Answers to Three Key Questions about Creation and Evolution | thebereancall.org

Answers to Three Key Questions about Creation and Evolution

September 7, 2023
Randy Guliuzza

More about our annual Conference: https://www.thebereancall.org/conference

Watch the Conference Live or Later:

Dr. Randy Guliuzza is a captivating speaker who presents well-documented and often humorous scientific and biblical talks to audiences of all ages. He has represented ICR in several scientific debates at secular universities and in other forums. Dr. Guliuzza has a B.S. in Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, a B.A. in theology from Moody Bible Institute, an M.D. from the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. Dr. Guliuzza served nine years in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps and is a registered Professional Engineer. In 2008, he retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Air Force, where he served as 28th Bomb Wing Flight Surgeon and Chief of Aerospace Medicine, and joined ICR as National Representative. He was appointed President in 2020.

ICR’s website: www.icr.org/randy_guliuzza/

Videos will also be posted on these platforms:

Join us on Social Media:

Transcript:

Randy: Well, thank you, Rob! That was a great introduction. It was wonderful. And I have to tell you: Rob mentioned all those nice things, but I’ve really never met a man more zealous, more focused on the Lord Jesus, and will talk to anybody, anywhere, at any time about the Lord Jesus and their need of salvation than my good brother Rob Yardley here. And it’s been a joy to see you [...]. 

[audience applauds]

So you’re a mentor to me in those areas. Just a real joy, and a real heart to serve the Lord. How we met, I want to mention, in 2010 is we were on a pastors conference I believe down in Southern California, and we needed a helper with our book table, and our events department said, “Well, there is this wonderful man. He will come in and help you do anything, and he’s got a real servant’s heart,” and that’s what it turned out to be. Rob Yardley, he came and he helped at the book table, and he wasn’t even feeling good. He was very, very sick, and he came, and he’s come to so many of my talks and so many things, it’s just great to see you. And thank you for volunteering your time to serve on our board. It’s a real blessing to have you. So thank you.

Wow! This has been a tremendous conference. All the talks, all the talks, bar none, have been just over the top good in so many ways. And I want to thank you all. Jay, thanks for that wonderful talk! You saved me at least five minutes of time tonight in my talk just by some of those things that I won’t have to explain, because you explained them so well, so thoroughly, and in such a very engaging manner. So thank you, thank you very much. Look forward to hearing the other talks tomorrow on those areas.

So tonight we want to talk about something new, and hopefully something useful. New and useful.

Okay, what do we have up on the screen there? Nothing yet, but…there it is! Bing, whiteboard! How many of you guys like a live whiteboard talk? They’re kind of fun on that! Well I can’t really write on this, but we will do some writing, and we’ll be doing some talk on a whiteboard. And this whiteboard will move, see? Boom. It’s gonna move. And it’ll move, and it’ll zoom in, and I’ll write really fast on this. We’re gonna cover three important questions that came up in a debate. Rob Yardley actually came to the debate. It was down in Southern California. It was between myself and a representative from Reasons to Believe, and a representative from BioLogos. BioLogos. Not Logos, BioLogos, the theistic evolutionists. And it was moderated by a man named Sean McDowell, and you can actually watch the debate if you go to his webpage, Sean McDowell. And he came up with three really good questions for the debate. 

Question number 1: How do you understand and interpret Genesis 1 and 2? So this is actually a great talk to take notes on. How do you understand and interpret Genesis 1 and 2? Do you think anybody might ask you that question? How do you understand? How do you interpret Genesis 1 and 2? You should have an answer to that.

Question number 2: (kind of written in the modern lingo) What is your take on Darwinian evolution and its compatibility with Christian faith? What is your take on Darwinian evolution and its compatibility with Christian faith? That’s actually, like, two questions rolled into one.

And question number 3 was: Are you open to the natural world pointing to design? Hm! Are you open to the natural world pointing to design? 

These are great questions, and we ended up debating over these questions. They called it, like, a dialogue or an exchange, or something like that, but it’s a debate.

So since I’m in California and I want to be a little countercultural, and the reason why people have “yeah, but…”--thank you for that introduction!--answers to the first two questions, it’s because of the third. 

So here we go. There it is. Question number 3 I’m gonna begin with first. Are you open to the natural world pointing to design? I’m from ICR! What am I gonna say? Yes! Yes! No “yeah, but…” Yes. Yes. So this is what I said. I’m gonna write real fast: yes! And here’s my answer: The workmanship seen in living things is best explained by intelligent design. I try to keep this short, simple, easy to understand for anybody. Yes.

Now, there’s a key word in that answer, and the key word is “workmanship.” Workmanship. And we are going to elaborate on this more tomorrow morning. That’s a great word. All of you have memorized, probably, Romans:1:20: “The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are…” what? “...made.” Now, that Greek word, which is translated “made,” is used only one other time in the entire New Testament in Ephesians:2:10 where it says, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” Oh! Now this really makes sense in Romans 1! Invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen by looking at His workmanship! His workmanship. 

Psalm:19:1 says–what? “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord, and the firmament shows his…” what?

Audience: Handiwork.

Randy: Handiwork! Workmanship! Handiwork! Now, there are some distinctive things about workmanship. This little clicker in my hand, does it show signs of workmanship? Of course it does! What you see here are multiple parts working together for a purpose. The only thing that puts multiple parts working together for a purpose is a workman. Workman, a handyman. This shows workmanship.

Now, when you look at me, do you see multiple incredible, phenomenal, over-the-top good parts working together for a purpose? Of course you do!

[audience laughs]

You see them in spades on here! Laugh at my jokes, not true things! 

[audience laughs]

This is just incredible! You see evidences of workmanship.

Now, I could jump into all kinds of areas for workmanship, but let’s look at this one: oh, isn’t that cool? You kind of like zoom out, zoom in here. This program shows evidences of workmanship. 

Let’s talk about adaptation, and tomorrow we’re gonna talk about it even more. So how might creatures adapt to a very challenging environment, like a cave? And what you see up there, I’m gonna talk about it even more tomorrow, are cave fish. You see some sighted fish, and then you see those blind pink fish. Those two can mate with each other. They’re the same species. They have offspring. But the one that’s blind and hypopigmented lives in a cave on that. How in the world did that happen? Did it take millions of years to go from that sighted fish to that blind fish? Mm-mm. Nope, nope, nope. That is a lie that you’re being taught and that has been taught. These creatures are able to self-adjust. Now that’s a cool word! That’s even better than adapt. Adapt’s been kind of perverted. These creatures can self-adjust to different systems, and they do it through highly engineered mechanisms there. And so in fact as we look at creatures, and we start to read scientific papers about them and how they adapt, you’re not gonna find words like “random” and stuff like this. As you read these scientific papers, you’re reading these words–this is what’s popping out of the scientific literature. I pulled every one of these from scientific papers. In fact, they say adaptation is regulated. Not just regulated, but highly regulated. That it is rapid, that it is repeatable. Sometimes it’s even reversible. And that the responses to these environmental conditions are so targeted they’re even predictable.

Now, when you’re reading those words–regulated, rapid, repeatable, predictable–you are not reading words of a random mindless purposeless process, you’re reading words that an engineer would do and would put them together. You’re reading signs of engineering here. And this should be the first clue that this adaptive process is a highly regulated engineered process.

So during this debate, I want to take on three major icons of evolution, and the first one is these cave fish. Now, we always talk about those cave fish that I showed you on the picture, but do you…this is gonna astound you: currently there are over 230 different kinds of fish, 230 different kinds, that have a sighted part on the surface and a blind counterpart in caves. Not just the ones that they always talk about. All different kinds. So when you’re seeing all different kinds of these fish doing it, you should be thinking, This is a created adaptive process that the Lord has put into these kinds of creatures, not something slow. So what you see there on the pictures, this was a Cell paper on these cave fish, you see the sighted type at the top and you see their blind counterparts at the bottom. You notice there’s something interesting about those blind ones–since I have time tonight and I can give you my testimony–look at that little horn. It’s called a horn that develops on these fish. Nobody knows what the horn does, but it’s doing something, and we at ICR are gonna research that. I bet you it’s some kind of sensor, some kind of sensor that’s on those babies on that. It’s not just some mutated appendage that’s sticking out there on there.

Well, anyway, since I didn’t have a whole lot of time back then, I pointed to this paper, and so for those of you who are the purists, I’ll put the scientific paper up there. This was a 2013 paper published by a man named Rohner. What he was able to demonstrate, as you can see on the right hand side of the slide, if need be, these fish can go from a sighted fish to a blind fish in a single generation. What? That quickly. Nobody knows exactly the steps in that, nobody knows what the linkage is yet, but we’re working on this at ICR. We have a whole lab that if you come and you visit our facility, you can see it from the inside, our cave fish lab where we’re working on this. This will be a slow, arduous process, but we’re gonna try to figure out how they do that. And tomorrow I’ll show you some results of experimentation that we did on the pigmentation part if you’re interested in coming back and seeing it on that. But we’ll cover that tomorrow on those things.

Here’s an…oh, wow! Look at that! This is our museum! If you get down to Dallas, please stop in and visit this. This is where you can see the lab for our blind cave fish, plus a whole bunch of other things that are very, very useful to train you on creation science. As it says there, our discovery center is a bulwark for biblical truth on that. You go through here, you’re going to go up from that four percent who have a biblical worldview to a higher, higher number on all of those kinds of things. It’s a wonderful facility and it’s being constantly updated all the time. So please stop in and take a look at that.

Second icon are these finches, which people misname Darwin’s finches. Now, you’re told that the reason why they have big beaks and small beaks is because there’s a struggle to survive, and there’s this one-up-manship. And then in, you know, in the dry weather when the seeds are really, really small, the birds with the teeny weeny beaks, they survive, and the other ones die out. And when it’s rainy season, they’ve got those big seeds, the birds with the big beaks survive and all that stuff. Wrong again! Wrong again. 

In fact, this paper demonstrated–this was a cool research paper on that–and it came out just a few years ago: Epigenetic Variation between Urban and Rural Populations of Darwin’s Finches. Let me tell you what those are: there’s the urban and the rural population. All the finches used to be rural until people started moving in. Then people throw their food away in their garbage can, and some people even throw it along the side of the road. I don’t know who would do that, but they do. And these urban finches found out, hey, it’s easier to eat human trash food than it is to go out and fetch your own food! 

So the population is divided into two groups: the rural group and the urban group. As you can see there on the picture, within just two years, two years, there was variations in these finch beaks. And look what it says there: “Growing evidence suggests that epigenetic mechanisms may also be involved in…” what? What kind of adaptation? “...rapid adaptation to new environments.” 

Let me explain what that is, epigenetic mechanisms. All of us are hung up on the genes. You have the gene for this, you have the gene for that. You know, some of you over here are wondering, Do you have the smart gene on that? Some of you are wondering, Do I have the dumb gene? I don’t know, but everybody is wondering if they got the gene for this or the gene for that. Genes are important, but they’re not the whole story. In fact, there is another layer–there’s several layers. There’s multiple layers of information. 

But there is at least one other layer of information which is not coded in the genes, and that’s called epigenetic–above the genes. And this information can regulate the genes, turning the genes on, turning them off. And it can do it rapidly, and you don’t have to wait for the genes to change one little bit at a time over long periods of time. They can be changed quickly. Those are called epigenetic mechanisms. And they led to these rapid changes in these finch beaks.

Here’s another icon of evolution: these moths, peppered moths. And you all heard the story about this one when you were kids growing up, because I know it was in your textbooks. All there were at one time were those white moths, and then the people in England started burning a bunch of coal, polluting everything with black coal dust. The white moths stood out like a sore thumb, again in some struggle to survive they were picked off, and the black ones slowly won out due to a genetic mutation which made them black, and they eventually took over the population. A classic example of survival of the fittest, or as Darwin called it, natural selection. We will spend more time on that tomorrow. 

But that isn’t what happened at all. This paper was published in 2016, which pointed out the industrial melanism mutation in British peppered moths as a transposable element. What in the world is that? Well, your DNA is not static. You think your DNA is what your DNA is? No! DNA can actually be changed in real time. And one of the ways it’s changed is tiny little machines can go along your DNA, and they can clip out a portion of it, clip out a section of DNA, and it can be relocated and pasted in in another spot. And when it’s clipped out and it’s pasted in, it changes the expression of these genes. And in this particular case, as you see there, over 95 percent of the black moths had a huge chunk of DNA clipped out and transported and pasted right at the exact spot that is needed to promote the expression of the black pigmentation. And zero percent of the white moths had it. Hmm! Sound like a lucky chance 95 percent of the time? No! These are highly regulated mechanisms that do this.

Now, as I’m doing the debate here, the audience is getting quieter and quieter, because they’re just watching this stuff. And you know what they’re thinking? Nobody ever told me this! I never learned about this in school! I was taught about random mutations, one little bitty change at a time. And you’re telling me stuff that can lead to rapid changes, which nobody ever said, and they look highly, highly engineered? Hmm! They’re getting interested in this. What other kinds of changes are there?

Oh, this one’s really cool. You guys can identify with this–it’s ice fishing! Down in Texas, they have no clue on that! Well, what kind of fish is that proud fisherman holding in his hand? It’s a muskie, or a pike. It’s a big pike fish. Some of them are muskie. They’re the same. It’s a predator fish, and it’ll eat a trout in the lake, it’ll eat a bass in the lake, and it’ll eat these carp in the lake. 

Now, what’s interesting about these carp, they’re called crucian carp, when that pike eats one of those carp and digests it and puts little carpy vapors back into the lake water, the other carp can detect that their cousin just got digested. And within a day, within a day, they start to morph from this shape to this shape. Wow! Which makes them bigger and faster and harder to eat. They don’t care if a bass gets [...], but when their cousin does, they start to change. Wow! That is really a very targeted rapid response to all of this. 

That’s not the only fish. Here’s another cool fish–this one’s not up in Minnesota, this is down in the Caribbean. It’s called a reef race. They live on coral reefs on that. The male there is that brightly colored one with the blue head, the female is the yellow one. Now, there’s not just usually one female, there’s usually a little school of females, 10-15 females, and this one male covers ‘em all. Wow! They’re happy when that’s happening. But what happens when that male dies, or a fisherman comes by and fishes that male out? What are those lonely females to do now? Hmm? Well, they can detect that the male is gone, and two, that little school of females can detect which one of them is the biggest, and within one day, her ovaries regress, she grows testes, and she’ll morph into a male. No way! Yes way on that! That is really cool on that! It’s what females have wanted to do forever! 

[audience laughs]

I mean, it’s just like wow on that! Look at all the bennies that she will get on all of that! Wow! Now, that’s kinda cool! The entire transformation doesn’t happen within one day, but the initiation of it starts within one day. That is really kinda cool!

How about this headline: “Mice can warn sons, grandsons of dangers via sperm.” How in the world does that work there? Well, let me give you an idea of what your tax dollars are with biologists at major universities. These biologists took these male mice, and they were all male mice, and they could put them on a metal pad that could shock their feet–painfully, but not lethally. And they would expose them to cherry blossom odor and shock their feet. Expose them to cherry blossom, shock their feet, expose them, shock them, shock shock shock on all of that. Then they took these male mice, and they mated them with a naive female, a naive female. Not the type that humans are looking for, but it’s a female that had never been exposed to cherry blossom odor. She had pups, and these biologists sacrificed the pups immediately upon birth, and they stained them through their nasal region looking for olfactory bulbs and nerves, and they stained blue. And this is what they found: on the left hand side of the screen are olfactory bulbs–these little [...] here are the bulbs, and these streaks are the nerves of controls. They were pups born to males who had never been exposed to cherry blossom odor, never had their feet shocked. On the right hand side are the pups that were born to the dads who were exposed to cherry blossom odors and had their feet shocked. And they have over 200 percent increase in olfactory bulbs, and guess what they’re specific for? Cherry blossom odor. Hmm! Wow! That’s pretty cool. Dad’s exposed, Mom isn’t, pups are already attuned to that potential threat. That’s what the quote says: “Such information would be an efficient way for parents to inform their offspring about the importance of specific environmental features that they are likely to encounter in their future environments.” Hmm! Nobody ever heard about this stuff. How many of you heard about this? Nobody’s being taught this. Rob knows, because Rob’s a faithful follower of me on that! So good for Rob on there!

These are just really, really cool things. Well, how in the world is this happening? It’s clearly not random mutation fractioned out by struggles to survive. These and many, many mechanisms can be explained through clear engineering principles. Now, what you see up on the screen is a cruise control. Cruise control is an adaptable mechanism which humans have invented. You know what it does, exactly. There are three key elements in a system that is adaptable, and you need to memorize them. Any adaptable thing–what did I say? Any adaptable thing, cruise control or creatures, they must have these three elements: sensors. Number two, logic–kind of an if-then logic. If my car is slowing down, then push on the throttle. It’s usually controlled by a computer, some kind of logic. And then you have to have an output device which makes it happen. So you have to have sensors, logic, and output. Sensors, logic, and output. What are they? Sensors, logic, and output. If any of those are missing, you can’t adapt. Creatures can’t adapt, cruise controls can’t adapt, space shuttles can’t adapt. You have to have a way of tracking what’s happening outside of you. Sensors–what biologists call receptors are really sensors. They get everything backwards. They’re really sensors. Logic: we can see some places in the cell where the logic is, but other places are yet to be discovered. And output devices: those are absolutely essentials, and adaptability can be explained by these engineering principles and these mechanisms here. And not only that, as it says there, these creatures, just like a space shuttle, have engineered upfront capability, which means that the solutions precede the challenges. Evolutionists say the solutions are due to the challenges. Wrong! Solutions precede the challenges. How many of you’d like to go on a space shuttle where the engineers have not thought through the solutions and built them into the space shuttle in advance? No! That would be trial and error and hit and miss. That’s what evolutionists propose. But as you can tell, it doesn’t work. How do you live in a cave until you’re adapted to, preprogrammed to, live in a cave? So many things are different from cave living to stream living. How does that happen? You would never–you wouldn’t even be able to find your mate in the cave, not to mention find the food and metabolize and do all of these kinds of things on that. You need the solutions up front, and that’s how the creatures are built. They’re built with these sensors and they’re built with these solutions upfront. 

So, as I said during the debate, this is a completely new radical idea. And if you’re here as a creationist and you’re hanging on to mutations, selection, mutations, selection, mutations, selection, you’re totally wrong. Totally wrong. Adaptation isn’t happening through this slow, iterative process. Adaptation is a highly regulated, highly, highly regulated mechanism which enables these creatures to do it. And I gave you epigenetic mechanisms. There are literally dozens, dozens, of different mechanisms which all enable organisms to continuously track their environment around them. Many, and many yet to be discovered that are highly regulating and enable these creatures to do this. And as time goes on and more and more research papers are published, all of the evidence is coming back about these mechanisms, and it just does not fit at all with standard evolutionary theory. This is a one-time chance for creationists to get out in front and frame the debate from an engineered perspective, which is, by the way, what these creatures are. They have been and always will be highly engineered things. So let’s start explaining them in that way.

And if you want to learn about that, come to our state of the art exhibits at our discovery center! Here’s a great picture of what it looks like at night. So if you ever want to get down to Dallas, do it around January, sometime then–March, February, March. You come down now, you’ll really have to be tracking your environmental changes, because you’ll shrivel up like a raisin. Anyway, so, it’s pretty hot down there right now. Coming up here has been a real treat for these last couple days!

Wow! All of that…why is that important? I’ll tell you why: because many of the reasons why people are going to compromise on the next two questions is because they think that science has overturned the Bible! They’re convinced on it. But what they’ve been fed is bad science, poor science, in so many ways. And so I’ve launched the debate showing them, hopefully shocking them, with some science that they had never heard, which clearly demonstrated just the exact opposite of what evolutionary theory teaches, that these creatures are highly engineered. 

Now that I’ve got their attention, now that I know that they’ve heard stuff that they never heard before, now that I know they’re saying, “Whoa! These creatures really maybe are engineered!” we’re ready for question number two: What is your take on Darwinian evolution and its compatibility with Christian faith? 

Hmm. Those are two good questions. Well, here are two good answers for them on that. I know they’re good, because they’re mine. Anyway…

[audience laughs]

…Darwinian evolution is a weak scientific theory. You notice I didn’t say they’re crazy, or they’re nuts, or any of that other stuff? I just said it’s weak. It’s a weak scientific theory, and then the second part is important too: and a poor explanation for the design of living things. Do you realize that is the number one reason why Darwin put evolutionary theory together to begin with? It’s because the 900 pound gorilla in the room, which has been staring everybody who has ever lived on this planet right in the face, is how do you account for the incredible design of creatures which clearly shows that they were created? That’s the main question–not the diversity of life. It’s why in the world do creatures look so incredibly designed? That’s the question. That’s what everybody’s been trying to answer. That’s what evolutionary theory is trying to answer is why do creatures look so designed? We would say they look designed because they are designed! Darwin’s claim to fame is he supposedly came up with a mechanism to explain why they were designed without a designer. And I’m saying his theory fails. His theory fails, because it’s weak. It fails because it doesn’t explain design. 

Question number 2b was about compatibility with the Christian faith. I’m saying that the basic premises of evolutionary theory cannot be reconciled, and I added one word–not just Christian faith, I said, “biblical Christian faith.” Biblical Christian faith. They can’t be reconciled. 

Okay, what’s the evidence for those? Okay, if you’re gonna talk about evolution of life, you gotta get life going. You’ve got to get it started, and as it says there on the right, no scientist on this planet really has a clue of how life began by natural processes. None! The little paper that’s right here published by John Horgan way back in 2011 that says, “Don’t tell the creationists, but scientists don’t have a clue of how life began,” is as true today as it was back then. And he began his article by saying he wrote the same headline 20 years earlier, and his editor wouldn’t let him publish it. And you know what, 20 years from now they’re not gonna be–they’re not gonna have a clue. Because in order to explain life, you have to explain four major biological functions. Growth, reproduction, adaptation, and metabolism. And all four of those are–creatures do all four of those things. And all four are absolutely necessary, and all four are incredibly complicated. All four have their own chicken-and-egg scenario within themselves, and they have chicken-and-egg scenarios between themselves. You don’t…you can’t reproduce until you can metabolize–that is, get energy from your environment and get resources and build yourself up. None of those things can happen, and nobody can–they can’t even agree on which one of those they want to begin with. So they’re not even close to explaining that. That’s why it’s a weak scientific theory, contrary to all the pulpit pounding you catch on television. Nobody can explain this.

Number 2: Not only do you have to get life going, you have to be able to explain how it changes from one type to another! In all of human experience, without a single exception–none! Zero!–has ever seen one creature change to a fundamentally different kind of creature! Never has ever been observed! In fact, we observe the exact opposite. We observe that creatures faithfully reproduce after their kind over and over and over again. That’s why it’s a weak scientific theory, notwithstanding the imagination that’s invoked by evolutionists. 

Why else is it a weak scientific theory? It’s weak because almost every one of their predictions has been proven false. And if you can’t predict things, then your theory is weak. And if you predict things and they turn out to be wrong, your theory is weak. So they predict that sometime life began, and over a long period of time it branched out into all the major different body types. But when you go and you look at the fossil record, right at the basic level where fossils begin to show up, you find the major body types showing there–almost all of them. You find invertebrates, vertebrates, mollusks, you find all of those types. They were totally wrong on that prediction. And it's about time someone shouts when your predictions are wrong. Evolutionists shout what they claim is true, and then when it’s proven false, they never say a word about it. It goes away kind of quietly. But in this debate, I’m going to shout: you’re wrong, and you are wrong about these things! 

They said that similar features were due to common ancestry. But we know thousands and thousands of examples where creatures have highly similar features but have nothing to do with common ancestry. None at all! And there’s just a couple of them up on the screen.

By the way, the DNA that codes for the echolocation in bats and whales and dolphins is essentially genetically identical to each other. Hmm! How did that happen? They were totally wrong on this! Similar features can be found due to creatures which are not from a common ancestor or they’re widely diverse. Totally wrong on those predictions. They were wrong about all these other claims: that your appendix was a useless vestigial organ. Way back in the ‘90s, early ‘90s, when I was in med school, I already knew I was being taught that it had tissue in it which was important for immunologic functions. You can live without it, but that doesn’t mean it’s vestigial at all. In fact, it has–it can serve very important functions.

The bone that every one of you are sitting on mislabeled as a tailbone, also said that was vestigial. Totally wrong! You just go to med school for just a few months and you realize that there are important muscles in your pelvic floor which are anchored to this so-called tailbone! And they’re useful for you right now! And I’m glad yours are working right now on all of those things! As a good friend of mine at ICR says, Frank Sherwin, “If you think this tailbone is a worthless vestigial organ, our ministry, ICR, we will pay for your surgery to have it removed on that. But you will have to pay for the diapers you’ll be in for the rest of your life.” Hmm!

They saw a little folds of skin on little embryos, human embryos, and they said they were gill slits. Wrong on that! These tissues never have gill tissue, never will, don’t. They’re little folds of skin which form into your lower jaw and muscles of your neck and glands and all of that. 

They said that DNA which they didn’t know it was coding for was junk. They labeled it as “junk DNA,” and in fact, they said almost 98 percent of your genome or more was this junk DNA. Totally wrong on that! We now know that the so-called junk DNA, much of it is absolutely vital for life and it regulates the DNA which codes for proteins! They were wrong on that pronouncement. 

And as Jay already mentioned today, when they claim that humans and chimps were 98-99 percent genetically similar to each other, totally wrong on that! And Jay was absolutely right when he said that the percentage that were more likely similar to each other is around 80 percent, or maybe even less. They were wrong on all of these things, and when you’re wrong, your theory is weak in these areas. 

Huh! When I was a kiddo, I was told that neanderthals were something like this, some hairy cavemen, and stuff like that. In fact, that’s a picture from when maybe some of you guys were kids on that. We now know that humans and neanderthals mated with each other, as you see there on the right. You just had to be careful, anyway, about all of those kinds of things.

Here’s another one: Lucy! What I don’t like about this is not only do they have the whites of the eyes, as Jay pointed out here, but what you really see is tons of imagination! I don’t like theories that have tons of imagination. When I was an engineer, we didn’t operate by imagination. And even as a medical doctor, we don’t do it either on those things. 

Now look at the picture on the right: that’s another one of these artist’s renditions. I don’t think Jay had this one in his talk today, but it’s like a lot of what he had. Look at her on that: if you put lipstick on her right there, she would look like a Texan in many ways…

[audience laughing]

So you would just…I mean, but over on the left are the bones. Look at those bones! Do you see a little bit of imagination between those two? Incredible! Science that relies on that much of imagination is weak. Well, I can say, “Well, somebody…that’s the ‘70s. Nobody would do it nowadays.” Ha! Here’s 2015, here’s Homo naledi on that. Look at that! Here’s the bones! Tons of imagination between those on those kinds of things. So tons of imagination. Incredibly weak.

Man, would you get control of your wife right over there??

[audience laughing]

I tell you, it’s like, Ohh! Oh, I tell you…thank you for letting me get a drink! Oh…is she always like this? She is? Good! Good. I’ll pay you after my talk, so thank you very much.

All right, weak–weak scientific theory. We could go on and on with areas where they make predictions that were totally wrong, failed, and all this other kind of stuff. Well, what about the compatibility with Christian faith? Hmm. Well, it’s not compatible with biblical Christian faith. Here’s a book, Adam’s Ancestor, written by Louis and Mary Leakey. I heard about them when I was a kiddo growing up. Both of them have passed away since then. Both of them were atheists. Both of them were evolutionists. And so when they’re writing about Adam, they’re not talking about the biblical Adam at all, but they're laying out the foundation for the evolutionary link of humans to our supposed apelike ancestor. And not only do atheistic evolutionists believe this, but theistic evolutionists believe it, too. In fact, aside from the addition of God, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between what the theistic evolutionists and the atheistic evolutionists believe. But there’s some major differences between what they believe and what the Bible teaches. 

First of all, when the Bible talks about Adam and also Eve, how they were created, the Bible says they were direct creation. Direct creation. Adam was formed of the dust of the ground, and Eve was taken out of Adam’s side. Well evolutionists say, “No, that’s totally wrong. We descended from some apelike ancestor.” 

The Bible says who was created and those verses that are right down there, that they were the first human–Adam particularly was the first human–and evolutionists say, “Totally wrong. The first human is completely indeterminate.” 

And the Bible says how many were created: a pair, Adam and Eve, which were the ancestors to all of us today. Evolutionists say that’s crazy, you could never get the genetic diversity in the human race from just a couple. There had to be a population of anywhere from 10-100 thousand of these. 

So on these three major counts, biblical Christian faith and evolutionary theory are completely incompatible with each other. 

But then just summarizing very quickly, why is the biblical Adam important? Well, all of these verses, all the verses, some in the Old Testament as well, mention Adam directly by name. Directly by name. And all of these accounts point out at least three important things: there was a real man, Adam, who really sinned and brought real death to everybody, therefore all of us need a real Savior. That’s what’s important. And that’s why it’s very important. And so this is a major biblical difference. And most of the time, we stop there, and it’s important. And I would throw in another one: probably the most important thing about Genesis 1 is it is laying out the biblical foundation for the doctrine of God, who God is. Now, I normally don’t put this in my talk, but since we have unlimited time, I’ll add it on that.

Who is God? Who is God? Not what is God like. We know God has these attributes which are unique to Him only–that He’s omniscient, omnipresent, all of those omnis, which none of us are. And He’s also loving, and holy, and all of these other things. But I’m not asking what is God like, I’m asking you who is God? By definition, in the Bible, God is the…?

Audience: Creator.

Randy: Creator! That is how He is defined. And that is how He is always defined. And not only is it a position describing what He is like, it is a position of rank and authority. He is of the highest rank because of who He is as Creator. 

Now, I was in the military, and I’m very familiar with rank. There was a wing commander over me who worked for an Air Force commander who worked for his four-star general who was the chief of staff of the Air Force who himself worked for the secretary of defense who worked for the president! Boom, boom, boom, boom! Rank! And there is a rank which greatly, greatly exceeds president, and that’s called God! 

Audience: Amen.

Randy: And that’s who God is! And so when you compromise on Genesis 1, you as a believer are sticking a knife in your gut and disemboweling yourself on who God is. And so it is the very basis for all of theology, the beginning of theology, which even outranks the gospel in all of these things. So this is really, really important. 

But here’s some other areas where it’s completely different–we’re gonna go into this in much more detail tomorrow. An evolutionary theory, their death-driven means to good is by one creature driving into extinction another one. And Steve Jobs, who was a thorough-going unbeliever, when he was dying of pancreatic cancer, gave his commencement address at Stanford University, he said, “Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent.” And all of evolutionary theory is talking about this, and we’ll elaborate on this a little bit more tomorrow. But the Bible doesn’t say that it is the good thing. The Bible says death is a curse. And the Bible says death is an enemy, and death will be destroyed. And what you and I and everybody have become accustomed to is what you see on the left hand side of the screen up there. But what you see on the left hand side of the screen is gross. It’s gross. And one of these days, it’s going to be eliminated, and I am looking forward to it! That’s what it says. That is completely incompatible. Christians, don’t try to bring it into our own worldview. 

And here’s another one that’s incompatible. I already mentioned this in Romans:1:20. The Bible says that His workmanship is clearly seen, clearly seen, and that you can understand it. 

Well, you see there up on the screen are some gears. Not just gears, microscopic gears. Microscopic gears which connect the hind legs of this little planthopper insect which can launch itself from zero to 700 Gs in a tiny fraction of a second. And it wants its two rear legs to extend at the same time at the same rate, so the engineer who put this planthopper together connected his rear legs with a set of mechanical gears. Huh! You have to have a microscope to see them, but they’re gears nonetheless.

Now, when I see gears, it is totally rational and reasonable for me to infer that there is a gear-maker. Evolutionists say that’s crazy, and you shouldn’t infer that, and that you’re not looking at real design, you’re looking at apparent design, which came about through some death driven process of survival of the fittest over long periods of time. That it’s not real design. That’s totally incompatible with Romans 1 and Psalm 19.

So there are many, many areas where it’s a completely incompatible view altogether, and they can’t be reconciled.

Which then brings us to question number 1, which was question number 3: How do you interpret and understand Genesis 1 and 2? And by now, everybody’s wondering, Hmm, how do you interpret Genesis 1? What is your understanding of Genesis 1 and 2? Well, here’s my understanding: Genesis 1 and 2 are this–historical narratives. Real history. Not mythohistory, as William Lane Craig says, real history. Real history of how the Lord created the heavens and the earth. And how do I interpret them? I give words their normal meaning in their normal context. Normal meaning, normal context. That’s what I was taught at Moody–not Wheaton, Moody! 

[audience laughs]

I could say literal–normal, literal, they’re fine. Some people say, “Well, do you do everything literal when the Lord said Peter was a rock? Do you think he was a literal rock?” Mm, I give…nope. I give words their normal meaning in their normal context. Now, why do I do that? Because I do that in every other area of life, and so do you. You do it as well. 

So here’s a prescription. I’ve written jillions of these, because when people come to the doctor, and they’re sick, they want to walk out with something in their hand other than a bill, you know? They want a prescription. So how many of you can read what this medication is? How many of you have highly evolved eyeballs right there? What does that medication…anybody read it? Atenolol. That’s a high blood pressure medication. So this is a really simple script. It says, “Atenolol 150 mg by mouth daily.” You’ve probably all had scripts like that: 150 mg by mouth daily. So you take your script to Walgreens or CVS, and you give it to them. The pharmacist looks at it and says, “What does Dr. Guliuzza mean ‘by mouth’? Mouth of a river, mouth of a cave, what’s he talking about?” So he changes your script to say, “Atenolol 150 mg by a natural opening daily.” Oh, wow! Totally changes the meaning! Where do you think, man, that pill’s going? 

[audience laughs]

Now when I say “by mouth,” I mean normal meaning, normal context this hole in your face! Put it there. That’s what I’m talking about. Normal meaning, normal words, like we do in everything else.

Now, before I went to medical school, I told you I was an engineer. I was stationed in Guam. One of the projects I was in charge of was a barracks rehab project. This contractor had to rehab barracks, and one of his–part of his scope of work was to paint the walls, and the contract said, “Contractor shall apply two coats of paint.” Two coats of paint. Well, this contractor came in, painted all the rooms with one coat of paint, packed up his stuff, and left, and our inspector caught it. And we sent him a letter, and we said, “Hey, you owe us another coat of paint.” And the contractor sent us a letter that said this: “What the contract means is one coat thick enough to equal two coats of paint.” And he had put on a thick coat of paint. We said, “No, what the contract means is…” What? Two coats of paint. So this…we had a dispute and this went to court. Oh, really, ughh! How many of you think the government got gypped, and the contractor was allowed to escape with one coat of paint? How many of you think the government won for once? Yes, we won this. And I love it, because this is what the judge said–the judge said, “In contract law [huh!] words must be construed to…” Guess what he said? “...normal meaning in the context of the specifications, otherwise the intentions of either party becomes unknowable.” Which means if you can make words say whatever you want them to mean, then they really don’t mean anything on that! 

May I suggest that that’s how we should approach the Bible? We should give the words their normal meaning, otherwise the intention of the Bible giver becomes–what? Unknowable. Unknowable. So how do I interpret the Bible? I give words their normal meaning in their normal context, like any other portion of literature. 

There are some good scientific reasons for doing this, as well. I’m not a Hebrew scholar, but this man, Steven Boyd, is. And he can look at the Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew grammar in a bunch of poetic passages has what you can quantify as distinctive characteristics, and the same grammar in real narrative passages has distinctive characteristics, and Genesis 1 and 2 pops right up there in historical narrative. Not poetry. So there are subjective reasons for looking at it.

But this is really important, really important. If I were to ask you, “How many of you believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, authoritative, infallible Word of God?” You would say, “Amen!” And I’d say, “You’re way off base in terms of what the debate is about!” Totally off base! And the enemy knows it! Nobody, in our opponents, nobody from BioLogos that Jay was talking about, nobody from any of the other ministries, as they would call themselves, none of them ever would say, “We don’t believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God.” They would all say that! Hmm! So if they’re saying that, and I’m saying that, what’s the difference? Hmm. 

The difference is something that probably some of you have been missing for a long time. It’s called “clarity.” Clarity. Or the fancy shmancy word is perspicuity. Perspicuity. What clarity means is that you, the average person in the pew, can read it and understand it for yourself without the need and aid of an authority to interpret it for you. Ah! That’s the difference. And you know who recognized the difference? Every one of these major reformers. Every one of the major reformers knew this was the name of the game. So if someone’s coming up here and talking about inerrancy and errancy, and fallibility, inspiration, you’re off the base. Nobody’s debating that. Nobody’s debating that. What’s debated is can you understand it for yourself?

Now, why were the reformers interested in it? Because prior to the Reformation, the church was telling people the Bible is a mystical book, and you can’t read it and understand it yourself, you must have a priest read it and tell you what it says. Does that sound familiar? Yes. Yes. It wasn’t over whether it’s inspired, it’s whether you can read it and understand it for yourself. Is it clear? And they said no, you couldn’t. And these reformers said yes, you can. That’s the difference. And today, the scientific theistic evolutionists are saying no, you can’t. You must have a scientist come and tell you what it says. That’s the debate–not inerrancy, not infallibility, not inspiration. It’s clarity. Clarity. And many of our Christian ancestors died for this on that. 

As it says here, the reformers completely disagreed. They said God communicates and anybody can understand it. Now, why would they say such a thing? Because there’s a lot of biblical passages which teach it! In Deuteronomy 30, after Moses gave the law, he said, “You don’t have to go across the ocean and find someone to come and tell you what the word says, or you don’t even have to go up to heaven and bring someone down.” He says, “The word is near you. It’s in your heart. It’s in your very lips,” meaning you can understand it. And all these passages in John 14, 15, and 16 and 1 John, particularly in the John passages, the Lord Jesus said, “When the Holy Spirit is come, He will lead you into…” what? “...all truth.” He doesn’t say He needed a priest. Said, “The Holy Spirit will come and lead you into all truth.” 

Oh, here’s a great one! Acts 17: “There was a group of people who were more noble than the Thessalonicans, and they were called the…”?

Audience: Bereans!

Randy: Good! The Bereans! Now, what does that have to do with clarity? Because the Bible says, “the Bereans searched the scripture,” the Bereans, common people in the pew, “searched the scripture,” and they were checking up on who? 

Audience: Paul.

Randy: Paul. Hmm. If you can check up on Paul, then you can understand the Bible for yourself. And this is how the issue of authority–me, the Bible. The Bible is my authority. Me, the priest, the Bible, who’s my authority? The…? The priest. Me, the scientist, the Bible, who’s my authority? The scientist. That’s why it relates to biblical authority. That’s why it’s so important. That’s why you don’t need really religious authorities to tell you how to understand the Bible, and you definitely don’t need these scientific authorities to tell you, especially when they’re all atheists.

You know this? You know who understood this really well today, biblical clarity, who wasn’t talking about inspiration? Hmm. Jay quoted a man named Richard Dawkins, who understood you should be able to read it for yourself, and you shouldn’t be able to pick and choose which passages you want to believe. 

Well, 2008 poll of 20- to 30-year-olds, people who claimed they were Christians at one time, which means they believed the Bible was the Word of God, Jesus was the Son of God and the only way to God. Amazingly, 95 percent of them faithfully attended church regularly when they were in grammar school. But only about half were attending by the time they were in high school and only 11 percent by the time they were in college. That means young people from this church will be leaving it at some time. And the major reason they gave is they no longer believed what the Bible was teaching was true. That’s why they were leaving it.

So biblical clarity is super important. Why Christians don’t talk about it, I don't know, but this is the name of the game. This is where the battle is being drawn. Can you understand it for yourself, or do you have to have Stephen Hawking or somebody else come in and tell you what it says, mediated by some Christian who says you need to have that?

Oh, man, here’s one more–we have two more points. You’re gonna have a bunch of those theistic evolutionists are gonna come up to you and they’re gonna say, “You know, you’re really hurting the church. You’re really hurting evangelism. You’re really making Christians look dumb by holding to this normal [or literal, whatever you call it] interpretation, which we know is scientifically wrong. And you’re really damaging the church by doing this.” You’ve all heard that argument. Huh! This is an interesting paper published in 2017 by two people who are not even believers–one from Indiana State University, and the other from Harvard. And they tracked belief in the Bible where someone said it’s inspired, but not literal. Hey, you know what? They believed it’s inspired, but you really couldn’t take it for what it says. Those people who believed it was the literal Word and those people who believed it was a book of fables, and they tracked church attendance from 1990 to 2015. And these so-called liberal churches, the liberal churches, were hemorrhaging membership, and the conservative Bible-believing churches stayed the same. And the people who were leaving these liberal churches were becoming non-affiliated. Huh! Who’s hurting the church? Who’s hurting the church? They are! These are the facts. Don’t be intimidated by those claims. The facts show that they’re the ones who are hurting the church, because people, when they come to church, they want to hear something different. They don’t want to hear the same nonsense that they hear out there. They want to hear a different voice, a different call, a different word. And when they come to churches like this, they get it. 

Oh, by the way, there’s no books out there, because we shipped them, and UPS told us this morning they don’t know where our books are. They’re somewhere…in fact, they said they could still be in Dallas, for all they know! So we don’t have a book to sell you. I don’t have any free Acts and Facts to give you, and I don’t have this signup sheet. But I can point you to ICR.org, and you can sign up for free for this life-changing magazine. Or, better yet, if you really want to get it, my good wife is back there, she is the bookie, and she will take your name and address. And if you want it, we’ll make sure you get it, and we’ll make sure you get it for free.

Finally, this is the most important reason why I give words their normal meaning in their normal context: it’s because the Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the other apostles did as well. When someone asked the Lord if it was lawful for a man to put away his wife, the Lord said–actually, He begins, “Have you not read? From the beginning of creation God made them male and female [Genesis 1]: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and hold fast,” or as my beloved King James says, “cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” quoting from Genesis 2. He clearly gave words their normal meaning and He believed it. 

And Paul, as we’ve already mentioned, in 1 Corinthians 15 mentions, “For as by one man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam, all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 

You know what that says? That says there’s really only two groups of people on the planet. Not rich people and poor people, smart people and dumb people, black people and white people, all of those silly things we divide over are really unimportant. There’s only two groups of people: those people who are in Adam, meaning they’re dead, lost in their trespasses and sins, with no hope, alienated from the life of God which is in Christ Jesus. And there’s a second group of people who are in Christ, who have been redeemed, born again, renewed, with hope of eternal life through Christ. Dead in Adam, alive in Christ. 

I know this is being recorded, but it’s the most important question of all the three that we had today: where are you tonight? Where are you today? Are you dead and lost in Adam, or have you come to faith in Christ? Christ the redeemer, Christ the sin bearer, Christ the atoning substitute for your sins and mine there. The Bible says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” I would urge you, as the pastor of this church would urge you, and anybody else would, come to Christ, and He will give you life. He will give you life. 

Now, we’ve incorporated that question in these other three questions. So hopefully this was something new and useful for you tonight. Thank you for your attention, thank you again for the invitation, Rob, and it’s been a pleasure. 

Copyright © The Berean Call 2016. All rights Reserved.  Click here for copyright permissions.