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It Is Written Canada

Where Am I From?

Chris Holland

Where Am I From?- Part 1

God's book, the Bible, still relevant in today's complex world.

It is written, sharing messages of hope around the world.

Dear friends, thank you so much for joining It Is Written.

I am very excited today to have in studio with me Dr.

Tim Standish is a senior scientist with the Geoscience Research Institute.

He holds a Bachelor's of Science in Zoology, a Master's of Science in Biology, and a PhD in environmental biology and public policy.

Standish, thank you so much for joining us today.

Standish, I was naming off a lot of big things, zoology and biology and geoscience.

What is the Geoscience Research Institute?

Well I would start off by saying it is probably the most interesting place on earth to work.

Basically we're a group of scholars who are interested in the relationship between science and faith.

And obviously, there is this kind of idea out there in the world that these are 2 areas of knowledge that are in conflict with 1 another in some way.

What we're looking for is harmony between the 2.

It's our belief that, and in fact, I think a well-defended position, that when you look at science, you cannot do it without having faith.

And the question is, what are you going to have faith in?

Wow, it sounds like a very interesting place to work.

Now how long has the Geoscience Research Institute existed?

And So let's see here, how many years later is it?

Wow, and how long have you worked with the Geoscience Research Institute?

And previous to that, I actually met you a number of years ago when you were an Associate professor of biology at Andrews University.

And prior to that, you were an associate professor of biology at Union College in Nebraska.

We are having a series here, and the title of the series is Where Am I From?

Standish, I'm gonna ask you a very broad-based question, but you've talked about origins, you talk about faith and science, so where are we from?

Well, as you can imagine, as a scientist, I've investigated this very carefully, and I've discovered that I came from my mother and father and the interesting thing about science is that we can we can look at things like that And we have some rules that we use.

1 of the rules that's commonly used is the idea that the present is, it gives us some sort of insight on what occurred in the past.

So I would expect that you were the product of your parents, too.

None of us just came into existence in a puff of smoke or something like that.

We were all born from parents who were somewhat like ourselves.

And I sincerely believe that all human beings are descended from human beings.

Well obviously I happen to be a Christian, so my Christian faith gives me some insight into that.

But in addition to that, my science also tells me something about it.

It isn't that I have observed every child being born into the world.

However, I know of no exception to a human being, the origin of a human being, other than being born from a mother.

The product of a genetic union between a mother and a father.

So from that particular perspective, I would say it is scientifically pretty well supported that humans come from humans, oak trees come from oak trees, and dogs come from dogs, cows come from cows, Fish come from fish, and so on.

So that's sort of the scientist in me speaking.

1 of the things that I've done recently that has been fascinating has been to start investigating my own DNA.

And using that, I can actually trace my ancestry in the most fascinating ways.

I found out interesting things about myself.

I found out, for example, that I have some Native American ancestry.

That was pretty unexpected, but very exciting.

That's the kind of thing that science can inform us about.

However, I have not found evidence that compellingly points me to believe that I came from atoms alone.

Okay, so you're getting to this conversation of maybe we would call it origins.

You know, And I knew when I asked that broad-based question, I wondered if you would say, I am from California or, but you are talking here now about origins.

This has actually been a question of the ages, so to speak, on this issue of where are we from?

And not where we live or where we're located and this issue with the present, but that ancient time of how did human beings come into existence?

How did this universe come into existence?

Over time there have been many, many writings about how in fact this world, the human race, come into being.

And I know you've done some studying on that.

What kind of ancient literature do we have that talks about origins and where we are from?

Well, if you look at what philosophers write about, this is really 1 of the big, big questions they wrestle with.

They're always asking questions about what causes such and such a thing.

And of course, we wake up in the morning and we look around ourselves and we can start asking those same sorts of questions too.

It's not something that's just restricted to, you know, strange people in ivory towers.

People in the past had the same questions that we have today, and they wrote about their ideas.

Some of them may seem kind of bizarre to us today.

I'm particularly interested in what the ancient Greek philosophers wrote about these things.

But you can go back even before the Greeks and of course, if you go all the way back, you can go all the way back to Moses.

Moses gives 1 of the most ancient accounts of where everything came from in the book of Genesis.

The beginning of things, the generation of things.

But 1 of the questions that I started asking myself was, where or when did people start getting different ideas than the ideas that Moses had?

Moses believed that there was a divine cause for everything.

He talked about an eternal God, an omnipotent God, an all-powerful God as the cause for everything that we see today.

And other people around Moses, some of them would have had similar ideas.

Now, interestingly enough, the Egyptians, whom Moses grew up with, actually had some different kinds of ideas.

They apparently believed certain things about the potential, at least, for beings to come from mud, which is kind of cool.

I have not really studied the Egyptian literature, but others have, and it's been fascinating to hear them talk about that, but I won't try to pretend I'm an expert in that.

What I did was I started going back and asking, who were the first people who thought that human beings and other organisms or the entire universe didn't come from some sort of divine cause.

And I still think that the earliest record of that is in the Bible.

Interestingly enough, at least I haven't been able to find anything written earlier than what's in the Bible.

Where Am I From?- Part 2

Friends thank you so much for joining It Is Written.

I am thrilled to once again have my friend, Dr.

Standish is a senior scientist with the Geoscience Research Institute.

Standish, welcome to the program once again.

Standish, you are a senior scientist with the Geoscience Research Institute.

You are a, you're not a former professor.

You still teach, but you were an associate professor of biology for both Andrews University in Michigan and Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska.

You have a PhD in environmental biology and public policy, a master's of science in biology, a bachelor's of science in zoology.

Tell me, what do you do as a senior scientist for the Geoscience Research Institute?

I wake up almost every morning and ask myself that question as well.

There are a wide variety of things that we engage in at the Geoscience Research Institute.

We do try to keep current with our research.

Every now and again, I still try to publish a scientific paper in the regular peer-reviewed literature.

1 of the interesting things is I can teach classes not just in the United States where we're located, but in other countries as well.

So I teach a class at the Adventist International Institute for Advanced Studies in the Philippines and also for the Adventist University of Africa.

And I also have the opportunity to travel as a guest lecturer to various other universities, both Seventh-day Adventist universities, but also secular universities on occasion and universities that are run by other Christian denominations.

That is fabulous, and I am so glad that you've actually taken the time to come to Canada and to teach in this classroom, a classroom that's broadcast all across the nation.

Standish, just as a point of reference, what is the Geoscience, you talked about being current in its study, what is the Geoscience Research Institute dedicated to, What's its mission?

Well, obviously, our mission is ultimately to draw people to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer.

Now, in addition to that, we want to shed light on science and the way in which scientific understandings of reality work with biblical revelation.

And, you know, there are a wealth of resources at the Geoscience Research Institute website.

What's that website if somebody wants to go and visit that site and get to some of those resources.

And there you can find articles and all kinds of resources.

We put out blogs and you can get to those very easily through the website.

And of course we encourage people to join us on Facebook as well.

We have interesting things coming out continually on our Facebook page.

Standish, we kind of left everybody on edge with last week's program.

We had been talking about origins, where are we from, and we left off with Paul at Mars Hill in a showdown with the Epicureans and the Stoics.

Now before we get to what happened there, maybe it's just a point of reference and a little bit of review.

Who are these Epicurean philosophers and why are they important to this discussion on origins?

The Epicurean philosophers were followers of a philosopher named Epicurus.

And Epicurus had taken atomistic philosophy, The idea that change occurs around us as a result of atoms moving.

Not being guided by anything, It's just their nature to keep moving and rearranging themselves.

And just to hit a pause button there, and that is originating with another philosopher.

Democritus, and so Epicurus is a, maybe not a direct, is he a direct student of Democritus?

Okay, so this is, the Epicureans are following on this line of thinking of atomists, that atoms merely rearranged as how things come into being, which in essence means there's nothing new in the universe the universe is simply a Constant rearrange and I'm oversimplifying it but a constant rearranging of atoms.

Okay, so let's talk more about these Epicureans.

So they're these descendants of Democritus and Adamism, And so what else are they believing?

They believe that the only way to, or the best way to get knowledge is through our senses.

The only reality is what we take in through our senses.

That's why we associate them with hedonism, with good food and good drink and the good life, which is what the philosophers were seeking to talk about.

They believed in avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.

Paul shows up at Mars Hill and there are the Epicureans and there are the Stoics.

And we'll come to the Stoics in just a moment.

Paul gets there and many of us know the story.

Paul shows up and he sees all these different altars built and 1 in particular is built to the unknown God.

And what happens now when Paul engages, and maybe even better to step back even a few, what's happening at Mars Hill with the Epicureans?

Well apparently Mars Hill was the place where people met to discuss things.

And this is where Paul is going around and seeing everything that's going on but then the more serious discussions are going up on this sort of small hill above the Agora called the Areopagus or Mars Hill.

And this is where the scholars are and they're discussing these different philosophical ideas.

And so they heard Paul making some arguments in the marketplace and they asked, hey, what's this new idea this guy's talking about?

And they invited him to come up and tell them in a more formal kind of setting what his idea was.

So he came up there and he took advantage of what he had observed going on in that society.

Now it's pretty obvious to me that he understood what the Epicureans believed, and he also understood what the Stoics believed because he also was a philosopher.

He probably studied what these philosophies were about.

And the interesting thing to me is that he sort of came in at a point where they would have already been having discussions.

And now is probably a good time to talk about the Stoics.

Yeah, I was just going to say, so We talked about these Epicureans and what they believe and their being descendants of Adamism but now we have the Stoics.

What are some important things to know about them?

So you'll remember that the Stoics, They believed that everything just sort of happened by itself.

Where Am I From?- Part 3

It is Written, sharing messages of hope around the world.

Dear friend, thank you so much for joining us today on It Is Written.

We're in the midst of a series where we've been asking the question, where are we from?

Not a province, not our city, but where have we come from?

And helping me in this conversation has been Dr.

Standish, wanna welcome you to the program once again.

Well, thank you so much for having me back.

I hope that you're enjoying this as much as I am.

Standish, you work for the Geoscience Research Institute.

What does the Geoscience Research Institute do?

What are some of the things you're doing right now?

Well, basically, the Geoscience Research Institute has 5 scholars.

We're all trained and active scientists, and we fall into different categories of science.

There's a geologist, There's a paleontologist, there's a physicist and a biogeographer and then me.

I keep asking what exactly am I, but I'm a biologist.

I actually concentrate primarily in molecular genetics, which is the study of DNA and associated molecules inside cells.

What we're looking at is the way in which the Bible and science interface.

Now there are many people who think, oh well science, it is slowly and surely and progressively proving the Bible wrong.

It's quite surprising to see the agreement that exists between the very best science out there and the claims of Scripture.

Also it's probably necessary to have something like a biblical worldview to even do science in the first place.

You have to believe, for example, that nature will be the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And of course, what the Bible teaches is that God who sustains all of nature is the same yesterday, today and forever.

So when we find something like a law of physics, we can have confidence that it's going to be the same tomorrow.

The force of gravity is not going to change in our lifetime or a thousand years from now or a million years from now because God is the 1 who sustains his creation.

You have to believe something like that to actually do science.

So there are both philosophical aspects of the biblical worldview, and also discoveries that science makes in which science and the Bible actually are in remarkable harmony.

Now, that's not to deny that there are, in fact, areas of tension.

And that's Really what we've been talking about over these last few programs that Tension that exists and where it comes from is it really based on evidence or is it a philosophical?

Thing that's being that's being struggled through here.

Standish, over the course of the last several shows, we've been having this discussion.

We kind of began by just asking that broad-based question, where do I come from?

And we began with a discussion about origins and 1 of the most ancient documents recording what the origin of humankind is coming from the Bible, the book of Genesis, written by Moses.

But then we began to investigate and say, at some point, at some point in the ancient past, there was a departure from this worldview that God created everything in 6 days.

And we saw 1 of those departures actually taking place and we talked specifically about Indian philosophy and then we talked about Greek philosophy.

Now if you've missed any of those shows, you can go to our YouTube page, www.youtube.com forward slash IIW Canada.

You can pick up any of those shows and watch them to bring you up to speed in this discussion.

So as we explored that, we saw emerging the Epicureans, and then we talked a little bit about the Stoics, and then around the time of Jesus, about 2, 000 years ago, somewhere between probably 35 and 40 AD, we see this interaction with Paul and these philosophers.

And he blows their mind with this argument that the unknown God who you've built an altar to, I know who that God is.

And we ask the question why is this discussion even important?

I mean, why even worry about these things?

And where we ended last week was that not only is God the Creator, but He also sent His Son, Jesus, whom the Bible says through Jesus all things were made.

God sent his son to a planet that has fallen and not perfect any longer, and we're gonna talk about that in just a moment, And he sent his son with an eventual goal that he's going to make a new creation.

So that takes us all the way back to the beginning of that ancient document, Genesis.

Why is the Genesis account so important for this discussion on origins?

Well, even if you are just a historian and you are interested in these things, the Genesis account is absolutely fascinating.

Usually when we're talking about history, written accounts trump everything else.

And so, you know, if you happen to go into the middle of the desert in Egypt and you see some hieroglyphics that are there in the rock and those hieroglyphics say, I thought most the second pharaoh of Egypt was here.

Even though somebody could have come along last week and carefully chiseled those things in and then, well, maybe not in a week, but done everything they could to make that look old and it could fool us.

We believe written accounts, first-hand accounts of things.

When you think about other events in history that we believe actually happened.

For example, I believe that Julius Caesar invaded Britain.

He said, yes, I, Caesar, invaded Britain.

And we have far less reliable, you know, documents that we get that account from.

And by the way, we also can believe that as a politician, Caesar was being quite self-serving when he talked about all of his achievements like that.

But we believe written accounts from the past.

So even though I was just in Britain not that long ago and you know what?

Yes, it's it's it's it's simply a way in which scholarship works And so this account in Genesis is valuable, if for no other reason, than because it is a very, very early account.

But it also happens to be a very coherent account.

It makes an awful lot of sense because when we look around our world, most people agree, certainly most western people agree, that the evidence points towards some kind of beginning.

Now, it may have been a big bang, or it may have been God creating everything, but the universe appears to have a beginning.

And the fact that human beings are here tells us that human beings came from somewhere.

We don't believe that human beings are eternal.

So this account that there was a beginning, that makes an awful lot of sense.

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