Often this is the perspective of the world. Is this reality? Are we to shut our eyes to science and focus on faith? In this seminar, we will lay the foundations for a reasonable faith.

GYC 2016: When All Has Been Heard

<p>Often this is the perspective of the world. Is this reality? Are we to shut our eyes to science and focus on faith? In this seminar, we will lay the foundations for a reasonable faith.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Creation and Evolution - Which Faith Will You Choose?

Chad Kreuzer

1. Thinking Skeptics and Ignorant Christians

This message was presented at the GYC 2016 conference, When All Has Been Heard, in Houston, Texas.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

And As people are coming in, you're welcome to still, you know, there's still some seats closer to the front.

There's a few in the back too, but we probably have more up here actually.

Just before we begin, just to let you know, I have made 1 change to the schedule for any of you who are thinking of coming back.

It's actually 2 of the messages we're going to change.

I thought because of a change I made it would work better and I didn't realize the last message would be on Sabbath.

Our first message is thinking skeptics and ignorant Christians.

The second message would have been, did Darwin murder God?

But now I've switched that to on Sabbath, And I've switched the 1 that would have been the next message at 1030, which is going to now be, is evolution a detriment to health and science?

You probably never heard anything about evolution from this standpoint that we're going to look at in the next message.

They are scanning each person that's in the room, just to see how many are here.

And so if you weren't scanned on the way in, if you could please go out that door so that he could scan you on the way out.

They just want to know- You don't have to do it now, but afterward, right?

On your way out, make sure if you go out, you go out that door because he's in the back, the gentleman that's scanning people right now, he has his back to us.

So he'll scan you at the end and then they'll know how many people are in the room.

That will help them out because probably for future subjects they'll want to know how many people need to come, you know, how many people come to a given subject.

So you'd help us out, you'd help GYC out with that.

So once again for those of you who didn't hear, we've switched the next message, which is going to be is evolution a detriment to health and science, with the last message, which will now be did Darwin murder God, will be Saturday afternoon.

But before we begin, I ask that you bow your heads with me for a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to study.

You know, when it comes to science and the Bible, actually before we even begin, let me just tell you quickly who I am.

I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I have been traveling around for the last 15 years.

We put on various different seminars, and I make a living as a documentary filmmaker.

So I go around to archaeologists, historians, theologians, scholars, health professionals, and make documentaries about history, archaeology, the Bible, and also science.

And so our newest 1, I'll share with you some more of those different things as we go forward.

But we all should be able to be thinking people and have a reasonable answer for what we believe.

So you don't have to be a scientist per se to think about these things.

But once again, I'm not a scientist, but I am fascinated with science, so I regularly read books about science, and so it's just something that interests me, and then we produce documentaries about various subjects.

But when we think about the idea of science and faith, we typically think of articles like what we see here.

This is an interesting thing we see in the Washington Post.

So faith versus fact, why religion and science are mutually incompatible.

Meaning the idea in much of mainstream media today is that Faith cannot be compatible with science.

That these 2 things are against each other.

And I hope to show you that this is not the case.

And actually, a Faith in what is actually true should enhance our view of science and actually give us a better life as a result of it.

And I'm going to share with you in the next message that creationists, true creationists, following science from the Bible, they're the longest living people in the world, creationists.

Evolution has not created the longest living people in the world.

Very interesting to think about, and that is scientific.

Let's start with some definitions quickly.

The word atheist, an atheist is, a theist is 1 who believes, and we'll look at that in just a moment, but an atheist is 1 who believes that there is no God.

And when you think of a deist, a deist is someone who believes that there is a God, but it is a God who is detached from humanity.

Basically the deist believes there is a creator God who set in motion all the scientific workings in nature.

He allows them to begin, but then what does he do?

He just lets them kind of work out themselves, meaning that he doesn't really interact with humanity.

A theist is 1 who actually does believe in God and generally believes that God has in some way communicated with humanity, delivering a message, and that God is a personal God.

I do believe that God actually has communicated with humanity and I'm going to give you some evidence for that also.

But there's another kind of faith, another belief system, And by the way, an atheist is a faith system.

And I'm going to show you that further as we go on with these messages.

But there's another 1 that you may never have heard of.

Fideism is a religious understanding and these would probably typically be someone from a Christian perspective who has a very particular understanding about the Bible and about faith.

Now, these people believe that having evidence for what you believe would go against faith.

That faith should be believing by blind faith.

Meaning, a Fideist in essence might think this, that if evolutionists had greater and greater arguments against the Bible, that was wonderful, because that can help us to have even more faith.

Because we'll just believe blindly in what something says like a religious book.

I believe that God has actually given us evidence in Scripture and in science, and that having evidence does not lower faith, but it can actually enhance faith.

You may know that Hebrews 11, verse 1 says that, it says something very interesting about faith.

It says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

So the Bible actually says faith can have evidence for something you've never seen.

I'm going to go into detail on that when we look at did Darwin murder God?

Very powerful presentation, that's the 1 Sabbath afternoon.

So we're going to look at that Saturday afternoon.

Now we're going to talk about that here in this first presentation.

2. Is Evolution A Detriment To Health And Science?

A few more people will trickle in while we do it.

Looks like I gotta turn this down just a little bit.

Yes, yes, sorry, I gotta tell everybody, thank you, man.

We told the first group, I switched around 2 messages.

So if you got the wrong 1 and you want to run to somebody else, you're welcome to.

We switch around this message and the last message.

So what it is, is this message would have been to Darwin, murder God.

Now it is, is evolution a detriment to health and science?

So I'm sorry about that and I knew that would cause a little bit of trouble, but I decided I had to do it, so at least I wanted to do it.

And it was partly because I didn't realize the last 1 would be on Sabbath when I was asked to do it.

Heavenly Father, I pray that your blessing would be upon us now as we go over this question, which is literally important to our physical life and our eternal life.

All right, so we are asking, we are asking the question, is evolution a detriment to health and science?

Let me see if I can get this thing working, because it's not.

Could it be that evolutionists are starting with a bad premise and because of their bad premise, they're coming to a bad conclusion.

Now, in order to find this out, we need to look at their ideas, the ideas of the fact that the earth is billions of years old.

Is it that this idea is actually a hindrance to science?

We're going to look at this as we move forward.

Now, this 1 we're talking about health and science.

1 of the most popular diets in the world today is something called the Paleo diet.

Raise your hand if you've heard of the Paleo diet.

Now, the Paleolithic era, according to the evolutionists, was a time period where human beings were hunter-gatherers.

And they say what we need to do, this is what some of the evolutionists are saying, in order to live the healthiest, you want to go back and live as the people did during the Paleolithic era.

What would another term be for people who lived during that time period?

I could be strong, you know, I could be whatever, you know, and I could be tough and and and they tell us This is the best diet for the human beings.

You'll live the longest at least that's their hope although it's kind of new It's not new because it's the paleo diet, you know, so it's it's the oldest diet really this is what they say.

We have an idea that there's actually an older diet than people living off animal carcasses.

So let's look at some of what the practitioners of this are saying.

This is Rob Wolf, 1 of the most popular people.

He's written the book, What is the Paleo Diet?

And this man says, he says, the Paleo diet is the healthiest way you can eat because it is the only nutritional approach that works with your genetics to help you stay lean, strong and energetic.

This is a high meat-based diet with, now there are some benefits I've got to say to the paleo diet and I'll talk about that in a little bit.

But it's basically eating whole foods, so not refined foods.

You don't eat sugar, you don't eat junk food, and by the way, that's good to get rid of all the junk.

And so they say this is the healthiest way to live.

Notice right here, it's kind of small, sorry to show you, but it says the Inuit paradox.

The scientists actually don't call them Inuit.

That's the proper name for society not to offend.

But scientists call Inuit, anybody guess?

In the medical literature they're called Eskimos.

And so even today, you know, Some people may not like that term, but that's what these scientists call it.

So they call it the Eskimo paradox, and you probably can't see it because it's way too small.

It says, how can people who gorge on fat, meat fat, and rarely see a vegetable be healthier than we are?

So what they're saying is if you were to eat a bunch of animal fat, carcasses of dead animals, you know, even raw, you could eat it raw, they don't all eat it raw, many of them cook it, but that you would be healthier than we are.

So I'm asking the question, is evolution a hindrance to science?

They start with the premise that we're slowly evolving and we should go back to our ancestral diet which they imagined by the way was a meat-based diet.

So there's another proof, so actually let me go back to that.

The last group of people, those are the Inuits.

They said that if you look at Eskimos or Inuits, you'll find that they were healthier, super healthy people, super healthy.

Now you got to start using your bologna detector.

Do you know, has anybody ever heard before that a really healthy group of people out there are called the Eskimos?

Why are they saying they were so healthy then?

We're going to go forward and look at that.

Another group of people they looked at were the Maasai people in Africa.

An East African group of people, it says the Maasai keep healthy despite a high fat diet.

They consider these more like hunter-gatherer type people.

Although they're really not because they raise cattle and grow food sometimes.

But the Maasai in East India consume a high fat diet of animal fat, but they don't seem to suffer from lifestyle diseases.

Scientists have now discovered that the Maasai move with a surprising low intensity.

So they're thinking maybe it's because they walk like 13 miles a day and they do it slowly.

But we're going to ask the question, are they actually healthy?

Does the science actually show that either of these 2 groups that are the great proofs of eating an evolutionary diet is the best way you should live.

5. Textbook Deceptions

And my wife and I have a ministry called Anchor Point Films.

We go around to archaeologists, historians, theologians, scholars, and we make documentaries with the purpose of reaching people with the message of the Bible, the message of health.

We specifically make things for the purpose of reaching people who may not be believers at all in the Bible.

So that's generally with our films, our target audience, specifically for our documentaries that we make.

We have a series called Scripture Mysteries where the first documentary, the purpose is to establish the validity of the Bible.

These documentaries, some of them have been shown at, you know, secular university campuses to give evidence for the Bible, for Jesus, and for the truth that the Word of God contains.

And so the first 1 is to establish the validity of the Bible, and the next 1 is to establish the validity of Jesus.

And we also have a series, a new documentary I should say, specifically on health, And it mixes together archaeology, history, and cultures of longevity.

Very fascinating information that can be beneficial to you for your own spiritual walk, but it is also something that is a blessing to share with people.

We made them so they'd be something that people would not be afraid or ashamed to share with their friends at school, coworkers, family members, what have you.

But before we begin this morning, I just want to say a prayer.

So let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this opportunity to study science.

As we talk about your word also, I pray that your Holy Spirit would guide us.

Kind of our thesis text we've looked at over and over is Proverbs 18 verse 17, which says, the 1 who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him.

Now, if you've gone to, you know, specifically public schooling, and you were taught from a child in the different textbooks, in the different scientific textbooks, you were given a perspective of the origins of the world, of the universe for that matter.

And so you're given 1 side of the story and it's very convincing because they are not allowed to give you the other side of the story.

Now I'm not even saying telling people they like in public schools that we have to teach people oh God did it just tell people that God no but you can't even I mean it's almost like you shouldn't even tell the other side of the story and show how these things many of them have literally been proven wrong and And the scientists at the top know that many of the things in the text, we're just going to look at a few of them quickly.

But if you study into it, and I want to share with you a book that never even mentions God, but it's a fantastic book on the issue of creation and evolution, though it never mentions even spirituality within the book.

And this book is by a man by the name of Jonathan Wells, W-E-L-L-S.

I'll be quoting from him here in this presentation, at least during some of it.

And what he does is he goes through some of the greatest icons of evolution, some of the greatest proofs of evolution, and reveals that even top scientists sometimes say that these things we just know they're not true, yet guess where they remain?

Because no other good proof has come out that could establish the theory of evolution as well as these icons, yet we know they're not true, so they stay in the books for upwards of 90 years.

You'll see at least 1 of them has for 90 years scientists have known it's not true, and it hasn't left the textbooks yet, and it probably never will, by the way.

Because how would they prove a theory that is losing ground day by day.

We're gonna look at this so don't take my word for it.

Now, the reason this picture is so terrible because I just took it, you know, a picture of a magazine when I was in the library, in the Chicago library, of this issue of Science magazine.

It's interesting because when we think of life growing about it, you know, in the biology textbooks, we see something like a tree of life, right?

Maybe you've seen that, you know, a simpler, what we think of as simpler creatures at the lower end and it slowly branches off till you get to maybe, you know, the ocean animals and then they begin to, you know, get to the, you know, they turn into land animals and it branches off and finally you get to mammals and then those mammals slowly turn into, you know, their first quadrupeds for, you know, they walk on all fours and then they, then they turn into bipedal creatures, they talk, they turn into animals that can walk on 2 feet, and they finally turn into human beings.

So it branches off into the various forms of life.

And so the idea of natural selection is presented in textbooks, And I think there is a form of natural selection, but natural selection doesn't create new kinds of creatures.

It can just weed out certain kinds of creatures.

Now, I'm just going to read you a quotation about natural selection here from Science Magazine.

It says natural selection is a central feature of neo-darwinism.

It is allowed in Brooks and Wiley's theory but only as a minor influence.

See natural selection can affect survivorship, says Brooks.

It can weed out some of the complexity and so slow down the information decay that results in speciation.

It may have a stabilizing effect but it does not promote speciation.

So Scientists are beginning to look at this and say, okay, yeah, yeah, like, for instance, if certain animals have stronger beaks, certain birds, and birds of the same species have smaller beaks, and their small beaks can't break open certain nuts or seeds that they need in their area, the smaller ones may die off.

But does that mean the ones with bigger beaks are becoming another animal?

No new information was added, by the way.

So this doesn't mean that something new is happening, it just means you lost some genetic information.

This has nothing to do with additional genetic information, yet we somehow imagine, oh no, some of the animals have died off, that's evolution.

Now if dying off certain portions of a species, if that is evolution, do you see how sometimes we hear part of the picture and it's very convincing like, wow it's true, animals with bigger beaks are more likely to survive and the fittest survive.

Well yeah the fittest survive, that's kind of obvious right?

But that doesn't mean it's becoming a new creature.

And the scientists are looking at it and saying, well, maybe this doesn't actually create new species.

Maybe it just has a stabilizing effect on the animals.

It says it is not a creative force, as many people have suggested.

It doesn't create new kinds of animals because certain animals die off because they're not as well adapted to certain environmental changes.

Here are the...anybody know what we call these?

I mean that's not the proper name for the birds, but that's what we call them in the evolutionary textbooks, right?

So you have some of the some of the smaller beaks, then you have significantly larger beaks.

But in certain situations, larger beaks are beneficial.

Maybe to break open certain nuts or seed to get the seed inside of it, you know, a shell.

But there are other time periods where actually having a smaller beak is beneficial.

Now by the way, these birds have within them the genetic information already.

Meaning some people have bigger noses, like I have a bigger nose than many of you probably do, right?

Some of you have smaller noses, like we we have these different things, there can be benefits, there can be negatives to these various different things, but let's look at what we see here about this.

It says, during the 1970s on, you know, this is in the Galapagos Islands, on Daphne Major, that's 1 of the islands there, received regular rainfall that supported an abundant food supply and a large finch population.

In normal rainy seasons, such as that of 1976, the island received about 5 inches of rain, but in 1977 only about an inch fell.

As a result of the drought, the average beak depth of medium ground finches increased about 5%.

Now keep in mind, was new genetic information produced during that season?

They already had that genetic information, so nothing had really changed, except some came out with, they were born with 5% larger beaks.

So we're not creating some new kind of creature here.

It's just the genetics that God put within them exhibited a larger beak with the genetics they already had.

So this doesn't prove that new genes are coming about in this situation, particularly anyway.

Series

Creation and Evolution - Which Faith Will You Choose?

1. Thinking Skeptics and Ignorant Christians

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Creation and Evolution - Which Faith Will You Choose?

5. Textbook Deceptions

59m

Ron du Preez: The 'Day' that Changed the World

From God to Godzilla: The Scholars vs. the Scriptures

46m

Adventism: The Answer to Modern Atheism

02 The Rocks Cry Out Since 1798

1h

GYC 2013 Seminar: Daniel: Defining Adventism's Role in the Great Controversy

02-Daniel 7: The Investigative Judgment, Men Before Angels

57m

Adventism: The Answer to Modern Atheism

03 Evolving Evolution and Creation’s Case

53m

How to Interpret Scripture

How to Interpret Scripture: How did we get Here? Tracing the Origin of the Bible in History

1h

Clifford Goldstein: Unashamed to be an Adventist

The Resurrection of Jesus

59m

Coexist - Understanding World Religions...

3. Hinduism/Buddhism/Confucianism/Daoism

1h

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Law, the Sabbath and Worship in the End-time Crisis

06-Danger Signals, Part 2

1h 10m

Egypt, the Exodus & Moses' Quest for God's Destiny

4. The Deliverance, the Escape, & the Power of the Word

1h

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible - A Deeper Look at The Great Controversy

03-Adventism’s Prophetic Message in the Great Controversy

1h

Creation, Science, Evidence, and Faith

The Forgotten Pillar

47m

Sound Doctrine