrons with a magnetic force? Because, you know, that's what plasma cosmology does. thinks that magnetic forces are not considered enough by the secular standard cosmology.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I think that somehow, in a way we don't understand yet, that electromagnetic fields are a kind of interface with consciousness. Our brains are mainly electromagnetic in the way they work, and somehow our minds interact with our brains. No one knows how. But I think that if we take the view that what interfaces with our bodies and brains is this electromagnetic activity, then the Sun has vastly more complex electromagnetic activity than we do. I mean, solar flares, sunspots, 11-year cycles, all these NASA space probes and space observatories monitoring solar weather. It's changing all the time. And I think the mind of the Sun could interface with these electromagnetic fields which are basically within plasma. The Sun's made of plasma. And I think the Sun and the other stars may be conscious beings. I don't think that consciousness is confined to brains. And, you know, one of the things materialists believe is that the whole universe is completely unconscious, except in human and perhaps a few animal brains, the light bulb of consciousness is switched on for unknown reasons. That's the materialist worldview. And they have an awful problem explaining why anything's conscious at all. That's why it's called the hard problem, the very existence of human consciousness. But in the past, people thought consciousness was much more widespread in nature, that nature was alive. In the Middle Ages, it was taken for granted. It was taught in medieval universities that nature was alive. Animals are called animals because they have a soul. Anima is the Latin for soul, built into our language. So they didn't believe they had an immortal soul like humans, but they thought they had a soul that organized their bodies and their instincts. And so I think that the stars and nature are all a reflection of an ultimate conscious source of all things, which I think of as God. And there's no reason why consciousness should just be confined to human brains. That's why I'm exploring the idea that sound is conscious, because I think from a scientific point of view, this is an open question. It's not because it's a dogma of religious belief or anything like that. It's not part of my religious faith that it's conscious or not conscious. It's an open question. And I think it's the kind of thing scientists should look at.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it's a fun topic to consider. It's definitely not out of the realm of possibility in God's created nature. I love how you referred basically to Hebrews 1, 3, that God upholds all things by the word of His power, so He's upholding all things now.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, yes. You know, it's a question, I'm afraid, that is off-limits. for materialist scientists. It simply can't be looked into because, as you said earlier, it would threaten their entire worldview. You said something earlier that could be construed by Christians and Jews to be a threatening statement. You mentioned a fellow who rejected Judaism because he was taught by his family that God is against everyone who's gay, and he decided since he was gay that he was going to be against God. And I could go like this and start to get a little bit defensive, but of course... You know, we all understand that God's not against any man. He's not against anyone. He's for everyone. God recommends against certain behaviors for obvious reasons, and God wants what's good for all of us. But I don't feel the kind of the knee-jerk need to defend every aspect of God against any question at any time. The way I saw Michael Shermer respond to your question implications that there was something beyond the material. Michael Shermer said, first of all, he said, I'm not God, you're not God. And he said, there's an objective reality. I don't know what it is, and you don't either. Dr. Sheldrake, I think that's an overstatement.
SPEAKER 01 :
What do you think? Well, I think it would be definitely true to say that no one understands the whole of reality, including the mind of God, the whole of nature, etc. We're limited humans, and obviously, by definition, our minds are human minds with a limited power of understanding. So I think that confession of ignorance is reasonable for anyone. So I don't have a problem with that. I think the idea that there's an objective reality to which science has unique access is questionable because scientists are humans. And as some physicists have pointed out, Our theories about nature are theories in human minds. And the so-called laws of nature are not out there. You don't actually run into a law of nature when you're sort of looking through a telescope. You don't see Newton's laws or Maxwell's equations. These are invisible things which are accessed only through minds. And so for scientists to understand nature, they can only do so through their minds. So the very idea of objective nature relies on human minds to formulate that very idea. So I think that the idea that somehow nature is totally independent of all minds and all consciousness is an illusion that materialists have created and they themselves are the first to say they believe in science and reason and reason itself implies mind. So if you're going to have mind in nature and mind in underlying nature which makes it comprehensible, their belief that it's comprehensible through mathematical laws implies that underlying nature is something mind-like. And it can only be appreciated through minds. And they're very proud of their own minds and how smart they are. So it's actually to think of it as objective out there with no consciousness is not what science is actually telling us. True. And not what Schirmer could possibly believe, given that he's a devotee of science and reason.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, yes, and that's why the statement struck me as disingenuous. I'm not God, you're not God, that's not an overstatement. That's true. I don't necessarily believe that Michael Schirmer believes that he's not God. But I also believe it's an overstatement to say... that we don't know what reality is. I think we do know what reality is, and I think that Michael Shermer's statement that he doesn't know is simply a revelation of the fact that he doesn't know God. And so, Dr. Sheldrake, I don't want to imply that I absolutely understand everything about nature, but because I do know who God is, I can say that I do know what reality is and I know that it will all be explained to me. The things I don't understand will be explained at some point. Michael Shermer does not have that touchstone. Michael Shermer and other materialists do not have that touchstone in their mind and in their heart and not even in their psyche. And so, anyway, that seems to me to be the source of some of the inherent fear that you seem to strike into their heart.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, it certainly doesn't help, the fact that I make no secret of the fact that I'm a Christian. I mean, that arouses tremendous prejudice in a lot of scientists, just to start with. And it doesn't help that I have unorthodox theories, and it doesn't help that I think there's evidence for telepathy in dogs and people and so on. None of that helps. But it doesn't help with dogmatic scientists. But the interesting thing is that a lot of dogmatic scientists, when I'm talking to them alone in the evening and stuff, become much less dogmatic. A lot of them are frightened of not agreeing with the party line when they're at work. But when they get home, many of them have had psychic experiences, some have had spiritual experiences, some have had near-death experiences, some have dogs waiting for them when they get home from the laboratory. The fact is that most dogmatic materialists Some are really dogmatic. I mean, Michael Sherman's made a living out of it, and Richard Dawkins, it's his whole public persona. But we recently did a survey, the Scientific and Medical Network in Britain recently did a survey of scientific, medical, and engineering professionals in Britain, France, and Germany, working scientists, and asked them, we had it done by a professional public opinion survey organization, How many of them are atheists? It's about 25%. Quite a lot compared with the normal population, but it's certainly not the majority. About 20% more describe themselves as non-religious agnostics. 45% describe themselves as atheists or non-religious. about 45% have described themselves as religious or spiritual or spiritual but not religious or spiritual and religious. So about 45%, about 10% didn't say or didn't know or whatever, but about equal numbers were sort of non-religious and spiritually bleak religious. And the atheists are certainly not a majority, even within Europe, where atheism is much more predominant than it is in the United States. And I know from my own experience of giving talks in scientific institutions that after the talk, one after another, people come up to me and they look both ways to make sure no one's listening. And then they say, you know, I'm really interested in what you say. I agree with a lot of what you say. I've had these experiences myself, but I can't tell my colleagues because they're all so straight. And after three or four have done this, I said, well, actually, you're not alone. I said, there's at least three or four other people in your institute who think like you do. They said, well, how do you know? And I said, because they've just told me, him and her and him. And what I say to them is, you know, your life would be so much more fun if you come out of the closet. Spiritually-minded scientists who've had psychic or spiritual experiences are quite common, and they behaved like gays did in the 1950s. You know, they were all in the closet, I think they couldn't possibly admit it. So my slogan to them really is, you know, come out of the closet, and you'll find that if you talk freely in your laboratory tea room or with friends after work and stuff... you'll find a lot of them who actually agree with you. So right now, people who do have these views are hiding them from their colleagues. Another metaphor for this is the Soviet Union under Brezhnev. You know, in the last days of communism, how many people in the Soviet Union really believed in communism? I mean, there were certainly some, but the majority didn't. But they didn't become outright dissidents because then they'd be locked up in psychiatric institutes or sent to Siberia. So they pretended to go along with it. You know, party congresses, they dutifully clap at the right moments and stuff. I think that within the world of science, it's rather like that at the moment. I think there's this materialist orthodoxy, which is held in place by inertia and by fear, but which is not actually sincerely believed in by most scientists. And if you include among most scientists, Indians and South Americans... There are more scientists in India than there are in the United States. I lived and worked in India. I hardly ever met an atheist in India. Most of the scientists, my colleagues, were devout Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs or Jains or Christians.
SPEAKER 03 :
Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart. We are out of time for today. If you want to hear the rest of this program, go to rsr.org. That's Real Science Radio, rsr.org.
SPEAKER 02 :
Intelligent design and DNA Scholars can't explain it all away Get ready to be awed By the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keeping it real That's what I'm talking about
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Delve into a thought-provoking discussion on the boundaries between science and spirituality as Dr. Rupert Sheldrake questions materialism's resistance to the existence of non-physical phenomena. Listen as he argues that consciousness might be embedded not only in human brains but possibly in stars, electromagnetic fields, and the cosmos at large. Engage with his insights into how this perspective could reshape our understanding of reality, offering a profound connection between the physical and spiritual realms.
SPEAKER 05 :
Please stay tuned for the conclusion of our interview with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and his theories on everything from dog intuition to a conscious sun and stars to the mind's influence on health.
SPEAKER 02 :
and DNA Scholars can't explain it all away Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keepin' it real
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, maybe what would help our audience on your hypothesis is some examples of what supports it, you know, some evidence that supports the idea of morphic resonance. And I think you've had examples of like how you can train rats to do something and then somehow rats across the globe learn the same thing without it being taught. It was taught locally and yet globally rats kind of learn this technique or this new thing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, there was an actual experiment started at Harvard where they trained rats to escape from a water maze. They had to swim to the right exit. And it took them to start with more than 250 trials before they cottoned on and got it. Within about 25 generations, it only took them about 25 trials to learn. This rate of learning speeded up tenfold. They assumed that it was because of the inheritance of acquired characters, or what we now call epigenetic inheritance. But when this was checked out in Australia and in Scotland, they found their rats started off where the Harvard rats had left off, with about 25 arrows, and they got better and better. But not only did the rats descended from trained parents get better, but all the rats of that breed were getting better. Now that's what I'd expect with morphic resonance. If a lot of animals learn a new trick, all around the world it should be easier for others to learn it. If lots of humans learn something new, like programming computers, playing video games, surfboarding, snowboarding, it should get easier for others to learn it. And one line of evidence comes from the rather amazing fact that Average intelligence in intelligence tests improved all over the world by about 30% over the course of the 20th century, not because people were getting 30% smarter, but because the tests were getting easier to do. And I think the tests were getting easier to do because so many people had done them. And right now, I have an experimental project going on to find out whether it gets easier every day for people to do the New York Times five-letter word puzzle, Wordle. Every day there's a new puzzle. Millions of people do it. Is it getting easier to do in the evening compared with the morning? Well, we don't know yet, but there's a student looking into this here in Britain at the moment, and she's going to measure the first, when it's first published in New Zealand, then it sweeps around the world with the day and the last people doing it in Hawaii. So she's getting the scores from New Zealand and Hawaii, which would be right to an extended day to see what's going on. Now, this also applies to crystals. If you make a new chemical and crystallize it for the first time, it may take a long time to crystallize. But if you keep making the same chemical, it should get easier to crystallize all over the world as a new habit develops. And that seems to be what happens. Chemists find that new compounds often get easier to crystallize. So these are all examples of morphic resonance.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, and I want to jump in real quick. Dr. Sheldrake, the examples you just gave, they seem to terrify materialists. I watched your debate with Michael Shermer, and at the very early stages of the debate, as soon as you mentioned anything... I can't remember the exact phrase, but you mentioned something immaterial, and Michael Shermer immediately crossed his arms, and pretty much for the rest of the debate, he sat in this defensive cross-armed position, and I've read a number of the criticisms of your experiments online, and it seems to me that there is some measure of actual hysterical fear on the part of materialists whenever you get into mentioning things like this that cause them to attack your methods. Rather scrupulously, I must say. They do attack your methods rather scrupulously. What do you think is the source of the fear that is obvious in their hearts and in their eyes when they're confronted with this idea that there may be things outside of the material universe that are worthy of consideration?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, some materialists have made materialism into their worldview. It is a kind of religion for them. It's an anti-religion. I mean, it's an atheist worldview. And if you look at the actual personal history of many materialists, they're people who themselves or whose parents or grandparents have rejected a religious worldview, usually Christian, sometimes Jewish. But Christianity is the religion that generates the largest number of atheists. Islam isn't so atheist-generating as Christianity. Christianity is like a kind of engine for generating atheism. Now there's an interesting concept that we should look into. That is profound. Well, I think it's a very important fact, and we need to recognize it. You see, I think what happens with materialists is that they've personally rejected Christianity or Judaism for various reasons. I mean, Oliver Sacks, the Jewish neurologist, was a militant atheist. He rejected Judaism because he was gay. And when he was a teenager, His Jewish family told him that God was against everyone who was gay, and he was utterly condemned for being gay. So he decided he was against God. And so, if God was against him because he was gay. So he found a ready basis for that in materialist atheism, putting his faith in science. Some people reject Christianity because, you know, for a variety of reasons, they've had oppressive puritanical upbringings, etc. And if they take up materialism, then it provides them with an alternative worldview that seems to explain everything with no afterlife. So no need to be, if you've been brought up to be afraid of hell, then you don't need to be afraid of hell anymore because there's no such thing as any afterlife. If you've been brought up to feel guilty about sex, no need to feel guilty about sex. But above all, the big payoff for materialists is the feeling that if they become materialists, they're smarter than everyone else. They've seen through the dogmas of religion. They've seen through these childish beliefs that have held back humanity for centuries. They've seen through all that, and they've risen above it. And basically, their stance is they're smarter. So materialism is very important for them because it justifies their atheism and their self-satisfaction at being smarter than everyone else. And what happens, why I get a lot of flak, is that, you know, I'm a scientist, I've studied at Cambridge, I've studied at Harvard, I got a PhD, I've published papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature and the Proceedings of the Royal Society. And they can't dismiss me as being someone who's just ignorant and stupid, who doesn't know these things, who hasn't studied science. So I get under their skin. And then what I'm basically doing is trying to point out, as in my book, The Science Delusion, called Science Set Free in the US, the ten dogmas of materialism, which are part of their belief system. actually are not very well supported by science. They're not supported by science at all. It is a dogmatic belief system. And they're very, very resistant to that being pointed out because basically their whole sense of personal identity would collapse without it. So it does trigger off anxiety, anger, fear, because it is essentially a dogmatic belief system. They like to portray religious people as dogmatic believers and taking everything on faith and authority, but actually nowhere is that more true in the modern world than among materialist atheists. Most of them actually don't know very much science, and when they say they put their trust in science, basically they put their trust in what the high priests of science tell them, They haven't personally gone to the Large Hadron Collider and conducted experiments or personally sequenced DNA or personally analyzed genes or anything. They've just taken the whole lot on faith. So I think that is the real reason they get so upset and angry and why they're so immune to evidence. I mean, in the debate with Michael Shermer, he showed not the slightest interest in evidence for anything that went against his point of view. He just thought it must be rubbish.
SPEAKER 05 :
yeah yeah so instead they do things like ban your talk on ted tv i mean was that i guess that really was banned i know you can watch it it was uh we've played clips of it before well they tried banning it but um they the thing is that you can't really ban anything nowadays and when word got out they were planning to ban it people cloned the talk and put it up all over the internet
SPEAKER 01 :
Actually, they did me a good turn. You see, I think Providence works through atheists as well as through Christians and believers. And, you know, before my talk had been planned, it had about 30,000 views. It's now had about 8 million in various formats on different websites. By far the most successful thing I've ever done in terms of exposure. And that would not have happened without a helping hand from the militant atheists.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well said, well said.
SPEAKER 04 :
It goes back to the truism that God's Word never returns void. And God's Word, whether the atheists want it to or not, God's Word does govern everything to a certain degree. Now, you had mentioned earlier, when I asked you about spiritual versus physical things, It seemed like you implied that spiritual is necessarily separate from nature. Is that your belief? Can you clarify that? Is the spiritual necessarily separate from the natural?
SPEAKER 01 :
No, actually I think the spiritual underlies the whole of nature. As I was saying, I think the energy in nature is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. So I see God as sustaining the whole universe from moment to moment, underlying all reality, not just setting up a universe in the first place, pressing a start button, and then having it all go on automatically like a machine. I think that God is sustaining all things. So in that sense, the Spirit of God pervades all nature all the time. But as we experience the spiritual, I think we experience it through our consciousness. And I think we experience our consciousness is not the same as the material activity of our body. It's obviously permeates the body and depends on it. But the distinction I really make, which I think is important, is between the bodily, the psychic and the spiritual. You know, because when St. Paul says, the natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God, the natural man in Greek is anthropos psychikos, the psychic man or the ensouled man. And I think there's a realm of the psychic. which includes telepathy, premonitions, and what some might call the sixth sense, which is part of animal nature as well as human nature. I've done a lot of research, as you know, with psychic dogs, as in dogs that know when their owners are coming home. And I think the psychic level is to do with survival abilities and skills. I think wolves know what other wolves are doing when they're miles away. It's part of the way they coordinate the social group. Dogs become part of a human family and pick up our intentions, our thoughts. I don't think these are spiritual powers. I think they're to do, they're like the senses. I mean, smell, taste, touch, vision. I think they're like a kind of invisible sense, like a sixth sense, which, like everything in nature, has a spiritual underpinning, but it's not in itself spiritual. So I think I distinguish between psychic and spiritual. Now, this is one area where I run into problems with our friends, the materialists, because they don't believe in psychic phenomena. They don't think telepathy and things are possible. They don't think dogs can possibly pick up their owner's intentions and so on. And the reason they're so down on psychic phenomena is they think that if you let in any invisible influence at all, then God's going to come back through the back door. And so they feel they have to deny all these psychic phenomena. I spend a certain amount of time speaking to skeptic groups. If they invite me, I accept their invitation. I go and address them, you know, atheist organizations. And one of my messages to them is you don't need to be afraid of telepathy and psychic powers because these are part of nature. They're natural, not supernatural, normal, not paranormal. They're just something science hasn't dealt with yet, but they're part of nature. Whereas spiritual things are somewhat more different. They're about choice. They're about the most fundamental choices we make. They're about morality. They're about our connection with the divine, our openness to God and the influence of God. And they're not quite the same as totally survival instinct level. This is something of a different level of consciousness. So, I think all of them, everything is ultimately pervaded by the spirit. But I think there's a distinction between body, psyche, and spirit in our own lives, which is important to recognize.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Well, that's interesting. So, this gives me a better picture of this morphic resonance. And you've got… Isn't there evidence, for example, of like dogs who kind of react when their owner's on the way home? So there is evidence. It's not just a thought and an idea. And one of the things about science is a hard currency of science is predictions. And I love that you're doing that test with that dog. Werbel? Is that the name of it?
SPEAKER 01 :
I don't play it. W-O-R-B-L-E.
SPEAKER 05 :
Werbel, yes. Okay. And, you know, I will have to say anecdotally, it's not working on my dad. He's still terrible at those games, no matter what time of day it is. But, wow, that's really interesting. And I know you've even talked about... And I know this is going to be foreign to a lot of people, but maybe even the sun and the stars, they have a consciousness about them. And that somehow plays into this morphic resonance, that there's a third element. It's not just matter and energy, that somehow there's an interaction. And I'm curious, because I've heard you talk about that. Would you believe that that's kind of tied together electrons with a magnetic force? Because, you know, that's what plasma cosmology does. thinks that magnetic forces are not considered enough by the secular standard cosmology.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I think that somehow, in a way we don't understand yet, that electromagnetic fields are a kind of interface with consciousness. Our brains are mainly electromagnetic in the way they work, and somehow our minds interact with our brains. No one knows how. But I think that if we take the view that what interfaces with our bodies and brains is this electromagnetic activity, then the Sun has vastly more complex electromagnetic activity than we do. I mean, solar flares, sunspots, 11-year cycles, all these NASA space probes and space observatories monitoring solar weather. It's changing all the time. And I think the mind of the Sun could interface with these electromagnetic fields which are basically within plasma. The Sun's made of plasma. And I think the Sun and the other stars may be conscious beings. I don't think that consciousness is confined to brains. And, you know, one of the things materialists believe is that the whole universe is completely unconscious, except in human and perhaps a few animal brains, the light bulb of consciousness is switched on for unknown reasons. That's the materialist worldview. And they have an awful problem explaining why anything's conscious at all. That's why it's called the hard problem, the very existence of human consciousness. But in the past, people thought consciousness was much more widespread in nature, that nature was alive. In the Middle Ages, it was taken for granted. It was taught in medieval universities that nature was alive. Animals are called animals because they have a soul. Anima is the Latin for soul, built into our language. So they didn't believe they had an immortal soul like humans, but they thought they had a soul that organized their bodies and their instincts. And so I think that the stars and nature are all a reflection of an ultimate conscious source of all things, which I think of as God. And there's no reason why consciousness should just be confined to human brains. That's why I'm exploring the idea that sound is conscious, because I think from a scientific point of view, this is an open question. It's not because it's a dogma of religious belief or anything like that. It's not part of my religious faith that it's conscious or not conscious. It's an open question. And I think it's the kind of thing scientists should look at.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it's a fun topic to consider. It's definitely not out of the realm of possibility in God's created nature. I love how you referred basically to Hebrews 1, 3, that God upholds all things by the word of His power, so He's upholding all things now.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, yes. You know, it's a question, I'm afraid, that is off-limits. for materialist scientists. It simply can't be looked into because, as you said earlier, it would threaten their entire worldview. You said something earlier that could be construed by Christians and Jews to be a threatening statement. You mentioned a fellow who rejected Judaism because he was taught by his family that God is against everyone who's gay, and he decided since he was gay that he was going to be against God. And I could go like this and start to get a little bit defensive, but of course... You know, we all understand that God's not against any man. He's not against anyone. He's for everyone. God recommends against certain behaviors for obvious reasons, and God wants what's good for all of us. But I don't feel the kind of the knee-jerk need to defend every aspect of God against any question at any time. The way I saw Michael Shermer respond to your question implications that there was something beyond the material. Michael Shermer said, first of all, he said, I'm not God, you're not God. And he said, there's an objective reality. I don't know what it is, and you don't either. Dr. Sheldrake, I think that's an overstatement.
SPEAKER 01 :
What do you think? Well, I think it would be definitely true to say that no one understands the whole of reality, including the mind of God, the whole of nature, etc. We're limited humans, and obviously, by definition, our minds are human minds with a limited power of understanding. So I think that confession of ignorance is reasonable for anyone. So I don't have a problem with that. I think the idea that there's an objective reality to which science has unique access is questionable because scientists are humans. And as some physicists have pointed out, Our theories about nature are theories in human minds. And the so-called laws of nature are not out there. You don't actually run into a law of nature when you're sort of looking through a telescope. You don't see Newton's laws or Maxwell's equations. These are invisible things which are accessed only through minds. And so for scientists to understand nature, they can only do so through their minds. So the very idea of objective nature relies on human minds to formulate that very idea. So I think that the idea that somehow nature is totally independent of all minds and all consciousness is an illusion that materialists have created and they themselves are the first to say they believe in science and reason and reason itself implies mind. So if you're going to have mind in nature and mind in underlying nature which makes it comprehensible, their belief that it's comprehensible through mathematical laws implies that underlying nature is something mind-like. And it can only be appreciated through minds. And they're very proud of their own minds and how smart they are. So it's actually to think of it as objective out there with no consciousness is not what science is actually telling us. True. And not what Schirmer could possibly believe, given that he's a devotee of science and reason.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, yes, and that's why the statement struck me as disingenuous. I'm not God, you're not God, that's not an overstatement. That's true. I don't necessarily believe that Michael Schirmer believes that he's not God. But I also believe it's an overstatement to say... that we don't know what reality is. I think we do know what reality is, and I think that Michael Shermer's statement that he doesn't know is simply a revelation of the fact that he doesn't know God. And so, Dr. Sheldrake, I don't want to imply that I absolutely understand everything about nature, but because I do know who God is, I can say that I do know what reality is and I know that it will all be explained to me. The things I don't understand will be explained at some point. Michael Shermer does not have that touchstone. Michael Shermer and other materialists do not have that touchstone in their mind and in their heart and not even in their psyche. And so, anyway, that seems to me to be the source of some of the inherent fear that you seem to strike into their heart.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, it certainly doesn't help, the fact that I make no secret of the fact that I'm a Christian. I mean, that arouses tremendous prejudice in a lot of scientists, just to start with. And it doesn't help that I have unorthodox theories, and it doesn't help that I think there's evidence for telepathy in dogs and people and so on. None of that helps. But it doesn't help with dogmatic scientists. But the interesting thing is that a lot of dogmatic scientists, when I'm talking to them alone in the evening and stuff, become much less dogmatic. A lot of them are frightened of not agreeing with the party line when they're at work. But when they get home, many of them have had psychic experiences, some have had spiritual experiences, some have had near-death experiences, some have dogs waiting for them when they get home from the laboratory. The fact is that most dogmatic materialists Some are really dogmatic. I mean, Michael Sherman's made a living out of it, and Richard Dawkins, it's his whole public persona. But we recently did a survey, the Scientific and Medical Network in Britain recently did a survey of scientific, medical, and engineering professionals in Britain, France, and Germany, working scientists, and asked them, we had it done by a professional public opinion survey organization, How many of them are atheists? It's about 25%. Quite a lot compared with the normal population, but it's certainly not the majority. About 20% more describe themselves as non-religious agnostics. 45% describe themselves as atheists or non-religious. about 45% have described themselves as religious or spiritual or spiritual but not religious or spiritual and religious. So about 45%, about 10% didn't say or didn't know or whatever, but about equal numbers were sort of non-religious and spiritually bleak religious. And the atheists are certainly not a majority, even within Europe, where atheism is much more predominant than it is in the United States. And I know from my own experience of giving talks in scientific institutions that after the talk, one after another, people come up to me and they look both ways to make sure no one's listening. And then they say, you know, I'm really interested in what you say. I agree with a lot of what you say. I've had these experiences myself, but I can't tell my colleagues because they're all so straight. And after three or four have done this, I said, well, actually, you're not alone. I said, there's at least three or four other people in your institute who think like you do. They said, well, how do you know? And I said, because they've just told me, him and her and him. And what I say to them is, you know, your life would be so much more fun if you come out of the closet. Spiritually-minded scientists who've had psychic or spiritual experiences are quite common, and they behaved like gays did in the 1950s. You know, they were all in the closet, I think they couldn't possibly admit it. So my slogan to them really is, you know, come out of the closet, and you'll find that if you talk freely in your laboratory tea room or with friends after work and stuff... you'll find a lot of them who actually agree with you. So right now, people who do have these views are hiding them from their colleagues. Another metaphor for this is the Soviet Union under Brezhnev. You know, in the last days of communism, how many people in the Soviet Union really believed in communism? I mean, there were certainly some, but the majority didn't. But they didn't become outright dissidents because then they'd be locked up in psychiatric institutes or sent to Siberia. So they pretended to go along with it. You know, party congresses, they dutifully clap at the right moments and stuff. I think that within the world of science, it's rather like that at the moment. I think there's this materialist orthodoxy, which is held in place by inertia and by fear, but which is not actually sincerely believed in by most scientists. And if you include among most scientists, Indians and South Americans... There are more scientists in India than there are in the United States. I lived and worked in India. I hardly ever met an atheist in India. Most of the scientists, my colleagues, were devout Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs or Jains or Christians.
SPEAKER 03 :
Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart. We are out of time for today. If you want to hear the rest of this program, go to rsr.org. That's Real Science Radio, rsr.org.
SPEAKER 02 :
Intelligent design and DNA Scholars can't explain it all away Get ready to be awed By the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keeping it real That's what I'm talking about
Join us as we journey into the heart of Jerusalem's reconstruction, where faith was not only a weapon of the soul but a practical means of defense. Pastor Bob Enyart shares valuable insights from the Book of Nehemiah, emphasizing the importance of readiness and righteousness when confronted with opposition. Through intriguing comparisons of biblical and modern-day scenarios, this episode offers a profound reflection on how true faith combines trust in God with wise stewardship and action.
SPEAKER 01 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Theology Thursday. I'm Nicole McBurney. Every weekday we bring you the news of the day, the culture, and science from a Christian worldview. But today join me and Pastor Bob Enyart as we explore the source of our Christian worldview, the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
So they're mocking these people for trying to accomplish their vision and it was a vision that God was behind and so it was the natural tendency of men to mock it. It seems that human beings have a radar system built in. And if someone is doing miracles and they're false miracles, like if it's the Antichrist or the false prophet, the masses will flock to follow and to take heed of the miracles. If it's a prophet or an apostle of God or Christ himself and he's doing miracles, the masses will reject him. Now why is that? Why would they reject Jesus and reject the apostles and the prophets who did miracles and Moses reject all them and God but if the devil does miracles they're going to believe. Why? It's because of the built in antenna that human beings have. If God does it we're against it. We might not even know for sure that God is doing it but if we have an inkling that God does it we're against it. On the other hand if the devil does it, or anyone that's in league with the devil, then we'll consider it. At least we're not going to get all that angry about it. So this Ammonite, now Sanballat, we talked about he was a Moabite. Moab and Ammon, they were the result of Lot's incest, and they became two peoples, Moab and Ammon, and enemies of the Jews for many centuries. And verse 4 says, So they're mocking, even if a fox goes up on the wall, he'll knock the stones down. In verse 4, Nehemiah prays, So Nehemiah is praying that they would be destroyed, that they would be taken away. And that's not very nice. He really should repent of that, right? Doesn't God condemn him for this? Doesn't God put in here that Nehemiah is a bad guy? Not a very good Christian? Well, Nehemiah is a great guy. And this is here in the Bible because God liked it. Verse 5, look at this. Do not cover their iniquity and do not let their sin be blotted out from before you. I don't think I've ever been that harsh in my entire 20... How long? Since 1973. How many years is that? 30 years? Oh, no. 30 years of a reputation for harsh and confrontational ministry. I don't think I've ever asked God not to let anyone repent. I've never been that harsh. That's why I'll never make it into the Bible. I'm only kidding. But the Bible characters were extraordinarily harsh. Many of them, not all of them, but many of them, we could virtually call them brutal. And God liked them. Because when you're dealing with the wicked, it's good to confront the wicked and to let everybody know exactly how bad these people are. Do not cover their iniquity. Do not let their sin be blotted out from before you. Don't forgive them. Don't save them. For they have provoked you to anger before the builders. So we built the wall and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height for the people had a mind to work. They had a really good attitude and they worked really hard. And so often as human beings, it's easier to say, I'm going to go to bed early tonight. But when you have an important job to do You put your shoulder to the grindstone and you get to work. Now, what happened when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites... Now, Ashdod is a city in Gaza, one of the five cities of the Philistines. And I think in the Gaza Strip today, there's Ashdod still to this day, if I recall. And the Ashdodites... heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry. And all of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion. Nevertheless, we made our prayer to our God and because of them, we set a watch against them day and night. And so we're going to find out that Nehemiah was determined to defend Jerusalem the workers, the people who live there, the city, the project, and if it meant using swords or spears in self-defense, that that was his plan. And of course, how many Christians, percentage-wise it's not that huge, but there are many Christians numbers-wise, certainly in the hundreds of thousands, that are pacifists, that you can't kill someone, you can't use a gun, You can't use force to defend yourself. And that's completely against the Bible. They take some particular stories like when Jesus is about to be arrested and Peter uses a sword and Jesus said, no, Peter, that's not it. I'm going with them. And they'll take a story like that and say, see, God does not want us to defend ourselves. But that's not the point of that story at all. Jesus had set his face toward Jerusalem, and he knew he was to be arrested, tried, and crucified. And it was inappropriate to take a sword and try to stop that. Verse 10, Then Judah said, The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall. And that Judah, that's... The people of Judah, the people said, hey, this is not going to work. We're not going to be able to get this done. We can't even find a place to work. Have you ever tried to do a job and you're standing in filth and a mess? And it's so discouraging. Imagine the city had been destroyed. The wall is knocked down. You can't even get a good footing to get started. And just to carry away the huge rocks, to get them out of the way so you could put them back on, it had to be extremely discouraging. Very difficult. And our adversaries said, verse 11, they will neither know nor see anything till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease. So that's what their enemies were saying. We are going to put a stop to this and we will kill them. So it was when the Jews who dwelt near them came that they told us 10 times, from whatever place you turn, they will be upon us. In other words, wherever you go, wherever you return from, if you go home to your city to do some work and you come back the next day, in the morning, they're going to get you. Wherever you go home, when you come back, they're going to ambush you. So therefore, Nehemiah, what he did was he started a prayer meeting. He said, we'll pray and then we'll be safe. Well, I'm sure he prayed a lot. But he did more than just pray. Therefore, I position men behind the lower parts of the wall at the openings. And I set the people according to their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And so we see that Nehemiah made sure that his workers were armed. And throughout history, it is wicked governments that disarm the people. The Philistines had occupied Israel and they passed a law, they imposed a law that no Jew could own a sword or a spear and no Jew could be a blacksmith. They couldn't be a blacksmith even to make plows for their oxen because they might make swords. So if a Jew wanted to have his plow sharpened, he had to bring it to the Philistines and pay them so many shekels to have a plow sharpened. We've seen that through history, that when evil governments conquer or even come to power in their own land, then they will pass a law and confiscate weapons, take away weapons. The Taliban did that in Afghanistan. And it's just a typical thing that governments that are evil will take away the guns. In this country, it's the liberals who fight for gun control legislation, gun registration, and gun confiscation. In England, they virtually outlawed gun ownership. You know, they started with handguns and then rifles and hunting guns, and it's become almost impossible to to have a gun in England. In our country, the states that have the most severe gun control laws typically have the highest crime rates. And when you look at the cities with the most severe gun control laws, they almost always have the highest crime rates. So it's something that empowers the criminals. And a government should be able to trust its people. If the government is righteous, the people will rejoice. And the people are not going to use their guns in a criminal way. Criminals will do that, but criminals don't obey gun control laws. So the gun control laws are counterproductive, and no matter how much evidence there is to show that, people who have their antenna up, their radar against what's right, they will not look at evidence and be persuaded. They're determined for their cause because it's godless. Now, I've always objected to conservative right-wingers when they advocate that we should be allowed to own and carry guns. I agree with that. But then the reason they give, I disagree with. So many of them say, because if the government is corrupt, then we need our guns to have a revolution. And what are you going to do? You're going to go shoot police officers and governors and judges, the president. Is that what you're going to do with your guns when the government is corrupt? We've got two police officers here in this room. Guys, watch out. There's some lunatic right-wingers who might be gunning for you. But no, the Bible teaches that you're to submit to the governing authorities and when they're corrupt, you don't obey their evil command. You don't obey a godless law. So when Saul was king and David had already been anointed as the next king and Saul was a murderer, David had a sword at Saul's throat. He could have killed him, but he didn't. Because he said, Saul is the government. Saul is the official. And therefore, I'm not going to obey him, but I'm not going to kill him. Verse 14, And I looked and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. And that's an encouragement that we could use in our lives, even though we're not typically up against an army of people who want to kill us, we're up against the world that wants to mock us, ridicule us, make sure that we fail in our efforts to preach the gospel, to oppose evolution, abortion, homosexuality, and God is telling us here through the encouragement of Nehemiah, do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. So that's our motivation. Even if we're out at an abortion mill fighting against the killing of unborn children, to me, And I cannot separate these two. In my thinking, I'm fighting for my family, for my children, for my grandchildren. That's what I'm fighting for. Because as my kids grow up in a society that legalizes child killing, that means that society is intensely evil and my kids will be attacked from every side. And so when I fight that battle, I'm fighting to help my family, to minister, for my neighbors, whether they have anything to do with abortion or not. It's part of the battle between right and wrong. Verse 15, And it happened when our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, everyone to his work. So it was from that time on, all right, so that plot right then came to nothing. Their enemies... in their effort. So from that time on, half of my servants, half of the people who agreed to help rebuild the wall, half of my servants worked at construction while the other half held a prayer meeting. I'm sorry, I keep misreading that. The other half held the spears, the shields, the bows, and wore armor And the leaders were behind all the house of Judah. So that's more evidence throughout the Bible that God is an advocate of self-defense. He is the one in whom that principle resides. It's right to deter the wicked and to stop them, if you have the opportunity and the ability, from hurting someone. Verse 17. Those who built on the wall and those who carried burdens loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction and with the other they held a weapon. Verse 18. Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built. And the one who sounded the trumpet was beside me. Then I said to the nobles, the rulers, and the rest of the people, The work is great and extensive, and we are separated far from one another on the wall. Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us. So Nehemiah kept the guy with the trumpet with him at all times so that if he got word from anyone that there was an attack underway, they would race to that location, blow the trumpet, And then everyone would come, rush in, whether they had an axe or a sword or a spear, they'd engage the enemy. That was the plan. And our God will fight for us. Now, did Nehemiah have any certain knowledge that God would do a miracle and give them a military victory? I don't believe so. The mood that God was in at this time in Israel's history... I think he would have. But if Nehemiah had sinned terribly, as David did in a very important time in Israel's history, as Saul had sinned terribly, as leader after leader had been evil and corrupt, God said, you know, I'm not going to help you. You're on your own. And then they would typically be defeated. And so here also, there's no absolute guarantee that God is going to give them a military victory. But when Nehemiah's heart was right before God and we are God's covenant people, his chosen people, and he's promised us if we are faithful, he will strengthen us. And whether that strength comes from an angel of the Lord who slaughters tens of thousands of Assyrian soldiers in one day, or if it just comes from the courage that the Jews have Because they know that they're in the right. One way or the other, they should be confident in God. And if you're confident in the Lord and you're doing what's right, and you go into battle and you get killed, that's okay. So, you're dead. And you're with the Lord. My brother, Brian, he's had a lifelong fear of flying. And he's going through a hard time right now. My mother was out there for a week visiting him in New Jersey. And she said, come to Denver, come to church, at least for one weekend. You'll have such a great time. Your sister Susan just came. She had a wonderful time. You'll be built up and encouraged. And he said, I don't like to fly. And my mother said to her son, she said, if the plane crashes, you're dead. So what? Just come. And he said, well, that's a good point. Maybe I will. So, of course, we have to be good stewards with what God has given us, our money, our resources, our bodies, our lives, our time. But this life, it's important, but it's not all important. We do what's right and we trust the Lord with our eternity. And if we're saved, our souls are in his hand and we fight the battle. Now, does that mean that We don't use wisdom. And if I have a job with the phone company and my family depends on my paycheck and I've got people at work telling me homosexuality is good and if I say no, it's bad, they're going to fire me. Well, what should I do? Well, I'm a Christian. I trust in the Lord. I'm going to say it's a sin. And then get fired and my family may lose their home. No, we don't have that obligation to risk our family's well-being just to set someone straight. Our first priority as a father and a husband is to our family, to provide for them. Our second responsibility is to others and our neighbors, to tell them about the Lord and to be good and fair to them. So we should have, of course, there are complex issues that come to play when we make decisions. but we trust God with our lives and our future, our families, and at the same time we use wisdom to make good decisions. And the better you know the Word of God, and the more you understand what God is like, the easier it is to make those decisions. Just one example came to mind. Cheryl and I were talking about lying and how in the Bible God blessed people for lying. like the Hebrew midwives. He gave them families of their own after they lied to Pharaoh. And Rahab lied to the king of Jericho and God worked her into the lineage of Jesus Christ. And other examples of deception and lies that God blessed or even originated with God. We were talking about that and the Corrie Ten Boom story. Corrie Ten Boom in the hiding place. And her sister, a Nazi, came to the door and they had a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jewish woman in the house. And she had false papers. And in the story, her papers were excellent. Not all the forged papers were good. And she didn't look Jewish. And so she'd be easy to hide. And the official came and they suspected them. And they said, well, that's This is the family. You got five people. What's she doing here? Who's she? Is she a Jew? And Corrie Ten Boom's sister, was her name Betsy, said, yes, she's a Jew. And they took her away. And she most likely was killed, percentage-wise. And why did she do that? Because she didn't know God as well as she could have. I have no doubt she's a Christian and with the Lord right now. But she thought, that it's wrong to deceive at all times, and God would be disappointed in her if she lied, even in order to save a life. Now, isn't that a tragedy? You don't have to go to Sunday school for all that long to hear about Jericho, and you don't have to be a Christian for all that long to find out about the Exodus. What do you have to get as far as Exodus chapter 1? And all the other stories. with God saying, when Jesus said, man was not made for the law, but the law for man. And so if you think you're keeping a law and the result of it is that an innocent person will be killed, you're not keeping the law. You're confused. So the better we get to know God, the more we could honor him with the decisions we make and the work decisions we make. And when we trust him, we know what we're doing. We know why we're trusting him. We know that this is a good thing to trust him with. Verse 21. So we labored in the work and half of the men held the spears from daybreak until the stars appeared. Now that's a long day. Jason and I were both whining before the study about how long some of our work days are. Jason, we got it easy. No, not really. You only got a three, four hours sleep in the last 24 hours. That's less than these guys got. So that is worth some whining, I think. They labored in the work. Half of the men held the spears from daybreak until the stars appeared. I was in a debate with a friend of this church. He doesn't go to this church, but he's a friend of the church. Yesterday, Saturday. And he was... saying that if you trust God, you don't have to take these steps of actually defending yourself. He wasn't a pacifist, but he just got into this weird thought. And I said, no, I said, you think you trust God when you don't. protect, say, your property or your money. You think you're trusting God while you're not locking up your wallet or your door. I'm trusting God when I am locking my door. So you trust God with your door unlocked. I'll trust God with my door locked and we'll see who does better. He could not follow that. He thought if I was going to lock my door to physically keep a thief out, I'm not trusting God. And I asked him, I said, did the midwives have faith in God and trust God? And they lied to Pharaoh. And Rahab, did she not trust God and have faith in God? She lied to King of Jericho. And they ended up in the Hall of Faith. That's pretty good. By faith, the midwives lied. And by faith, Rahab lied. And by faith, you can lock your door and trust God to help you. how's he going to help you? He's going to give you the wisdom to lock your door. If you're trusting God and not locking your door, leaving your wallet outside your front door, well, you think it's faith, but it's really foolishness. Verse 22, at the same time, I also said to the people, let each man and his servant stay at night in Jerusalem and they may that they may be by our guard by night in a working party by day. So rather than going home to your village and staying the night with your family and coming back in the morning, don't do that. Because remember the Jews who lived out there, they heard Sanballat and the enemies and they heard the Philistines, what was left of them. And they heard them say, when they go back to their villages, when they're heading back to Jerusalem, we'll ambush them there. So he said, all right, this is good intelligence we're getting. So let's change our plans. When you get done at night, stay here and don't leave. So at night we have an automatic built-in security detail of the entire construction workforce so that they may be our guard by night and a working party by day. So neither I, my brethren, my servants, and this is sort of a funny verse, so that we nor the men of the guard who followed me took off our clothes, except that everyone took them off for washing. I'm really glad to hear that. It was very kind of them. The Mosaic law says, love your neighbor. So why does it say we didn't take off our clothes? Well, even back then at night, you go to bed, you go in your tent and you undress and you get under a blanket and you go to sleep. Not during this project. They worked all day and they slept at night, even if it was out in the open or under a lean-to. And they were dressed and ready to go 24 hours a day. They only bathed when they had to. And aside from that, they were ready to go. And of course, the application of that to our lives is evident. That we are to praise the Lord and worship God and bless Him. In the night, in the day, when the sun rises up, when the sun sets, we're to worship God. The Bible says meditate on God day and night. And the Jewish student who went to the rabbi and said, Rabbi, I'd like to also study philosophy other than the scriptures. And the rabbi said, of course you can study philosophy. Just find an hour. which is neither of the day nor of the night, and in it you may study philosophy. So we are to be prepared to serve the Lord, to do what's right, to defend our loved ones at every moment. Whether we're in front of others or alone, God is there at every moment with us, and so we're to be faithful throughout our lives. May God bless you all.
In a thought-provoking exchange, Bob Enyart examines how theistic evolutionists blur the lines between science and faith, essentially stripping Genesis of its foundational truths. Through a series of seven observations, we expose the lack of a viable secular theory of origins, offering a critical view that theists often overlook. This discussion extends to biblical creation narratives and their implications on human consciousness, challenging listeners to consider the theological compromises made by educational institutions. Bob poses an assertive argument: without God's special creation, the field of origins holds no credible ground.
SPEAKER 01 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob and your live today. We are playing the first portion of my father and predecessor Bob in yards video trading Genesis trading Genesis for secular origins. This was a presentation that he gave at Pepperdine University in in California and it's so sad to see that many major Christian denominations many major major christian schools and colleges they have traded away genesis because the thought is oh genesis is not scientific genesis does not match up with current modern science and so they trade genesis away for secular origins However, the sad thing about this is when you look at secular scientific theory, they have no theory of origins. The best that they can come up with is abiogenesis, which is that, hey, maybe life came from non-life and the entire field of abiogenesis, all of that research that has been done, it's come up as a dead end. They can't figure out how to get life coming from non-life after... millions of dollars spent, years of research. And the more they study, the bigger of a problem it becomes. And so Christians, what we have done is we have traded Genesis and we have gotten nothing in return. So that was the premise of this presentation that Bob gave at Pepperdine University in California. We're going to play just the first portion of this here today. If you want to get the entire thing, you can find that by going to rsr.org. That stands for Real Science Radio. rsr.org and click on the store. Check out Trading Genesis. You won't regret it. Let's jump right into the broadcast.
SPEAKER 02 :
A year ago, during the Pepperdine Bible Lectures, professors at the university presented a six-part series on theistic evolution. Yet the Church of Christ School refused to allow some of their alumni to present a class on biblical creation. So a year later, Real Science Radio received an invitation to come to this short-changed, though absolutely gorgeous, Pepperdine University campus to participate in a Bible and science event to respond to those theistic evolution classes. Greetings to the brightest audience in California. I am Bob Enyart, and Fred, he's my co-host, Fred Williams. He's the funny-looking one there on the right, a software engineer and creation speaker. For our Real Science Radio Caveman show, we took this publicity shot at Red Rocks Park just down the road from our studio in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. When the Pepperdine administration traded away the literal reading of Genesis for the secular explanation of origins, what did they get for that trade and what did they give up? And it's not only the administration, it's the staff too, including the affable Professor Chris Hurd, who I met briefly today. I mentioned the public invitation in this week's Malibu Times for folks to attend our Creation Science event here on the Pepperdine campus, and I extended a personal invitation to him. And Dr. Hurd said that he couldn't make it today, but that he may be able to attend our dinosaur soft tissue presentation tomorrow morning. That'd be great, of course. So there's Chris Hurd and his fellow theologian, Professor Chris Duran, and the biology professor here, Rodney Honeycutt, and then also Rich Little, the senior Church of Christ minister at Pepperdine. I'm going to argue that they got nothing for that trade, and they gave away a lot more than just the age of the Earth. Regarding the scientific study of origins, theistic evolution, as held by its leading proponents, is virtually indistinguishable from atheism. Did you know that the theistic evolutionists typically reject intelligent design? Let that sink in for a moment. Especially the leading theistic evolutionists, they reject even intelligent design. And did you know that old earth Christian colleges also deny the global flood? So theistic evolutionists reject intelligent design and old earth Christian colleges deny the global flood. compromise is never satisfied. It's one thing to compromise on the literal reading of Genesis and so you become a theistic evolutionist, but then they can't even accept that there's evidence for God the designer in biological life. That's what I mean by compromise is never satisfied. As soon as you compromise at one level, you will be then enticed to compromise again. If Christian colleges were to teach the truth, their students would learn that science agrees with the straightforward reading of the Bible. But instead of siding with Moses with his account in Genesis, Pepperdine University has chosen instead to side with the secular world stories of origins. Atheists claim that God doesn't exist, but what actually doesn't exist is a secular theory of origins. That does not exist. They don't even have a theory for Pepperdine to side with. I'll give you seven observations to establish my point that secular theories of origins, like on the origin of species, or the origin of stars, or the origin of life, or the origin of the universe, I'll give you seven observations to make my point that if you abandon Genesis, no theory of origins even exists for you to side with. The last two of these seven perhaps require discussion because these first five I can just list because they should be obvious to anyone even casually familiar with the state of secular science. So number one, the origin of species for Darwinists begins with species already in existence. So as with all of these observations, they're not explaining the origin if they begin with that thing already in existence. So again, number one, the origin of species for Darwinists begins with species already in existence. And number two, based on everything actually proposed in the literature. The origin of genes begins with a modification of existing genes. And number three, the origin of stars begins with the explosion of existing stars. I just read this again in National Geographic's latest Space Atlas, where a couple hundred pages. And when they get to the formation of stars, they say there's a gas nebula in space. and a star explodes, and that explosion creates a pressure wave that condenses the gas so it could form a star. And as I'm reading, I'm thinking, aren't you guys cheating? Because if you're going to explain the origin of stars, you can't begin with stars already existing. And that's our third observation, the origin of stars begins with the explosion of existing stars. The origin of life on Earth is claimed increasingly to have come from pre-existing life on other planets. Number five, the origin of the universe is increasingly explained to have come from a pre-existing multiverse. Those five observations disprove the belief that secular theories of origins even exist Atheists say that God does not exist. In reality, their theories of origins do not exist. And so apart from the special creation revealed in Scripture, there are no theories of origins. And the few hypotheses that have circulated for a while are in full retreat. So that's five, but we still have two more observations to go, which will further the point that Pepperdine, by abandoning the plain reading of Genesis, doesn't even have a theory of origins to side with. The sixth observation regards consciousness, and the seventh regards a scheme, a biological information scheme. For realize that just as old earth Christian colleges also deny the global flood, so too the leading theistic evolutionists even reject intelligent design, for compromise is never satisfied. For example, the BioLogos organization, founded by the famed theistic evolutionist Francis Collins, they are staunch opponents of intelligent design. As with so many leading theistic evolutionists, they insist on something called methodological naturalism. That is the atheist claim that it's against the rules even to look for the existence of a creator. It's against the rules even to look at, say, biological organisms for evidence of intent, of will, of design, of purpose. Collins has written that evolution is how God created life. And so he came up with the name for his group, BioLogos, to be a synonym for theistic evolution. Bio for evolution, and logos, well, because, and our k ain't no logos, kai ho logos, and pros ton theon, kai theos ain't no logos. In the beginning was the word, and the word, logos, was with God, and the word was God. and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So that's his purpose for biologos, theistic evolution. So back to consciousness, our sixth observation. If there is no special creation of biological life, as asserted by all secular scientists and many leading theistic evolutionists, then there certainly is no secular theory of origins for anyone to side with. because human consciousness is part of existence, perhaps the most extraordinary part. And if your theory doesn't explain our consciousness, then not only don't you have a robust theory of origins, you don't even have a working hypothesis to explain where we've come from. So as with many other religious institutions, because Pepperdine is not the only one, of course, sadly, Pepperdine has discarded God's special creation and therefore has sided with a position that doesn't even exist. For the choice has always been and always will be either God or nothing. If you side with God and his word, you have the truth. Let God be true and every man a liar. So if you trade in God's word for something else, the only thing you can get in return is nothing. For again, theistic evolution in practice is indistinguishable from atheism. And why is that? The theory of evolution is claimed to answer not the why question, but the how question. And its central answer to the how question is its only non-negotiable answer. And that is the diversity of life arose, and this is their non-negotiable, from a non-directed process. That's it. The diversity of life arose from a non-directed process. So if theistic evolution were to propose a directed process directed by God, then that would entirely gut the theory of evolution, for you can't have a directed, non-directed process. So because you can't have both, which one do you think will win out? Well, even the term theistic evolutionist, that's an adjective and a noun, or theistic evolution. So the substantive, the noun, wins out. these evolutionists, they give the credit to their methodological naturalism, and then there's not much left over for their theism to explain. Charles Darwin cheated with the title of his book on the origin of species, for he began with species already in existence. For propaganda purposes, to sell atheistic origins to the general public and to gullible academia, Darwin exploited the number in the word species, for it takes the same form whether singular or plural species. So with that title, the origin of species, millions of people since 1859 have assumed that Darwinists have scientifically explained the origin of life. But they haven't. and they won't because they can't. Life is information-based, and information is not physical. Awareness is not physical. So consciousness requires a soul. God gave to plants a body, to animals a soul, and to men a spirit. God gave to plants only a body. So plants cannot feel pain. They cannot have relationships. They can't disapprove of the plucking of their fruit. And neither can a tree grieve the lopping off of its boughs. To some animals, God gave a body and a soul. a nephesh, a soul, of varying depths and quality, so that many animals can feel pain, relate, and can even have rudimentary emotions. To Adam and Eve, God gave a body, a soul, and a spirit, so that we can experience the full range of awareness, passion, and relationship, and especially so that we could come to know our Creator God. The magazine founded by Billy Graham, which has become increasingly worldly, Christianity Today, they promote theistic evolution. In their cover story titled The Search for the Historical Atom, which we reviewed on the air at Real Science Radio, you can hear that online at rsr.org, Christianity Today denies that God made Adam of the dust of the earth. Instead, they claim that Adam was a barrel of monkeys, literally. Well, they no longer take God's word literally, but they sure do take theistic evolution literally. And so they claim that about 200 ape-like creatures following Francis Collins and Biologos and the theistic evolution camp in many Christian circles They claim that about 200 ape-like creatures had evolved sufficiently by strictly natural means, of course, to where God could then put a spirit into them, and so Adam was really 200 ape men who all became human. That's what's being taught at our Christian colleges, and that's what was promoted by that issue of Christianity today. World-famous atheists have pointed out that such a claim destroys the gospel itself. And these are atheists pointing this out. Because if there was no curse at the tree, then why would Jesus become a curse on a tree? And if sin didn't enter the world through the first man, then the epistles are wrong on that too. Eight times the New Testament mentions Adam by name. by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, by three different New Testament authors. That's eight times. Twice, the Bible records Jesus Christ discussing the making of mankind, quote, at the beginning of creation. And by the way, not after millions of years, but at the beginning of creation, as Jesus said. And also, regardless of what perversion may be forthcoming from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding their current case, we're expecting their opinion in June, Jesus said that God made them male and female. at the beginning of the creation, male and female. There's so much truth, of course, in the words of the Lord. And just as the leading theistic evolutionists even reject intelligent design for compromise is never satisfied, so too Old Earth Christian colleges also deny the global flood, even though the New Testament presents Noah's flood as a historical event. The apostle Peter recalled that the Lord waited patiently, quote, in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. Now, the Roman Catholic Church wrongly claims that Peter was a pope. Yet because the Vatican rejects special creation, they also reject the flood. even ignoring their so-called first pope, who wrote, again, now in his second epistle, that God, quote, did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly. And Peter then essentially warned Pepperdine and all the churches of Christ and all the denominations and believers who named the name of the Lord. Peter warned all of us that in the last days, scoffers will claim that all things continue as they were, That sounds like Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin's uniformitarianism. All things, scoffers will claim, that all things will continue as they were, for this they willfully forget, that the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. The epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that, quote, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household. Wow. Jesus himself described the world before the flood. With the majority ignoring God until, as the Lord said, until the day that Noah entered the ark. This is Jesus speaking. Until the day that Noah entered the ark and... the flood came and took them all away. In fact, Jesus referenced each of the first seven chapters of Genesis, taking them literally, while every single author of the New Testament Every one of them referred to at least one of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. So when you step back, even if you are an unbeliever, you should be able to see that the secular world certainly doesn't have any robust theory of origins. And in fact, the few hypotheses that they did have are in full retreat. And if you are a Christian, or at least claim to be a Christian and step back to take in the big picture, you should be able to see that you have traded away God's special creation for what? for nothing, because without God there is nothing. Now for the seventh observation that makes our point that there are no secular theories of origins. And this one regards a scheme, a biological information scheme, in very general terms, by way of, again, what they call methodological naturalism, What is the materialist theory for how to originate the scheme to encode a protein sequence onto a DNA molecule? And that's supposed to be an instruction set for building that protein. Atheists have nothing to explain how that would have originated. You could search the literature all you'd like. You could immerse yourself in the RNA world. You could think of nothing but adenine and cytosine. The secular evolutionists, and thus also the leading theistic evolutionists, have not taken even a first baby step. In more than a half century since the DNA double helix was discovered, they have not taken even a baby step toward explaining how a symbolic scheme can arise from only matter and energy, by which information then could be encoded. Atheists and therefore all methodological naturalists, including Francis Collins and Biologos and Pepperdine, they have nothing. and without God's special creation. They will forever have nothing because an understanding of physics and information affirmatively demonstrates that the laws of physics do not include symbolic logic functions. Information is not physical and hence strictly material systems cannot give rise to information systems. Here's another way of stating this. Real Science Radio asserts that not a single journal paper has ever proposed even a vague theoretical method of how a scheme of biological information could have arisen by material processes. Now how can we say that? Have we surveyed the millions of published peer-reviewed papers? No, of course not. But we say that because just like it is impossible to even to think about how to give consciousness to a computer because it's such an impossible absurdity that it is literally unthinkable. You can't even think of how to do it. Okay? Give consciousness to a computer. So too, the idea of matter giving rise to a symbolic coding scheme is such an impossible absurdity that it is literally unthinkable. It is impossible even to propose a possible solution. So that goes beyond just saying that it's impossible. You know, it's impossible for someone to jump to the moon, right? But science fiction writers, they could imagine how to do it if it could be done. They'd get some super strong guy like the Hulk and have him jump as hard and as high as he can and aim for the moon. His leg muscles just need to generate an absurd amount of force and there he goes. Now let those same secular science fiction writers imagine how to give consciousness to a computer. I'm not saying that they haven't thought up plenty of hows and datas and Frankensteins, but I am saying that they have no way of even thinking about the problem of what you would have to do to bring consciousness, which is not physical, to a strictly material entity. They don't even know how to think about the problem. And likewise, they simply can't even think of how matter and energy can originate a symbolic information scheme, such as how to code the amino acid sequence of a protein into a database. Can't even think, begin to think of the solution to that problem from an evolutionary perspective. Before Matter could even try to come up with the scheme itself, and I realize all the absurdities in this, as though Matter is gonna try to do anything, but that's part of their problem. Before Matter could even have the opportunity to come up with the scheme itself, the symbolic scheme of encoding information, here are three prerequisites it would need to begin with. First, it would need a protein or some other life-enabling device. Second, it would need a database like an information molecule that could contain the instructions for building that protein. And by the way, it takes, what is it, now they've identified about 150 proteins to make one protein. So how do you solve that problem if you're an atheist or, like the professors at Pepperdine, if you're a methodological naturalist? How do you evolve some kind of stepwise problem process to create a protein when you need 150 proteins to make one protein. But anyway, so first you need a protein, then you need a database, and then three, you need a mechanism to implement the instructions to build the protein. So you need those prerequisites. And they are prerequisites because what could bring a genetic code into existence if no protein existed for it to build? And after all that, you still wouldn't have the symbolic code itself, even if you had all that. the symbolic code, the scheme that we're talking about, the manner of representing in the information molecule the instructions for building the protein. Materialists cannot answer this question because it is unanswerable, because information is not physical. Therefore, they don't even know how to think about a solution, let alone actually solving the problem. The nucleotides in our DNA, the rungs of the DNA ladder, they are genetic letters. They're not like letters. They are letters. They are genetic letters. And the order of those letters are not determined by the laws of physics, but by the...
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Hey, we are out of time. If you want to get the entire presentation, Trading Genesis, you can find that at rsr.org and then click on the store and check out the Trading Genesis video. You won't regret it. Hey, may God bless you guys.
Join us on a thought-provoking journey as we unravel the depths of scientific inquiry with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. With a background in biochemistry and a penchant for challenging established norms, Dr. Sheldrake explores concepts such as the variability of universal constants and the revolutionary idea of morphic resonance. Delve into discussions on the speed of light, the concept of dark matter, and the role of consciousness and belief systems in shaping scientific exploration. This episode promises to spark curiosity and inspire new perspectives.
SPEAKER 01 :
The usual scientific assumption is that all the laws of nature and all the constants of nature were fixed and emerged from nothing at the moment of the Big Bang, along with all the energy and matter in the universe. And as my friend Terence McKenna used to say, modern science is based on the principle, give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest. And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws of nature from nowhere in a single instant.
SPEAKER 04 :
I see what you did there. One free miracle. I love it.
SPEAKER 02 :
and DNA Scholars can't explain it all away Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keepin' it real
SPEAKER 05 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country. This is Real Science Radio. I'm Fred Williams.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I'm Doug McBurney, Bible student, science geek, amateur comedian. Fred, it is great to be back with you talking about real science on Friday.
SPEAKER 05 :
Today we have a very special guest joining us, an absolutely brilliant scientist. And it's none other than the renowned Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. He's coming to us from the United Kingdom. So welcome to Real Science Radio, Dr. Sheldrake. Good to be with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, yes, Dr. Sheldrake, I have been looking forward to this interview literally for years. Ever since I watched your video experiment with dogs and their owners, and it wasn't just watching the video, it was then doing a little bit of research and discovering the controversy around dogs. The intensive efforts to disprove anything you said. And you have quite a biography. And for time, I'll have to summarize for our audience. Dr. Sheldrake earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cambridge University. He is... an author or co-author of 15 books and more than 100 research papers. In fact, on ResearchGate, Dr. Sheldrake's research interest score, which combines the number of reads, recommendations, and citations, is in the top 4% of all scientists. Dr. Sheldrake is best known for his theory of morphic resonance and his ability to cause acute discomfort among those he's dubbed, quote, a scientific priesthood with an authoritarian mentality. And for time, I've left a great deal out, Dr. Sheldrake. Is there anything else in particular that you would like to add?
SPEAKER 01 :
I think that's enough to start with, Doug.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, Dr. Sheldrake, a couple years ago on one of our shows on the Universal Constance, we played a clip from a TED Talk that you had that apparently got banned. And I think it was on your book, The Science Delusion. And you questioned some dogmas in science, such as the Universal Constance. And at the time, we were particularly interested in your view on the speed of light and how it had, and I emphasize past tense, had changed in the past. Can you elaborate a little bit on that for our audience? Because there's a topic related to plasma cosmology that you may be familiar with that our audience tends to, we tend to have a view that the speed of light did change in the past.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I didn't come to this with any particular presuppositions, but I got interested in the so-called constants of nature because I thought this is a kind of dogmatic assumption that they're constant constants. Are they really? So, you know, I believe in empirical evidence. I took a look at the historical record. I had to go to the Patent Office Library in London because most libraries throw away the handbooks of physical constants when a new edition comes along. But fortunately, they kept them. So I managed to get them to get, you know, from the 1910s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. They brought them out from their reserve stock room, dusting them off. And I found that if you looked at the actual records, almost all the constants vary quite a lot, including the speed of light, which dropped by 20 kilometers per second between 1928 and 1945 all over the world. And the figures they were showing have tiny error bars. You know, it's not as if they had errors of 30 kilometers per second. They had errors of, you know, 0.001 kilometer per second. And so there's a huge change. Well, I went and talked to the head of metrology, the science that measures these things, at the National Physical Laboratory in London. I asked him about it, and he said he was a little bit embarrassed by it. He actually said, you've discovered perhaps the most embarrassing incident in the history of our science. So I said, well... How do you explain the fact that all around the world people were getting at 20 kilobytes per second lower than before? And I said, were they just fudging the results to get what they expected? He said, we don't like to use the word fudge. I thought, what do you prefer? He said, we prefer the more delicate phrase, intellectual phase locking. Anyway, well, I said, it changed in the past, so how do we know it's not going to change in the future? And he then said, it can't. And I said, why not? He said, we fixed it by definition. And he said, we've then defined the units of time and space, the meter and the second, in terms of light itself. So if the speed of light does change, no one will ever notice. Nobody will ever notice that. Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
So they tied the speed of light to the meter itself, and so you can never, ever detect another change in the speed of light. That's amazing.
SPEAKER 01 :
They fixed that one, but they haven't fixed the gravitational constant, which still varies quite a lot. And as I was leaving, he was very friendly. As I was leaving, he reached down to below his desk. There was a cardboard box down by his desk. He said... You might be interested in this. He said, these pamphlets have just come from the printers. He handed one to me and said, the latest values of the physical constants.
SPEAKER 05 :
That's amazing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, did he say that without a trace of irony? Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
So intellectual phase locking, is that because all these different people from different parts around the globe were coming up with the same numbers, and in order to fudge them, they had to all interlock? Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
there is that that's referring to i think he's just referring to the fact they had to they got the expected answer and gotcha that is they they correct their answers they discard outlying values that kind of thing and you know when they get the expected answer they just sort of stop the correction process so um you know that's basically what was going on apparently
SPEAKER 05 :
Gotcha. So are you aware of Barry Satterfield's idea that speed of light was faster in the past?
SPEAKER 01 :
I'm not sure if you've ever... No, I haven't actually, no.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, because I know I've listened to some of your stuff. Your intellect is incredible and you know so much about physics and like zero point energy. And so he believes zero point energy increased in the past so that the speed of light, it's like swimming through molasses. So... You know, we're creationists here and we believe, you know, that the universe isn't that old. It's, you know, seven, maybe 7,000 years old. But we have a real difficult time explaining distant starlight. And so he had come up with this idea that speed of light was faster in the past. And because of zero point energy increased, the light was traveling slower as that energy increased. And what was super interesting, and I wish I could get any physicist to work on this, is he's provided scientific data that the quantized red shifts that we see as we look out match the electron jumps, you know, the quantized differences in electrons in the atom. And I, you know, I haven't, had anyone really look into that to confirm if it's true. I just wanted to kind of run that by you and see what your thoughts are on that. And I wasn't sure, again, if you'd even heard of any of this before.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't, so I can't really comment on it. Well, how do you explain the redshift, or have you thought about the redshift? Well, I have thought about the redshift, yes. The theory, I mean, there's the standard theory, of course, that it's the recession of the Doppler effect. But I'm interested in the unconventional cosmologist Halton Arp. I don't know, is he on the radar?
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, yeah, they're definitely familiar with his work, yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. Well, as you know, he thinks that in quasars, they're creating new matter. He thinks that matter's being created all the time. It wasn't just in the Big Bang. And he thinks newly minted matter is being spat out of quasars. And newly minted matter has an intrinsic redshift because it takes time for the rest of the universe to register that it's there. And that sort of... It affects the redshift. So anyway, that's another theory of redshift, Halton Arp's newly minted matter theory. I'm sure there are others. Anyway, I quite like Arp and his ideas, so I've paid more attention to that than the others.
SPEAKER 05 :
Gotcha. So do you have an issue with dark matter as an explanatory device for why a galaxy's stars seem to be moving a lot faster than the amount of matter can allow?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I mean, dark matter I see as just a fudge factor invented by physicists to explain their equations. And basically, the stars and the galaxies don't behave as they're supposed to, according to standard gravitational theory. So they're able to make them fit. by adding in arbitrary amounts of dark matter, which is invisible and unobserved, just to make the equations balance. And, you know, it's like if you were dealing with a spreadsheet of an account and there are huge gaps in the account. It's like adding virtual money to fill in the holes. Or actually, banks do it all the time with quantitative easing. They just sort of create extra money. Well, dark matter, I see, is a kind of quantitative easing of matter within the universe to fit the facts.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Well, very well said. I've often observed that many of our atheist friends, they accuse us, Christians, creationists, of any time we don't know the answer, we just add God. and who they call magic, but we would say that there's an awful lot more evidence for the Creator, God, than there is for dark matter. I mean, you have the Jewish race persisting for 4,000 years through history, and the Christian religion persisting for 2,000 years in the face of not academic banishment, but actual execution, even crucifixion. And so there's an awful lot more evidence for what they call our fudge factor than what we recognize as their fudge factor. And I'm very encouraged that you recognize that as a fudge factor. That's encouraging to me.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. And I wanted to ask you, Dr. Sheldrake, so, you know, you've got your hypothesis on morphic resonance, but maybe for our audience, perhaps a backdrop that they may be interested in is I know you view yourself as a Trinitarian, you know, from a science point of view. And maybe if they had a better understanding of what you're referring to, I'd like to kind of jump into that a little bit before we talk about morphic resonance, which I think ties into this view.
SPEAKER 01 :
You mean my view on the Holy Trinity?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, no, not necessarily. But just your position as a Trinitarian, you know, that there's three different ways of explaining things. And, yeah, if you do have a view on the Holy Trinity, that would be awesome, too. But I'm thinking more along the lines of, is everything just matter and energy? Or is there a third element? You know, is there information? Is the mind and the consciousness separate? I know conscience is something that science has tried to deny for centuries. many decades, if not centuries. And I don't know, I guess I wanted to maybe start with you elaborating on where you come from on this particular topic of matter, energy, and information.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I prefer the word form to information because information is in-form-mation. It's that which puts form into things. And I think it's easier to think in terms of form, just form itself, you know, like the shape of flowers or the shape of an animal or a building or a chair. We're used to forms and information is a theory about how the form gets there. So I'd rather stick to form. But you see, basically, I think that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which I find a very helpful view, is that the ground of all being is consciousness. And the first revelation of God to Moses in the Old Testament, when Moses says, who are you? He says, I am who I am. Well, that's a definition of conscious being in the present, of conscious being, I am. it couldn't be simpler and clearer. But the doctrine of the Holy Trinity says that then in the Logos, the second person of the Holy Trinity, in the beginning was the Word. The word Logos, given its background in Greek philosophy and the fact that the New Testament is written in Greek, basically means forms, ideas. Hindus call it nama-rupa, names and forms. It's the principle of form or order in the universe. And then the Holy Spirit is the principle of movement or change. All the images of the Spirit are of movement and change. you know, wind blowing over the water, breath, flames of fire, flying birds, and so on. And so, basically, I think what it's saying is there's a ground of consciousness behind everything, and this is manifested through the Logos which comes before Jesus of Nazareth. I mean, it says in the Creed, through him all things were made. Well, All things weren't made through Jesus as Nazareth in AD 0. The whole universe, we differ no doubt how long we think it existed before Jesus, but it certainly existed before him in almost everyone's view. So I think that basically the principle of form, the Logos is the principle of form and order. And if we look in physics at what his view of matter and energy is, basically physics says that Matter itself is made of energy bound within fields. Fields are what in nature represents form, order, structure, and is what gives shape and structure to the universe. The gravitational field gives the spherical shape to the Sun and the Moon and the Earth and the stars. The electromagnetic fields and the quantum fields shape all matter and all things. So I think that there's a principle of form and there's a principle of energy. that moves through them. And what physics calls energy, I think, is the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit. So I see the whole universe as a manifestation of the divine, not just in an initial act of creation, but in the ongoing sustaining of the whole of nature as it is.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Yeah, you know, we've got a really good website, a webpage on number three. So it's called RSR brought to you by the number three. It's at rsr.org slash three. And it's really interesting because in the Bible, there's all kinds of references to number three. We could go through all kinds. Like, you know, the Hebrew scriptures are composed of three sections, the law, prophets, and writings. God created three archangels and, of course, the Trinity. And then you look at nature and you've got the number three, all over the place. I mean, you've got, you know, the universe exists in space, matter and time. Space itself exists in three dimensions, height, width, and length, as does time and past, present, future. And even matter appears to be a wave, a particle, and information. And it's interesting you bring up fields, because I know the late John Wheeler, and I'm sure you're familiar with him, he said his career was kind of broken into three parts. First particles, then fields, and then everything's information. So you've got a theory on, and if you can maybe get a little bit more into this theory of yours, morphic resonance, because it kind of ties into this, right? So your thought process behind developing that kind of ties into this Trinitarian view in a sense?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. I mean, I didn't have a Trinitarian view when I first developed Morphic Resonance. That sort of came later. I went through an atheist phase, like many scientists. Many are still in it. You know, I went through an atheist phase and I came back to a more spiritual view, partly through India, living and working in India, and actually through living and working in India, came back to a Christian path. I was actually confirmed in the Church of South India. And so I found my way back to a question via India. It's an unusual route, I know. But morphic resonance came earlier than that, and it came because I was trying to understand inheritance of form. I was working on the development of plants at Cambridge, doing research in developmental biology, and I was trying to understand how form is inherited. And I came to the conclusion that genes were grossly overrated. You know, people like Richard Dawkins were going around saying everything's shaped by selfish genes. I thought genes were very grossly overrated because what they do is code for the structure of proteins, the primary structure of proteins. They don't code for the shape of your face or the pattern on a bird's wings or the color of a butterfly's wings, the patterns on the wings. I thought form had to be inherited in some other way, and instincts which are like the habits of a species, its behavior. And I came up with the idea that if there's a memory in nature, if there's a direct connection across time, then many of these surprising puzzles could be explained. Now, most people don't see them as puzzles because they think genes explain it all. But I was a biochemist. I was teaching biochemistry. about DNA and molecular biology to students at Cambridge. And it wasn't as if I didn't know about this. I was personally quite friendly with Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA. I was sort of in the middle of that world, and I came to the conclusion it just wasn't enough. So the idea of morphic resonance is that there's a kind of collective memory in each species inherited directly through an influence from all the past members of the species. Each individual contributes to that collective memory and draws upon it. And so, in the most general sense, this suggests that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits. They develop through a kind of natural selection, but they're not like a kind of fixed Napoleonic code, as most scientists assume, that was given at the moment of the Big Bang. The usual scientific assumption is that all the laws of nature and all the constants of nature were fixed and emerged from nothing at the moment of the Big Bang, along with all the energy and matter in the universe. And as my friend Terence McKenna used to say, modern science is based on the principle, give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest. And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws of nature from nowhere in a single instant.
SPEAKER 04 :
I see what you did there. One free miracle. I love it.
SPEAKER 03 :
And they accuse us. I wanted to explore. this just a little bit you talk about a collective memory that strikes me as inherently materialist are you saying that there is a material that there is a collective memory that is stored in the material of things or are you referring to something spiritual
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, neither really. What I'm saying is that there's a collective memory which is not material, it's not stored in things. The idea that memory is stored in things, you see, treats the question of memory as if it's something in space. The question where is about something in space, where is it stored? So then you'd have an answer like in the brain or in the genes or something like that. But memory is a relationship in time, not in space. And what I'm suggesting is a direct connection across time, a resonance across time. We're used to the idea of resonance across space, as in radio waves, as in mobile telephones, as in acoustic resonance, and so on. electro-nuclear magnetic resonance as in scanning devices in medicine. All of these are resonance in space. But what I'm suggesting is a resonance in time from the past to the present based on similarity and that there's a direct connection. Now that's not the same as the spiritual realm because I think that this is the way in which all memory in nature works. I think everything in nature has a kind of memory underlying it. The so-called laws of nature have a kind of memory aspect. Even crystals and molecules have a kind of memory from previous crystals and molecules. So it's not spiritual in the sense it's not conscious and beyond nature or in a realm of spiritual freedom or anything. It's part of nature. but it's not part of nature as conceived by materialists who have on the one hand a belief in eternal non-material laws and on the other hand a kind of nature with no memory in it at all, kind of amnesic matter governed by material laws which are beyond nature. Basically their conception of natural laws is based on a kind of Greek Platonic philosophy of rational principles outside the universe. So, you know, it's not as if materialists don't believe in anything. They believe in some supernatural laws which are present at all times and in all places, utterly immutable and totally omnipotent. In fact, they have all the properties of God as traditionally conceived, and like God they're invisible. So it's not as if they don't believe in anything. They have their own very, very strong belief. What I'm saying is I think that belief is misconceived. I think it comes from a Greek philosophical assumption that ultimate reality is eternal and there's nothing changeable within, truly changeable within nature. Whereas I think the key feature of the whole Judeo-Christian tradition is that there's a developmental process in nature. Even though we disagree in our interpretation of the book of Genesis, it's clear that the whole universe isn't created at once. Those six days, whether they're days, eons, or ages, we don't need to discuss now, but it's a series of stages or processes, the creation story. It's a process, and the whole Old Testament shows a process, and the New Testament shows a process, a developmental process in time. And so the idea of evolution is, I think, a kind of generalization of the Judeo-Christian view of history as being an unfolding process in time, whereas Greek, Hindu, and Buddhist cosmologies see history as entirely cyclical, just repetitive cycles including reincarnation. Everything just goes in cycles with a kind of eternal basis. Whereas I think this key point of the Judeo-Christian tradition is this process view. And evolution, however one interprets it, or process, is a development in time. And I think that morphic resonance is part of that because it's... History is changed by what happens. I mean, Christians believe, and I believe as a Christian, that history and the destiny of humanity was changed through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And that changed things for everyone else thereafter. And I think there's a kind of memory process there. You see, it changes things. Yeah, that's interesting. No, I'm just saying I think morphic resonance is compatible with a view of developmental change in history and where what's happened in the past influences what happens now. And it differs from the conventional assumption that it all depends on eternal mathematical laws that are not affected by anything that actually happens.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it's interesting that in this discussion that you've weaved in kind of the Greek philosophy of immutability, because we could go off on a whole other tangent on that, you know, because we're not Calvinists here at Real Science Radio. But, you know, maybe what would help our audience on your hypothesis is some examples of what supports it, you know, some evidence that supports it. the idea of morphic resonance. And I think you've had examples of like how you can train rats to do something and then somehow rats across the globe learn the same thing without it being taught. It was taught locally and yet globally, rats kind of learn this technique or this new thing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, there was an actual experiment started at Harvard where they trained rats to escape from a water maze. They had to swim to the right exit. And it took them to start with more than 250 trials before they cottoned on and got it. Within about 25 generations, it only took them about 25 trials to learn. This rate of learning speeded up tenfold. They assumed that it was because of the inheritance of acquired characters, or what we now call epigenetic inheritance. But when this was checked out in Australia and in Scotland, they found their rats started off where the Harvard rats had left off, with about 25 arrows, and they got better and better. But not only did the rats descended from trained parents get better, but all the rats of that breed were getting better. Now that's what I'd expect with morphic resonance. If a lot of animals learn a new trick, all around the world it should be easier for others to learn it. If lots of humans learn something new, like programming computers, playing video games, surfboarding, snowboarding, it should get easier for others to learn it. And one line of evidence comes from the rather amazing fact that average intelligence in intelligence tests improved all over the world by about 30% over the course of the 20th century, not because people were getting 30% smarter, but because the tests were getting easier to do. And I think the tests were getting easier to do because so many people had done them. And right now, I have an experimental project going on to find out whether it gets easier every day for people to do the New York Times five-letter word puzzle, Wordle.
SPEAKER 05 :
Please tune in next week for the conclusion of our interview with the renowned Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.
SPEAKER 02 :
Scholars can't explain it all away. Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Tune into Real Science Radio. Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keepin' it real.
Join Bob Enyart and Fred Williams in this intriguing episode of Real Science Radio as they delve into the evidence supporting the reality of the global flood described in the Bible. Amidst common skepticism, our hosts present compelling arguments and authenticated scientific findings that challenge mainstream thoughts on the global flood. From sedimentary layers spread across continents to the fossil records' hidden testimonies, this episode is packed with enlightening details that reinforce the Biblical accounts of history. As they navigate through evidence tailored for both materialists and Christians, Bob and Fred discuss the presence of marine fossils on mountain tops and the implications of dinosaur soft tissue findings. Their engaging dialogue makes a case for interpretation of ancient narratives with modern scientific discoveries. Whether you're a skeptic or believer, prepare to reconsider your perspective on historical floods and what they entail for our understanding of ancient earth events. Furthermore, the episode explores the anthropological insights drawn from numerous cultures worldwide, each recounting its version of a catastrophic flood akin to that of Noah's Ark. Together, these pieces of evidence unravel a narrative written into the fabric of geological and cultural history, offering a fresh lens through which to view ancient and sacred texts.
SPEAKER 01 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country, and welcome to Bob and Your Life. Today, we are going back to an episode of Real Science Radio, and this is evidence for the global flood, the global flood that wasn't just some allegorical tale. That was true history, the history of the Bible, the history of reality. The Bible, the Genesis, it is a literal telling of history. It is not just allegorical. We can trust the Word of God. And here is scientific evidence for the global flood in the Word of God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Scholars can't explain it all away.
SPEAKER 1 :
Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God. Tune into Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 02 :
Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 03 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country. Welcome to Real Science Radio. I'm Bob Enyart. And I'm Fred Williams, creation speaker and software engineer. Well, this is RSR's list of evidence for the global flood.
SPEAKER 04 :
But wait, Bob. There is no evidence for a global flood. There is no evidence. I mean, if I could count the number of times. If I was given a dollar for every time I heard that through my life.
SPEAKER 03 :
There's no evidence for a global flood. Speaking on creation. It's so funny. Mars, NASA says maybe Mars had a global flood. or hemisphere, it's bone dry up there. I mean, there's some water, but it's like a desert. Yeah, it's amazing how they can find a global flood there, but not on Earth. Earth is covered like 70% of average of two miles deep in water, and no, it's impossible for there to be a global flood on Earth. So, Fred, this will be so fun, and this show is a long time coming. We should have done this years ago. Could you believe we have never done a show...
SPEAKER 04 :
A list of the evidence for the global flood. Of all our list shows, that is amazing. And this is a really long and it's a really fun list. So you'll find that we've divided this show into two sections. Evidence for materialists and evidence for Christians. And the reason is because the folks in each of these camps, they tend to want to consider different kinds of evidence.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that's true. The New Testament... says that faith is the evidence of things not seen. That's such a cool teaching. It is really cool.
SPEAKER 04 :
So many people think faith is blind, and it's not. The Bible defines faith as evidence.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so later, as we get to the second half of the list, Fred, you said the evidence for Christians, then let's talk a bit about the use of of evidence for God's existence, right? There's the whole presuppositional versus evidentialist debate. So let's talk about that as compared to presupposing God's existence. But this, of course, is not theism. This is evidence for the global flood. And they say there's no evidence that So we're going to have a fun list of no evidence. That's right. A field day. So to begin with our evidence for the materialist, Fred, across the world, when you look at the continents, there is an average of a mile deep of sedimentary layers on the continents. Sedimentary layers. These are rock layers where the sediments, they were laid down by water. Laid down by water and they're a mile thick everywhere. All over the earth. So you have hundreds of different layers. They add up to an average of a mile on the continents all over the earth. And many of those sedimentary layers are regional in extent. It's all over the continents. Yeah. Have you heard of the Grand Canyon? Yeah. Have you been there? A dozen times. Oh, wow. Rafting, camping, researching. Fred, we have June is Grand Canyon Month at Real Science Radio coming up in just a couple weeks. It's going to be the greatest month. Oh, that's awesome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. But yeah, the Grand Canyon has millions of years of layers.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that's right. Right? So those layers are a huge extent. They go through a major region. of the continental U.S. So that's our first piece of evidence for a global flood, that there's an average of a mile deep of sedimentary layers on the continents, and they're massive. Some of them are 500 feet or thicker in thickness. Many of them have great purity. And their boundaries are often flat. Maybe we'll talk about that later. Yep, flat gaps. And they're regional in extent. So all over the world, mile deep, sedimentary layers. That's exhibit number one entered into evidence for the prosecution.
SPEAKER 04 :
That's right. And this next one is a famous statement coined by none other than Ken Ham of billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water in strata all over the earth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, the fossil record. And when he says billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water, yeah, that's right, billions. And then, of course, there's the microorganisms. Yeah, there are billions of fossils. And the way fossils form, it's not just an organism keels over dead and then turns into rock. No, typically it's something that happens naturally. very fast, and there's often fossil graveyards where there's thousands or millions of dead organisms all broken up and jumbled up all together.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and not only that, many of them are buried alive. We have evidence for that that we can talk about later.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, so many. It's so typical. You've got fish that were fossilized in the process of eating other fish. Yep. And fish fossilized in the process of giving birth. Now, that's rough. That is. That's a tough one. Yep. Right? So, yeah, the fossil record is evidence of catastrophism. And of rapidity. Something happened very quickly to billions of organisms to turn them into stone. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Clams are in the closed position often. And, you know, those things in my fish tank, they're alive when they're closed. If they're open, that's not good because that means they're dead and other fish have eaten them.
SPEAKER 03 :
So when they die, the clams open. They do. Yeah. And there's got to be billions of clams in the fossil record, just clams. Oh, yeah. And the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado out to the west of our studios here in the foothills of the Rockies, we call that Clam National Monument because there are way more clams than there are dinosaurs. So, yeah, you've got a mixture of marine and land organisms in fossil graveyards and where you find fossils all over the earth. Yep. You can find them at Home Depot in the gravel. Wow. And then our third piece of evidence. A documented extinction, they call it the Permian extinction, an extinction event that that destroyed 90% of all the species that lived in the oceans.
SPEAKER 1 :
90%?
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, they say the extinction event lasted a long period of time, but they say it was a single event. They say everything lasted a long period of time.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, long ages is their rescue device, their hero, the hero of the plot, as they call it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, it's their knee-jerk reaction. Like, how long does it take for opals to form? Oh, 100,000 years, maybe a million years. Then they actually find out how they formed. Oh, we were wrong. It takes about six or seven weeks. It takes a couple months, and you've got opals, a never-ending supply because they're made by microorganisms with wet sand on a couple beaches in Australia. So you go from a million years to six or seven weeks. Wow. And that's because of their knee-jerk reaction. Everything is millions of years. But the point here is that the Permian extinction is recognized by scientists around the world as an event that occurred in the oceans that destroyed 90% of all the species in existence. And so if there's a global flood, With all that turmoil of their ecosystem, all the upheaval, it's not surprising that 90% of all marine species have gone extinct in a single event.
SPEAKER 04 :
They have. They're documented extinction. They call it Permian extinction.
SPEAKER 03 :
We call it the history of the global flood as documented in the Bible. Right. In Genesis, God's word, it's the global flood in the days of Noah. Yep. When he built the ark, as Jesus said, as Peter said, the Apostle Peter, as is affirmed in the New Testament. Yep.
SPEAKER 04 :
This next one. Do you know that there's sufficient water in our two mile deep oceans to cover the entire earth? Whoa. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
People say, where's the water for the global flood? Well, those who say there's not enough water on Earth, it is funny. In fact, we'll link to NASA and their Noacon Epoch, where they say on Mars, Mars was once flooded. And they say it's a hemisphere flood. Like hemisphere, like maybe half the planet, maybe more, was flooded. And it is bone dry. It's a desert up there. I mean, they found water on Mars a thousand times. Yeah. It's not the kind of water that you go jet ski in. Exactly. Right. So NASA, and that means pretty much all the secular scientists, they're like sheeple. They believe that there could have been a global or a near global flood on Mars that but there's not enough water on earth for a global flood. So the global flood model is that in the pre-flood world, the mountains were not as high as the mountains are today because the Bible says that the mountains rose up and the valley sunk down. In a day, this happened as a result of the global flood. So when the mountains were more modest in the initial creation, when everything was perfect... then there's plenty of water on the surface of the earth today to flood the pre-flood mountains.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, if you took the mountains and collapsed everything, the water would cover the whole earth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, exactly. And you could still have relatively high mountains, just not like today.
SPEAKER 04 :
That's right. And I think all you could do is jet ski. You certainly couldn't play a lot of football, you know, a lot of land sports. Wait a minute. Oh, during the flood? No, if you shrunk all the mountains and just flattened the earth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. Well, then water would cover everything. It would. Right. If you leveled out the surface of the earth, yeah, then it would all be covered by water. Exactly. So, Fred, our fifth piece of evidence, all major mountain ranges have marine fossils on their summits. Now, there are major mountains all over the world, and they have clams up on the tops of the mountains.
SPEAKER 04 :
Buried alive, by the way.
SPEAKER 03 :
Buried alive. And not buried on volcanoes, obviously. Oh, yeah. We're not talking about volcanic mountain ranges, obviously. Yeah. We're talking about where the earth compressed and the mountains were raised up. And so, in fact, there's a documentary showing just like this month called Everest. And they point out that on the very summit of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, Now, not if you go from the center of the earth. If you go from sea level. Yeah, from sea level. If you go from the center of the earth, what is it? It's in South America because of how the earth bulges near the equator. Maybe it's in Columbia. But from sea level, the tallest mountain on earth, Mount Everest, has in this documentary. It's so fun. They're like, here's these marine fossils on the very summit, on the very top of Mount Everest.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think this is a good time, Bob, to remind our audience that there is no evidence for a global flood. There's no evidence. So we find fossils close... Buried alive on all the major mountain ranges, excluding volcanoes, on Mount Everest, on Mount Longs Peak, Hikes Peak, you name it. We find fossils, marine fossils that are buried on these mountains, and yet there's no evidence for a global flood.
SPEAKER 03 :
No evidence for a global flood. The average mile-deep sedimentary layers on the continents, no evidence for a global flood. Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the Earth, no evidence for a global flood. 90% of all the species in the oceans going extinct in a single event, no evidence for a global flood. Two mile-deep oceans that could cover the Earth, no evidence for a global flood. All the major mountain ranges have marine fossils on their summits. No evidence for a global flood.
SPEAKER 04 :
And number six, no evidence for a global flood is dinosaur soft tissue. I think we've talked about that one before.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. That's so much fun, right? That when they break open dinosaur bones and so many other species, kinds of animals, they Dozens of different kinds of creatures. They're finding soft tissue that still exists. It's still, for example, with the T-Rex, they have T-Rex blood cells. Yeah, it's not fully fossilized. Right. Tyrannosaurus Rex blood vessels they have. Original material. A dozen different proteins from a dozen kinds of dinosaurs and countless other organisms that They find it in skin. They find it in feathers. They find it in embryos, fossil embryos. And we have documented all this, rsr.org slash dinosaur. And when you go there, the very first link goes to a Google spreadsheet, a Google Docs spreadsheet. Fred, we're up to now about 100, 100. Wow. Wow. 1.8 billion years old, it's like, come on. Yeah. Cut us a break. Yep. These soft tissue fossils, original biomaterial fossils, they're not millions of years old. They're more equivalent to the soft tissue that's still in mummies. If you take Egyptian mummies, break open their bones, you'll find little bits of DNA. You'll find proteins, little bits here and there. It's not all decomposed. Well, dinosaur bones and all the rest of the fossils, it's very similar to the amount of decomposition you get from Egyptian mummies. I mean, this soft tissue is all documented in the world's leading science journals. That's right. And the ones who deny it are disappearing. Almost no one any longer denies dinosaur soft tissue.
SPEAKER 04 :
It's like when Mary Schweitzer asked this one guy, well, what would convince you, you know, when all this stuff first came out? And he said nothing. No matter what, his mind was made up. Dinosaurs are millions of years old. There's no way this is original biological material. Nothing will convince him. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, anyway, that's our sixth piece of evidence. And, you know, you mentioned DNA. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I know one thing that's kind of becoming a fossil in itself is Rational Wiki. It should be called Irrational Wiki. Yeah. I guarantee you they still... The eight-piece website. Yeah. They still say that there's no DNA been found in dinosaur bones. And if there was, it would be evidence for...
SPEAKER 03 :
A young Earth. And now we have DNA from a hadrosaur and a T-Rex. So they provided a test. Great. A scientific test.
SPEAKER 04 :
We could falsify or confirm the theory.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, we have that link to Rational Wiki, whatever the atheist website. On our website, rsr.org slash STDs. Oh, yeah. STDS. Because soft tissue deniers, and they're science deniers, right? Yeah. Soft tissue deniers. Okay. Next piece of evidence. anthropological cataloging of hundreds of cultures. Fred, I used to say 100 cultures. It's now hundreds of cultures with an ancient corporate recollection of a flood that
SPEAKER 04 :
And their accounts have so many similarities. It really is truly amazing. I mean, I really like the Chinese account. Their varied language, the characters in their language, because their language is, you know, those pictograms. Oh, yeah. And you break them apart, and then you get the meanings of words.
SPEAKER 03 :
So they have one pictograph, which is... The number eight and mouth. Eight mouths to feed. And that's their symbol for a vessel, for a ship. Eight mouths to feed. Because on Noah's Ark, there were eight people. So the pictograph in the ancient Chinese pictographs for a ship is the number eight, the symbol for mouth, eight mouths to feed, and a vessel. It could be a vessel like a bowl or something. So eight mouths to feed in a vessel, that's how they wrote ship, boat. Yeah. And that comes right out of Genesis.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, yeah. It was so interesting about that is I presented that evidence once to a class at church when I was going through some creation stuff. And a lady there who had been to China, she's not from China, she's American, but spent like 10 years there, definitely an older. There was definitely skeptical of some of the things I was saying. She immediately said, oh, that's not the number eight. I know Chinese very well.
SPEAKER 03 :
The Chinese symbol. Yes. She said, that's not the number eight.
SPEAKER 04 :
I'm fluent in Chinese. And I'm like, okay. I was like, I'll look into this. Yeah. You know, I feel like my source is reliable, but definitely I'll look into this and I'll get back to you. Well, at that time, I just started working at Trimble. And my manager was a PhD scientist from China. Yeah, that's awesome. This lady named Kuang Yi Chin. And I asked her, I said, Kuang Yi, you know, I have this issue. I just want to ask you about the number eight. And I showed her the symbol. And she goes – and I told her, you know, this lady said that that's not the number eight. And she goes, well, no, it's not. And I'm like, oh. You know, I'm kind of like, oh. It's scary. But she goes, but it used to be. Oh, right, right. It used to be. It was the ancient version of the number eight. Just like how our language deteriorates over time or changes over time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
It's like the King James. There's so much you can't read out of there because, you know, our languages, you know, change.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly. In language – is the greatest monument to a culture. The fact that there's a book called Discovery in Genesis, and there's been a lot of research since that book was published, but so many of the significant words in ancient Chinese came from the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis, right up to the dispersion at Babel.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it's truly amazing.
SPEAKER 03 :
So Fred, of these hundreds of cultures with an ancient corporate recollection of the flood, they have so many similar details. Like there was a flood that would be so bad that it would kill all the animals and you had to have a vessel that saved some people and some of the animals. Some of the accounts like the ancient Babylonians, the guy who was their Noah released a bird And waited for the bird to come back to see if they could get out of the boat. And the similarities all over the world are stunning. There's a worldwide recollection of a global flood that has been documented not by creationists. but by secular anthropologists in their own texts. That's right.
SPEAKER 04 :
And what's so cool about the biblical account, it's the only one of all of these accounts that when it describes Noah's Ark, it's scientifically accurate. It actually is a boat that can float. In fact, it's built for stability. Shipmakers will tell you that. The dimensions for the ark are perfect for stability. Whereas I think the Babylonian account, it's a cube-shaped
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. I mean, you were very unstable. The animals inside a wave comes. Everybody's going 90 degrees over.
SPEAKER 04 :
You better have lots of motion sickness.
SPEAKER 03 :
They're going to start rolling. Yeah. You're on your head, on your feet, on your head, on your feet. So, right. The Bible's account is the most matter of fact account of all these accounts. And it's scientifically plausible. So now we're up to our eighth piece of evidence for the global flood.
SPEAKER 04 :
And that is the extent of stratigraphic layers of regional and continental scope.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and I mentioned this earlier, Fred, but you've got layers, strata, that will go for thousands of square miles. And so if the old earther, the uniformitarian, wants to say that this was the result of a local flood... So you have at the Grand Canyon, the red wall limestone covers thousands of square miles. It's 500 to 800 feet thick. And it's part of an unbroken series of all these other strata with no erosion between the strata. And it goes for thousands of square miles.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it's amazing.
SPEAKER 03 :
What kind of a local flood is this that has regional and continental-wide stratigraphic layers? That's some local flood.
SPEAKER 04 :
Lots of huge local floods.
SPEAKER 03 :
It just doesn't work. It's a global flood. And so our next piece of evidence, and it's related, and here we focus on the flat gaps. And we could talk about as it's exposed in the Grand Canyon, but this is true in sedimentary strata layers. Characteristically, in places all over the earth, they show no evidence of what should be millions of years of relentless erosion. But instead, the boundaries are flat gaps. They're flat gaps.
SPEAKER 04 :
And we've talked before about how water is the universal solvent.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Right. And we've talked about cavitation. Oh, brother, all the things that water can do, right, to rocks. And, in fact, what I'd like to embed in this show summary, Fred, is a photo of the Grand Canyon with an arrow pointing down. to one of the layers. You know, you could throw a dart at any of the layers, and the boundaries are flat for as far as the eye can see. But one of them in particular, the USGS, the National Park Service, indeed pretty much all old earth geologists, they say right at that boundary, perfectly flat, like a laminated piece of wood, or like a layer cake, right at that boundary... There's 100 million years missing. Now, it looks just like all the other boundaries, flat gap, no evidence of erosion, no evidence of deposition, flat. But they look at the fossils that are below that boundary and the fossils above it, and they say, well, we know that there was 100 million years of evolution, but there's no evidence for it here. So they say the entire Ordovician and Silurian periods are just missing. With what? With no erosion? Yeah. Come on.
SPEAKER 04 :
Erosion is relentless. I like what Dr. Ariel Roth said on this. Now, he's like so many scientists, you know, they were brainwashed into believing evolution. He's got a PhD from Michigan in biology. Well, he's a creationist now. And this is what he said about these flat gaps that you find all over the place and really fascinating. cool in the Grand Canyon. You have a great picture of him there. He said this, in fact, according to average erosion rates, many or all of the layers should be gone. Since they are there and flat, this indicates that the millions of years postulated for these gaps never occurred. These flat gaps are so common that they pretty much challenge the validity of the whole geologic time scale.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, just the fact that they're flat gaps means Now, geologists, they might rarely call them flat gaps, but what they call them is paraconformities. They're paraconformities. You could look it up on the internet, look it on Wikipedia. Don't trust Wikipedia, but you could look on Wikipedia if it's sourced correctly. But these are parallel strata with no erosion. There's no evidence of erosion. Fred, if you travel... We have gone studying the Bible to Europe. We've gone to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel. And you'll find cities that today are desolate, including in Egypt. We did our evidence for the Exodus. Cities that are gone in one major reason is because of the change of the terrain. Erosion has decimated cultures. And we're talking about in 1,000 or 2,000 years. Imagine a million years of erosion.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Then 100 million leaving no trace.
SPEAKER 04 :
And just everywhere where we see how solvent water is, how powerful water is, how it can cut through rock like – knife through butter and that depends on the circumstances but it certainly erodes rock well here i had to there's a quote from nature magazine about this cavitation that collapsed bubble temps can rise as high as 27 000 fahrenheit which is as hot as the surface of a bright star that's the power of water people don't realize that right and that's when there's
SPEAKER 03 :
For example, if there's a natural dam that breaches and there's a flood and you get cavitation, those tiny, almost microscopic bubbles that burst.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
With all of them going. Right. And because of their surface area and. Yeah, the physics of erosion with water, water destroys things. It doesn't leave layers of soft rock because these sedimentary layers are mostly soft rock, perfectly undisturbed for millions of years.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I liked your analogy of layered cake. I mean, that's what these sedimentary layers are like.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. It's really pretty. Yeah, and I'll put an image in also of laminated wood. That's what the Grand Canyon looks like. It looks like flat, laminated layers. When I stand on the South Rim or the North Rim, and I love to talk to tourists. I get addicted to it. I talk to the guides, the rangers. I talk to the park employees. And I'll ask them, look across the Grand Canyon. You're looking 10, 20 miles away. Look at that wall one mile deep. Look at all the flat boundaries between them. For as far as the eye could see, why is there no erosion? Why are they not all irregular? And their eyes get real wide. And they say, why? As soon as you bring it up, it's obvious it should all be irregular. So these layers at the Grand Canyon were laid down rapidly. Now, Fred, a tangent on this, maybe we should make this like our 10th piece of evidence. In that red wall limestone at the Grand Canyon, I did my own calculation to see how quickly an inch of that stuff would form because they don't like to talk about that. They'll tell you the age of the layer below the red wall and the age of the layer right above the red wall. Well, when you take that, subtract one from the other, you get that it took like 38 million years for the red wall limestone to be deposited.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, we are out of time. If you want to catch the rest of this broadcast, you can find it online by going to RSR, that stands for Real Science Radio, rsr.org slash flood. Again, that's rsr.org slash flood to get the rest of this broadcast. Hey, may God bless you guys.
In this thought-provoking episode, Real Science Radio hosts Fred Williams and Doug McBurney engage with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a renowned scientist known for his bold challenge to scientific norms. The conversation explores the historical variability of scientific constants and the concept of morphic resonance, suggesting a world where nature’s laws are seen as habits rather than immutable codes. Delve into the deep philosophical discussions that connect scientific findings with broader metaphysical and spiritual concepts.
SPEAKER 01 :
The usual scientific assumption is that all the laws of nature and all the constants of nature were fixed and emerged from nothing at the moment of the Big Bang, along with all the energy and matter in the universe. And as my friend Terence McKenna used to say, modern science is based on the principle, give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest. And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws of nature from nowhere in a single instant.
SPEAKER 04 :
I see what you did there. One free miracle. I love it.
SPEAKER 02 :
and DNA Scholars can't explain it all away Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keepin' it real
SPEAKER 05 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country. This is Real Science Radio. I'm Fred Williams.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I'm Doug McBurney, Bible student, science geek, amateur comedian. Fred, it is great to be back with you talking about real science on Friday.
SPEAKER 05 :
Today we have a very special guest joining us, an absolutely brilliant scientist. And it's none other than the renowned Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. He's coming to us from the United Kingdom. So welcome to Real Science Radio, Dr. Sheldrake. Good to be with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, yes, Dr. Sheldrake, I have been looking forward to this interview literally for years. Ever since I watched your video experiment with dogs and their owners, and it wasn't just watching the video, it was then doing a little bit of research and discovering the controversy around dogs. The intensive efforts to disprove anything you said. And you have quite a biography. And for time, I'll have to summarize for our audience. Dr. Sheldrake earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cambridge University. He is... an author or co-author of 15 books and more than 100 research papers. In fact, on ResearchGate, Dr. Sheldrake's research interest score, which combines the number of reads, recommendations, and citations, is in the top 4% of all scientists. Dr. Sheldrake is best known for his theory of morphic resonance and his ability to cause acute discomfort among those he's dubbed, quote, a scientific priesthood with an authoritarian mentality. And for time, I've left a great deal out, Dr. Sheldrake. Is there anything else in particular that you would like to add?
SPEAKER 01 :
I think that's enough to start with, Doug.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, Dr. Sheldrake, a couple years ago on one of our shows on the Universal Constance, we played a clip from a TED Talk that you had that apparently got banned. And I think it was on your book, The Science Delusion. And you questioned some dogmas in science, such as the Universal Constance. And at the time, we were particularly interested in your view on the speed of light and how it had, and I emphasize past tense, had changed in the past. Can you elaborate a little bit on that for our audience? Because there's a topic related to plasma cosmology that you may be familiar with that our audience tends to, we tend to have a view that the speed of light did change in the past.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I didn't come to this with any particular presuppositions, but I got interested in the so-called constants of nature because I thought this is a kind of dogmatic assumption that they're constant constants. Are they really? So, you know, I believe in empirical evidence. I took a look at the historical record. I had to go to the Patent Office Library in London because most libraries throw away the handbooks of physical constants when a new edition comes along. But fortunately, they kept them. So I managed to get them to get, you know, from the 1910s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. They brought them out from their reserve stock room, dusting them off. And I found that if you looked at the actual records, almost all the constants vary quite a lot, including the speed of light, which dropped by 20 kilometers per second between 1928 and 1945 all over the world. And the figures they were showing have tiny error bars. You know, it's not as if they had errors of 30 kilometers per second. They had errors of, you know, 0.001 kilometer per second. And so there's a huge change. Well, I went and talked to the head of metrology, the science that measures these things, at the National Physical Laboratory in London. I asked him about it, and he said he was a little bit embarrassed by it. He actually said, you've discovered perhaps the most embarrassing incident in the history of our science. So I said, well... How do you explain the fact that all around the world people were getting at 20 kilobytes per second lower than before? And I said, were they just fudging the results to get what they expected? He said, we don't like to use the word fudge. I thought, what do you prefer? He said, we prefer the more delicate phrase, intellectual phase locking. Anyway, well, I said, it changed in the past, so how do we know it's not going to change in the future? And he then said, it can't. And I said, why not? He said, we fixed it by definition. And he said, we've then defined the units of time and space, the meter and the second, in terms of light itself. So if the speed of light does change, no one will ever notice. Nobody will ever notice that. Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
So they tied the speed of light to the meter itself, and so you can never, ever detect another change in the speed of light. That's amazing.
SPEAKER 01 :
They fixed that one, but they haven't fixed the gravitational constant, which still varies quite a lot. And as I was leaving, he was very friendly. As I was leaving, he reached down to below his desk. There was a cardboard box down by his desk. He said... You might be interested in this. He said, these pamphlets have just come from the printers. He handed one to me and said, the latest values of the physical constants.
SPEAKER 05 :
That's amazing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, did he say that without a trace of irony? Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
So intellectual phase locking, is that because all these different people from different parts around the globe were coming up with the same numbers, and in order to fudge them, they had to all interlock? Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
there is that that's referring to i think he's just referring to the fact they had to they got the expected answer and gotcha that is they they correct their answers they discard outlying values that kind of thing and you know when they get the expected answer they just sort of stop the correction process so um you know that's basically what was going on apparently
SPEAKER 05 :
Gotcha. So are you aware of Barry Satterfield's idea that speed of light was faster in the past?
SPEAKER 01 :
I'm not sure if you've ever... No, I haven't actually, no.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, because I know I've listened to some of your stuff. Your intellect is incredible and you know so much about physics and like zero point energy. And so he believes zero point energy increased in the past so that the speed of light, it's like swimming through molasses. So... You know, we're creationists here and we believe, you know, that the universe isn't that old. It's, you know, seven, maybe 7,000 years old. But we have a real difficult time explaining distant starlight. And so he had come up with this idea that speed of light was faster in the past. And because of zero point energy increased, the light was traveling slower as that energy increased. And what was super interesting, and I wish I could get any physicist to work on this, is he's provided scientific data that the quantized red shifts that we see as we look out match the electron jumps, you know, the quantized differences in electrons in the atom. And I, you know, I haven't, had anyone really look into that to confirm if it's true. I just wanted to kind of run that by you and see what your thoughts are on that. And I wasn't sure, again, if you'd even heard of any of this before.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't, so I can't really comment on it. Well, how do you explain the redshift, or have you thought about the redshift? Well, I have thought about the redshift, yes. The theory, I mean, there's the standard theory, of course, that it's the recession of the Doppler effect. But I'm interested in the unconventional cosmologist Halton Arp. I don't know, is he on the radar?
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, yeah, they're definitely familiar with his work, yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. Well, as you know, he thinks that in quasars, they're creating new matter. He thinks that matter's being created all the time. It wasn't just in the Big Bang. And he thinks newly minted matter is being spat out of quasars. And newly minted matter has an intrinsic redshift because it takes time for the rest of the universe to register that it's there. And that sort of... It affects the redshift. So anyway, that's another theory of redshift, Halton Arp's newly minted matter theory. I'm sure there are others. Anyway, I quite like Arp and his ideas, so I've paid more attention to that than the others.
SPEAKER 05 :
Gotcha. So do you have an issue with dark matter as an explanatory device for why a galaxy's stars seem to be moving a lot faster than the amount of matter can allow?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I mean, dark matter I see as just a fudge factor invented by physicists to explain their equations. And basically, the stars and the galaxies don't behave as they're supposed to, according to standard gravitational theory. So they're able to make them fit. by adding in arbitrary amounts of dark matter, which is invisible and unobserved, just to make the equations balance. And, you know, it's like if you were dealing with a spreadsheet of an account and there are huge gaps in the account. It's like adding virtual money to fill in the holes. Or actually, banks do it all the time with quantitative easing. They just sort of create extra money. Well, dark matter, I see, is a kind of quantitative easing of matter within the universe to fit the facts.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Well, very well said. I've often observed that many of our atheist friends, they accuse us, Christians, creationists, of any time we don't know the answer, we just add God. and who they call magic, but we would say that there's an awful lot more evidence for the Creator, God, than there is for dark matter. I mean, you have the Jewish race persisting for 4,000 years through history, and the Christian religion persisting for 2,000 years in the face of not academic banishment, but actual execution, even crucifixion. And so there's an awful lot more evidence for what they call our fudge factor than what we recognize as their fudge factor. And I'm very encouraged that you recognize that as a fudge factor. That's encouraging to me.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. And I wanted to ask you, Dr. Sheldrake, so, you know, you've got your hypothesis on morphic resonance, but maybe for our audience, perhaps a backdrop that they may be interested in is I know you view yourself as a Trinitarian, you know, from a science point of view. And maybe if they had a better understanding of what you're referring to, I'd like to kind of jump into that a little bit before we talk about morphic resonance, which I think ties into this view.
SPEAKER 01 :
You mean my view on the Holy Trinity?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, no, not necessarily. But just your position as a Trinitarian, you know, that there's three different ways of explaining things. And, yeah, if you do have a view on the Holy Trinity, that would be awesome, too. But I'm thinking more along the lines of, is everything just matter and energy? Or is there a third element? You know, is there information? Is the mind and the consciousness separate? I know conscience is something that science has tried to deny for centuries. many decades, if not centuries. And I don't know, I guess I wanted to maybe start with you elaborating on where you come from on this particular topic of matter, energy, and information.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I prefer the word form to information because information is in-form-mation. It's that which puts form into things. And I think it's easier to think in terms of form, just form itself, you know, like the shape of flowers or the shape of an animal or a building or a chair. We're used to forms and information is a theory about how the form gets there. So I'd rather stick to form. But you see, basically, I think that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which I find a very helpful view, is that the ground of all being is consciousness. And the first revelation of God to Moses in the Old Testament, when Moses says, who are you? He says, I am who I am. Well, that's a definition of conscious being in the present, of conscious being, I am. it couldn't be simpler and clearer. But the doctrine of the Holy Trinity says that then in the Logos, the second person of the Holy Trinity, in the beginning was the Word. The word Logos, given its background in Greek philosophy and the fact that the New Testament is written in Greek, basically means forms, ideas. Hindus call it nama-rupa, names and forms. It's the principle of form or order in the universe. And then the Holy Spirit is the principle of movement or change. All the images of the Spirit are of movement and change. you know, wind blowing over the water, breath, flames of fire, flying birds, and so on. And so, basically, I think what it's saying is there's a ground of consciousness behind everything, and this is manifested through the Logos which comes before Jesus of Nazareth. I mean, it says in the Creed, through him all things were made. Well, All things weren't made through Jesus as Nazareth in AD 0. The whole universe, we differ no doubt how long we think it existed before Jesus, but it certainly existed before him in almost everyone's view. So I think that basically the principle of form, the Logos is the principle of form and order. And if we look in physics at what his view of matter and energy is, basically physics says that Matter itself is made of energy bound within fields. Fields are what in nature represents form, order, structure, and is what gives shape and structure to the universe. The gravitational field gives the spherical shape to the Sun and the Moon and the Earth and the stars. The electromagnetic fields and the quantum fields shape all matter and all things. So I think that there's a principle of form and there's a principle of energy. that moves through them. And what physics calls energy, I think, is the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit. So I see the whole universe as a manifestation of the divine, not just in an initial act of creation, but in the ongoing sustaining of the whole of nature as it is.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Yeah, you know, we've got a really good website, a webpage on number three. So it's called RSR brought to you by the number three. It's at rsr.org slash three. And it's really interesting because in the Bible, there's all kinds of references to number three. We could go through all kinds. Like, you know, the Hebrew scriptures are composed of three sections, the law, prophets, and writings. God created three archangels and, of course, the Trinity. And then you look at nature and you've got the number three, all over the place. I mean, you've got, you know, the universe exists in space, matter and time. Space itself exists in three dimensions, height, width, and length, as does time and past, present, future. And even matter appears to be a wave, a particle, and information. And it's interesting you bring up fields, because I know the late John Wheeler, and I'm sure you're familiar with him, he said his career was kind of broken into three parts. First particles, then fields, and then everything's information. So you've got a theory on, and if you can maybe get a little bit more into this theory of yours, morphic resonance, because it kind of ties into this, right? So your thought process behind developing that kind of ties into this Trinitarian view in a sense?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. I mean, I didn't have a Trinitarian view when I first developed Morphic Resonance. That sort of came later. I went through an atheist phase, like many scientists. Many are still in it. You know, I went through an atheist phase and I came back to a more spiritual view, partly through India, living and working in India, and actually through living and working in India, came back to a Christian path. I was actually confirmed in the Church of South India. And so I found my way back to a question via India. It's an unusual route, I know. But morphic resonance came earlier than that, and it came because I was trying to understand inheritance of form. I was working on the development of plants at Cambridge, doing research in developmental biology, and I was trying to understand how form is inherited. And I came to the conclusion that genes were grossly overrated. You know, people like Richard Dawkins were going around saying everything's shaped by selfish genes. I thought genes were very grossly overrated because what they do is code for the structure of proteins, the primary structure of proteins. They don't code for the shape of your face or the pattern on a bird's wings or the color of a butterfly's wings, the patterns on the wings. I thought form had to be inherited in some other way, and instincts which are like the habits of a species, its behavior. And I came up with the idea that if there's a memory in nature, if there's a direct connection across time, then many of these surprising puzzles could be explained. Now, most people don't see them as puzzles because they think genes explain it all. But I was a biochemist. I was teaching biochemistry. about DNA and molecular biology to students at Cambridge. And it wasn't as if I didn't know about this. I was personally quite friendly with Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA. I was sort of in the middle of that world, and I came to the conclusion it just wasn't enough. So the idea of morphic resonance is that there's a kind of collective memory in each species inherited directly through an influence from all the past members of the species. Each individual contributes to that collective memory and draws upon it. And so, in the most general sense, this suggests that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits. They develop through a kind of natural selection, but they're not like a kind of fixed Napoleonic code, as most scientists assume, that was given at the moment of the Big Bang. The usual scientific assumption is that all the laws of nature and all the constants of nature were fixed and emerged from nothing at the moment of the Big Bang, along with all the energy and matter in the universe. And as my friend Terence McKenna used to say, modern science is based on the principle, give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest. And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws of nature from nowhere in a single instant.
SPEAKER 04 :
I see what you did there. One free miracle. I love it.
SPEAKER 03 :
And they accuse us. I wanted to explore. this just a little bit you talk about a collective memory that strikes me as inherently materialist are you saying that there is a material that there is a collective memory that is stored in the material of things or are you referring to something spiritual
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, neither really. What I'm saying is that there's a collective memory which is not material, it's not stored in things. The idea that memory is stored in things, you see, treats the question of memory as if it's something in space. The question where is about something in space, where is it stored? So then you'd have an answer like in the brain or in the genes or something like that. But memory is a relationship in time, not in space. And what I'm suggesting is a direct connection across time, a resonance across time. We're used to the idea of resonance across space, as in radio waves, as in mobile telephones, as in acoustic resonance, and so on. electro-nuclear magnetic resonance as in scanning devices in medicine. All of these are resonance in space. But what I'm suggesting is a resonance in time from the past to the present based on similarity and that there's a direct connection. Now that's not the same as the spiritual realm because I think that this is the way in which all memory in nature works. I think everything in nature has a kind of memory underlying it. The so-called laws of nature have a kind of memory aspect. Even crystals and molecules have a kind of memory from previous crystals and molecules. So it's not spiritual in the sense it's not conscious and beyond nature or in a realm of spiritual freedom or anything. It's part of nature. but it's not part of nature as conceived by materialists who have on the one hand a belief in eternal non-material laws and on the other hand a kind of nature with no memory in it at all, kind of amnesic matter governed by material laws which are beyond nature. Basically their conception of natural laws is based on a kind of Greek Platonic philosophy of rational principles outside the universe. So, you know, it's not as if materialists don't believe in anything. They believe in some supernatural laws which are present at all times and in all places, utterly immutable and totally omnipotent. In fact, they have all the properties of God as traditionally conceived, and like God they're invisible. So it's not as if they don't believe in anything. They have their own very, very strong belief. What I'm saying is I think that belief is misconceived. I think it comes from a Greek philosophical assumption that ultimate reality is eternal and there's nothing changeable within, truly changeable within nature. Whereas I think the key feature of the whole Judeo-Christian tradition is that there's a developmental process in nature. Even though we disagree in our interpretation of the book of Genesis, it's clear that the whole universe isn't created at once. Those six days, whether they're days, eons, or ages, we don't need to discuss now, but it's a series of stages or processes, the creation story. It's a process, and the whole Old Testament shows a process, and the New Testament shows a process, a developmental process in time. And so the idea of evolution is, I think, a kind of generalization of the Judeo-Christian view of history as being an unfolding process in time, whereas Greek, Hindu, and Buddhist cosmologies see history as entirely cyclical, just repetitive cycles including reincarnation. Everything just goes in cycles with a kind of eternal basis. Whereas I think this key point of the Judeo-Christian tradition is this process view. And evolution, however one interprets it, or process, is a development in time. And I think that morphic resonance is part of that because it's... History is changed by what happens. I mean, Christians believe, and I believe as a Christian, that history and the destiny of humanity was changed through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And that changed things for everyone else thereafter. And I think there's a kind of memory process there. You see, it changes things. Yeah, that's interesting. No, I'm just saying I think morphic resonance is compatible with a view of developmental change in history and where what's happened in the past influences what happens now. And it differs from the conventional assumption that it all depends on eternal mathematical laws that are not affected by anything that actually happens.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it's interesting that in this discussion that you've weaved in kind of the Greek philosophy of immutability, because we could go off on a whole other tangent on that, you know, because we're not Calvinists here at Real Science Radio. But, you know, maybe what would help our audience on your hypothesis is some examples of what supports it, you know, some evidence that supports it. the idea of morphic resonance. And I think you've had examples of like how you can train rats to do something and then somehow rats across the globe learn the same thing without it being taught. It was taught locally and yet globally, rats kind of learn this technique or this new thing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, there was an actual experiment started at Harvard where they trained rats to escape from a water maze. They had to swim to the right exit. And it took them to start with more than 250 trials before they cottoned on and got it. Within about 25 generations, it only took them about 25 trials to learn. This rate of learning speeded up tenfold. They assumed that it was because of the inheritance of acquired characters, or what we now call epigenetic inheritance. But when this was checked out in Australia and in Scotland, they found their rats started off where the Harvard rats had left off, with about 25 arrows, and they got better and better. But not only did the rats descended from trained parents get better, but all the rats of that breed were getting better. Now that's what I'd expect with morphic resonance. If a lot of animals learn a new trick, all around the world it should be easier for others to learn it. If lots of humans learn something new, like programming computers, playing video games, surfboarding, snowboarding, it should get easier for others to learn it. And one line of evidence comes from the rather amazing fact that average intelligence in intelligence tests improved all over the world by about 30% over the course of the 20th century, not because people were getting 30% smarter, but because the tests were getting easier to do. And I think the tests were getting easier to do because so many people had done them. And right now, I have an experimental project going on to find out whether it gets easier every day for people to do the New York Times five-letter word puzzle, Wordle.
SPEAKER 05 :
Please tune in next week for the conclusion of our interview with the renowned Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.
SPEAKER 02 :
Scholars can't explain it all away. Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Tune into Real Science Radio. Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keepin' it real.
This episode of Theology Thursday delves into the historical and spiritual journey of Nehemiah as he leads the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls amid fierce resistance. Pastor Bob guides us through the nuanced layers of this biblical story, unveiling lessons that resonate with our personal battles and societal challenges today. Whether you're interested in biblical history or looking for inspiration in today’s trials, this discussion offers ample food for thought.
SPEAKER 01 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Theology Thursday. I'm Nicole McBurney. Every weekday we bring you the news of the day, the culture, and science from a Christian worldview. But today join me and Pastor Bob Enyart as we explore the source of our Christian worldview, the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
Nehemiah chapter 3 verse 28. We're going through the account of which families worked on which part of the wall. We gave a bit of an overview in the last class about some of the towers and some of the stretches of the wall. And now we're headed back up the eastern side of the city wall, back up to the top of Mount Moriah. And once we hit the corner, then the description will turn to the west and we get to the sheep gate where we started from, where they bring the sheep in for the sacrifices eventually. Hopefully they'll start doing that again. And then we'll have gone full circle around the city wall of Jerusalem with the description of who's working on what repairs. So Nehemiah 3, verse 28. Beyond the horse gate, the priest made repairs, each in front of his own house. And we talked about how this book started out with some men from Judah had traveled to Shushan and Nehemiah saw them and said, How are those Jews doing who escaped the captivity? When Nebuchadnezzar carried everyone off to Babylon, some of them remained behind. How are they doing? And the report that was given was mostly that the whole land is destitute. Jerusalem is lying in ruins. So it was a discouraging report. But we do know that many stayed behind. They were either hiding or traveling at the time. or they just weren't worth carting off to Babylon. So among those who stayed behind, they put together their own authority structure, their own ministry, their own priests and Levites. And so some of those priests live in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and they would work near where their homes were, which was right near where the temple would eventually be rebuilt. After them, Zadok, the son of Emer, made repairs in front of his own house. After him, Shemaiah, the son of Shechaniah, the keeper of the east gate, made repairs. After him, Hananiah, the son of Shelamiah. Now this is a quiz. You guys are going to be tested on these pronunciations afterward. And Hanan, the sixth son of Zaleph, repaired another section. After him, Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, made repairs in front of his dwelling. I remember at a church service once, I asked if someone would want to do the Bible reading. And somebody came up, and I assigned a passage that was pretty much unreadable. And it was just a practical joke. I don't know if that's okay in church, but it was pretty funny. These verses are a piece of cake compared to what you could find in Chronicles. After him, Melchizedek, one of the goldsmiths, made repairs as far as the house of the Nethanim and of the merchants in front of the Miphkod Gate, in front of the Miphkod Gate, and as far as the upper room at the corner. So where the wall running north and south and the northern wall running east and west, where they met in the northeast corner of The city, they had a building there, as was common, because why not? You've got two walls already, just two more walls and a ceiling, and you've got a building. So they had an upper room there at the corner, in which we talked about that area being a natural fortress, and it was used as a fortress even in the time of Jesus. And between the upper room at the corner, now heading south, as far as the sheep gate, the goldsmiths and the merchants made repairs. Okay, so that completed our tour that we began in the last session. And now chapter four, which becomes a little bit more of a narrative of a story, so it's a bit more interesting. But it so happened when Sanbalat heard that we were rebuilding the wall. And remember, Sanbalat was one of, Three officials that are mentioned by name who are the enemies of the Jews and they did not want them rebuilding Jerusalem. That was for certain. So Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant and mocked the Jews. And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria and said, And Sanballat is described as the governor of Samaria in a document that I've described earlier. It was found in Egypt in the city of Elephantine in 1909. And it was addressed, it was written by two Jews addressed to the governor of Samaria, Sanballat's sons. So there's an extra biblical confirmation of the existence of this gentleman. And he spoke before his brethren in the army of Samaria and said, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? He's talking about them trying to rebuild the wall to fortify the city. Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish, stones that are burned? So he's mocking them and trying to whip up anger and resentment against them so he could hopefully motivate a force to go in and stop what they're doing and kill them. Notice the question, will they offer sacrifices? Is that a key or a clue to anything? A little aspect of this Ezra and Nehemiah story that I like to point out. Will they offer sacrifices? As far as Sanballat was concerned, were the Jews currently offering sacrifices? Their normal routine of daily and weekly and annual sacrifices? No, they weren't. Why weren't they? Well, because the temple had been destroyed. Now, we've talked about the canonical order of the books, Ezra and Nehemiah, where in Ezra the temple is rebuilt, in Nehemiah the wall is rebuilt, but in actual history, those events were reversed. First, the story of Nehemiah occurs. The wall is rebuilt. Then, the temple is rebuilt. Now, we'll get later in Nehemiah, in chapter 6, where we'll see a verse that people will read and say, oh look, the temple was already built. That's why Ezra came first. But no, since we could see by so many substantive reasons that the wall was built first, then all the houses in the city, and then the temple. We can tell that order of events. But in chapter 6, we'll see a reference to the temple that they think they're going to be attacked. Should we go and hide in the temple? And it's either a temporary structure that Nehemiah had constructed so they can offer, or it was the ruins of the original temple. that had been destroyed. And they're going to shut a door over themselves and hide. But just to show that once the temple was built, if we go back to Ezra, I'd just like to look at three verses real quick. Ezra, the previous book, chapter 6, verses 17 and 18. What I want to point out is that when they built the temple... Then they started to offer the sacrifices and it was not a secret. It was done with a lot of fanfare. So, Ezra chapter 6, this is after the decree of Darius. And then verse 17, this is when they had completed rebuilding the temple and they were dedicating it. And they offered sacrifices at the dedication of this house of God 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel, 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. They assigned the priests to their divisions and the Levites to their divisions over the service of God in Jerusalem as it is written in the book of Moses. So not only did they start with this huge sacrifice, this dedication, but then They took the priests and the Levites. And who are those two groups again, the priests and the Levites? Well, remember the 12 tribes. The third tribe was Levi, all his descendants. And one of Levi's many descendants of tens of thousands was Aaron. And Aaron's sons were the priests. So Aaron's brethren within his tribe, the Levites, they were not priests. They were the helpers. of the temple and the priesthood. They helped. And they had their assigned duties, but the priests were the ones that offered the sacrifices. And the priests were the Levites who were the descendants of Aaron. Well, they assigned the priests to their divisions and the Levites to their divisions. Over the service of God in Jerusalem, that meant from the dedication forward, at least as to when Ezra was written, that they returned to their normal daily routine of the daily sacrifice and then the special sacrifices. And they did this as it is written in the book of Moses. So when we see Nehemiah, that the governor of Samaria is saying, what do they think, they're going to start sacrificing again? Forget that. They're not going to do that. That's de facto evidence that the temple had not been built and they were not sacrificing. The next chapter in Ezra 7, we'll just look at one verse, verse 17. Now this is the letter of King Artaxerxes to Ezra the priest. And they had taken quite a collection to go with Ezra and gold and silver that he took with him. And then all the money he collected, a freewill offering of the Jews. And verse 17 says, Artaxerxes, the king of the Medes and the Persians, says, And we could tell by reading through Ezra that the sacrificial system was re-engaged. And they had begun once again And so when we go through Nehemiah, we've seen already the passage that said, well, they completed the wall. The wall was built, but they didn't have their houses. In fact, I'll re-quote that verse, Nehemiah chapter 7. Nehemiah chapter 7 verse 1 says, When the wall was built, and I had hung the doors, then I appointed the Levites, And then verse 4, Nehemiah 7.4, Now the city was large and spacious, but the people in it were few, and the houses were not rebuilt. The houses were not rebuilt. And we have already looked and seen that one of the prophets wrote, and God said that you have your houses, they've been built, you have nice ceilings, paneled houses, and my house is not built. How dare you? I brought you back from captivity to Jerusalem, and you've taken care of yourselves. You've built your homes. That's obviously after the wall was built. Then the houses were not built. Then they built their houses, and then they got comfortable. And then some period of time passed, a number of years, and God said, how about my house? Don't you care enough to build my house? And we looked at that verse I think on two occasions so far in the study, so we can see the order, the wall, then their houses, and then the temple. So we'll continue now with verse 3 of Nehemiah, back to our study, chapter 4, verse 3. But when we get to chapter 6, and we see a reference to the temple, taking that one verse, people will think, oh yeah, the temple was already built in Ezra. And if you had to argue our position from that one verse, you wouldn't be able to do it because it refers to the temple. But it's obviously either just the ruins of the temple or a temporary building that was sufficing for a place of sacrifice. Okay, verse three. Now, Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him and he said, whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. So they're mocking these people for trying to accomplish their vision. And it was a vision that God was behind. And so it was the natural tendency of men to mock it. It seems that human beings have a radar system built in. And if someone is doing miracles and they're false miracles, like if it's the Antichrist or the false prophet, the masses... will flock to follow and to take heed of the miracles. If it's a prophet or an apostle of God or Christ himself and he's doing miracles, the masses will reject him. Now, why is that? Why would they reject Jesus and reject the apostles and the prophets who did miracles and Moses, reject all them and God, but if the devil does miracles, they're going to believe.
SPEAKER 1 :
Why?
SPEAKER 02 :
Why? It's because of the built-in antenna that human beings have. If God does it, we're against it. We might not even know for sure that God is doing it. But if we have an inkling that God does it, we're against it. On the other hand, if the devil does it, or anyone that's in league with the devil, then we'll consider it. At least we're not going to get all that angry about it. So, This Ammonite, now Sanballat, we talked about he was a Moabite. Moab and Ammon, they were the result of Lot's incest, and they became two peoples, Moab and Ammon, and enemies of the Jews for many centuries. And verse 4, so they're mocking, even if a fox goes up on the wall, he'll knock the stones down. Verse 4, Nehemiah prays, Hear, O our God, for we are despised turn their reproach on their own heads and give them as plunder to a land of captivity. So Nehemiah is praying that they would be destroyed, that they would be taken away. And that's not very nice. He really should repent of that, right? Doesn't God condemn him for this? Doesn't God put in here that Nehemiah is a bad guy, not a very good Christian? Well, Nehemiah is a great guy. And this is here in the Bible because God liked it. Verse 5. Look at this. Do not cover their iniquity and do not let their sin be blotted out from before you. I don't think I've ever been that harsh in my entire 20... How long? Since 1973. How many years is that? 30 years? Oh, no. 30 years of a reputation for harsh and confrontational ministry, I don't think I've ever asked God not to let anyone repent. I've never been that harsh. That's why I'll never make it into the Bible. I'm only kidding. But the Bible characters were extraordinarily harsh. Many of them, not all of them, but many of them, we could virtually call them brutal. And God liked them. Because when you're dealing with the wicked It's good to confront the wicked and to let everybody know exactly how bad these people are. Do not cover their iniquity. Do not let their sin be blotted out from before you. Don't forgive them. Don't save them. For they have provoked you to anger before the builders. So we built the wall and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height for the people had a mind to work. They had a really good attitude and they worked really hard. And so often, as human beings, it's easier to say, I'm going to go to bed early tonight. But when you have an important job to do, you put your shoulder to the grindstone and you get to work. Now, it happened when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, now Ashdod, is a city in Gaza, one of the five cities of the Philistines. And I think in the Gaza Strip today, there's Ashdod still to this day, if I recall. And the Ashdodites heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry. And all of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion. Nevertheless, we made our prayer to our God, and because of them, we set a watch against them day and night. And so we're going to find out that Nehemiah was determined to defend the workers, the people who live there, the city, the project. And if it meant using swords or spears in self-defense, that that was his plan. And of course, how many Christians, percentage-wise, it's not that huge, but there are many Christians numbers-wise, certainly in the hundreds of thousands, that are pacifists. That you can't kill someone. You can't use a gun. You can't use force to defend yourself. And that's completely against the Bible. They take some particular stories, like when Jesus is about to be arrested and Peter uses a sword and And Jesus said, no, Peter, that's not it. I'm going with them. And they'll take a story like that and say, see, God does not want us to defend ourselves. But that's not the point of that story at all. Jesus had set his face toward Jerusalem and he knew he was to be arrested, tried, and crucified. And it was inappropriate to take a sword and try to stop that. Verse 10, then Judas said, The strength of the laborers is failing. And there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall. And that Judah, that's the people of Judah. The people said, hey, this is not going to work. We're not going to be able to get this done. We can't even find a place to work. Have you ever tried to do a job and you're standing in filth and a mess? And it's so discouraging. Imagine the city had been destroyed, the wall was knocked down, you can't even get a good footing to get started. And just to carry away the huge rocks, to get them out of the way so you could put them back on, it had to be extremely discouraging. Very difficult. And our adversaries said, verse 11, they will neither know nor see anything till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease. So that's what their enemies were saying. We are going to put a stop to this and we will kill them. So it was when the Jews who dwelt near them came that they told us ten times, from whatever place you turn, they will be upon us. In other words, wherever you go, wherever you return from, if you go home to your city to do some work and you come back the next day, In the morning, they're going to get you. Wherever you go, home, when you come back, they're going to ambush you. So therefore, Nehemiah, what he did was he started a prayer meeting. He said, we'll pray and then we'll be safe. Well, I'm sure he prayed a lot. But he did more than just pray. Therefore, I positioned men behind the lower parts of the wall at the openings. And I set the people according to their family's with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And so we see that Nehemiah made sure that his workers were armed. And throughout history, it is wicked governments that disarm the people. The Philistines had occupied Israel and they passed a law, they imposed a law that no Jew could own a sword or a spear without And no Jew could be a blacksmith. They couldn't be a blacksmith even to make plows for their oxen because they might make swords. So if a Jew wanted to have his plow sharpened, he had to bring it to the Philistines and pay them so many shekels to have a plow sharpened. We've seen that through history, that when evil governments conquer or even come to power in their own land, then they will pass a law and confiscate weapons, take away weapons. The Taliban did that in Afghanistan. And it's just a typical thing that governments that are evil will take away the guns. In this country, it's the liberals who fight for gun control legislation, gun registration, and gun confiscation. In England, they virtually outlawed gun ownership. They started with handguns and then rifles and hunting guns and it's become almost impossible to have a gun in England. In our country, the states that have the most severe gun control laws typically have the highest crime rates. And when you look at the cities with the most severe gun control laws, they almost always have the highest crime rates. So it's It's something that empowers the criminals. And a government should be able to trust its people. If the government is righteous, the people will rejoice. And the people are not going to use their guns in a criminal way. Criminals will do that, but criminals don't obey gun control laws. So the gun control laws are counterproductive, and no matter how much evidence there is to show that, people who have their antenna up their radar against what's right, they will not look at evidence and be persuaded. They're determined for their cause because it's godless. Now, I've always objected to conservative right-wingers when they advocate that we should be allowed to own and carry guns. I agree with that. But then the reason they give, I disagree with. So many of them say, because if the government is corrupt... then we need our guns to have a revolution. What are you going to do? You're going to go shoot police officers and governors, judges, the president. Is that what you're going to do with your guns when the government is corrupt? We've got two police officers here in this room. Guys, watch out. There's some lunatic right-wingers who might be gunning for you. But no, the Bible teaches that you're to submit to the governing authorities and when they're corrupt... you don't obey their evil command. You don't obey a godless law. So when Saul was king and David had already been anointed as the next king and Saul was a murderer, David had a sword at Saul's throat. He could have killed him, but he didn't because he said Saul is the government. Saul is the official. And therefore, I'm not going to obey him, but I'm not going to kill him. Verse 14, And I looked and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. And that's an encouragement that we could use in our lives, even though we're not typically up against an army of people who want to kill us, we're up against the world that wants to mock us, ridicule us, make sure that we fail in our efforts to preach the gospel, to oppose evolution, abortion, homosexuality. And God is telling us here through the encouragement of Nehemiah, do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives. and your houses. So that's our motivation. Even if we're out at an abortion mill fighting against the killing of unborn children, to me, and I cannot separate these two, in my thinking, I'm fighting for my family, for my children, for my grandchildren. That's what I'm fighting for. Because as my kids grow up in a society that legalizes child killing, that means that society is intensely evil and my kids will be attacked from every side. And so when I fight that battle, I'm fighting to help my family, to minister for my neighbors, whether they have anything to do with abortion or not. It's part of the battle between right and wrong. Verse 15 says,
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, this is Nicole McBurney jumping into the broadcast. We are out of time for today, so be sure to come back next Thursday to hear the rest of this study. To find other resources and Bible studies, be sure to go to kgov.com slash store. That's kgov.com slash store.
In today’s discourse, we disentangle complex philosophical arguments and their implications for modern Christian theology. Amidst a backdrop of current events involving public figures like General Michael Flynn and Woody Allen, we pivot into the deep waters of Euthyphro's Dilemma and test the depths of Socratic wisdom against biblical truths. Discover how these ancient dialogues still spark critical reflection and theological inquiry today.
SPEAKER 02 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob and Ear Live. Today we're playing part one of Bob's response to Euthyphro's Dilemma. Bob's response to Euthyphro's Dilemma. Euthyphro's Dilemma is considered by a lot of Christian apologists one of the hardest objections to christianity to respond to and uh today we're playing part one of bob's response which i think he really hits the nail on the head and it all comes down to the trinity the trinity is so important for understanding euthyphro's dilemma with that said let's jump right into the broadcast
SPEAKER 03 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country. Welcome to Baba Neart Live. I'm the pastor of Denver Bible Church. Today we're going to talk about thinking clearly and the challenge in the Christian's life, in every person's life. of thinking clearly, and we're going to use an ancient exercise in thinking from Socrates. It's called Euthyphro's Dilemma, and apply it to Christian theology and how atheists will throw Euthyphro's Dilemma at Christians and say, see, this proves that God doesn't exist. We've known for thousands of years. You guys just are not smart enough to realize it. Before we get to that, speaking of thinking clearly, let's cover a couple items in the news. General Michael Flynn, the case against him has just been dropped. Spike Lee, who on a Friday two weeks ago praised Woody Allen, and then on Saturday he apologized. He retracted his congratulations to Woody Allen. We'll talk about that. And also Matt Walsh. on all the hate crimes against whites that are not charged as hate crimes. Then we'll get to the exercise with Euthyphro's dilemma on thinking clearly. Oh, by the way, Bevelyn and Ed May, famous from their missionary trip to Chaz, it's looking good like bevel and will be on the show with us next week can't wait for that okay michael flynn the federal judge in charge of the Michael Flynn, the scam case against him. That was part of the Russia hoax, bloodless coup effort to depose a sitting president by the Obama administration. So the judge in that case, when the Justice Department said they're withdrawing the charges against Flynn and the federal judge then had only one role, and that was to dismiss the case. Instead of dismissing the case, he appointed another federal judge, a retired federal judge, to act as a prosecutor to see if they could continue the case against General Flynn. Really shocking. And so a week or two ago on one of the big stories about the developments in the case, I posted a comment and said one way to try to get it through this corrupt judge's mind that what he is doing by taking a judge and basically turning him into a prosecutor to keep the case going, one way to perhaps get get it through his thick skull, his corrupt skull, that what he's doing violates all the principles that he claims to hold to would be for the Justice Department to take a prosecutor and appoint him as a federal appellate judge and have him order the case dismissed. Wouldn't that be funny? And this corrupt federal judge would have a heart attack. And they could say, oh, we were only joking just to show you how corrupt you are. Spike Lee, the famous filmmaker, leftist, godless celebrity, just two weeks ago on a Friday, he celebrates Woody Allen. the filmmaker, pervert, pedophile. And by the very next day, that Saturday, he apologized. Now, why would he do that in one day? I mean, he's known Woody Allen for decades. Why would he apologize after just one day? Oh, because he was mindful of the sometimes justified effects of cancel culture. And he realized some of his friends got to him and said, you know, you remember that you honored Roman Polanski, who pleaded guilty to raping a 13 year old girl, drugging her and raping her. And now you're celebrating Woody Allen? You've done these things publicly? Do you realize what's going to happen to you? And so anyway, he apologized for celebrating Woody Allen. And that is a huge change in the culture. Absolutely huge. We have on our website, kgov.com slash pedophiles, we have our big, ugly list of liberals supporting pedophiles. And it's a stunning list. It begins with Quentin Tarantino and Natalie Portman. It goes to Katie Couric, Charlie Rose, Prince Andrew. Yeah, him. And ABC and their Good Morning America program. And Vogue and NBC and their Access Hollywood program. And the Walt Disney Studios and Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos. And Warner Brothers. And Chris Tucker. You ever hear of him? Comedian. Kevin Spacey. The Washington Post. CNN. New York Magazine. For each one of these, we have links to show how they supported pedophiles. For each one. University of Massachusetts openly supported. Liam Neeson, the Rockefeller Foundation, University of Indiana, Alec Baldwin. Forget about Hugh Hefner. He's in hell now, but he's on the list. And it goes on and on. The National ACLU, Colorado's ACLU, George Stepanolovas. What's his name? Just stop annoying us. No, it's George Stephanopoulos, Chelsea Handler, and then Woody Allen, of course. And it goes on and on with Elon Musk and Harvey Weinstein and Vanity Fair. and Johnny Depp, and on and on and on. Wow. So that's the Spike Lee news. And then Matt Walsh does this great column about the hate crimes against whites, Caucasians, and there are no hate crime charges. And so you know that question I hate when people ask yesterday on the show, why? Stop being boring. Don't ask why. Tell people why. And so all these crimes against whites for nothing other than the color of their skin and there are no hate crime charges. So many conservatives confuse themselves and they say, well, the idea of a hate crime is not a valid idea. And they say, well, you know, there's no such thing as a love crime. When you murder someone, you're not loving them by murdering them. So, well, that's true, but that's not the point of a hate crime. When you look at the spectrum of crime, one crime is a credible threat. When you make a credible threat, that's a crime. And if you murder someone, you're at a park, you get in a fight, and you murder them. That's different than if you threatened your neighbor's family and you said, I'm going to kill your children, then I'm going to kill your wife and I'm going to kill you. And then you go ahead and kill one of them. That's a different kind of crime because a threat, a credible threat, is itself also a crime. And so when Muslim terrorists target Jews, or Christians, and if they're committing crimes specifically in Jewish synagogues, well, then that's not only a murder and an assault and trespassing, it's also a hate crime in the fear the terror that they're trying to instill that they are instilling on thousands of other people perhaps millions so it is it is not wrong the terminology could be debated but it's not wrong to recognize this additional dimension of criminal behavior and charge accordingly and punish accordingly especially when you have a criminal or an organization that hasn't committed a murder, when they commit a murder or any crime worthy of death, as the Apostle Paul put it, then nobody should object. You put them to death. But there are also murderer wannabes, terrorist wannabes, who commit hate crimes and could be punished accordingly. So those few news updates in the process of doing that, it wasn't only covering some current events. It was attempting to not only think clearly about current events, but also to illustrate and to teach what it means to think clearly and from a biblical Christian worldview about the events of the day. You go back 2,500 years ago to the time of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. There is a dialogue of Socrates with Euthyphro. Now, who's Euthyphro? That's not a name we're familiar with these days. It's a proper name, some guy named Euthyphro. Well, he was a prosecutor. He was a state's attorney in this dialogue with Socrates. He's the prosecutor heading to court in Athens in order to prosecute his own father. How's that? So the Greek philosopher Plato, Socrates' student, reports an apparent dilemma for those who believe in God. Atheists to this very day, 2,500 years later, they argue that Euthyphro's dilemma shows that moral absolutes cannot logically flow from a divine being. So they use this as an argument against Christianity, because in Christianity you have God, and all moral absolutes flow from God. And so Socrates thought up this dilemma. as a way to challenge that, to try to falsify that. And you could read Euthyphro's dilemma, the full text of it, on kgov.com. Just go to kgov.com slash Euthyphro. Oh, wait a minute. Nobody knows how to spell Euthyphro. You could Google Christian answer to Euthyphro or to Euthyphro's dilemma, and you should find us ranked number one by Google at kgov.com, the article I had the honor to write. And then one of our favorite scientists, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati with creation.com, CMI, Creation Ministries International, He linked to our article on Euthyphro's dilemma from his own article on the topic over at creation.com. That ministry is based out of Australia. So Euthyphro is spelled E-U-T-H, like euthanize, for example, E-U-T-H-Y-P-H-R-O, Euthyphro. So kgov.com slash Euthyphro. And you can read the full text. It's not very long, and it's annotated. So here and there, if something's a little confusing, we have some explanatory notes. So here is Euthyphro's dilemma as presented to the Christian. It's got two parts, one and two. Number one, and these are both questions, is something good, like let's say humility, is something like humility good because God recognizes it as good? Or, Is something good because God commands that it is good? As Socrates put it, because God loves it. So that was his vocabulary back then. But what he means is, is something good because God recognizes it or because God commands it as good? That's it. That's the question. That question falsifies Allah as being a candidate for the true God. Those two questions, Allah cannot survive as the proposed ultimate deity because these two questions expose the fallacy in the Islamic belief about Allah. Now, Socrates' dialogue with Euthyphro used these questions as the backdrop. to show the logical contradictions in the Greek religion. The Greeks had their pantheon of gods. And even though Christian theology differs from Greek mythology, the atheist can still start his inquiry with these identical questions posed to the believer. Whether this argument still succeeds like it would against Allah and Islam depends upon the force of this dilemma against the claims of Christianity. We're not defending a God like Allah. We are defending the God of the Bible because Christianity asserts that the God of the Bible is the true God. Jesus Christ is our Creator and our Savior. He is God the Son of the Triune God. So, is something like kindness or honesty inherently good and simply recognized by the Trinity as good? Or does God make something like kindness good by deciding that it will be a good thing? That is, by approving of it, by loving it, or by commanding it? Now, if God does not make something good by commanding it, but rather recognizes that which is good, what standard of righteousness does he use to make this judgment? Now that's interesting because if God just decides, okay, I'm going to command what is good. So you have the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not commit adultery, shalt not bear false witness. If something is good only because God commanded it, then he could take all the nots out of the Ten Commandments. And they could be thou shalt murder, thou shalt steal, thou shalt commit adultery, thou shalt bear false witness. And then if you do all those things, then you're good. Now, if you are a Christian, something in your spirit should be grieved by that thought. You should recognize that there's something wrong with that idea. Just a few years after the 1611 King James was printed, there was an Octavia version of the King James. That's where they would print Bibles on huge paper for the pulpit. And then they'd have quartos, where they would cut that paper into fourths or quarters, and each one was a Bible. Then they had octo, whatever they called it, They cut that same sheet of paper into eighths, and you had little tiny Bibles. And so this small Bible published of the King James came to be known as the Wicked Bible. If you go to our debate on the 1611 King James, King James-only debate, Will Duffy and I, we traveled to Oxford. We got access to the handwritten notes of the King James translators, and we used those in this amazing debate, kgov.com slash KJO. Kgov.com slash KJO. Or you could shorten it to KO for knockout. Really fun debate. And the Wicked Bible was a full and complete printing of the King James Bible, except it had a typo in Exodus chapter 20. And where it's supposed to say, thou shall not commit adultery, the typesetter left out the word not, and it said, thou shall commit adultery. How's that one? And by the way, you could search for photos of the Wicked Bible. They're very rare and not very good quality photos. So Will Duffy and I, we did put a high quality photo of this in our debate at kgov.com slash KJO. And everyone immediately, this is part of the power of God's Word, everyone immediately knew it was false. They knew it was, this is a bad Bible. This is not a good Bible. This is a bad Bible. So the printer, you know, the king almost had his head cut. Because you couldn't just start a print shop. You had to be licensed by the king in order to print. And this was the case in many countries, and I think for a period of perhaps some centuries. So again, if God does not make something good by commanding it, but rather he recognizes that which is good, then the question arises, what standard of righteousness does he use to make this judgment? If the standard is external to himself— then it appears that contrary to Christian teaching, an authority superior to God would exist. So far, that's all valid thinking. If by God's will, he decides whether some trait will be good as though he could have decided otherwise, that's very arbitrary. And if his nature itself is is claimed to define goodness, then that is very arbitrary. But what if we say that God's nature itself is claimed to define goodness? Then how could God himself even know whether he were good? How could that be? If Allah was the true God, how could Allah know if he were good? Now, this is an important question because Jesus brings this up in the Gospel of John. He says, if I testify concerning myself, my testimony is not credible. And that's Jesus saying that. Christians believe that God commands worship for a reason similar to why he commands a son to honor his father, because it is good for the son. But some non-Christians, acknowledging no fear of the Creator, assert that if a powerful being like the biblical God actually exists, perhaps he doesn't even realize it, but he commands worship because he is selfish. That's their challenge. They don't have a fear of God, and they say such things. Is there a valid response to this? Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is God the Son, and thus Christians should recognize that the euthyphro dilemma presents a valid question to be addressed because, as I had just stated, the Gospel of John quotes Jesus himself raising this concern, "...if I bear witness of myself, my witness is not credible." The New Testament presents a divine assertion that God the Son urges others to obtain corroborating evidence to his claims. So by the recorded judgment of Jesus, if Euthyphro's dilemma is ultimately unanswerable, then Christianity is falsified. Paul, the Apostle Paul, said, hey, Christianity could be falsified. How is it falsifiable? Well, for example, if Christ did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is false, and our faith is in vain. However, Christ did rise from the dead, and that means that every other religion is false, and he is the Savior of all those who trust in him. So if Euthyphro's dilemma, I'm not saying if we can answer it, because sometimes there's an answer and people are just not smart enough or they don't have enough information to answer a particular question. I'm saying if it's ultimately unanswerable, then Christianity is falsified. Conversely, if Christianity is true, then Euthyphro's dilemma is answerable. So you go back to the atheist, the skeptic, who presents the Christian with two options. If God decides what kind of traits will be considered good, then goodness itself appears arbitrary. Otherwise, if goodness is not arbitrary but objective, then it appears that the true standard of righteousness would supersede God's own authority. So you could break up these questions into the divine command view and the recognition view. So let's begin with the divine command view regarding Euthyphro's second horn. You know, when you're on the horns of a dilemma, his second option, the divine command view of morality. If God's command makes something righteous, then as atheists and even some Christian theologians point out, God could have commanded either adultery or faithfulness and forbade murdering or honoring your parents. There's a famous atheist of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell. He's considered by many, he was considered to be perhaps the smartest man alive in the world in the 1900s, perhaps the smartest, at least, mathematician. And if you go to kgov.com slash atheism, you'll see how astoundingly stupid he was. But many people think he's one of the smartest people who ever lived because a famous atheist is the one who could say the stupidest things with the straightest face. So atheist Bertrand Russell said, if the only basis for morality is God's decrees, it follows that they might just as well have been the opposite of what they are. He wrote that in 1962. We link to it. And that's totally true. Well, go back half a millennium earlier. Go back 500 years before Bertrand Russell to the influential Christian theologian John Duns Scotus. He affirmatively taught that God does make something like honesty or humility good by deciding that it will be good. But if it were true that God invents the distinction between good and evil, then by this atheist objection and this Christian's reasoning, God's commands are arbitrary at the deepest level. So the shall nots of the Ten Commandments could have been the shalls. Now, there are real-world effects of this arbitrariness. For example, there are those who claim a special dispensation from God to justify the selling of indulgences. Have you heard of that? It's an ugly part of church history. It's called simony, the selling of indulgences, and other bad behavior by the church. You could actually pay the church and get a receipt for a license to sin. Church raised money by doing that. I use the term church loosely. Scripture, though, describes the Lord God as abounding in goodness and truth, with righteousness and justice as the foundation of your throne. Arbitrariness is not affirmed. No, not at all. But rather in the Bible, God shows personal favoritism to no man. There goes Calvinism. God the Son does not show personal favoritism, but teaches the way of God in truth. The scriptures tell us. And he said, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And he teaches of the spirit of truth. And the Lord said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And many other verses that we reference here. Atheists use Euthyphro's dilemma, hoping to show that both options are invalid. So while they will approve of the conclusion here that we're drawing, that Euthyphro's second option is invalid because then morality itself is arbitrary. There's no such thing as absolute morality. They will reject much of the reasoning that I'm using because this material... Stop the tape.
SPEAKER 02 :
Stop the tape. Hey, we are out of time. If you want to hear the entirety of this broadcast series, you can find it online. It's at kgov.com slash euthyphro. Although euthyphro, that's a very difficult word. to spell. So I just, I created kgov.com slash E, E for Euthyphro. It's a lot easier to spell the letter E than it is to spell Euthyphro. So kgov.com slash E. Hey, may God bless you guys.
Join Nicole McBurney and Pastor Bob Enyart for *Theology Thursday*, where scripture comes alive through deep dives, cultural commentary, and a dash of humor. Whether it's exploring the poetic justice in Ezra, unpacking prophetic timelines, or drawing surprising parallels between King Darius and modern politics, this show offers fresh insights with a Christian worldview. From burnt offerings to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, you'll learn how history, theology, and prophecy connect to our lives today—often with a witty twist.
SPEAKER 01 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Theology Thursday. I'm Nicole McBurney. Every weekday we bring you the news of the day, the culture, and science from a Christian worldview. But today join me and Pastor Bob Enyart as we explore the source of our Christian worldview, the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
For the burnt offerings of the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the request of the priests who are in Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail. That's just so funny. Poetic justice doesn't begin to describe it. And he's obviously rubbing salt into a wound here. What would that be like today? It would be like telling the Democrats in the Senate that they have to fund Don Wildman's American Family Association. You guys got to pay for that. You got to pay for James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Oh yeah, whatever it costs to reinstall Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument, You got to pay for that too. It would just kill him. That's not what Tat and I and company wanted to hear. So just in case they're not understanding the king's intent, verse 10, do this that they may offer sacrifices of sweet aroma to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons. So he's saying, I want them to pray for me. I want the blessings of their God upon me and my household. Now, by the way, the Bible speaks often of animals sacrificed as burnt offerings, describing the smell as a sweet aroma. And why does it do that? Well, of course, if you have a backyard barbecue, you got spare ribs or lamb chops on an open fire, smells great. But, That's not necessarily the point. Yeah, it smells great, but it's a sweet aroma because it's acceptable to God as a substitutionary sacrifice. God wants to redeem his children who have rebelled against him, but he can't just make believe we never hurt anyone, we never did anything wrong. Because we've sinned, there has to be a punishment for the sin The only acceptable punishment, since we are eternal creatures who now deserve eternal death, the only way that God could forgive that is to pay for it with something that's valued or worth more than the debt, equal or more than the debt. So what's worth more than the eternal death of millions or billions of human beings? What's worth that much? Well, in all of creation, There's no animal that's worth that much, no tree, no star, no angel. The only thing that could be worth that much is the creator, God the son. So God decided that he would offer himself as a blood sacrifice to die for us so that we can have new life, so that the debt would be justly paid for. And so the Bible refers to the sweet aroma of, to the Lord as God accepting the animal sacrifices as pointing to Christ's sacrifice. That's why we read in Isaiah 53, verse 10, speaking of the crucifixion, that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Now that's an especially harsh verse to read a week after most all of us went to see The Passion, Mel Gibson's movie, And we saw the suffering Christ went through. And then we read, it pleased the Lord to bruise him. So that the crucifixion was at the same time wonderfully beautiful and utterly horrible. Horrible in what Christ had to go through, but beautiful because God loved us so much. The Son and the Father loved us so much that he was willing to do that for us. Okay. Okay. So Darius, he's speaking like he's a believer. It's amazing how he is interested in getting the blessings of the God of Israel. And just in case, Tat and I, the governor and your cohorts, just in case, now wait a minute, don't go anywhere. I'm not done yet. Just in case you need some fatherly encouragement to make sure you adhere to my wishes here, Verse 11, I also wish you would decree that whoever alters this edict, let a timber be pulled from his house and erected and let him be hanged on it. Sounds like what happened to Haman, doesn't it? And let his house be made a refuse heap because of this. So, hey, if wicked men refuse to honor God, well, then at least they'll have to honor the governing official who honors God. for the time being. And God will punish the unrepentant by turning his eternal habitations into a pile of refuse which burns forever. That's what Jesus describes hell as, like a junkyard, a trash heap that burns forever. And so for now, the king, this earthly king, will turn a wicked man's earthly home into a refuse heap. Same punishment, just different order of magnitude. Verse 12. And may the God who causes his name to dwell there destroy any king or people who put their hand to alter it or to destroy this house of God, which is in Jerusalem. I, Darius, issue a decree. Let it be done diligently. Okay, so that's the letter that they received in return. Last study, we saw the letter they sent out and we thought, here we go again, same story. And they got quite a response, one that they were not expecting. So how did these mid-level bureaucrats respond to the letter? Then Tatanai, governor of the region beyond the river, Shethar-Baznai and their companions diligently did according to what King Darius had sent. So, Call me a hopeless romantic, but this reminds me of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. He's divesting himself of weapons of mass destruction as quickly as his bureaucrats can find them. Not because he's had a change of heart, but because he wants to keep his heart right where it is, in his chest, beating. So the bad guys obeyed the king who is siding in a wonderful way with the prophets Haggai and Zechariah with Ezra the priest and Zerubbabel, the governor of Palestine, of Judah. And also he's the general contractor, so to speak, of the temple project. Now this next verse 14 covers a great part of the story. It encompasses the next four years of construction right through to the completion of the second temple. also called Zerubbabel's temple. Verse 14. So the elders of the Jews built and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai, the prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Ido, son of Ido. And they built and finished it, the temple, according to the commandment of the God of Israel and according to the command of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Now, notice again and let your mind keep a mental note of when these prophets lived and ministered. Haggai and Zechariah were prophets of the building of the second temple. And that's helpful. I try to make mental notes like bookmarks of when certain prophets were working and ministering so that if you happen to hear a quote from their book, or turn and read a chapter, you know the historical context. If you don't, you open Zechariah and you're reading, you could get something out of it. But it's a lot more helpful when you know, where does he fit in? Is he before Noah? Is he during the time of... Where is he? Is he with Jeroboam, the king? Well, if you know, Zechariah and Haggai are involved with the encouraging the Jews to rebuild the temple after it had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, you have a pretty good idea. Okay, this is just over four centuries before Christ was born. It was half a millennium after David and Solomon. It was a century or so after Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. So you start to put it together. And when you then read, you know the historical setting in it. It makes more sense. By the way, if these two are the prophets of the second temple, Haggai and Zechariah, who were the prophets of the first temple, of Solomon's temple? There were three, and you should be able to guess one. Nathan. Nathan. But then there were two more. There was Ahijah and Edo. I-D-D-O. Now, it's not the Edo we just read, Zechariah, the son of Edo. That's centuries later. But what's with that? Nathan, Ahijah, and Edo were the prophets of the first temple. Prophets of the second temple were Haggai and Zechariah. And if you consider Herod's temple the third one, who was the prophet then? Well, John the Baptist. So you've got three prophets for the first temple, two for the second, and one for the third. This prophet Zechariah, son of Edo, He really wasn't the son of Edo. He was the grandson of Edo. He's actually Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Edo. But in Ezra, and only in Ezra here, he's referred to as Zechariah, son of Edo. And I actually think, you know, God likes to do that. Even though Jason may take me to task with this. But God likes to cross the T's, dot the I's, He likes the parallelism. And it seems like, well, we've got Edo, the prophet for the first temple, and here we are half a millennium later. We're building the second temple. Let's get another Edo on the scene. Because Edo, what does he do? He doesn't do much other than he prophesies of Solomon and his time building the temple and the kings that followed Solomon, Rehoboam and Ahijah. And And the Bible repeatedly says that he was a prophet who wrote down the record of what these guys did, but we've lost the record. But he was the prophet, one of the three of the first temple. And so anyway, I think that's why God refers to Zechariah as the son of Edo, who's really his grandfather. Okay, let's read again. Verse 14, the last sentence, and they built and finished it according to the commandment of the God of Israel. And according to the command of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. And I've mentioned the difficulty in identifying who these ancient Persian kings are. And that Artaxerxes, he's the guy who married Esther, protected the Jews and told Nehemiah he could go rebuild the city and the wall. And then their son Cyrus, allowed the Jews to begin rebuilding the temple. But then he turned against them sometime later. And by the word of Darius, who was quite a bit later, the project resumed and the temple rebuilt. Oh, by the way, I brought this book. Bishop Usher did this book. It's been out of print in English for 400 years. So it's an old book. And it was just republished. this year by Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham's group. So I'm really thrilled and it's a brilliant history. He's an accomplished historian of the ancient world and he's an expert at the Bible. And so he attempts to combine ancient history with biblical history and try to put as authoritatively as he could what happened in which years. What I'm hoping is Now that this is available again, which it has not been, not even on the internet, you were not able to get this. So now that it's available, I'm hoping that some conservative Christian scholars will do a thorough and complete re-evaluation and a harmony of Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian history with the biblical record. Take a new shot at it. I know that Christians have been working on that And their work is being published in some creationist journals, including in Ken Ham's TJ, Technical Journal. But I'm hoping that work will be expanded. And I think this will be a great resource because Bishop Usher's done an extraordinary job at a first crack at the project. Okay, let's continue with Ezra chapter 6, verse 15. By the way, When we break, if anybody wants to look at this, just grab it. Ezra 6.15. Now the temple was finished on the third day of the month of Adar. That's the last month of the Jewish calendar. The temple was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. Now a numerologist could have a heyday with that. Since Jason's in the room, I'll just continue. this month of Adar that was their 12th month just prior to the Passover so it corresponds to the end of winter and the beginning of spring verse 16 then the children of Israel the priest and the Levites and the rest of the descendants of the captivity celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy and praise the Lord Undoubtedly, for many, it was only a superficial revival. For many, it wasn't a real revival. They're just going along with it. But for a good number, there was obviously a real heart, repentance, conversion, a desire to please God. So how many had the history become part of their actual personal relationship with God? We don't know, but it was very possibly significant. And this was a great milestone, the rebuilding of the temple, because the temple was the center of Jewish spiritual life, their culture, history, and their social center. And it was what helped them keep their national identity over the next four centuries until the first coming of the Messiah. So they remained an identifiable group of Jews from the time of Abraham right till the time of Christ and even till today. Verse 17, And they offered sacrifices at the dedication of this house of God, 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, all paid for, no doubt, out of the cheerful heart of Governor Tatanai, and as a sin offering for all Israel, 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. So because there were 12 tribes and God had said, use goats as a sin offering, they offered 12 goats. Now my guess is they paid for them themselves. That's my guess. But why 12 tribes? I thought the northern 10 tribes were lost. Well, they pretty much were lost. Remember, Israel had a civil war north and south. The north had the 10 tribes called the kingdom of Israel. The south was Judah and Judah was mostly the tribe of Judah and Simeon in the south and the Negev, a little bit of Benjamin just north of Jerusalem. And so when the Jews returned from Babylon to Judah, it was mostly all men of the tribe of Judah. And there were some Levites and descendants of Aaron, some priests, and maybe a few of Simeon and a few of Benjamin, but mostly just Judah and Levi and the priests, sons of Aaron. So why did they do 12 goats for 12 tribes? Well, even though they were not there, a couple of things were going on. One, they could offer the sacrifices for their brothers wherever they were in the world. But two, they wanted to reconstitute the 12 tribes, at least symbolically, even if they were not there in actuality. In the priesthood, the sons of Aaron, now remember Moses was of the tribe of Levi. Pops, do you know what tribe you're from, your family? You're Jewish, right? Who knows these days, right? We don't know. But probably most of the Jews who we identify as Jews are from the tribe of Judah or Levi. Jacob had 12 sons. Levi was the third. Judah was the fourth. Of the tribe of Levi, Levi entered into Egypt with a couple of his sons and they multiplied and eventually from the sons of Levi came Moses. And Moses had a brother Aaron. So Aaron was the high priest and Aaron's sons are priests. But his cousins... were not priests. They're still of the tribe of Levi, but they can't be priests because they're not his sons. So what do we call those guys? Levites. And God gave the Levites the job of helping the priests. Thus, they decided to do 12 goats, even though the 12 tribes, for the most part, were no more. The northern 10 went to Assyria and the Borg-like Assyrians assimilated them. And some historians say you can trace going up into Europe, but it's not as clear as tracing the Jews who were taken into Babylon because they returned to Judah and they were the Jews mostly who were there when the Romans came and occupied at the time of Christ. And then in AD 70, there was an uprising of the Jews and the Romans crushed the uprising and destroyed Jerusalem, leveled the temple, eventually saw the suicide of a couple thousand Jews, was it, on the mountain fortress of Masada. And so those Jews then in AD 70 were more identifiable and they were scattered. And so most of the Jews that we're familiar with today are Jews of the southern kingdom of Judah. Ezra 6, verse 18. They assigned the priests to their divisions and the Levites to their divisions over the service of God in Jerusalem as it is written in the book of Moses. So God had said specifically, here's what the priests do and here's what the Levites do. And so they took upon themselves those roles again. But also, King David had taken the priesthood, the sons of Aaron, and I think it's in 1 Chronicles 24, he took the sons of Aaron and he divided them into 24 groups or 24 courses or orders. And so that through the year, they would cycle through those 24 and they would know when their family had to go to the temple to do the work and they'd all take turns. So that by the time you get to, The New Testament, John the Baptist, his father's name was Zechariah and he was a priest. So he was the son of Aaron and he was of the order of Abijah. And Abijah was the eighth of the 24 groups that David broke the priesthood up into so that they would know what time of the year each group was due to work at the temple. So it was the time for the order of Abijah to go work at the temple. So Zechariah went, him and all his close relatives. Well, after they came back from Babylon, they had lost those 24 orders. They only had priests from a few of them. So what could they do? They reconstituted the 24, even though they didn't have actual family members from the original 24. Still, they were all descendants of Aaron. So they took upon themselves the names of the 24 families that David had divided. So when it says here they assigned the priests to their divisions and the Levites, as it is written in the book of Moses, the book of Moses told them their main roles, but then it was David, his work in the book of Chronicles that broke them up into their priestly divisions. Verse 19, And the descendants of the captivity kept the Passover... on the 14th day of the first month. And that's exactly what God had commanded through Moses in the book of Exodus, that you're to keep this day, the 14th day of the first month, as the Passover for all your generations. And it turned out to be that day when they were killing the Passover lamb to celebrate the Passover. As the Jews are killing the Passover lamb, that's the day that Jesus Christ was crucified, on that day. And in Exodus, God says, four days before the Passover, you're to pay the money to buy the Passover lamb on that day. And so in the Gospels, it's hard to peg it exactly, but we can see that Judas paid, well, Judas was paid by the high priest 30 pieces of silver to purchase Jesus Christ, who is the Passover lamb, to buy him as the sacrifice for the whole nation a few days before Christ was actually crucified. So my guess is that that happened on the 10th day of the month of Nisan. And it was actually originally called the month of Abib, which was the Jewish name. But when the Jews were taken into exile... In Babylon, when they came back 70 years later, they had all pagan names of the month. When God said, your year shall begin in the month of the Passover, they gave up on that. And so they began keeping their calendar. You know, the Jewish New Year, what's that feast called? The Jewish New Year is Rosh Hashanah. Is that right? And they keep that. That's when the Babylonians started their year. It's not when God said, do it at the month of the Passover. And the original Jewish biblical names for the months, they stopped using. And after 70 years in a foreign country, you come back and you use the pagan names, which they did. And not that that's evil, but so the month of Nisan is the Babylonian name for the month. It was originally Abib. Okay. So from this, when they kept the Passover here in verse 19, They would do that for the next 450 years or so until the time of Jesus Christ when he came as the lamb from heaven and was offered up. Verse 20, for the priest and the Levites had purified themselves. All of them were ritually clean and they slaughtered the Passover lambs for all the descendants of the captivity, for their brethren, the priests, So after the Passover, beginning immediately, there was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which would last a week. And they couldn't put yeast in the bread. And yeast is leaven. It causes the bread to decay. It breaks it down. The bacteria rots the wheat. And as it rots it, it produces the waste result is carbon dioxide. And that gas causes the bread to rise. And so unleavened bread is when the bread does not decompose. It'll stay for a long time. It won't go bad. Jesus Christ was the bread from heaven. So he's the Passover lamb. He was killed like the Passover lamb without his bones being broken. And then the Jews immediately began keeping the feast of unleavened bread when the bread would not decompose. And their Jewish scriptures said that his body would not decompose in the grave. And Jesus Christ, the bread from heaven, was put into the grave and he did not decompose. While in every house in Israel, the bread was not decomposing. And what's the next feast? The next one on the calendar in Leviticus 23 is the feast of first fruits. And that would fall on that Sunday. So you have the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread. Christ is in the tomb. The next feast is on Sunday, the feast of first fruits. That's when Christ rose from the dead. The first fruits from the dead, Jesus Christ. before the rest of us as we will follow Him in resurrection. So the Jewish feasts were symbolic and prophetic of Christ's ministry for us. And let's finish with verse 22. They kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord made them joyful and turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. May God bless you all.
The duo also delves into the biology of sex, contrasting it with gender, and systematically outlines how sex is scientifically cut and dry, with roots traceable through human history back to Genesis. The episode offers listeners a journey into etymology, with insights into how societal influences shape the way words transform and ultimately the perception of concepts like gender in public discourse. An enlightening episode for anyone looking to understand the linguistic complexities and societal implications of gender terminology.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sexologist is just, I don't know, I guess a scholarly term for deranged pervert. And, you know, anyone with the title of sexologist should be kept far away from children.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stay away from my daughter.
SPEAKER 02 :
And your family. You don't even want to touch them with a six-foot pole. Any normal people.
SPEAKER 01 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in creation. Welcome to Real Science Radio. I'm Doug McBurney.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I'm Nicole McBurney. It's good to be on the air talking about real science on Friday.
SPEAKER 01 :
That's right. It's Real Science Radio and Fred Williams is on assignment this week. And so we're joined today by Real Science Radio contributing editor and producer Nicole McBurney with some analysis on one of the more important stories of the 21st century and to set it up. I want to look back to the 20th century briefly because I remember listening to a radio talk show in 1994. The talk show host was G. Gordon Liddy, and he was warning his listeners that the subtle replacement of the word sex with gender was happening, and he noticed it because he's kind of a word geek. He noticed it, and he said, first of all, it's grammatically incorrect. And second, he noted that this was not by accident. Now, Nicole, you don't remember this, but the early 1990s were the full court press of the homosexual rights movement. The first full court press open out there everywhere. And G. Gordon Liddy noticed during this full court press to normalize. perversion, that the word sex was subtly and slowly being replaced in the media by the word gender. And he said it wasn't an accident. And he said there were nefarious motives behind it. And so now fast forward 30 years, And we're in the midst of what some have dubbed the collapse of Western civilization into gender insanity. Help us understand.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so gender insanity, I'd rather just call it insanity. Because calling it gender insanity would be adopting the terminology that you have just said is incorrect. Or I guess as your radio talk show host had said... And I would completely agree with him that it wasn't by accident. And we'll get into the reasons why a little bit later on the show. I would just call it the ultimate manifestation of a century's worth of rebellion against God's design for family.
SPEAKER 01 :
Wow. Well, that's putting quite a fine point on it. And now some people might think that talk of grammatical terms is going to be a dry and boring subject, but this is not dry and boring because this is an analysis of the corruption of our society. And we're going to start in the area of grammar, and then we're going to take it from there. Let's talk about the grammar a little bit. What have you found out?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so the word gender originally, and I realize that, you know, when people, if people ask me what my gender is, I'm not going to be confused by it because, and this is an argument that people give all the time is, well, language changes. So, you know, deal with it. And I recognize that. But the term gender, when used as a noun, was originally a grammatical term for a category or a class that a noun falls into. And the word itself, the word gender, comes from the Latin word genus, which means kind, family, or order. So you're familiar with taxonomy. You know scientists will classify an animal by their genus. And genus also comes from an even earlier word, or the Proto-Indo-Perian Proto-Indo-European root gene, meaning to give birth or to beget. And this same root gives us our words generate, genetic, genealogy, or homogenous, for example. I mentioned the PIE languages. Are you familiar with the PIE languages?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, PI, I'm familiar with pie. And I mean, not just the kind you can eat. I'm familiar with 3.14. All right. So am I in the ballpark?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, not even close. But let me give you a third pie for you. This PIE is an acronym. It stands for Proto-Indo-European. And it's a... The Proto-Indo-European is a reconstructed language. It's not a real language, so you won't be able to go out into an archaeological dig and find a potsherd that says Arfaxid was here in the Proto-Indo-European language. But based off of how language has, I guess, evolved over time and distinguished itself into many other distinct languages, linguists can use these patterns and go backwards and reconstruct this mother language, this common ancestor. And this common ancestor encompasses languages all the way from the Indo-Iranian, like Bengali and Hindi, to the Greek and the Germanic and Italic languages. So all the way from India to Europe, you will find a common ancestor for these languages here. And that's a wide, broad area, which is pretty impressive.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't have thought Hindi was related to German, but apparently the linguists do.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and so I had a graphic there of this family tree, and I'm putting up another graphic, kind of showing you how these words could be related. Here's the word two, T-W-O, as in the number two. And if you look, if you compare it to many of these other PIE languages, you see like dos, duo two twa they're all very similar and so linguists have linked this back to one word uh dwoh d-w-o-h and that's what they guess the proto the original language for this family would have looked like so the number two all goes back to this one common word and there are other words not just the number two but this is a really good example of that um and so um
SPEAKER 01 :
Words can have a common ancestor, unlike proteins, which we learned from. We learned that on Real Science Radio recently in an interview with Sal Cordova on proteins.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, we will link to that, because that was a fantastic show. I recommend everybody go watch that. But languages do have a common ancestor, and I guess the earliest we can really go back is the Tower of Babel, and I think that's about when you could have pinned the Proto-Indo-European languages would have existed. So I had just, out of curiosity, googled when the Proto-Indo-European languages, when linguists would have guessed that such a language would have existed, and they say probably around 1250, 2500 BC. And according to Answers in Genesis, Answers in Genesis has estimated that the Tower of Babel was around 2200 BC. So about that time frame would have been whenever God split the languages and Proto-Indo-European would have been one of those languages, it seems.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, okay, interesting.
SPEAKER 02 :
But going back to the word gender, the topic of today's show, when we look at the Webster's 1828 Dictionary, we can see that this word was also used as a verb, and it means to beget or to breed, which is why in the King James, we should give a warning.
SPEAKER 01 :
Warning, warning, warning, Will Robinson, there are Bible verses up ahead. For those in the audience who advocate pluralism and diversity, we know here at Real Science Radio that you would censor anyone who would dare quote a Bible verse in public, so this warning gives you fair notice. Raw, unadulterated truth is about to be uttered.
SPEAKER 02 :
That's right. So we go to Leviticus chapter 19, verse 19. It says, quote, Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind, unquote. And also in 2 Timothy 2.20, quote, But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing they do gender strifes, unquote. So we typically don't use the word gender as a verb today, but it was prevalent in the past. King James is evidence for that. But we mostly use it as a noun today. So that brings us back to gender as a case system in grammar.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, now before we jump into gender as a case system, let me just see if I'm understanding here. So thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. So in that phrase, gender has something to do with breeding. So one could say that it has something to do with Sex in the breeding sense, but it doesn't have to do with sex in the male-female categorization sense. And then in the Apostle Paul's instruction to Timothy, he's saying avoid unlearned questions knowing that they do gender strifes, meaning they cause strifes. They cause something to happen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
So neither of those have to do with a male-female sex construct.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right, not inherently. And as we get into this, the case systems, like I was saying, so the Proto-Indo-European languages, I'm just going to start calling them the Pi languages because that's much easier to say. So a lot of the Pi-derived languages have a tooth case system, masculine-feminine, or a three-case system, masculine-feminine, and neuter. But if you go outside of the Pi languages, you have Zulu, for example, which has 17 genders. 17 17 oh the zoo zulus must be popular over at the u.n with 17 genders right well and this shows that gender does not is not distinctly male and female or it doesn't have to be based off male and female as a category and i'm putting up a chart here and this is a category for people Not necessarily male and female, but you can see the word for boy, child, friend, parent, and person here all have a similar shape at the beginning. It all starts with um. So the word for boy is umfana, child umtwana, friend is umgane, parent umzali, and person umuntu. And for any of our Zulu speakers out there, I'm sorry if I pronounced that wrong. I tried. But you can see there that they...
SPEAKER 01 :
We invite any Zulu speakers to call with corrections.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, absolutely. But you can see my point is that they all have that first um distinguishing that the noun here is talking about a person, and then the ending differentiates, it specifies what kind of person are we talking about. So that's how these nouns work in a gendered language. These are called inflections. The different shape is the inflection of the noun.
SPEAKER 01 :
Ah, okay. So... And none of the 17 genders in the Zulu language have to do with male, female, gender fluid, gender unconcerned, gender inconsiderate, gender confused, or any of that stuff.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, that whole thing came much later, long after Zulu was around. But then if we go back to the Pi languages, there are also some languages that don't have gender systems like Turkish, Persian, and English. English does have gender for the pronouns, and the reason is that's just leftover of the old English system that used to be gendered. for all of its nouns. So, like, if you're familiar with Spanish, you would know that there's masculine and feminine and neuter. So, like, la mesa, the table, is feminine. El tomate is masculine. The tomato is masculine in Spanish. But in English, we would just say the table, the tomato. It's just... We use the same article, and the ending doesn't really specify anything in our nouns. But we do... But in Old English, it used to be that we did have these masculine, feminine, and neuter genders. And we lost those between the 11th and 14th century as the language lost its inflection. And our... our sentence structure, English syntax became much more rigid, so now we typically use a subject-verb-object order. So, like, I would say, I ate the soup. I wouldn't say... I could say, the soup I ate, but that sounds weird, and it's... Maybe you might see that in poetry, but it's not really standard English. Maybe an uneducated person might say something like that. But that was fairly common in Old English. It wouldn't have sounded as weird because the different inflections in the noun would have been very clear what the subject and what the object was.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, okay. Interesting.
SPEAKER 02 :
And so in Old English, subject, verb, object was the most common word order, but you could switch them around. And In a highly inflected language like Greek, where the nouns have different endings and different articles depending on what part of speech they are, you can make a word salad and it still makes sense. It's not confusing. It doesn't sound weird. Whereas in English, you have to be very specific. You'd have to add more words to clarify what you mean.
SPEAKER 01 :
So you could put together word salads and basically be a speechwriter for any number of candidates for higher office these days. And so this does indicate that with English, there has been a devolution of the language. The language has become less sophisticated and I would say a little more legalistic, a little more rigid, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, we've definitely lost. And this happens just because of various influences. Like I had mentioned earlier, people say language changes. And really, the reason language changes is because of various influences, whether another country comes in, like... William the Conqueror came in in the 11th century, so we now have a lot of French loan words in our language. Or cultural influences might have affected language changes. So all these various influences have caused us to lose our inflection and make our sentences more rigid. And now we generally have to use more words to describe what we mean. So I have this here. This is a book, Beowulf. And Beowulf is the English language's oldest epic, and I have it in parallel. So it has the Old English over here on this page and on the other page in Modern English. And if you just look at what I'm holding up, you can see that the Old English has, per line, fewer words than compared to the Modern English.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, wow.
SPEAKER 02 :
So where, you know, a sentence might have four words in the old English, you might need ten words in the modern English. So that just shows you over time. And I think that's also a reflection of general laziness in people. We just, we start to break down. And so we need more information in order to pass on what we mean. Instead of using one or two words, now we need like ten.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right, right. And it's sort of an algorithm that you can watch if you read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. You can see that more words are required to describe situations because the situations... just become more and more convoluted you know at the very beginning when god was in the garden with adam and eve he could speak in very simple terms with them yeah but by the time it came to to write the law down for the jews there's like 613 different laws that had to be so i i see a similar algorithm in the bible and in language wow yeah
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so I kind of want to talk a little bit about the origin of gendered and gendered languages, because not all languages are gendered. Like, Chinese, for example, has been around pretty much as far back as we can go, and it's not a gendered language. So it's not something that's necessary for language, and I think that's something that came out during the Tower of Babel. I have no other explanation. I think God's just creative, and He's just like, I'm going to do a little bit of this over here, and we're not going to do that over here. So... That's why we have some languages that do and some languages that don't. So in English, whenever we think of gender, you know, we tend to think male and female. And whereas in another language that is gendered, like maybe Spanish, growing up learning that language, you wouldn't really think of objects being male and female, they're just masculine and feminine, that's just how the language is. And so whenever I study a language, like Spanish, and they say, well, the genders are just kind of arbitrary, there's no reason for the table to be spanned, the table to be feminine in spanish while the book is masculine and that confused me because i'm thinking how can you categorize something arbitrarily like that just didn't make sense and as i was as i was studying this i realize it's because i'm looking at it backwards So let me kind of try and walk through this to help you understand where I'm coming from. So if we go back in time to the Sumerian languages, which linguists say is the oldest known language, and they did not have the masculine-feminine distinction, but rather a human-non-human distinction. And then later on, the Hittite language, which branched off the Proto-Indo-European early on, had an animate and non-animate. So kind of going from human to non-human, now you have like animate, meaning you could include animals and maybe some plants. So you're getting a little bit more specific. And then later on down the line, you get this from animate and non-animate. Now you have neuter, masculine, and feminine. And it's attributed to a man named Protagoras, who was a Greek philosopher and rhetorician. Linguists say he was the first to label nouns as masculine, feminine, and neuter. So I think up until this time, you know, in history, peace is not very common. You're almost always fighting some battle or some blight, just trying to survive. So I don't think many people really had the time to sit down and analyze and categorize languages. But then in the 5th century BC, and we get this source from Aristotle, he says Protagoras was the one who kind of sat down and he was fascinated with grammar. And he's like, I see a pattern. We have these three categories, and I'm going to classify them as male, female, and neuter. And I think the reason he classified it as male, female, and neuter was because that's a concept anyone can grasp, right? Masculine, feminine... Male, female, and neuter are three very distinct categories. At least we knew that up until modern times. And so he would look at these words and say, you know, okay, the word for woman here has this ending and this article, and so do these words over here. I'm going to classify those as the female nouns. And then he did the same for the male nouns. And then... Maybe whatever else was the neuter nouns. And there are some, you know, exceptions to the rules. But generally speaking, words that have a similar ending will have the same article. Like in English, we have a and the as articles. Greek has a lot more depending on what part of speech the noun is. So depending on masculine, feminine, or neuter, those articles would change. And so because he was kind of the first to categorize these, he noticed that some of these feminine nouns, such as menace, which means wrath and frenzy, or pelex, meaning helmet, he said these female nouns have the same ending as a lot of these masculine nouns. So we should stop using the female articles for these and categorize this as masculine. So I guess he was... picking going through and he's like you know some of these aren't really matching up so anyway that I just found that really interesting and so he had he had some influence on the structure of the language going forward after his analysis yeah it seems like I'm not sure if they categorized it to his liking or not and like I said I'm not really familiar with Greek but it was interesting he noticed these patterns he's like wait these don't really fit so going back to I said it was confusing to me that masculine, feminine, and neuter were arbitrary. And the reason I was thinking that is because I was thinking someone just sat down and decided this word's going to be masculine, this one's going to be feminine, and that one's neuter. But the language was already there. He was the one who just noticed the pattern and just categorized it by these masculine, feminine, neuter labels. He could have picked black, white, and gray. It didn't really matter what he called them. So in my English-speaking mind, I'm thinking backwards, thinking someone picked these, but that's just how language develops. So the arbitrariness comes into what words got what ending. That just kind of developed naturally. I don't know exactly what influences went in there. Maybe that was just the way God made it. That's the best I can say for that. So that's the aspect of gender and the linguistics. And if there's any linguists out there who want to correct me because I'm not a linguist, I'm just a word nerd, please reach out and I will make corrections in the KGov over at rsr.org in the show notes. But now I want to get into the science of sex, male and female. But before we do that, I do need to ask you the interesting fact of the week.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, that's right. The interesting fact of the week. We can't forget that. Everyone's on the edge of their seat.
SPEAKER 02 :
That's right.
SPEAKER 01 :
Lay it on me. All right, so. Let's hear it.
SPEAKER 02 :
What do you call an animal with both male and female characteristics?
SPEAKER 01 :
Animal with both male and female. David Bowie.
SPEAKER 02 :
No.
SPEAKER 01 :
No? Not quite. Okay, well, I have absolutely no idea what you would call that, but I'm sure you're going to tell me.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, the answer is genandromorph.
SPEAKER 01 :
Genandromorph. Okay, well, you know, if I would have taken a little bit more time and gone through my rudimentary understanding of Latin and English, I probably could have come up, because it sounds like someone just mashed that word together. Pretty much. Three or four different words.
SPEAKER 02 :
It might be pronounced genandromorph, actually. I'm not totally sure. But gyno, meaning woman, andro, man.
SPEAKER 01 :
Uh-huh, andro, genandromorph. So there you go. I get it. I mean, it makes sense to me. I could see how that word. Right. Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
So there you go. And I got some pictures up showing you it's a butterfly, a lobster and a couple of birds. And these animals sometimes have something goes wrong in their genetics and they have 50 percent male, 50 percent female. And the internal organs reflect that as well, not just the outside. But I do want to point out that this is an anomaly. This is not something that is normal.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right, right. And I also want to be clear that I don't want to imply that there's anything like that going on with creativity. No, he's without excuse for how strange he was. Anyway.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, so these anomalous, maybe you would even call them deformities?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I would call them a deformity because it negatively impacts the organism. As far as I know, a genandromorph cannot reproduce. And like I showed in the picture, a lobster, a butterfly, and a bird, It really only affects birds, insects, and crustaceans. It doesn't affect people. So some people will claim that there are intersex, but that's not what this is. That's not what a genandromorph is. An intersex person is just someone who had something go wrong developmentally to where their sex is not very clear. But they're still one or the other. Just the developmental, the physical development went wrong somewhere. And it's not just the reproductive organs that get affected. It's also typically like the joints are misshapen or you have weak ligaments, other physical problems to organs. It's not just one aspect. It's bad for the entire body.
SPEAKER 01 :
I see. And I remember, by the way, back during the full court press in the early 90s, when the normalization of sexual perversion was just full blown. If you spoke in the public square with the advocates of perversion, they would act like there was one of these intersex people around every corner. They were everywhere and they were always a topic that they brought up in order to try to normalize what... we always knew was abnormal and sad, by the way.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, like I said, it impacts people negatively who have this deformity. So sex, and let's just clarify, I'm talking about males and females, so we're getting into biology. It's a lot more cut and dry than the etymological origins of the word gender and gender categorizations and stuff. So explaining this will go by a lot quicker. But before we do that, a little bit of etymology. The word sex... comes from the pi root, the Proto-Indo-European root, sek, S-E-K, meaning to cut, which gives us words like section, dissection, insect, and even saw. And so that kind of reminds me of back in Genesis when God took woman from man, he cut her away from him. So that's pretty interesting. And so people and most animals and many plants reproduce sexually. In humans, the gametes, which are the ova and the sperm, each have 23 chromosomes, but you need 46 to make a new human being. So the males get half and the females get the other half. And God designed these two gametes to come together to produce offspring. And so Genesis 2.24 says, So God did separate men and women, but He still created a mechanism for them to come back together to become one.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, and there's an interesting word right there that I've always wondered about. Because the word cleave, so you know what a cleaver is, right? Yeah. chop something with a cleaver so cleave implies to to separate but in the in the text it also implies to join together which is just really sophisticated interesting little word yeah that i've always wondered about we'll look further into that in fact we'll have our crack staff look into that yeah we should we'll put a little note on what we find over at uh rsr.org for
SPEAKER 02 :
Interested audience members.
SPEAKER 01 :
Cleave.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. But let's get back to the show here. So chromosomes, I also want to clarify here, chromosomes are packets of DNA that give an individual Greetings out there, brightest audience.
SPEAKER 01 :
This is Doug McBurney jumping into our own show. We've run out of time on KLTT. To hear the rest of this broadcast, be sure to check in at the podcast at rsr.org.
