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Feb. 16, 2000 - Art Bell
02:41:29
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Creation, Physics & God - Hugh Ross
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Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, or good morning, wherever you may be across this great land of ours from the Hawaiian and Tahitian Islands in the west, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the pole, and worldwide on the Internet.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
Good morning, I'm Art Bell, and I've got breaking news from all kinds of fronts.
At this hour, we are scheduled to interview Hugh Ross from Reasons to Believe, along with Buzz Rana.
Dr. Buzz Rana.
Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Buzz Rana.
Now, my understanding is that Dr. Hugh Ross has not yet made it in, and may be coming, or may be not coming.
We don't know.
We'll find out shortly.
Anyway, that's what's coming up.
Stay right where you are.
All right.
At this hour, we were due to, and I think we are about to, interview Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Fusrana from Reasons to Believe.
Dr. Hugh Ross launched his career, he's known worldwide, at age 7 when he went to the library to simply find out why stars are hot.
That's a good question in itself.
Physics and astronomy captured curiosity and never let go of them.
At age 17, he was the youngest person to ever serve as Director of Observations for Vancouver's Royal Astronomical Society.
With the help of a provincial scholarship and a National Research Council NRC of Canada fellowship, he completed his undergraduate degree in physics at the University of British Columbia and graduate degrees in astronomy from the University of Toronto.
NRC also sent him to the U.S.
for post-doctoral studies at Caltech.
He researched stellar quasi-stellar objects, or quasars if you will, some of the most distant and ancient objects in the universe.
However, not all of Hugh's discoveries had to do with astrophysics.
He observed with amazement the impact of describing for people the process by which he came to have personal faith in Jesus Christ.
So, obviously, you can tell the bent the program is going to take this morning.
With us also this night is Dr. Fuz Rana, and I hope that I'm saying that correctly.
I doubt I am.
He is the newest executive to the staff of Reasons to Believe, the organization represented by these gentlemen, a non-profit, non-denominational organization that provides research and teaching on the harmony of God's revelation in the words of the Bible and the facts of nature.
He is vice president for science, apologetics.
Apologetics.
Interesting.
Dr. Runner attended West Virginia State College, then Ohio University, where he earned a Ph.D.
in Chemistry.
His post-doctoral work was conducted at the Universities of Virginia and Georgia.
He was a presidential scholar, elected in two honor societies, won the Donald Klippinger Research Award.
That would be two different years at Ohio University.
The doctor worked for seven years on product development for Procter & Gamble before joining Reasons to Believe.
So it should be a very lively debate indeed, if in fact we have them both.
And we've had a little trouble with telephones, but we're going to do the best we can.
Let's see.
Would this be Dr. Ross?
Yes, it is.
Dr. Ross, welcome to the program.
Thank you.
Let's see if we can get your associate as well, and I see that we just I think lost Dr. Ross.
Yes, we did.
So, Dr. Rana, are you there?
I'm there.
We just lost Dr. Ross, and we're going to have to call him back.
Okay, well, if there's problems, I'm willing to let Dr. Ross go solo.
No problem.
All right.
If you wish, and he's close by, go ahead and put him on the phone, and I'll call that other number.
And get you on that line.
Okay.
Here he is.
It will work out eventually.
Yes, it will.
Here he is.
Hello?
Hi, Dr. Ross.
Hello.
Hi.
I guess we're going to begin with you, and at the bottom of the hour, we'll attempt to make the connection.
Once again, seem to be having problems holding that connection.
Yes.
At any rate, welcome to the program.
Many, many, many people, doctor, have emailed me and faxed me and communicated that you ought to be on the show and that your organization of reasons to believe is probably the most credible organization in this country to argue the kind of uh... uh... faith is that the right word no argue the facts that you believe uh... represent uh...
And hold up the pillars of the faith you have.
Is that fair?
Well, that may be part of the confusion.
I mean, the Bible's definition for faith is acting upon established truth.
Right.
Not faith unless you've established it to be true, but neither is it faith if you don't act on it.
And those are the same principles that Western science operates on.
We make experiments, we establish what's true, and we act accordingly.
I guess I would like to begin, since I've got somebody of your caliber on the phone, by challenging you with something that's occurred on this radio program over the last several months.
We've had a young man who wrote a book called, Matthew Alper is his name.
And he wrote a book, Doctor, called The God Part of the Brain.
And I'm sure you're familiar, if not, with that book and certainly similar research that has been going on recently.
In which a certain area of the brain is stimulated and those people engaging in the experiments inevitably report either near-death type experiences, out-of-body experiences, or some sort of religious revelation.
And this young man contends that mankind's greatest fear is our own mortality.
That our greatest fear is death, and that through the process of evolution, he contends, our brain has constructed in its own self-defense an area called the god part of the brain that virtually wires everybody on the planet to believe in something beyond the physical life that we have now and if indeed if you go
into the Amazon and you find unlikely as it is
some untouched group of natives they believe in something the sun or the weather
you know the wind or something that mankind in essence is wired to believe how would you comment
well mean the Bible tells us that we are body soul and spirit and so it makes sense that the spirit part
of us would operate through the physical part of our body
to express itself So in that sense, there's got to be part of the brain that's tied in with spiritual expression.
However, what's interesting is that people that are very severely retarded with different parts of the brain malfunctioning, are still able to express themselves spiritually, just like with strokes.
The part of the brain that is best adapted for that communication breaks down and is wiped out.
Other parts of the brain shift over and take over that responsibility.
It seems to indicate that there is more than a biological explanation to the spirit expression of everyone.
All of us are compelled to express ourselves spiritually in one way or another.
It's like the same mistake people make when they say, well, you really can't come into a relationship with God unless you've got a certain amount of education about God.
When the truth is that education is not the big factor, rather it's our humility to the one that's beyond us that really counts.
So intellect and education aren't what's critical, they're helpful.
But they're not what's critical because we see that people without that also have the same responses.
And there are also at... I interviewed a doctor last night, a very interesting doctor, physician, internal medicine physician, who has begun to follow a kind of a different path.
And they're conducting experiments now at Duke University regarding the power of prayer.
Yes.
And they've done double-blind studies in which Christians, as one group, and Muslims and Buddhists and so forth and so on have prayed for individuals who are ill.
Inevitably, an incredible percentage of the individuals in the control group who are prayed for recovered so much faster with very few side effects, i.e.
prayer worked.
The catch is that it worked equally well for the Buddhists And for each different religious fashion that engaged in prayer.
It really worked, but it worked for all of them.
Yeah, the report I saw was in the American Medical Association Journal.
Yes, sir.
Dr. Fuz Rana, who is with us, has more information on it than I do.
But what I recall is that There was a study done where people were prayed for.
They didn't know they were being prayed for.
It really was a double-blind thing.
That's correct.
And the researchers who were conducting the study didn't know which of the patients were being prayed for.
That's right.
But as I recall from the paper, it was not definitive enough to actually break it down into different religious beliefs.
You know, like Roman Catholic vs. Hindu vs. Evangelical Christian vs. Jew vs. He was giving us some very late results.
You know, I haven't seen anything published that actually breaks it down into different groups or tries to attribute the fervor with which people pray.
The study I saw just simply said that they would ask people to pray.
It was here in America, asking people to pray.
Presumably, most of them are coming from a Christian persuasion.
I would imagine so.
Simply asking people to pray and then measuring what the results would be, without the researchers knowing the details.
Just academically, however, for the sake of this conversation, let us assume the information is accurate, and each group was able to get this positive response.
In what way would that bother you, or would you find it reasonably easy to explain?
Well, again, I'd like to see the details of the actual study.
I mean, who was involved?
How did they identify these people?
But, you know, one aspect is that Jews really do pray to the same God as Christians.
They may have different doctrinal beliefs.
You know, Islam is a monotheistic religion.
If you look at the Quran, for example, you'll find about 25,000 words that have been borrowed from the Bible and incorporated it.
So, you know, when I'm talking to a Muslim, I say, well, I'm not critiquing that part which you borrowed from the Old and New Testament.
And there are certain elements of truth that are common to all faiths.
The thing I've noticed as I've traveled around the world and I've talked to an audience that's
exclusively Buddhist or exclusively Hindu, you always find within the audience a rather
large fraction who know that the doctrines they've been taught within their faith don't
fit with reality, don't fit with physical reality.
Something is not coming together and they're looking for something beyond what they've
been taught.
In fact, what I've done in coming back from overseas is say, you know, we all have to
do that.
All of us have been taught things about our belief system that are not true.
The thing that I've noticed is it's much easier to preach the Christian faith, say in Asia
or Africa, than it is here in the United States because we're so close to the truth here,
whereas when you're more distant from it, it's easier to spot the errors and pull together
those things that you know are true.
As it tells us in the Bible, God reveals His message to us through the record of nature.
He's written His law upon the heart of every human being.
So in that sense, God's spiritual truth has come from a single source, and that explains why there's a lot in common with the different religions of the world.
I guess what's unique to the Christian faith is that we are definitely falling short of God's standard, but we're not going to make it through human effort alone.
We need God's help, and God's help alone is what's going to get us across that barrier of imperfection that divides us from God.
I'm far from being an expert in religion, Doctor, but if a Buddhist, a group of Buddhists were to pray, who don't, I don't think they pray necessarily to a specific entity as such.
Some do.
Some do, but not all.
And prayer results were in fact obtained that equaled those that we've found so far in the double blinds here.
If that should occur, would that be a troublesome thing or something that you would have to take time in digesting, or do you simply want to reject it?
No.
I would expect that prayers coming from individuals who have a correct perception of who God is and what God can do would have more effective results from their prayers than those who would deny that.
I'm simply making the point that, you know, watch the label.
I know a lot of people who say, I am X, when in fact they really don't believe what the teachers of their religion teach.
They believe something quite different.
In fact, we're all held accountable to individually examine these things and see what is true.
So yeah, I would expect that there would be better results from those people who really do believe those things that are more correct about the one that created the universe.
How do we know he's the one who created the universe?
How do we know... Christians, after all, are the minority.
I know that because that was a question on who wants to be a millionaire the other night.
Are the minority in the world.
With regard to... We're the largest minority, but we are a minority.
Largest minority, but nevertheless, a minority.
So, fewer people believe in God as we know Him than...
We're a minority, so in other words... You know, I'm not even knowing how I'm... I don't even know how I want to really construct this question to you, because to you, I guess, that's simply a challenge, saying that the word has to be spread to the majority.
Would that be about right?
That would be correct, but it would also be correct to say that that word has already gone out to every living human being on the planet.
One thing the Bible says is that God clearly reveals himself through the record of nature, so that everyone on the planet is without excuse, because they've all been exposed to his truth.
All right, Doctor.
With that thought, hold on.
We'll try and re-establish phone connections with Dr. Sazrana during the break, and we'll be right back.
Dr. Hugh Ross is my guest.
Is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
This is a remastered version of the original song.
All right with me, let's find another place where we can be All right, rock with me, soul, take this strength, all this
strength, just for me All right, take a few hours, take my time, I might change,
take my breath All right, rock with me, soul, all right, all right
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
That's... that's it, all right?
Good morning, everybody, or good... yeah, most of you, I guess, morning by this time.
The majority of you out there, anyway.
Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Fosrana of an organization called Reasons to Believe, known worldwide, Are my guests.
We've got them both on the line now, and we will continue in a moment.
I've been told by countless people that the website for this organization, which is linked on my site right now, which is actually www.reasons.org, is one of the best in the world, with very, very convincing scientific evidence And Reasons to Believe, the name of the organization, Reasons to Believe.
And Dr. Hugh Ross, we are honored to have you here, along with Dr. Fasrana.
I hope I'm doing that right.
I'm going to try.
Gentlemen, are you both there?
Yes, I'm here.
Okay, that sounds like at least one, or maybe that was two, or you sound the same.
Dr. Ross?
I'm here.
Can you hear me?
Oh, you are there.
Okay, good.
Fine.
And Dr. Ross?
Yes, I'm here too.
Okay, we're off and running then.
Let's back up a little bit since we have Dr. Rana here.
We were talking, Doctor, about double-blind studies involving prayer.
And I have recent information to indicate that several religious groups were invited in the blind to pray for some people that were very sick.
The results were absolutely spectacular in every case, with the people recovering it twice the rate, and all kinds of impressive statistics regarding the apparent power of prayer.
Now, the doctor I had on last night, a doctor in internal medicine who's been involved in this, said that Buddhists and others had Also prayed for patients who were ill with equal results and we're kind of tossing that around and Dr. Ross sounded as though he was not impressed until he saw the hard data.
Let me put it that way.
Yes, it's not published yet as far as I can tell.
Were such a thing to be published?
Can I get you to go out on a limb?
Would that be something to consider?
Would it be a reason to doubt?
Well, again, we'd have to see some objective data.
I mean, who are these people?
What are the numbers like?
What are their belief systems?
But as I said earlier, I would expect that those individuals who have a more accurate perception on God and prayer should get superior results.
All right.
I interview frequently some of our nation's best Physicists.
Theoretical physicists.
People like Dr. Michio Kaku and others.
And they're very good at telling us what's going on in the world of physics until we back them up to the Big Bang.
And when we get there, they get stumped.
In other words, when you ask them what was one second prior to the Big Bang, which is supposedly, I am told, something smaller than a quark which we've not fully
identified yet expanding into everything we now know to be
which is incredible enough as a concept
but they they would be prior to that one second before that
explosion that that big bang they get stopped
they stop and they admit it
and they don't know what that happened or how it happened
well there's a small handle we can get on what happened before
i mean one reason why you're stopping them is that the big bang
uh... based on the theory of general relativity tells us that time is created when the universe begins
So, in that sense, before the beginning of the universe, there isn't time as we would know it and experience it.
On the other hand, the space-time theorem of general relativity does state that if there is mass in the universe, And if the different objects in the universe, if their dynamics is governed by the equations of general relativity, then there must exist a cause independent of matter, energy, space, and time that's responsible for bringing into existence matter, energy, space, and time.
And since we can state with great certainty that the universe does contain mass, and due to recent experiments that indeed the equations of general relativity reliably describe the dynamics of the universe, then
through pure physics alone we can establish what did exist before the Big Bang, namely the causer that
was responsible for bringing into existence matter, energy, and the ten space-time dimensions
along which matter and energy are distributed. But beyond that, physics is silent. You agree
then with the theoretical physicists who believe there may be up to ten dimensions? I'd say ten,
not eleven, not nine, but ten.
Ten?
Yes.
Oh, now that sounds very interesting.
Well, we've even published a book on it.
How, from a theological point of view, do you allow for that?
Well, the Christian faith is the one religion in the world that explicitly mentions the existence of dimensions beyond length, width, height, and time.
Where does it do that?
It does that by telling us that time is created, and that God is operating through cause and effect before the existence of the time dimension of our universe.
Now, by definition, time is that dimension or realm in which cause and effect phenomena take place.
Therefore, what we have in the Bible is a claim that the creator of the universe, the causer of the universe, has the capacity to operate in at least the equivalent of two independent dimensions of time.
You can also deduce that from the biblical claims that from God's perspective, time can be arbitrarily shrunk or arbitrarily expanded.
Also, the Bible makes the statement, God is no beginning, no ending, is uncreated.
Those statements that you see in the Old and New Testaments That could only be true of a being that has access to at least the equivalent of two dimensions of time.
Would not all this be best expressed, then, with the sign of infinity?
No beginning, no end?
Ah, it would be better to describe it as infinity to the infinity power.
In other words, in a single line of time, you can have an infinite number of cause and effect events sequentially strung out.
But in a plane of time, you can have an infinity of an infinity.
of those kinds of cause and effect expressions.
Now, it's not just time, it's also space.
There are places where the Bible speaks about the equivalent of several dimensions of space
beyond length, width, and height.
The Bible is also the whole only holy book that explicitly describes God's attributes
in a way that are impossible to fit into just length, width, height, and time, but are easily
conceived within ten space-time dimensions or more.
Gentlemen, for both of you, or either one of you, when did this Big Bang occur?
Well, the best date it just got published is 14.5 billion years ago, plus or minus a little more than half a billion years.
Another measurement puts it at 14.9 billion.
So a little bit less than 15 billion years.
So you're then in agreement with the general scientific view?
Yes.
Which I would conclude is also consistent with the biblical statement on when God created.
And man's appearance on Earth?
Man's appearance on Earth, if you were to appeal to a Biblical date, would be very roughly 10,000 to 60,000 years ago.
The genealogies in the Bible are not complete.
If you're looking for scientific dates, we've published a book, The Genesis Question, which lists six independent dates you can use through scientific investigation to get the origin of human beings.
And they fall from 30,000 years ago to about 50,000 years ago.
So then you take the literal view of Genesis and creation?
Yes, but we need to understand that the literal reading of the six days of creation could be six 12-hour periods, six 24-hour periods, or six long periods of time.
All three of those are a literal reading of the text.
We believe, because of what you see in the Genesis text, it can only be six consecutive long periods of time after all the... But not necessarily Earth time.
No, I think that is Earth time.
Well, if it is Earth time, then it should have been done in six Earth days.
The Hebrew word for day, yom, can mean a long period of time, 24 hours, or approximately 12 hours.
All three are listed there in the Hebrew lexicon.
Also, in Biblical Hebrew, there is no word for a long period of time except that word, day.
Whereas in English, we have several dozen options for describing a long period of time, in Biblical Hebrew, your only option Is that word, yawn, that's translated today in most of our English translations?
If there was, and I'm still struggling with this prior to the Big Bang thing, if there was no time and matter and space, well, there must have been space.
You're going to get silly layman's questions.
There doesn't have to be space.
It doesn't have to be space.
Or time.
Or time.
That's impossible to contemplate.
Where there is an absence, there is, as I understand it, space.
Well, it doesn't mean that there was nothing.
I mean, what you see in the book of Hebrews is that the universe that we can detect was made from that which we cannot detect.
But we're capable of making measurements within length, width, height, time, six more dimensions now, and matter and energy.
That's not where the universe came from according to the Bible.
That's not where it came from according to the space-time theorem of general relativity.
So what that tells us is that there's something beyond matter, energy, and ten space-time dimensions.
And that something has the possibility of cause and effect activity.
God?
Yes.
The Creator?
beyond all of that.
And the proof of his existence in your mind is the occurrence of the Big Bang itself,
because there is no other explanation possible.
That would be one of the pieces of proof.
I mean, the fact that the Big Bang explosion must be so incredibly designed in order to have the universe containing life, and the fact that, through general relativity, it points to a transcendent creator.
I assume that both of you have probably had an opportunity to see the movie Contact.
Yes.
When I get a scientist on the air, which is fairly frequently, I inevitably ask them if they were in the chair that Jodie Foster was in, and they were required to make a declaration of the sort that she was required to take the trip, that she was unable to give.
Inevitably, the scientists, the physicists, all Even after long pauses and hemming and hawing, they say, I would have said the same thing.
No.
So I would not have had a chair on that machine.
I could not have gone to represent to another alien race that God, the God of the Bible, is the thing that I must carry forth, and what is real and what I believe is real.
Well, there are lots of scientists that would espouse to the God of the Bible.
We're networked with hundreds of them across the world.
In fact, Nature Magazine published, maybe about two years ago now, a survey in which, based on their results, over 40% of scientists believe in a personal God.
So, the belief among scientists is quite high.
They are not very vocal about it.
Well, scientists by nature are not very vocal.
I mean, you have to be rather introverted to stay in a laboratory and get those kinds of research results that they do.
Well, science by its very nature requires demonstration, evidence, proof, repeatability, all of those things that are very, very difficult in terms of reasons to believe for somebody Well, I mean, the fact of the matter is, you know, in science you have absolute proof of nothing.
All we really ever have is practical proof or operational proof of the existence of many phenomena.
As a chemist, I've never seen an electron, but Based on operational proof, I'm convinced that an entity such as an electron must exist.
and likewise the evidence of the circumstantial evidence the operational
for the existence of the god of the bible was sufficient that i'm willing to accept the fact that there must be
the god of the bible and i'd choose to conduct my life accordingly
but what from a science uh... from a scientific point of view what
specific thing or what even group of things
the doctor led you to that final uh... but the the incredible moment when you were able to
believe Thank you.
Well, I didn't grow up in a Christian home.
In fact, my father was Muslim, and he wasn't a strict adherent to Islam, but he was committed to the Islamic faith.
I remember him praying every day to Allah and reading from the Koran.
My father also was highly educated.
He had a Ph.D.
in nuclear physics.
My mom was a non-practicing Catholic and had a master's degree in education.
She taught science and math.
So I grew up in a home that was inundated with science and in which the Christian faith was not held in very high regard.
When I went off to graduate school and was studying biochemistry specifically, once I began to really appreciate what was happening inside a living cell with respect to the chemistry, there's no way in my mind could I see how the laws of chemistry and physics could account for that type of specified complexity that you see inside a living cell.
And at that point I knew that there had to be something supernatural behind The chemistry happening inside living cells, behind the origin of life.
Now, and through a number of unrelated events, ultimately came to the point that I was open to reading the Bible for myself, objectively seeing if it was true or not, for the first time when I was 23 years old.
And through that experience, accepted the words of the Bible as being true.
But since then I've continued to evaluate and examine the interplay between science
and the Christian faith.
To me, the evidence is overwhelming and it's a weight of evidence.
It's not a single observation or a single fact, if you will, but it's everything as
a collective whole.
How do you account for a transcendent beginning to the universe?
How do you account for the fine-tuning you see in the universe?
How do you account for the fine-tuning you see with respect to our galaxy, our sun, our
solar system, our earth, our earth-moon system?
How do you account for the rapid appearance of life on the surface of the earth under
conditions in which it should not have originated?
How do you account for information in biological systems?
How do you account for the Cambrian explosion?
How do you account for the nature of the fossil record where we don't see gradual evolutionary
transformations?
Well, I was going to ask about that, and I was going to ask how do you account for the
dating and the fossil record that would seem to indicate.
Hundreds of thousands of millions of years of mankind, as opposed to the much shorter amount that you believe.
Well, there's no problem with millions of years for primitive life up through birds and mammals.
The Bible would simply say that humanity is recent.
And so there's certainly no problem with life being abundant on the planet for the past four billion years.
In fact, Fuzz and I see that as supportive of a testable creation model.
But not man, as we even remotely know him.
Is that correct?
Well, if you're talking about... Gentlemen, listen, we're at 70 hours, so let's pick up on this after the break.
Stay right there.
My guests are Dr. Ross, Dr. Hugh Ross, and Dr. Fuzz Rana from Reasons to Believe.
I'm Art Bell.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 16, 2000.
AMC Newsreel Musical Intro.
Coast to Coast AMC Newsreel Musical Intro.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time, the night featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
And we have with us this night the internationally known organization called Reasons to Believe, with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Foz Rana.
we'll get right back to that all right doctors uh... iran's and uh... for drama back to
once again and we were talking about
The fossil record, I think, and how many years, hundreds of thousands or millions of years, and you don't think that man, as we know him now, or even remotely as we know him now, has been around that long?
Bipedal primates, yes, but not human beings.
Not human beings.
Yes, something that I think is a common misperception is that paleoanthropologists use the term human In a very different sense than you and I would use the term human.
When they refer to humans, they're not only talking about the australopithecines, but also the more primitive bipedal homo primates.
Wherein you and I use the term human, we are thinking about modern humans, if you will.
Homo sapiens sapiens.
And so often times when one picks up a magazine article or a newspaper article, And you read about the latest discovery that paleontologists have made regarding humans at 2.5 million years ago.
Right.
What they really are talking about is an Australopithecine find more than likely.
Not what eventually became all of us having this discussion.
Well, you know, I mean, the question that really I think you're asking is, can we declare human evolution to be a fact?
And I've written a piece that's on our website That addresses that particular issue.
And what I think most people also are not aware of is how incomplete the data set is that paleoanthropologists are using.
And this is not meant to be a criticism towards these particular scientists.
What they're doing is exciting work.
It's very challenging work, where they're trying to piece together the natural history of these particular animals on the surface of the Earth.
But really, in most cases, these scientists are working with A partial skull, or a partial jawbone, or teeth, or occasionally they might get some post-cranial fossils, such as a partial humerus, or femur, or tibia, things along those lines.
But for the most part, they're looking at a very incomplete data set, and the fossils oftentimes are deformed as well.
And so from this incomplete data set, they're trying to reconstruct, quote-unquote, an evolutionary relationship between these different animals Right.
So there's a presupposition that's coming into play.
Now, when you have an incomplete data set, if all you have, in fact, in some cases, some species of these Australopithecines or the Homo Bipedal Primates are actually only known from a single fossil.
And if you only have a handful of fossils that define a species, You really don't have a clear understanding of the variation that happens naturally within that species across time or across geographies.
And so, if I have two fossils, one dated at 2.5 million years, one dated at 1.8 million years, and I see some differences in these two fossils, is that really due to a difference in species?
Am I seeing evolution at work?
Or am I looking at what's the natural variation?
And in fact, if you look in the paleoanthropology literature, Oftentimes you will see this very debate taking place among two different philosophies in paleoanthropology known as lumping and splitting.
Lumpers tend to group everybody together as a common species and splitters tend to break out different fossils and assign them to different species based on even subtle differences in the fossils.
type of incomplete data set, paleoanthropologists cannot agree on clear phylogenetic relationships
or what are the evolutionary relationships. And so to me, you can't declare evolution a fact if each paleoanthropologist
essentially has his own evolutionary tree, and as new discoveries are made, these paleoanthropologists run out
and redraw their trees, none of them agree with one another.
Alright, I can understand your argument. Let's examine then modern evidence, some more modern evidence that we can get
in hand readily, and that is the difference between, genetically, between, say a chimpanzee and a human being,
is so small, genetically, so small, so tiny, it's in the high 90s, I
forget the precise...
It's about 98% similar genetic material.
That would seem to give a hint, wouldn't it?
Well, that 2% difference is enormous.
I mean, trying to get that 2% in a brief period of time is just not going to happen through natural causation.
Moreover, you would expect a great degree of similarity.
I mean, here are three propositions.
No creator at all, one creator, or many creators.
If you've got no creator or many creators, we'd expect a lot more differentiation in the genetic material.
The similarity we see demonstrates we're looking at a creator that conserves his miraculous input.
So he uses templates for a variety of different life forms.
So we would expect, for example, that primates would share a lot in common.
The big question is, can you explain the differences without appealing to the supernatural?
And that's where we're bringing out data to the effect that that's not going to work.
You do have to bring in the supernatural to explain the differences.
That we see between, say, the three large primates and human beings on the face of the Earth today.
Are you comfortable with the concept of macroevolution?
We're comfortable that it has happened.
We're not comfortable that it has happened by natural causation alone.
Define natural causation.
In other words, that one species existing a long time ago naturally split into a number of different arms, which explains the species we have on the face of the Earth today.
One thing Fuzz and I are doing is working with a team of biologists and chemists to develop mathematical models on the when and how you would expect natural speciation.
And the bottom line is, it can happen through natural process alone.
Without invoking the supernatural, if you're talking about a species that's got more than a quadrillion individuals, a body size less than one centimeter, and a time between being able to give birth and be born, that's less than three months.
And what's interesting is you see field observation support for significant change for those species However, for the rest of the species, all we're seeing under real-time observations are extinctions.
And these same models would tell us the smaller the population, the larger the body size, the longer the generation time, the greater the likelihood for extinction before any significant change takes place through natural causation.
I've got an article here from Science and Ideas in Physics.
It's a brand new article, and it's entitled, Taking a Whiff of the Primordial Soup, Recreating the Big Bang in a Laboratory.
In a tunnel near Geneva, Switzerland, scientists may have recreated the stuff of the newborn universe.
Last week, scientists from CERN, Europe's particle physics lab, announced that by flinging beams of lead atoms into a metal barrier at close to the speed of light, They may have fleetingly created a hot soup made of matter's simplest constituents.
This sub-nuclear soup, scientists believe, is the same form of matter that existed just millionths of a second after the Big Bang, 13 to 15 billion years ago.
It says, all of this then coalesced into more familiar kinds of matter, The protons and neutrons found in stars, planets, our own bodies and so forth.
Your reaction to such a discovery should it prove out?
Oh, we're very excited about the discovery.
It's been done before, but this time they've got quite a rich mixture of gluons and quarks.
Precisely.
And you know what's thrilling is that through these powerful particle accelerators, We can go back and duplicate those conditions that existed very early in the history of the universe, and put to the test our different particle creation models.
And what's coming out of all of this, that is indeed, we are getting a particle creation model that's consistent with the biblical creation story.
Precisely.
So, in other words, you're not concerned at all.
In other words, you would consider it to be A verification of the process.
We would consider it a verification, correct.
Uh-huh.
And wouldn't take a thing away from he who created it.
Well, I mean, what's amazing is that we now have the capacity to look back in time and see what the creator did as early as 10 to the minus 18 seconds after the creation event.
So we can get within a millionth of a trillionth of a second of the actual creation instant.
Here's another one for you.
It would make sense, would it not, that from the instant of the Big Bang, material began to flow outward at a speed, at whatever speed.
And that material continues to expand and flow outward today.
And the laws of physics, it would seem to dictate that it would begin to expand at a slower Only if you've got enough matter in the universe to stop the expansion from the creation event.
all the time, until finally collapsing back in upon itself.
Only if you've got enough matter in the universe to stop the expansion from the creation event.
The latest measurements demonstrate that the universe contains just 28% of the mass that's
necessary to stop the expansion of the universe.
So in that sense, it will expand forever.
In fact though, actually I've got an article here that I cannot explain.
This appeared in National Science and Health and in the New York Times just the other day, February 15th.
The discovery two years ago that the expansion of the universe is in fact speeding up.
Yes, it's been speeding up for the last six billion years.
How is that possible?
Well, you have two factors governing the dynamics of the universe from the creation event.
You've got gravity, which is slowing down the expansion of the universe through the attractive force of different massive objects within the universe.
Right.
And so gravity acts as a brake on the expansion of the universe.
But what that article is referring to is a discovery made by 31 astronomers.
They published their results last June.
To the effect that there is a property of the space fabric of the universe.
It's something that Einstein hypothesized decades ago.
That the space fabric has within it energy to sustain self-stretching of that space fabric.
And what's unusual about this space energy is that the larger the space fabric of the universe becomes, The more energy it gains to sustain that self-stretching.
So what this means is that when the universe is much younger, when it's smaller in size, gravity will be the dominant aspect governing the dynamics of the universe.
The second factor that they call a cosmological constant at that time would be quite weak, because the smaller the universe is, the weaker that it expresses that self-stretching.
But as the universe gets bigger and bigger, the effect of gravity becomes weaker and weaker, because the different massive bodies in the universe get farther and farther apart.
But as the space fabric stretches more and more, it gains more and more energy to continue that self-stretching.
Well, that's one very logical explanation.
The other, by these particular scientists, is, going on with the article, looking for a way out of this perplexity, Several cosmologists are now suggesting that the cosmic acceleration may be in effect from some other universe.
Is that an equally plausible explanation?
Well, what came out of the discovery paper, the Astrophysical Journal, is that these two factors have been identified as being responsible for the expansion in history of the universe we observe.
They did speculate that there might be a third factor.
But I think what made the paper exciting for those of us from a Christian perspective, they were able to establish that if there are only these two factors, both of them must be profoundly designed in order to explain the existence of the right planets and the right stars to make physical life possible.
If there's a third factor, that third factor, too, must be designed.
Now, they were not saying that they had identified a third factor.
In fact, their opinion was there are only these two factors.
But they said their measurements were not yet sufficiently accurate to eliminate the possibility of a third factor.
But if that third factor exists, it too must be very exquisitely designed in order to sustain the planets and the stars that are necessary for life.
Now, trying to appeal to another universe Really doesn't wash, because once you get observers in, say there are two universes, once you've got observers in universe A, the space-time envelope of that universe cannot possibly overlap the space-time envelope of a second possibly existing universe.
What that means is, if God made three universes, those other two can have no effect on our universe today.
Because their space-time manifolds would be isolated.
Gentlemen, a question out of the blue here.
Not long ago, in our time, the Vatican in Rome went whizzing by every environmental objection that would normally be made, and established an observatory on a mountain In Arizona.
I mean, they just went whizzin' right through.
The Vatican, as you know, has a great deal of political and financial power.
And so they got the observatory where they wanted it, in conjunction with the university in Arizona.
And they're looking for something.
Looking really hard for something out there.
Any thoughts on why they might have done that?
Well, the Vatican, for decades, has been pumping money into observational astronomy.
There's always been a Vatican Observatory.
I think what's a little bit different about the current Pope is that he's trying to encourage a lot more of his direct scientific research.
So, for example, the Vatican Observatory has been sponsoring conferences where astronomers can get together and discuss issues that pertain to faith and scientific investigation.
So that's a new wrinkle.
We're getting a little more aggressively involved in interacting with the scientific community.
But the truth is, for decades, even centuries, they've been involved in astronomical research.
Attempting to prove to themselves, through science, which we've been discussing tonight, a reason to believe, Well, King David said 3,000 years ago that heavens declare the glory of God, and therefore those coming from a biblical perspective have got some extra motivation to go out and look at the heavens to see what they can see of God's glory.
And I think that's where the Vatican is developing a lot of their initiative.
And hey, it's not just the Vatican.
There are many within the Protestant persuasion, and also Eastern Orthodox, that have A strong motivation to study astronomy.
Do you think there's any possibility that they are looking for a sign or an object that they believe for some reason may be headed toward Earth or interact with Earth in some manner?
I've seen nothing in their literature to indicate that that's what's motivating them.
Rather, what's motivating them is to get a better understanding of how the universe works and what it's like.
All right.
Doctors, hold on.
Stand by.
This is very, very interesting.
From Reasons to Believe.
I'm Art Bell.
And this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
Never the same on any given night.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
The night featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
But you have closed your mind.
Whatever happened to our love?
I wish I understood.
It used to be so nice.
It used to be so good.
So when you near me, darling, can't you hear me echoing?
The love you gave me nothing else can save me, it's gone When you're gone, how can I even try to call?
When you're gone So I don't.
So I don't, how can I carry on?
I'm not a good guy.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired February 16th, 2000.
The internationally known Reasons to Believe, very well respected Reasons to Believe, is being represented this morning by Drs.
Hugh Ross and Floz Rana.
And they'll be back in a moment as we continue this discussion that, I admit, is hard to get your head wrapped around a little bit.
But I think they're doing quite well and I've thrown an awful lot of Really new stuff at them so far, and they're right on the money with it.
We'll be right back.
All right, back now to my guests.
Gentlemen, welcome back.
Fascinating stuff.
Have either one of you seen a UFO?
I've photographed a couple of them, but they're not true UFOs.
They're not true UFOs.
What did you see and what, in fact, did you photograph?
Well, I photographed these because in dealing with people who see UFOs, I wanted to show them some examples of how things that they think are flying saucers really are nothing of the sort.
One of them, for example, is the chandelier effect.
You get inside a restaurant and take a shot of the distant horizon.
There's a pane of glass between you and that horizon, and reflecting off that glass is a chandelier behind you.
What you see in the photograph is a cluster of spaceships dangling over the horizon.
And so a lot of UFO photographs are like that.
Another one I took while I was in the Canadian Rockies.
You've got really dark, damp conditions.
You're on that last shot of your roll of film.
You stretch the emotion a little bit and you get what you call the flying carpet effect.
You get this beautiful picture of the scene in front of you, but on top of that scene
would be looking like a flying carpet or some kind of a saucer effect in the atmosphere.
So it just shows you can't always believe what you see or interpret as you think as
you're seeing it.
I would say that probably 90% or even more of the photographs or even reports of unidentified
flying objects seen at distance or even very closely are probably as you suggest.
About 99% you can explain as either hoaxes or natural phenomena that people are misinterpreting.
Alright.
What about that 1%?
What about... Let's see, how can I explain this to you?
I have had a very close experience with an unidentified flying object, a triangle.
I was with my wife so close I could have thrown a rocket at this thing.
I mean, it just silently floated above my head.
It was very large, a triangle, and just floated out across the valley.
Now, we may well have Anti-gravity technology, we may have noise masking technology, but I must tell you, gentlemen, that short of that, what I saw was completely inexplicable, and it was not a trick of light and shadow, I assure you.
Well, I'd have to know such things as the date, time, and place that you saw the thing, whether other observers saw the event as well.
You know, that's the kind of data you need to really help identify or say, wait a minute, this is in that 1% category.
Well, let me help you out there.
Yes, my wife and I saw that.
We reported it on the radios a number of years ago now.
It was seen by many, many people in the same valley where I'm located.
A week later, a newspaper article appeared, and in fact, the newspaper contacted Nellis Air Force Base, we're out here in the desert, and asked for an explanation.
Nellis' explanation was that, yes indeed, on the evening in question, there had been a secret mission which may have overflown the Brumpt Valley, that's where I live, and that the aircraft in question was a C-130.
Now, I was in the Air Force, and I flew in C-130s, and I can assure you that that was no C-130.
A C-130 at 150 feet above your head would have rattled your teeth.
Yes.
Not a C-130, gentlemen.
Maybe not a C-130.
I mean, if you're living in Pahrump, Nevada, you're rather close to some test sites where there... I sure am.
And, you know, maybe there could be an aircraft, but they're telling you it's a C-130 so that you don't chase any deeper.
I mean, I had that same experience as an astronomer up in Canada.
And we were observing on a telescope that was close to NORAD headquarters.
And this was back in the early 70s.
We had an aircraft overfly our telescope.
It's a radio telescope, so it's 150 feet across.
It's in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
So I can imagine a pilot flying over would get rather curious.
But the thing we noticed is that this fast-flying craft would stop over our site and hover.
And I was messing up our observations.
And so figuring, well, we're just 60 miles from NORAD headquarters.
Let's call them and see if we can discourage them from having their pilots fly over our site.
And they denied that they were flying any such aircraft.
We don't have the aircraft with that kind of capability.
But the flights continued.
So we were able to get rid of it by calling the Ottawa newspapers.
Because, you know, there you've got the Russian Embassy, and very quickly, we did not have any more flights over our telescope.
And, of course, today we realize that at that time, the American military indeed did have aircraft with that kind of capability.
They just didn't want to talk about it.
So, that does explain a number of UFOs.
Strange craft, under development by our government, on purpose, secret, And when they're discovered, they'll say, well, you know, we don't have such items.
Or what you're really seeing is X. When in fact, you're sitting there on the ground and saying, well, I know it's not X. It's got to be Y. But nobody wants to tell you that.
Doctors, when you look into God's firmament and all the stars, and now we are finding out planets are more likely than not revolving around these stars.
Despite the recent announcement by some scientists that they believe there may be no life out there, that is very recent, is it not logical, as was suggested again in contact by Jodie Foster, I think, that if there are not others out there, what a giant waste of space, I think she said, and that seemed logical.
How do you come down on this subject of extraterrestrial life?
Well, Carl had the different actors and actresses.
I'm talking about Carl Sagan in that movie Contact.
Repeat that line.
It's all such a waste of words, the only ones.
Yes.
Well, actually, astronomers have known for some time that if you want a planet like Earth, it's not going to happen without the existence of a hundred billion trillion stars in the observable universe.
Yes.
And that's because the elements that you have in the universe, like carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, depend on the mass density of the universe.
So if the universe were to contain fewer than those hundred billion trillion observable stars, you would only have the element hydrogen.
Or if it had more than those hundred billion trillion stars, then that hydrogen would have been fused into elements heavier than iron.
If you want carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, so that life chemistry is possible, that can only take place in a universe where we have approximately a hundred billion trillion observable stars.
So if you want one Earth, that's what it's going to take.
So it's not all a waste.
In fact, we realize the Creator had so much care and love for the human species that it
wasn't too expensive to create a hundred billion trillion stars and carefully shape and craft
them for fifteen billion years so that in this narrow window of time we could all have
a nice place to live.
Now concerning extrasolar planets, over thirty have been discovered so far.
Which makes likely the fact that there would be many more.
There are many more planets.
On the other hand, we're only finding these planets around stars that are very metal rich
and young.
I mean, what's exceptional about our star, the Sun, it's middle-aged and yet it's metal
rich.
And so, really, of all the stars we see in our galaxy, only about 2% have the capacity to sustain planets.
The other 98% do not.
That still makes for a large number of planets.
But keep in mind, if you want life, You have to be dealing with middle-aged systems.
Bearing in mind that the only way they've been able to detect planets so far is the flicker of the light as the larger of the planets would pass between the Sun and our point of observation.
So it's entirely possible there are smaller planets as well that we cannot detect.
That's true, but the data so far is telling us that it's only in these late-born, metal-rich stars Now, we're finding planets, and by the way, that's exactly what we'd expect.
Sure.
Okay.
You know, it's going to take a lot of that heavy element material to make planets, and so you don't expect them around those stars that don't have elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in great abundance.
Do you imagine the possibility of extraterrestrial life anywhere other than Earth?
Well, certainly within our solar system, if for no other reason than that billions of tons of Earth-like material have been transported throughout the solar system.
But keep in mind this, the transport of life material only works over interplanetary distances,
not interstellar distances. And we really are talking the remains of life. I don't
really expect NASA to find a bacterium on Mars, but I do expect them to find
the remains of the bacterium just because so much of that stuff
has been moved from the surface of the Earth to the surface of Mars.
Thank you.
All right, but this we know about, and you're certainly correct with the transfer.
After all, we have the Mars rocks and so on and so on.
So we know that material transfers over these short distances.
But in all that we are able to observe, do you imagine there could be other Intelligent life, comparable to ours, within all of what we can see.
Is that something you imagine or something you highly doubt?
Well, I highly doubt it if we're talking about natural process alone.
I mean, I don't put it past the Creator, for example, to create life on several planets instead of just one.
But if you go to our website, for example, you'll see posted there a probability calculation on the possibility of finding a planet that has the capacity to support physical life.
Less than one chance in 10 to the 120th that you're going to find a planet like that.
And the maximum number of planets the universe could sustain by the most optimistic estimates is 10 to the 22. That's 10 billion trillion planets that we
could have within the universe.
But we're looking at 120 zeros after the one for the probability of having just one of
those 10 billion trillion planets having the capacity to support any conceivable kind of
physical life.
Then you're making the case that in all, and in great probability, we are alone.
We are alone unless the creator of the universe decided to perform his creation miracles on
a second or third planet.
All right.
If you did, academically, for the sake of the discussion, would you expect when we found, or when they found us, whichever way it might occur, or if it could occur, that they would have a belief system similar to ours?
They would be aware of a creator, of a god, Of Jesus, even?
The only thing the Bible rules out on that is God creating a spiritual, intelligent, physical species, like our human species, that has rebelled against God's authority and is in need of a Redeemer.
So, for example, a Bible leaves open the window that God made dolphins on another planet.
He's left open the window that God may have created the human-type beings on another planet that remained in fellowship with him, rather than choosing to rebel against his plan and his system.
So, from a Christian perspective, you have a lot of options.
Now, I would want to make this point clear.
The Bible is silent on the issue of extraterrestrial physical life in our universe.
It says a lot about angels.
But that's not physical life confined to a space-time continuum.
So it could be, it could not be.
But one thing the Bible is clear about it, it's out there, it didn't happen through Darwinian evolution or through some primordial sooth.
It took place the same way it did here on Earth, by miraculous intervention.
Miraculous intervention.
So there's really, there's no way for the two, miraculous intervention and Evolution to be compatible.
They simply are not compatible, are they?
Well, I'm not negating that our species has changed over time, but we're still human beings.
Our eyesight today is better than it was a couple of thousand years ago.
On the other hand, we've got a lot more diabetics in the population.
So in that sense, you might say that evolution, natural evolution, is pushing us towards rapid extinction rather than anything superior.
As I look around the planet, and I'm sure you see the same things, as we hear about the Arctic with 40% less ice, as we hear about the Antarctic with ice fields falling off into the water, as we hear about the ozone hole enlarging and more cancers and more disease, emerging diseases from the rainforest and so on, Is there a message there for all of us?
Well, I'd be willing to give some credibility to the ozone problem, because there we got very good measurements that show the connection between human activity, industrial activity.
It would seem so.
NASA's made some very careful measurements.
They have.
We cannot say the same thing for global warming.
I mean, yeah, there are some good models out there, but it's not definitive yet.
Whether we're really seeing a larger effect from natural causation or from a human activity.
Right, well let's not argue causation right now, but it is, in fact, if you look at our weather, for example, it's obvious the weather patterns are changing.
Yes.
Rather rapidly and disturbingly, as a matter of fact.
And it's obvious that there are climate changes that are underway.
So I'm asking, I guess, From a religious point of view, whether there is a message in what's going on right now?
Possibly.
I mean, there are hints within the Bible, for example, that God would disturb things in such a way to get people's attention, in order that more of the population may come to know Him.
And it's kind of based on the principle that God wants as many people as possible.
To come to know him in a personal way.
His preference is that we would come to know him through seeing the benefits of getting a good relationship with him, submitting to him.
But there are always those individuals that aren't going to make any movement until they see the consequences of their not submitting to God's authority.
That's why it tells us the Word of God is a two-edged sword.
I don't want to make this sound legalistic.
Really it's a recognition that we need to recognize that we can't do it ourselves.
It's impossible to live up to God's standards.
We need God's help to do it.
Are we observing, in all probability, signs of disobedience?
There's a straight-on question for you.
Well, I think all you've got to do is have some children in your household, and you can see that we all have this innate nature to live lives for ourselves rather than some altruistic purpose beyond us.
All right.
Doctors, we're at the top of another hour, and I've had you on for two hours.
I want to ask you if you're able to stay on.
And if so, whether you're willing to accept calls and questions.
Sure.
Sure.
That's two sures.
All right.
Then stay right where you are, and we'll be right back.
A very, very, very interesting program.
Two very learned gentlemen, with perhaps a different point of view than yours.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM, Where That Happens.
You're listening to ArcBell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
Her hands are never cold She's got better days in sight She's got her music on You won't have to think twice She's got a New York smell She got that daddy's eye
But she's easy, she'll unheed you How's it better just to leave you?
She's so cautious, and she knows just what is Take a trip to the city lights, take the long way home
Bring it up one day, it's unbelievable, unforgettable, I dare you
Then you'll want to take a drink and you'll look around You'll start to wonder, you'll know, hey, how it all works
You'll start to wonder, you'll know, hey, how it all works www.premierradionetworks.com
You're listening to ARC Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
Representing the internationally known, well-respected Reasons to Believe, my guests this morning are indeed an interesting pair, Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Pozrana, and they'll be back in a moment, and we're about to open the phone lines.
Just one little question before we do that.
Alright, once again, Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Fuzrana.
Gentlemen, welcome back.
Just one quick question.
Going back to this factual matter that Christians are, in fact, the minority, the biggest minority, I concede, but nevertheless a minority in terms of religious belief among the current population of six billion plus on the planet.
We proselytize.
We try and convert.
That is something that Christians do.
Is that fair to say?
Certainly.
Okay.
In doing that, we have often, frequently in fact, we've made mistakes.
I saw a movie recently called At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
Have you all seen that?
No.
It's a simple and a complicated story all at once.
It's a wonderful movie.
It might be disturbing for you, but it follows some Christians who go into the Amazon jungle to convert heathens.
And skipping across a lot of important plot, the end of the story is they end up infecting them with a flu which ends up killing them.
Now, they thought they had converted them, but in fact they really had not converted them at all, and their beliefs at the time of crisis, as they died of this flu, remain their original beliefs.
So, we do make some mistakes when we try to bring the word elsewhere.
Coming from the rainforest recently has been a number of emerging diseases That would seem to be, or I guess you could look at it as, a kind of karmic reaction to our plowing down through the rainforest.
Any comments?
What question are you asking?
Well, I guess I'm asking about the advisability of going in as Christians and And the giving of the rice, and the conversion that we think we're doing, and... Right.
You know, I guess I'm asking about that.
Well, I think you've stated it well.
When we go in like that, we do make mistakes.
We're human beings, after all.
We need to realize, however, God had another option.
If He wanted to, He could send one of His sinless angels to give a perfect presentation of His gospel message to every human being.
God could have done that.
He chose not to do that.
He chose instead to send people who he knew would make mistakes, would mess up, as we all do.
But the thing I get from reading my Bible is that when I go out as a representative of the Creator, it's not so much for God's benefit.
It's not so much for the benefit of the people that are going to hear my message.
It's more for my benefit.
In that process of obeying God to take his message to the outermost parts of the earth, that gives God the opportunity to transform my character.
And if necessary, I think God's going to tolerate a few mistakes.
Kind of like how we raise our children.
You have to let them fail a few times before they really get the training that's necessary.
So I think if we realize that we're going, Not so much to save those souls, not so much to make ourselves look good in God's eyes, but to realize that this is going to benefit me in terms of transforming my character into that of Jesus Christ.
Then we'll have a less likelihood to make some of the catastrophic errors that you're reporting.
Alright, let's go to the phones.
I've capitalized your time long enough.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Drs.
Ross and Rana.
Hello?
Hi, where are you?
My name's Mark.
I'm calling from Southern California.
Okay, Mark, you're going to have to yell at us a bit, but go ahead.
Okay, I'll speak up some.
Is that better?
Oh, it is.
Okay.
Your guests, I understand, believe that God created the earth and all the animals and plants on it.
Is that correct?
Correct.
That's right.
Okay.
One thing that I've had some trouble with, not necessarily that I don't I believe that a greater force exists than humanity.
I believe that's a distinct possibility.
But one thing I haven't been able to understand, if God created all the creatures, say he created fish, right?
He created what?
Fish.
Fish.
Yeah?
Well, why did he also create larger fish to eat these smaller fish?
And also, not only larger fish, but birds, snakes, they're affected
by parasites.
The entire system of predators.
Predators and parasites, yes. Why if he creates an animal, would he also create an animal to destroy that animal?
Or be a parasite to that animal?
Well, keep in mind that God is creating a planet. His purpose is to maximize the biomass and biodiversity of the
planet.
So when we human beings come along, we have the maximum wealth at our disposal, the maximum biodeposits.
And to make that work, a system of predators and parasites really is the ideal way to go.
Now keep in mind that this is not God's ultimate plan.
I mean, it just doesn't make sense, at least in my mind, anyway, why on one hand he would create one animal and then on the other hand create other animals that would prey upon the lesser of the animals, destroying its life and probably giving it a terrible death to be eaten or Well, given the laws of physics, if you take away the predators, is life better for the herbivores?
What you discover is that's not true.
The herbivores really need the predators in order to maintain their quality of life at an optimal level.
It's also necessary in order to have human beings rewarded with the maximum resources to sustain their civilization.
I mean, we're talking four billion years of life history upon the face of the earth.
And this is why we've got so much oil and coal and natural gas, topsoil.
And, you know, ultimately, it's simply a matter of degree.
When animals eat plants, the plants are the prey.
I mean, we are the predators.
So as vegetarians, we're predators as well.
But keep in mind that this whole system of life on planet Earth for the last 3.86 billion years is enabling us human beings to sustain the very high standard of living that we do.
The other point I was going to make is that God does not declare this creation perfect.
He says it is good, but that it's not perfect.
A perfect creation will come in the future.
In other words, this whole system of predators and parasites And that death over 3.86 billion years is all preparatory to the perfect creation that will come.
These laws of physics and this system of predation and parasites enables us to set up the means by which God can work through us human beings to rapidly conquer the problem of evil.
Once evil is conquered, as you'll see in the pages of the Bible, we have the promise of different laws of physics I have noticed, as many others have, Doctors, that during just about every war, every side holds up their work and their God as being on their side in that war to kill others who believe in another God.
Well, that's one of the best pieces of evidence that we have that this benevolent supernatural creator is opposed by a malevolent supernatural being.
There is evil in the world.
And it's one thing to look at parasites and predators and say, well, that's not ideal.
It's quite another thing to look at human beings and say, this is not only not ideal, it's outright evil.
The best evidence for evil in the universe is the way we human beings treat one another.
And that tells us that indeed we are living in a good creation, not the perfect creation, and there is evil out there that God needs to conquer.
And He's in the process of doing that.
So then, those other gods are evil, or the men who proclaim their names are evil?
Well, we all are evil.
Our view is that we all are sinners.
All right, East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Ross and Dr. Rana.
Hi.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Yell at us.
Good evening, gentlemen.
I have a couple of questions.
One of the first questions is that a while ago, what ten dimensions were mentioned.
I was interested in what the names and properties of the six dimensions beyond height, width, depth, and time were.
Well, you're going to love this.
They call them dimensions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.
Another appellation you'll find in literature is Dimensions E-F-G-H-I-J-K.
So this is such a new development in physics that we've not developed any names like length, width, height, and time.
We really don't need to just to work up the mathematics.
It's simply necessary to put subscripts or superscripts on these dimensions.
Until you have them nailed down.
Extraterrestrials, seraphim, cherubim?
Yes.
I believe that the Seraphim and the Cherubim are angels that God created.
They are a subset of the angels, but they are angels, which means that they are... Yes?
And isn't it possible that there are additional species of angels which just simply were not mentioned?
Well, that's possible.
I mean, actually, I would argue that the Seraphim and the Cherubim are angels that God created, he says.
Hundreds of millions of these angels, and there is a hierarchy of them.
As far as their physical characteristics go, there's nothing definitive in the Bible that different angels take on different properties from one another.
Most of them look like Christopher Walken, actually.
I was also interested.
You were talking about life on other planets.
Spirituality doesn't necessarily dictate the same physical form as ours, does it?
Spirituality doesn't.
If we're talking spiritual, non-physical life, by definition we're talking about life that exists beyond the space-time fabric of our universe.
If we're talking life within that space-time fabric, then yes, you've got to make it out of carbon.
If you've got to make it out of carbon, we discover that there's some incredibly fine-tuned characteristics ...that are necessary to bring that about.
That's one of the lines we use to demonstrate that there must be a very powerful, intelligent, and knowledgeable designer behind the universe.
When we demand that life must be carbon-based, aren't we somewhat limiting ourselves?
Is it not possible that under different gravity conditions, with different atmospheres, and so forth and so on, Well, when you look at the atomic chart of elements, you discover that you've got rather limited options if you want complex chemistry.
Boron's a possibility.
Silicon's a possibility.
Carbon, but as fuzz can tell you, when you run the experiments, you quickly discover that boron and silicon only get you so far.
You've got to go with carbon.
That's something that was established 30 years ago.
Yeah.
Carbon's the way it's got to go.
Right.
Only carbon, of all the chemical elements, is capable of forming long, chain-like molecules and complex ring structures.
Boron and silicon cannot do that.
So, regardless of the atmosphere or the physical conditions, it's really a fundamental limitation of the chemistry that those particular elements can be involved in.
All right.
Wes of the Rockies, you're on air with Dr. Rawson Rana.
Hi.
Hello?
Hello!
Hi, um... Where are you, sir?
I'm in Tucson, Arizona.
Alright.
Okay, I've seen the doctors, or one of them at least, on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
I think he's a genius.
I completely agree with the idea of blending the theology with the science, because I don't think that there's as many contradictions as the two sides would like to think.
I mean, first off, the book Genesis, the entire process follows evolution, and with phrases like, a day is like a thousand years, I think people nitpicking about the exact time perception to us.
It doesn't seem like that has to be so important and these people shouldn't be fighting with each other.
But I have a question for the doctor and it has to do with when you say there is evil in the world, are you referring to Nephilim, fallen breeds of angels that had taken the daughters of men and had wives and had giants and freaks and then of course through these cleansing processes it seems like this process seems to be being repeated with alien abductions.
Mirroring succubus and incubus sexual molestations from the Dark Ages.
It seems like it just keeps continuing, and quite possibly that this impurity is in the men, and it's being bred into the men by fallen angel scientists, or God's forces.
All right, slow down.
Let them answer.
The Nephilim, the Flood, and today's situation.
Yeah, we've written about that in a book called The Genesis Question.
It's just come out a few months ago, and addresses these subjects.
Our position is that the Nephilim were here.
They're not here now.
I mean, there are some Christians running around making the claim that the Nephilim have returned.
We're highly skeptical of that claim.
There's no evidence.
There's certainly no biblical support for that.
What you find in the pages of the Bible is that the last of these Nephilim disappeared at the hand of David's mighty men.
So once you get past David's mighty men 3,000 years ago, We no longer see them, the Philem, on the face of the Earth.
You wouldn't say that you wouldn't give any credence to the flood of reports of abductions, the sightings, etc., to possibly think that Satan's resurged?
He's using the same old methods, the same ships that Gabriel came down from the deep sea?
Don't get me wrong.
I do believe that there's a Satan.
I believe that he is a number of fallen angels working with him.
And that these fallen angels are busy trying to supernaturally manifest themselves to peoples of the Earth in a variety of ways.
I think that explains that 1% residual, the UFO phenomena.
I think it explains what goes on in seances and occult practices.
So yes, there are supernatural beings beyond our space-time dimension that are attempting to communicate with us.
On the other hand, as a pastor and as a scientist, I will say that probably 90% of the claims I hear for some supernatural manifestation of that nature are simply psychologically induced.
They're not real.
And if you really are in communication with an entity, you're not talking to who you think you are, right?
We have to be very skeptical about these claims, but I'm not saying that every claim is bogus.
There is a residual that are real.
All right, Doctors.
Hold on.
Bottom of the hour.
We'll be right back.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from
February 16, 2000.
This is a recording of the first episode of the Coast to Coast AM.
This is a recording of the first episode of the Coast to Coast AM from February 16, 2000.
I see trees of green, red and blue, and I see a man in a suit of green.
I see trees of green, red and blue, I see them bloom.
It's fun being you And I think to myself What a wonderful world I see skies of blue And clouds of white The bright blessed day The dark sacred night And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going
by.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
The night featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
2000. Doctors Hugh Ross and Closrana are here for reasons to believe. Never to step on that line.
Good morning, everybody.
We'll get back to our guests in one moment.
Stay right where you are.
Doctors, I'm not going to say this the way she said it, but I was in the other room talking to my wife and Without going into any detail, because it's really not necessary, we've been dealt in our life some really serious tragedies, some of which my audience is aware of, some of which they're not aware of.
I mean, really serious, terrible stuff, doctors.
And at the same time, we have been dealt some blessings.
But really, truly, at both extremes.
And so the temptation at times is to think that God doesn't give a damn, that he took the human race and just sort of threw us up in the air, and some of us landed on our head and got concussions, others died, some picked themselves up and blasted their brother till they got rich, um, that there just is no direction to it at all, and sometimes life feels that way.
Yeah, it does.
But I think we can draw some comfort from the fact that we see how very carefully engineered and designed the universe is, life is, and we realize there's got to be a God out there that really cares.
We see the way he has maximized our environment for our enjoyment and standard of living.
That's an additional piece of evidence.
But for me personally, what's the strongest piece of evidence is that as I commit myself To follow God's leading in my life as I see revealed in the pages of the Bible, I see God working supernaturally behind the scenes.
And I realize, you know, He not only cares for the universe, He not only cares for the human race, He cares for me as a personal, individual being.
And yes, He is going to take us through some tough water.
We're told that this life is a life of discipline and preparation.
so that we can enjoy the maximum possible reward in a new creation.
We're only here for a few decades.
The rest of eternity follows.
And we're taking this very short course where we get exposed to evil and suffering,
but it's going to prepare us for something far superior than anything that was possible in the Garden of Eden,
what the Christian faith and all other faiths refer to as paradise.
Then I will ask you what many who have lost their faith would ask, and that is,
when an F5 tornado plows into a church and kills women and infants,
along with others, strong believers,
so many say, what kind of God,
even casually observing what's going on here, could allow such a thing to occur?
In what way do you answer?
Well, as I go through the Bible and look at the whole question of death and suffering, What I've found helpful is to develop four categories.
One category is good people dying young, dying before their time.
Evil people that die at an early age.
Wicked people who live to be 90 or 100.
And then people who are righteous, who also live to be 90 and 100.
And what you see is the Bible is filled with insights as to why God brings about different
circumstances for different people.
And it's all predicated on the information we have in the Bible that the new creation,
the place for the righteous, is a place with different levels of reward.
God works to protect that reward.
I mean, it tells us in Isaiah, for example, that people ponder, why do good, righteous
people die when they're 10 years old, 20 years old, 30 years old?
Or one year old.
And then what it tells us in the next verse is that God knows the future of that individual.
And if he sees in that future a lot of torment, he says, you know what?
This person has already proven himself or herself.
I will deliver that person from this future torment, so they won't have to face all that.
There's an interesting story in the Bible about a wicked king, and he had a large family.
And God came to him and said, because of your wickedness, Everyone in your family will live on and see torment.
But your little boy, he was probably only about six years old, he said he will die in the next few days on his bed because he's the only good one in your whole family.
I will take him and deliver him from the torment that you and the rest of your family will face.
And the whole point is that little boy went on to a heavenly reward, and as Paul points out in his writings, No matter how good it is here on planet Earth, it's far better in the Kingdom of Heaven.
And so he says, for that reason, I would desire that my Creator take me right now.
But I also realize He's got a job for me to do here on Earth.
He's got training He wants me to go through.
And so he says I will stay here as long as He wants me to stay here.
But when He says it's time up, I'm ready to go.
I'm raring to go.
Well, that's a very different answer than I've heard.
ever before to that question.
First time caller on the line, you are on the air with Dr.
Hugh Ross and Dr. Fozarana.
Hi.
Yeah, hi.
Where are you sir?
This is Daniel.
I'm calling from Costa Mesa, California.
Okay, Daniel.
And thanks for taking my call.
I had a question about the commonality between a free will that we all acknowledge that we
have free will as humans and that angels, the Bible teaches explicitly that angels have
the free will to choose to follow God or not.
That's kind of the predicament we're in.
It's based on choices made by first angels and then us.
I think that we all kind of walk around, especially a lot of Christians, and they don't really think about that on a day-to-day basis.
This is battles being played out.
And I just wanted to ask your guests about, in the Gospel, it says, Jesus says, But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be, the second coming he's talking about.
And I wanted to make that reference to the days of Noah, as in the fallen age coming to earth, the Bible calls them the Nephilim.
Well, we sort of covered that.
They thought they were here and are not here now.
Correct, Dr.?
Yeah, I take the position that the Nephilim were here, but they disappeared at the time of David's mighty men.
And there's a number of scriptures in the Bible that point out that the demons are being restrained from doing that kind of thing again.
So it's not happening now, but it was happening then.
The reference to the fact that in the days of the coming of the Lord, people would become as wicked as they did during the days before the Flood?
Hey, do you want a little piece of chilling evidence?
In the days before the Flood, the murder rate had to be at least 19 out of 20 people dying death from murder.
Today, that murder rate is 1 out of 3, if you take into account abortions.
It's the first time in human history Our murder has become the number one cause of death for the human species, first time since the days before the flood.
If you account for abortion.
Otherwise, within the U.S., the murder rate is actually down.
That's true.
So, how do you reconcile that?
In other words, if we were moving toward the final days and the signs we were seeing would be increased death by murder, Then it should be pretty much cross the board, shouldn't it?
Well, I'm not claiming that conditions have become as bad as they are in the days before the flood.
I'm just saying that there's a trend in that direction if you look at the murder rate.
In terms of discounting abortions and saying, gee, murder's actually gone down, well, the baby boomers have gotten older.
I mean, the truth is most murders are committed by young men.
And we don't have the same proportion of young men in the population that we had 10, 20 years ago.
One category of murder, though, that is not down is children killing children.
A phenomenon that is just plain inexplicable.
The tragedy in Colorado and so many other places.
It's impossible to comprehend why children would slaughter other children and then take their lives as though their own life meant Absolutely.
As a matter of fact, I saw a gang member on TV, Doctors, and he looked right in the screen several years ago, and it impressed me and stays with me to this moment.
And he said, I don't give a damn about my own life, so you can imagine how I feel about yours.
Right.
And we have so many people that seem to not have any value for life whatsoever, theirs and certainly anybody else's.
And we've got this phenomena of children killing children.
Bad sign.
It's a bad sign.
The suicide rate is a bad sign.
Hey, you can just look at the 20th century.
Look how many people have died in wars and civil wars in that century compared to previous centuries.
So I think certain believers have a point when they say that, you know, things really are getting worse from a spiritual perspective rather than better.
Although perhaps a more balanced way to put a spin on that is that we're seeing a polarization.
At the same time, we're seeing wickedness rise to a level we've never seen before.
We're also seeing righteousness rise to a level it's never had before.
I mean, people all over the world are repenting of their rebellion against God and receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and people's lives are being transformed.
I think we're seeing both phenomena take place simultaneously.
But there's another one, Doctor, that's going on right now that I'm sure deserves your comment, and that is not embracing the Lord and Jesus, but rather embracing a new spirituality that seems minus the Lord, as you would describe Him, and more of what is called a New Age philosophy.
Where does that fit in?
Well, I think that fits in that the evidence scientifically today for the existence of God is so compelling, and yet people's rebellion is still there against God's authority.
They're going to express that in different ways than people did 50 years ago.
You know, as I speak on university campuses, I'm discovering that atheism and agnosticism doesn't have the attraction it once did.
The scientific evidence is just too compelling.
And so what they're doing instead of going in the Christian faith and saying, let's go with the New Age thing.
And I asked some students why they were doing that.
They said, well, Christianity has a higher price.
We want to get our spirituality as cheap as possible.
Do you really think that's being fair to those who I really do believe that they're able to be spiritual and are in fact very spiritual within themselves.
Well, everybody is spiritual.
I mean, we are spiritual beings.
We're compelled to worship something.
Some people worship these little white balls on large green patches of green, chasing around these little scepters we call golf clubs.
We all have our different aspects of worship.
And I think it's just coming out in this way.
I mean, I saw that when I was in the Soviet Union in the days of the Communists.
You know, belief in God was outlawed.
What happened?
People began to pursue occult physics.
Government didn't ban that, so they were expressing their spirituality that way.
And that goes on today in Russia.
That goes on today in Russia, and I think what we're trying to do is encourage people to be skeptical.
As it tells us in the Bible, everything must be tested.
My criticism of New Age philosophy is that it doesn't pass the rigorous scientific tests.
It doesn't pass the historical tests either.
And so we're trying to encourage people to move away from spiritual laziness, where they just kind of take anything that comes by and let's say, let's really check it out.
Let's scrutinize it.
Let's test it.
Make sure it's true before we go out and follow it or invest any resources in it.
I interviewed doctors for a long time, a really wonderful man, Father Malachi Martin.
You may have heard of him.
A Catholic priest, an exorcist, and he wrote a series of books, but one of the things that he contended was that evil in the form of the devil is in the Vatican.
Pretty radical stuff from a priest, but he wrote books about that.
And there are many others who believe that as well.
You want to stick your necks out and comment on that at all?
Well, I think from the aspect of Satan and the demons, the best place to mess up God's plan is to go to church.
So it wouldn't surprise me at all that there are demons running around the Vatican.
I think there are some demons running around my church as well.
But God has not left us without defenses.
East of the Rockies.
Good morning.
You're on the air with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Rosarana.
Yes, hello Art, and thank you gentlemen, all three of you, for the wonderful program.
Can you hear me okay?
Sure.
Okay, this is Sherry from Duluth, Minnesota.
Okay.
And thank you for such an insightful program.
I am a Christian by definition, accepting the Lord Jesus as my Savior and Lord.
But I have a question.
I'd never thought of creation.
All the times I've read and God saw that it was good, I mean, what does he say, six times at least, never saw the connection between good and not being perfect.
And I'm thinking that's what you said, right?
That's what I said, yes, because we have evil and suffering existing in this creation.
Well, the reason I ask, and I'm not trying to nitpick with doctrine, this is just so interesting to me.
I've never heard any other Christians explain it that way.
I've heard the evil coming as a result of the fall from the Garden of Eden as opposed to creation in the beginning.
Do you follow what I'm saying there?
Right.
But you notice in the Bible it tells us that evil was here before God created Adam and Eve.
Satan went into rebellion against God before that.
Right.
And I look at the Christian faith as a message of deliverance from paradise.
I mean, if I wanted to make a very broad generalization, religions outside of Christianity promise the restoration of paradise.
Christianity promises deliverance from paradise.
So our hope is much better than what we had in the Garden of Eden.
And God had the option of keeping Satan out of that garden.
He could have kept the human species In that paradisical situation, for all of eternity, if he wanted to.
Instead, he decided to let Satan invade.
But he used that invasion of Satan to engineer a means by which evil could be conquered once and for all, and we human beings could be trained to receive a reward far superior to anything possible in the Garden of Eden.
Interesting, so it's deliverance from paradise as opposed to restoration too.
Exactly.
I mean all you've got to do is look at the last two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22.
You discover that there's radically different laws of physics.
Radically different dimensionality.
We're not going to be confined in time like we are now.
And so it's going to be possible for us to have a level of relationship and intimacy that is impossible even without sin here in this universe.
So Jesus Christ would have had to have come had not Adam and Eve eaten the fruit because the creation, God's creation, was not perfect.
God's creation was not perfect.
It was the perfect creation given the existence of evil in God's creation system.
In other words, the laws of physics that we see, the ten space-time dimensions, that's really the perfect situation for dealing with evil.
But once evil is dispensed with, we have to look forward to a new creation that is far superior to anything we see in our ten space-time dimensions.
So even if man hadn't sinned yet, there was evil, so Christ still would have had to have come.
Well, he wouldn't have had to come for us, but you're right.
There would have been evil in the world.
The angels had fallen into sin.
I think Jesus would have taken a different situation.
But my belief is that God knew exactly what was going to happen when Satan invaded the Garden of Eden.
All right.
We are... You bet, ma'am.
We're so short on time here.
Doctors, we are at a juncture where I always ask... I have one more hour of show, but many people have things they have to do in the morning and be up early, so I always ask whether the guests would like to stay on or head to bed for duty in the morning.
I'm willing to stay on.
Yep, me too.
Both of you, huh?
Alright.
Well, that's the spirit.
Doctor, again, your latest book is?
Two books have come out.
The Genesis Question and Beyond the Cosmos.
And are they generally available in bookstores?
Amazon.com, I'm sure.
Amazon.com has it.
Christian bookstores have it.
And they can get it at our website at Reasons.org.
At Reasons.org.
All right, Doctors.
Hold on.
We'll be back shortly.
What a program, huh, Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Fozarana?
From Reasons to Believe, internationally recognized.
You're going to want to check out their website.
There's a lot of wisdom there.
I'm Art Bell from the high desert.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 16th, 2000.
It is the night, my body's waiting.
Wash away my troubles, wash away my fears, let the rain that shines by, let it shower.
Won't you wave my flower, won't you wave my shame with the rain, Shambhala
I wanna go, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I wanna go, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
If you wanna show me, if you wanna cry, I wanna go to Shambhala town
Everyone is lucky, everyone is lucky Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell's Somewhere in
Time.
Tonight's program originally aired February 16th, 2000.
And with us this night, we're honored to have a very prestigious group, couple, Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Posurana from Reasons to Believe.
And if you want to read more about it, and read more about their approach, it's all on their website.
Which is available from mine, of course.
A link is there.
You can just hop right over at www.artbell.com.
In a moment, I've got a kind of an interesting fax that I want to read.
Actually, there are two faxes here, and then we'll get back to the calls.
One from Bud in rainy San Diego, he says.
Sounds like your guests, that would be you two, are saying that God isn't smart enough to create an ecosystem that is self-sustaining without predation.
Well, that's a good point, that the predation is there realizing this is God's good creation in preparation for His perfect creation.
Hey, if you read the Bible, you discover the next creation doesn't have this predation that we see in this creation.
So the best is yet to come.
All right.
And then there's this.
And I will protect the person's name for reasons that will be obvious.
The person simply says, it could be argued that the perfect, balanced system will be seen only Once the evil parasite mankind has been removed.
And by the way, if you want something to worry about, that comes from a Walgreens prescription department.
Well, actually, he's got a valid point there.
I mean, I think we need to make the condition that you can either remove the evil human species, or you can transform this evil human species.
And God's plan is the latter, not the former.
Okay.
Back to the phones.
East of the Rockies.
You are on the air with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Fazrana.
I'm Art Bell.
Where are you, please?
Hi, this is Mark.
I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Hi, Mark.
It's really a blessing to speak to everybody tonight.
It's really, I have to echo, this has been a great program.
There's a question that I believe Art mentioned Matthew Alpert.
He wrote The God Part of the Brain.
Yes.
I believe he's a staunch atheist.
And I know in the Bible we really can't know God, it says we can't know God without Him revealing Himself to us.
But one of His key questions is, prove to me God exists.
And I'm just wondering how y'all would approach that scientifically, you know, with intelligent design of the universe, but I would think that you would really have to cry out or ask God to reveal Himself to you to get the truth.
All right, let's ask.
I mean, Matthew Albert, the gentleman I referred to that wrote the book, The God Part of the Brain, is indeed a devout atheist and would say, prove to me that God exists.
To which you would reply?
There is proof.
I mean, what Fuzz said earlier, there's no such thing as absolute proof for anything.
You know, I married my wife, for example, with less than absolute proof.
But the practical evidence that she existed I deem to be very high and substantial.
Likewise, we can argue that there is substantive scientific and historical evidence for the existence of God that's stronger than my own personal existence.
Well, look at that evidence and say that that is certainly adequate.
It could be that Matthew simply hasn't examined the depth of the scientific and historical evidence for the God of the Bible.
Something else that's important to remember, too, is that proofs oftentimes are very person-specific.
Just because something is a good argument doesn't necessarily mean that someone would accept that as proof for something, even though the logic may be sound.
A person may not see the logical connections in your argument.
They may not understand, appreciate, or agree with the assumptions going into your argument.
Or there may be some, if you will, psychological commitment to a certain conclusion that will keep them from accepting a proof that is offered no matter how good the arguments are.
You know, to give a good example, there are people today who believe the world is flat.
And that's in spite of the physical evidence.
Not too many anymore, but yes, there is a society that claims to believe that.
Let me give you a good person-specific argument.
And see how you deal with this.
I'm sure you're well aware of the reputation of this program.
I do a lot of shows on ufology.
I do a lot of shows on ghosts.
I'm going to do one of them next week.
And when I do shows like that, I get overwhelming numbers of people who will call with stories, not just frightening stories, gentlemen, but very loving stories.
So many people who have seen Their partners die, leave the physical existence, and yet have been contacted by them later.
And nothing negative, nothing evil, generally a very soothing message that all is alright, and there is a hereafter, and on and on and on and on.
I would assume you would deny any such communication as being authentic.
Well, I would agree that a lot of that is psychologically induced, but there's also a warning in the Bible that Satan and his demons will appear as angels of light.
So, I mean, after all, their motive is to deceive us.
You know, my own father had that kind of experience where his dead father, quote, came and visited him and had a little conversation with him.
I don't believe that that was my grandfather.
I believe it was a demon taking the form of my grandfather and communicating to my dad.
Now, years later we look upon that and say, yes, there is deception going on in that visit, but at the time my father explained it as a very pleasant, warm, comforting experience he had.
It was only years later that he recognized that this was not something that was benevolent.
By what manner did he recognize it years later as not benevolent?
Well, I mean, for one thing, there was contradictions.
My, quote, grandfather was saying that he was visiting from the other side, but one of the things he told my father, if anybody tells you there's anything like life after death, don't believe them.
Well, I mean, there's an internal contradiction going on there.
Have studied these near-death experiences where people report the typical tunnel and the relatives and the light, the very bright light.
And these people have, you know, they have virtually had no life signs at all.
And they've had these incredible experiences that seem so similar.
Have you investigated these and what do you make of them?
Well, I mean, I've run into a number of these kinds of stories just in my role as a pastor in our church.
Yes.
But one of the things we follow in our church is kind of a 10-80-10 rule.
Maybe 10% of these reports we get in our church really are from God.
Another 10% may be from the dark side, from Satan or one of his demons.
The other 80% are psychologically induced or chemically induced or whatever.
And so we train our elders to be skeptical, to be investigative.
It tells us in the Bible where to test the spirits, to see where they're from.
It could be the individual spirit.
It could be the spirit of a demon.
It could be the spirit of God himself.
We are held responsible to very carefully investigate each situation and test to see where it's coming from.
But personally, the first thing I look for is psychological or chemical inducement.
Most likely.
Right.
Well, I have seen examples where it's been demonic and where it's been from God himself.
I understand.
Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Fosrona.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, hi.
You're on the air.
Oh, OK.
I'm sorry.
I didn't realize that I was on.
I'm Jeff, calling from Anchorage.
Anchorage, Alaska.
OK.
Your old alma mater.
Oh, yes.
Brown KNI.
Not to backtrack, but a while ago there was a conversation about someone who had called in about why there was a predatorial aspect here on earth.
It got me to thinking.
I was listening to the response during the conversation of one of the doctors.
I could almost finish the thought.
He was interrupted.
It almost sounded like he started to say that this was not the way it was created to be, and I agree with that.
This is a phenomenal show, by the way.
I've gone to fundamentalist type of churches before, and I believe wholeheartedly in God and the creation, but have also had seen incredible proof of From the science side, another question that I also had was that we've got geological proof.
North and south poles are no longer aligned.
We're off magnetic north.
We've got some sort of a polar shift that had happened.
The pantheon aspect about the continents that have I've gone through some disruption and you can see how South America, in fact I'm looking at a map right now on my wall, fits right into Africa, etc.
I've had theoretical discussions with people about how the spiritual aspect fits into that.
Yeah, we are not proponents of the gap theory.
It sounded like I'm way out there, but Satan and his angels being thrown to earth, I've
heard that theory.
Do you have any comments on that at all?
We are not proponents of the gap theory.
I think it's quite clear in the Bible that God has not granted Satan that kind of power
or to any of Satan's allies.
They can't create.
I don't know.
I believe that continental drift is all part of God's creation plan.
I mean, it tells us in Genesis chapter 1, let there be the great landmasses.
And so these landmasses appeared above the surface of the waters through plate tectonics and volcanism.
And that's been going on over the last few billion years.
And so yeah, one time Alaska wasn't as far north as it is today.
We have coal in Antarctica.
That's because Antarctica has moved considerably over the past history of the Earth.
And we can also recognize that this continental drift that we're observing is imperfectly designed to maximize the quantity and diversity of life on planet Earth over the last three and a half billion years.
And so if it wasn't for that continental drift, then it'd be impossible for advanced life to live on the landmasses.
That's us.
That's us human beings.
I mean, we know, for example, that in the Arctic they have pulled from the ice the woolly mammoth with the green stuff still in its mouth and undigested in its belly, proving that at one point that animal died very, very rapidly in a climate that grew green stuff and is now buried in the ice, preserved for us to study.
Now, if that happened once, Why should we not presume that could occur again?
Oh, it can, and it does.
I mean, the caller's calling from Anchorage, and I've been up there, and I've been up in northern Canada, and hey, there are conditions where the temperature will drop dramatically in the space of a few minutes.
Doesn't happen where I live now in Pasadena, California, but hey, in those northern latitudes, you can get very sudden shifts in temperature.
I'm talking like 80 to 100 degrees in just a few minutes.
And so you could have this wooly mammoth enjoying his lunch, and suddenly the temperature drops to a point where he's frozen in place.
Well, yes, but if such a thing should occur today, for example, I mean you would have to presume the green stuff was growing, so the temperature was obviously much warmer.
And it got colder fast and stayed cold for a long time.
Now, if a similar condition were to occur today... Well, I'm saying it does.
This is not something that's happened only in the past.
It can happen today.
Then there would be essentially a reset switch hit, and there wouldn't be many of us around.
Well, I mean, we're able to withstand it.
When we see the temperature dropping by 10 degrees every couple of minutes, we go inside and get more clothing.
But, for example, in the Canadian prairies, when those kinds of conditions take place, they lose a lot of cattle.
Well, let's try this out, then.
There are many scientists who believe that the Earth's magnetic poles have switched before, have done reversals, bringing on these kinds of Earth changes that we've just been discussing, and that that could occur again.
A reversal of the poles, many believe, would bring catastrophic life Well, there's no question that reversals in the magnetic field of planet Earth has happened.
I mean, we've got rocks that show as many as 16 of those reversals over many millions of years.
Right.
It doesn't follow that a magnetic reversal is going to make for a catastrophic climatic change.
Now, there are ways you can get catastrophic climatic changes, and there's plenty of evidence that that's happened in the past history of the Earth.
But I wouldn't finger magnetic reversals for those sudden climatic changes.
All right.
First time caller on the line, you are on the air with Doctors Ross and Rana.
Hi.
Yes, hi.
This is Wayne in L.A.
Hello, Wayne.
Good program tonight.
Enjoying it as usual?
Good.
With President's Day coming up, a question comes to mind.
There have been numerous biographies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the last few years.
In fact, a couple of new ones just last year.
And in discussing the religion of both of these men, these biographies make the point that neither of them, for various intellectual reasons, could accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
And in particular, Lincoln, where even quotes from some of his letters, intimate letters to family, make that point.
Would you say then, in view of that fact, that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington Well, Wayne, there's a lot of debate over the spiritual state of both Lincoln and Washington.
You can pick up books that claim that they were Bible-believing Christians.
You can pick up books like the Duke noted, which says that they were simply deists or theists.
They weren't really Christians in the way that the evangelicals would define them.
So in that sense, this becomes a debatable point.
I think probably a more principled question to ask is, if people die in a state of rebellion against their Creator, do they go to Heaven or do they go to Hell?
And the Christian message is, they do not go to Heaven, they get to go to the place that they choose.
Would you define rebellion against the Creator as not accepting Jesus Christ?
Well, not accepting Jesus Christ as the creator of the universe and as the one who sacrificed himself for all of your shortcomings against God and others.
Now, keep in mind that you have in the book of Acts that no one can come into this relationship but through Jesus Christ, but hey, in the Old Testament alone, Jesus has 88 different names.
So it's not really essential for some savage in New Guinea, for example, living a hundred years ago, to really come up with a knowledge of the life and history of Jesus of Nazareth.
What's essential for that savage is to come to the recognition that, number one, a God exists.
That God is extremely powerful, extremely wise, and very loving towards the human species.
He would look at the conscience that's been written on his heart and realize that God is also just.
As he tries to live up to the victims of that conscience, he would discover that he falls miserably short of God's perfect standard.
But if God is so powerful, loving, and wise, he must have made provision.
God himself must have been the one who provided a bridge between our imperfection and his perfection.
And hey, you can read the book of Job.
He lived before any scripture was written down.
And he was able to establish by that line of reasoning that his Redeemer exists, and if he puts his faith and trust in that Redeemer, he will see God himself in the flesh on the last day.
All right, Doctor, hold on.
you're listening to art bells somewhere in time tonight featuring a replay of coast to coast am from february
sixteenth two thousand
the the
the of the and and you know that he
changes the no doubt the next video.
It's been a too long time with no peace of mind And I'm ready for the time to get ready You seem to want from me what I cannot give I feel so lonesome at times Uh, there may be some angels left on Earth, and this certainly would be one of them.
Your name is Crystal Gale.
It's burning holes in my mind.
It's been a while.
You're listening to ArcBell Summer in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 16, 2000.
There may be some angels left on Earth, and this certainly would be one of them.
Her name is Crystal Gale. Good morning. My guests from Reasons to Believe, Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Foz Rana.
And we'll get back to them in a moment with a couple of very, very, very, very, very interesting questions.
Don't touch that, Doc.
All right, once again, back to my guests, Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Foz Rana.
Gentlemen, The following question, I bet you would be familiar with the tribe that I'm going to talk about now.
There is one in South America in which it is believed that if one of the people in the tribe dies for whatever reason, keels over from a heart attack or whatever the cause may be, the medicine man in that tribe goes into a kind of a trance situation And he will inevitably blame that death on another member of the tribe, who is then ritualistically murdered for having been the reason for that other life being taken, without seeming reason.
Now, in every other manner, in every other way, This tribe may lead within its own boundaries and ethical, moral existence, but they have this belief.
Are these damned souls, until you reach them, are they damned souls when they die?
A guy who has served on our board of directors, Don Richardson, has served for many years as a missionary to such tribes.
His area was New Guinea.
But he's written a book on primitive tribes all over the world with different belief systems.
And his point is that these tribes are coming to grips with the fact that evil does exist and that evil is supernatural.
And so they're developing means to deal with that.
but he also says in each of these primitive cultures you find redemptive analogy
in their cultural system will be the analogy to the redemption of the creator that
we see described in the pages of the bible
and so he's been busy training missionaries on how to spot those redemptive analogies
and make a link with the message that we see in the bible to great effect
he's also telling stories how numbers of these tribes without any contact with the west with missionaries
or the bible you'll find
statements of those societies where they figure it all out
Thank you.
And so he says, just like what you see in the book of Job, you've got this righteous, humble individual who looks at the evidence around him, the redemptive analogies that God has placed in the culture around him, and they put two and two together and figure out what it is for.
So he says it's very interesting how in many of these tribal situations, It's like God has gone ahead of the missionary and already planted the message, and there are people there that already believe it.
So, that soul is not going to face damnation?
Well, it's like this.
The Gospel of John points out that God sends his light, which is defined as his truth,
his life and his love, into the heart, the spirit, of every human being that has ever
lived, man, woman and child.
And that those who receive that light, accept that light, will be saved and will be rewarded
accordingly.
Those who reject that light will be condemned.
So everyone is held responsible for what he or she does with the light that God has given
him.
The other promise that we see in the Bible is that if you accept the light that God gives
you, he will give you more light.
And so it's a promise that if you receive, more will be given to you.
But there's a flip side to that, too.
If you reject what God has revealed to you, then there will be less revelation coming into your life.
Alright, one more and then back to the phones.
A simple sentence.
Somebody writes, Anonymously, if someone brings peace to the Middle East, religious leaders will claim he is the Antichrist.
It is a no-win situation.
Yes, what kind of point are you trying to draw from that?
Well, I guess, since the Bible suggests that Armageddon will indeed occur in the Middle It is entirely possible, is it not, that anybody who would bring peace to the Middle East, improbable as that may seem at any given modern moment, that person would be viewed as the Antichrist.
Ah, yes, could be.
It doesn't mean he necessarily is.
I mean, a careful reading of the Bible on this point makes the statement, this will not happen until Israel disarms and it will lead to all the Jews settling in the land of Israel.
There's also a statement in Ezekiel to the effect that Israel would gain some kind of control over the ancient lands of Edom, Ammon, and Moab, which is now structured in the nation of Jordan.
None of that has happened yet.
I don't think the Antichrist is here.
So I'm not going to be too concerned about these things until I see a total disarmament taking place in the land of Israel.
I have frequently, as I told you, this program talks of all sorts of paranormal things and things that I'm sure you think are probably evil based.
So it has long been my contention that if extraterrestrial life would arrive and a little green guy would walk down the plank, he would be so full of lead before he got to the bottom Well, there are fundamentalists of a variety of different stripes, and yeah, I think you're pretty close to the mark.
If some creature were to come like that, they'd go after them.
as evil and uh...
film for a lead that far off the mark
well there are fundamentalist of a variety of different stripes and uh...
yeah i think you're pretty close to the marker some creature were to come like that uh... they'd go after
him and you know you gotta do is use the tribal example you picked up
you know when people from the west uh... first got into the stories tribes in the
jungle a lot of the tribes reacted by killing them
That's right.
Some of them, however, received them.
I think that would be the same situation in your analogy of an extraterrestrial visitation.
Some would receive, some would fill them full of lead.
All right.
East of the Rockies, you are on the air with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Susrana.
Hello.
Hi, did you say east of the Rockies?
That's where you are, right?
Yes.
That's you.
I didn't hear the first one.
Okay, where are you?
Upstate New York.
Definitely east.
I've got a few questions, but I'll try to stick to just a couple.
I didn't get to hear the whole show, so I hope I'm not repeating any questions.
I was wondering, did your guests go by the King James Version of the Bible, or a different one?
I don't think we've talked about that yet.
We haven't.
There are about 16 different English translations of the Bible that I'm comfortable with, but hey, when push comes to shove, you go to the original languages, the Greek and the New Testament, the Hebrew and the Old Testament.
Okay, so do you think most of the English language ones are translated properly or not?
Well, it depends what you're trying to read it for.
If you want to get all the satire and humor, I would recommend the Living Bible, but I wouldn't recommend it for getting the doctrinal points of the Trinity correct.
Different translations have a different focus.
The beauty of being an English language reader is that you have the luxury of getting so many different translations, you can cover all the bases.
What about Trinity being older than Christianity?
What do you think of that?
The Trinity being older than Christianity?
Well, I haven't heard that one.
The Trinity is unique to Christianity.
Every other religion denies the Trinity.
Well, they don't deny it, but they think of it as different than Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
That's right.
It's not the three persons, one essence that you see in Christianity.
And one more question.
Why do some fundamentalists think anyone that's non-christian, or not anyone, but a number of non-christians are anti-christian when they basically try to accept anybody that's good?
Well, I do see that going on, where certain groups of Christians look at all non-Christians as an enemy to be destroyed.
Yes.
But we're taking their perspective and reasons to believe that that's a mission field to be won.
And therefore, we're to treat them with respect and gentleness.
Otherwise, they're not going to listen to us.
All right.
Interesting.
Well, to the Rockies, you are on the air with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Farzana Haidt.
Oh, I'm unable to properly hear you.
Hello?
That's better.
Okay.
First, I'm just very honored to be able to speak with you this evening, and I have a comment, and I also have a question.
I need to run this down quick.
You were speaking earlier about once we receive God's light, how when we ask Him, He will give us more light.
Can you hear me all right?
Sure.
Okay.
In 1988, I've known God and Lord Jesus since I was a little girl.
Actually, God, but Jesus introduced Himself to me, actually, and I understood the reason for Him being in my twenties.
But I knew God as a little girl, and He spoke to me in dreams, and I was an abandoned child by mother and father, so I had... He was my sanity.
He was my everything.
In 1988, I asked him a question.
I prayed, and I fasted, and I wanted to know, and I wasn't going to let up until God gave me an answer.
What I wanted to know was what the pivotal point of mankind's, of his history, was that changed mankind forever.
And what he showed me in spirit, and then I researched it, was that when man harnessed lightning, which as Satan was thrown as lightning to the earth, and being that he's the prince of the power of the air, And once that door was opened, and man began to harness that, and electricity was introduced, which came into all the technology that we now know, which is Satan's realm of existence, because Satan wants to see all, know all, hear all, and be as God on Earth, that through this realm of existence, and through satellite, and through the computer chip, and everything coming... Don't forget the Internet!
Well, that too, I guess, just all of technology combined, uh... that they can will be able to be
if dot on the earth through the power of the air which is his realm of
existence and i wanted to ask you get that they had thought about
that and what they think of that profound revelation even even
like broadcasting
well just well you have the ability to be able to hear all the all
know all and track everything going to be on the current
and the government will be his on the earth.
Alright, well then let's translate this into all modern communication and this wonderful web of transfer of information, instant transfer of information.
Satan's playground, gentlemen.
Well, that's all true, that SAIT is capable of using our technology to further his ends, but I think he's got the short end of the stick because there are lots of good organizations, good people out there that are getting a positive message of redemption through this high technology.
Hey, right now people over the world are able to tie into what we're talking about.
So technology can be used for good, it can be used for evil, but I think the benefits outweigh the evil problems.
At least that's been true, but we've seen through reasons to believe.
All right.
First time caller on the line, you are on the air with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Farzana Ennard-Bell.
Hello.
You're on the air, yes.
Thank you.
Where are you?
I'm in Miami, but I'll get you a little wave from Titusville.
Miami, all right.
Well, if we can perceive that God exists in ten dimensions, can I speculate that beyond those dimensions there is molecular mass?
And if there is, can we conceive that there is any conceivable molecular existence beyond creation?
Molecular, no.
These ten dimensions define the realm for the operation of matter and energy and the laws of physics.
Beyond the ten space-time dimensions, different physics, different dimensionality.
That's the realm of God, Hell, Heaven, etc.
But the scriptures make it clear that the physics and the dimensionality is very different from what exists in our universe.
But you do say that there's molecular mass molecules existing beyond creation?
No, no, I'm saying the opposite.
In fact, molecules are impossible unless you live in a universe described by three very large, rapidly expanding dimensions of space.
Okay, I have a theory called dialectical checks and balance, and, you know, one thing happens as a result of another, so that if there's molecular expansion, that there has to be creation outside of a... because one thing happens as a result of another, you know?
I'm not denying that there's creation beyond the ten space-time dimensions.
I'm simply saying that it's not molecular.
It's not like atoms and molecules.
Uh-huh.
That would be true.
because those kinds of entities do require three very large, rapidly expanding dimensions of space.
Otherwise, you get unstable orbits.
Uh-huh. That would be true.
Gentlemen, we are just about out of time, and I want to be able to roll over again.
For people who would like information, there is your website.
We presently have a link, but if you would please give the website address again.
Yeah, that's reasons.org, and we do offer a free newsletter on the latest scientific discoveries, giving evidences for the existence of God.
And there's an 800 number.
That's 482-7836.
Is there a charge for people involved with that?
No, we offer a free, they get the newsletter for free, and we also have two hours a day where people can call in and ask questions.
Oh, you do?
Yes, we have a hotline where people can call in.
Alright, would you like to give that number out?
Sure, that's 626-335-1480.
One more time, twice always with numbers.
People are writing down and scrambling.
Right.
626-335-1480.
Well, it has been really instructional to have the two of you on tonight, and very different for me, as you might imagine, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate your staying up this late!
Well, it's been fun, and the calls and your questions have been really excellent.
We very much appreciate just how astute you've been.
Well, uh, thank you very much, and so, then, good night, Dr. Ross.
Good night, Dr. Rana.
Good night, all.
That's it.
We're out of time.
Uh, a lot to think about, uh, for anybody, uh, who is a thinking person.
You've got a lot to think about.
From the show.
Uh, for those who say, my goodness, what are you doing?
Well, then, listen to Next Hour or Tomorrow Night.
What I'm doing is pretty much indiscernible from night to night.
It's different every single night.
That's how I intended it to be.
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