Evolution Is Stupid | Dr. Randy Guliuzza on The Babylon Bee
Dr. Randy Guliuzza visits The Babylon Bee to destroy evolution with cutting-edge biological research focused on the programmed ability of creatures to adapt–but not evolve! Oh snap! We also discuss the proper place for creationism in evangelism and apologetics and how to properly interpret Genesis (hint: there's no evolution). Dr. Guliuzza is the President of Institute for Creation Research (ICR).Institute for Creation Research: https://www.icr.org/ ICR on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@icrscience Darwin Dethroned Seminar is livestreaming February 11, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRnp_H66tdo Become a premium subscriber: https://babylonbee.com/plans?utm_source=PYT&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=description
So I even went to Moody still believing in evolution.
And when I was at the library at Moody Bible Institute, I picked up a magazine, Acts and Facts, and it was like, bang, I was born again again.
I read this article about the origin of life.
It was so well written, so plain, that it was like, I've been lied to.
And now it's time for another interview on the Babylon Bee Podcast.
Welcome, folks.
We have another interview here on the Babylon Beek podcast.
I am here with my friend, Emma.
Hello.
Emma and I are here with our new friend, Dr. Randy Galuza.
Oh, thank you so much for the invitation.
Gluza.
That's correct.
Galuza.
Or some people just call me Dr. G. Dr. G, we have many questions for you.
We know that you have a specific and focused new area of research that you wanted to talk about.
It has to do with programmed ability to adapt within organisms.
Before we get to that, the first half of our interview is going to be some bigger picture material around creationism and theology because we have a broad audience.
As we jokingly said in the other room just before this, even within the Babylon Bee staff, there are sheep and goats.
Right.
There are creationists and not.
I'm kidding.
Okay, so that being said.
We can fight later, Sam.
So that being said, we'll lob you a couple quick ones easy.
Great.
A couple quick ones up front.
My first question is really big.
Do you start with science or do you start with the text of the Bible?
Where do you start?
You start with the text because that's where you have an eyewitness account, what really happened with creation.
And when you start with the text, it'll actually inform you and help you with your scientific research.
You look to the text for clues.
And the clues are there to help you in any area of astronomy and particularly in biology.
And as we transition towards the second half of the show, I'll fill you in on how I'm looking to the text to help me understand organisms in terms of an engineered approach.
But you begin with the text.
That's where the truth is.
That's where you find infallibility.
That's where you find an eyewitness account.
And the text informs us.
And when you say the text, I'm referring to 66 books.
Not 67, but 66 books.
Not the Apocrypha.
Not the Apocrypha, but not nature in and of itself.
Because some people would say that you have 66 books, but now nature becomes the 67th book of the Bible.
And in a way, that's what you're talking about.
You take the 67th book all of a sudden, and then you're beginning to interpret the other 66 books.
So when you talk about the text, just to be clear, I'm talking about the 66 books of the Bible.
So there's special revelation and general revelation.
Special revelation, God's word to us, which we submit ourselves to, general revelation, the world.
Some texts that come up frequently when you're talking about creationism are Psalm 19 and Romans 1.
Exactly.
Can you expound on those texts and how they're part of the foundation for your beliefs?
Right.
So when people are talking about general revelation, they mean, you know, something that people can see about God and deduce about God intuitively without even having read the Bible.
So Psalm 19, particularly verse 1, that says the heavens declare the glory of the Lord and the firmament shows his handiwork.
Now, we really focus on that first part of the phrase.
It's this heavens, this general revelation.
You can look out in space and you can see those things.
But from a biological standpoint, I like to focus on the second half of that verse.
And we'll get to this in the second half of the show.
The firmament shows his handiwork.
And that ties right back into Romans chapter 1, verse 20, where I'm going to paraphrase Paul here a little bit.
He says, invisible things of God can be clearly seen from the creation of the world.
So he's using an engineering term there, creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, by the things that are made.
And that Greek word for made is used only one other time in the New Testament in Ephesians 2.10, where it says, we are his workmanship in Christ Jesus.
So he's saying that when you look in the world, you should see handiwork, you should see workmanship, you should see signs of those things.
And just like we're looking at these microphones right now, we're seeing evidence of workmanship.
We conclude there was a workman who'd put these things together or a work woman.
I saw that glare there for a second.
It was like workman.
I don't care what he said.
A work person.
A work person with an X. That's right.
But there was a worker on these microphones.
And when you look at living things particularly, that's where the general revelation just bursts forth in terms of their complexity.
So when people look at creatures and they fit their environments so well, birds fit the sky.
Fish fit the water.
Whales don't make sense.
On that.
Whales don't fit.
Well, they breathe air.
It doesn't make sense to me that there's like, there's like creatures in the water that breathe air.
Yeah, yeah.
And like, why wouldn't sharks are not whales and dolphins are whales?
Like, why aren't sharks also whales?
It's unrelated, but I don't think that's it.
Like, I look at that and I think of like, wow.
Why did he do this?
This doesn't make sense.
Well, they have a hole on the top of their head or someplace where they get that air.
They're still breathing oxygen.
They breathe out.
Yeah.
Yeah, and they bring it out.
So in a way, you know, they kind of fit there really well.
They've got fins and flippers and stuff too, just like a submarine does.
So they go through that there.
And, you know, the submarine, it's like, that doesn't really fit either, but it does.
That's because a submarine gets its oxygen from the water, too.
Let's see.
Wow, that's a great question.
That was a good question.
I was like, I don't know.
I think I can breathe through water, you know.
Top of your head.
Yeah.
Up the top of your head and you're going to have to go to the house.
I don't have to go into a pool.
I'm going to go to go in there and just to come up with that.
Well, okay, I'm going to latch on to a couple words you've used.
Just to kind of rewind for a moment and ask about your background.
You've used the words engineering a couple times, and you're obviously well-versed in theology.
So we know you have a degree from Moody Bible Institute in Theology.
What else should we ask about his background?
We'll just ask, how did you first become introduced to creationism?
Wow, that's a perfect question because I became a Christian on the basis of my sin.
Someone talked to me that I was a sinner and I needed a savior.
And, you know, initially I thought, well, I'm not a sinner.
You know, sinners are in prison.
That's where you go for to find sinners.
And then suddenly I realized after reading the Bible and going to church with this gal who was inviting me, yeah, I guess I am a sinner.
And then I realized I needed a savior.
I was lost.
And I got down on my knees one night and asked Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior.
That's as far as it went.
I started going to church and believing the Bible, but nobody ever, ever addressed creation to me.
Nobody ever talked to me about Genesis 1.
So I even went to Moody still believing in evolution.
I still believed everything I had been taught.
I really trusted my teachers in school that they were pretty authoritative.
And when I was at the library at Moody Bible Institute, I picked up a magazine, which is the flagship magazine for the ministry that I am now the head of, Acts and Facts, which is free.
I pulled that baby out, went to one of those little cubicles in the library, read that, and it was like, bang, I was born again.
This is like true.
I read this article about the origin of life, and it just completely debunked the evolutionary thinking on that.
And I read an article about how you find a fossil and you find its living counterpart, and they look almost the same, even though supposedly tens or maybe even hundreds of millions of years have passed, but they look almost identical to each other.
Where was the evolution?
It was so well written, so plain, that it was like, I've been lied to.
So do you think it's just extinct animals, like a T-Rex doesn't look like a lizard?
Or, you know, like, do you think it's just like they're just extinct?
It wasn't an evolution or not.
Yeah.
So when you're talking about, yeah, some extinct animals in terms of like dinosaurs are clearly extinct, most of those dinosaurs, there's even a lot of mammals that are extinct and reptiles that are extinct.
So when you look in the fossil record, you certainly find a lot of animals which are not living today.
But on the other hand, you find many, many animals that are still alive today.
And they look nearly identical.
I mean, you can find them in every area.
You can find mammals that are alive today.
You can find reptiles.
You can find invertebrates, all of them.
And they look almost identical today when you find them.
I'm encouraged by a couple things you've said.
I mean, we'll get into now microevolution, macroevolution.
But before we do, I'm encouraged that you were born again when you invited Christ into your heart as your Lord and Savior.
I was encouraged when you said that creationism came second but did shore up your faith.
This was something we were talking about with a couple of the other staff members right before you came in.
What is the place of creationism in apologetics and evangelism?
Well, let me touch on something you just said a little earlier, just on that, and I'll get into apologetics and evangelism.
But you said short up your faith.
That is really, that's something that's very overlooked in the church today.
What does creation do for someone's faith that even you're not even going to maybe see as clearly in the Bible that you might see in general revelation?
Well, the Bible declares that the Lord has power, and when he takes Israel out of Egypt, a lot of power.
He raises Christ from the dead, a lot of power.
But when I look at creatures, I see such complexity.
I see such engineering genius that it shores up my faith in the sense that, wow, the Lord Jesus Christ, the creator of everything, he is a genius.
I mean, you're getting into complexity, which is mind-bogglingly complex.
I mean, it's staggeringly complex.
And it all fits.
And it all can be explained by engineering principles.
And it's all mathematically based in many, many ways.
So, you know, how would you know that the Lord Jesus was this great engineering genius, this wonder without that creation?
It says, I pray to him, and I know he can answer prayers.
He has the power and the ways to do it.
Second, his wisdom.
I mean, organisms fit, you know, like a whale.
It's in the water, and there's these blowholes, and it can hold its breath for hours.
And it has all of these mechanisms to live in that world perfectly well.
And the wisdom balances all these competing needs of what an engineer would call an optimized system.
And now I see in another way, this Lord is absolutely wise in every way.
And then I see goodness.
So general revelation reinforces my faith in that I see wisdom, power, genius right before my very eyes.
And there's times when if you ever, I don't know if that's like you, if you ever begin to doubt about something and then I just turn almost to looking at something scientifically, I said, wow, this could never have happened by accident and chance.
It is overwhelmingly complex.
So it reinforces my faith that way.
Do you think there's a conflict with evolution and faith?
Like, I don't think I ever bought into evolution because I would struggle with the human part, you know, that it's just an accident or natural selection that gets to humans.
And then we would frown down on living out natural selection now.
That would be immoral.
Like eugenics would be my idea of natural selection today.
Do you think there's a conflict with people with evolution and faith?
Yes.
There is an irreconcilable conflict that you cannot even bridge.
And you touched on two areas, and they're really separate.
One is the scientific area.
I mean, can their mechanism of random genetic mutations have somehow sorted out by their mystical selective force?
Yeah, come out this perfect.
And come out this perfect.
And I mean, well, I have to say, oh, I know.
You're right.
You're right.
When I look at you, I see something that is fearfully and wonderfully made on that.
So you're right.
That's right.
That's it.
I was saying.
Me, Sam.
She was wonderfully made.
You were fearfully and accidentally made.
You were fearfully made.
Oh, yeah.
So on that.
We're having too much fun.
I know.
But then you touched on that moral area.
You touched on that other moral area where you had eugenics.
You know, the average person, and we don't get taught this in school, do we, doesn't know that the United States and Great Britain, not Germany, were the leading places to launch eugenics.
Most people don't realize that in the United States, over 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized in states.
We don't realize that over 30 states had eugenics laws.
We don't realize that the Germans took the laws from several of our states and copied them.
Didn't we inspire that inspired hand?
Yes, we did.
We were the inspiration for that.
And the basis for all of that was natural selection.
It wasn't evolution.
It was natural selection because people thought ruthless natural selection is what brought us from our ape-like ancestors to humans and brought even more primitive creatures to those ape-like ancestors.
The struggle to survive, the competition for scarce resources, the dog-eat-dog world and the one-upmanship, that is what led to the idea that there are superior groups of people and that we should control our own evolution, as one person, Carl Pearson, said, by repeating the actions of ruthless natural selection.
So evolutionary people or evolutionists are racist?
No.
Nice try.
Nice try.
Nice.
But I would say selectionist thinking where you have this idea there's a competition for scarce resources, and that's how Darwin was ratcheting up improvement.
I mean, if you just had organisms that are competing with each other, that may get you there.
But what he had to have is he had to have one that was better.
And then the next generation was going to be better and better and better.
So he had an upward trajectory to his thinking.
And he introduced Malthus in where there's competition for something scarce.
And since I get it, not you two, that makes me the fittest.
And I go on to reproduce.
And so in one sense, people say, you know, they start to attach some sort of superiority to that kind of thinking.
Wouldn't we have gotten better?
Like, would there be evidence of like history of us being better than the Israelites in biblical time?
Like, we would be smarter now.
We're not smarter.
We're not.
Oh, speak for yourself.
I don't have like five degrees and I'm not a doctor, but.
You're right.
You would think that we'd be seeing clear evidences of evolution and improvement in humanity in the last several thousand years.
And I mean, I just flew out here from Texas.
And can you imagine if you took a group of people who are standing in line at an airport like 45 years ago and they're waiting to get on the plane where they had lots of legroom and people fed them food and you didn't have to fight for overhead bins because they could actually check your luggage and they didn't have to be almost strip searched and you and you could teleport them to today and put them in our airport and ride on our airplanes.
Would they think that we have evolved or devolved in 45 years?
I mean, what is it?
It's mad about the attire, too.
That thing they dress up.
Right.
Before it was suit and tie for the airplane, now it's like pajamas.
It's like pajamas.
They would see a major evidence of de-evolution with people.
They would go to a Walmart and then be royally disappointed.
Yeah.
They would say, what happened to you?
Flying used to be fun.
Yeah.
And now it's like it's a punishment.
So about survival of the fittest, does this mean that X-Men is unbiblical?
Because it's all about mutation and then you've got your special claws and your special weather powers?
Or you're the boring one who just screams and makes people go, ow, and that's your whole power?
Yeah, yeah, it is unbiblical.
And it's not only unbiblical, it's unscientific.
I mean, you go to the dentist's office, they come out with a big lead apron, they throw it across your lap.
There's a reason for that because they don't want to irradiate, they don't want to irradiate.
Adamantium doesn't exist.
Pardon me?
That's the metal.
That's the metal.
Inside of Wolverine's bones.
Oh, okay.
Sorry, sorry.
You need to take a look at it.
That doesn't make sense.
You go to Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.
Yeah.
But given the chance I'm going to get Xanthium or whatever you call it there, or a mutation that's going to harm my offspring, I'm taking the lead apron.
Does this mean Pokemon is also unbiblical?
Oh, man.
They evolve.
Oh, yeah.
They're the same kinds.
Oh, that's true.
Can Ham approve that if they're the same kinds?
They're the same kinds.
Yep.
Yeah.
They probably do reproduce after their kind.
So Pikachu kinds?
So Pikachu kinds.
Yeah, that's it.
Well, now we're into it.
Microevolution versus macroevolution.
I've been taking a lot of whey protein and getting yoked as well as synthetic testosterone.
And I'm now like Arnold in his prime.
Is that microevolution or macroevolution?
Well, it's neither.
I was off of Arnold too.
So true.
That is so true.
Burn.
I'm sorry to burn your Arnold, but he's not half the man he used to be.
So that's it.
It's probably more accurately called an adaptation on that, and not evolution at all.
Because the ability to take all of those things that you're doing and the capacity to do that has always been in you.
It's not due to those things that you're taking.
You take those things and your body is set up to extract those resources and place them where they need to be placed.
And so that you adapt.
And adaptation is really a spectrum, everything from a very rapid adaptation.
I shoot a gun, bang, your heart goes up instantaneously almost.
That's an adaptation.
You get your adaptation of, you know, you're bulking up like Arnold right there.
And then you have adaptations that can happen in other areas of your life.
And then you can have adaptations that you can pass on to your children.
So the ability to adapt, it's like in any engineered thing.
We build adaptable cars.
We build adaptable thermostats.
We build a lot of adaptable things.
That is a capacity that's in you.
So why would I confuse anybody by even indicating any kind of evolution which is conveying in their mind something that explains the diversity of life on Earth?
So you avoid the term even microevolution.
I do.
Makes sense.
Microaggression.
Right, exactly.
Microaggression.
I don't want to have misleading terms on that.
And so when the average person hears the word evolution, they're thinking something that's going to explain from a universal common ancestor everything that we got here.
And since evolutionists see macroevolution as just nothing but microevolution plus a lot of time equals macroevolution, I avoid those terms altogether, speak clearly and call that an adaptation.
Now, I mean, we're going to latch onto the word adaptation and make a hard pivot into your current research.
A last quick question before we do that.
And again, I just wanted to really like solidify how this is practical for people.
When you're reading Genesis 1 and 2, as a born-again Christian, what does it do to your faith if you're kind of latching onto the seeds and starting to doubt that it's all literal?
Right.
Was it in 60s or was it 6,000 years ago?
Right, right.
On that.
Well, when I read Genesis 1 and 2, the one thing I want to take away, you know, you use the word literal right there.
But I think a more accurate expression is historical, that this is a real historical record.
And that's where the debate comes in.
Is Genesis real history?
Is it really recording history?
Or is it myth?
Is it something that's been embellished?
Is, you know, when we say it's literal, but what we're actually saying is, is this true as it is written on that?
And that gets how it gets back to how we interpret the Bible or can interpret the Bible.
And nobody really thinks about this because we would have a lot of agreement.
If someone looked at the Bible and say, oh, I believe it's inspired.
I believe it's inspired.
I believe it's an errant.
I believe it's an errant.
But here's the question.
Can you, can you read the Bible and interpret it for yourself, Emma, without having to have somebody else come in between you and the Bible and tell you what it says?
Must you have some filter?
I think when people take the Bible home and interpret it from themselves, that's how cults are born.
Typically, like, I would say, yes, you can take a lot of the context, but there's a lot of things like that's for first century Israel that I wouldn't understand.
So I think I could take Genesis one and understand the same way as like someone else would understand it.
Exactly.
But if I'm interpreting it, if I'm coming up with a conclusion for it, then it could go any which number of ways.
Perhaps you could.
You could.
And that's where you use the entire Bible to guide you in that.
And so what I'm asking is, is it absolutely necessary for someone to interpret it for you?
Or can you interpret it?
And the reason why I asked that, because that was a major question at the time of the Reformation.
Because if you remember, you go back, you had the people in the pew and you had the clergy.
And the teaching at the time was that the Bible was kind of a mysterious book.
The person in the pew could not understand it for themselves.
And therefore, you had to have clergy tell you what the Bible said.
I mean, am I dredging back some Reformation thinking here?
No, this is good.
Priest of all believers.
Perspiscity of all believers.
Priest of all, all of those things.
Perspicuity is kind of a fancy, schmancy word for what?
Clarity?
Clarity.
That is clear.
That's ironic.
Perspicuity, a very unclear word for clarity.
For clarity.
I know.
It's one of those confusing words.
And the reformer said, no, the Bible says that when the Holy Spirit has come, the Holy Spirit is going to what?
Lead you into all truth.
It's the Holy Spirit who's going to guide your mind.
And it doesn't have to be a holy man.
It's the Holy Spirit who will do it.
And then in the book of Acts, chapter 17, Paul is teaching the Bereans, and it said the Bereans, those people in the pew, were checking their Bible to see if Paul was right.
And so what the Bible is teaching is that you can read it for yourself.
You can even check up on the theologian, and you don't have to have a holy man tell you what the Bible says.
So illumination of scripture, the Holy Spirit is illuminating.
Exactly.
Well, what you're saying and what we're all saying, I mean, in a multitude of counselors, there is wisdom.
So there is scholarship that you can bring to bear on the word and help its perspicuity to be perspicuous enough for you.
I liked that you used in one of the, our producer sent us some talks you had given.
And in one of the talks, you give a little slide from Dr. Stephen Boyd.
He was my Old Testament Hebrew professor at the Masters University.
That's where you've said you, you know, there's alignment between ICR and the Masters University.
You've worked with Dr. Joe Francis.
So I'll just share this really quick, just for fun.
Dr. Boyd was one of my quirkiest professors by far.
He taught while sitting down, very thick glasses.
How can you be a Hebrew professor if you don't have absolute like Coke bottle glasses?
He would even have us do quizzes to where like he'd make all the students stand.
It was very calisthenic and we'd walk around the classroom and write down the next word in Hebrew.
And that was my major.
I double majored in English and biblical languages.
So I did a year of Hebrew, three years of Greek.
And they say for Hebrew, it's just enough to make you dangerous.
Here's my point.
This was his, I mean, he's done a lot of work with the timeline of the Genesis flood, but his other big contribution is around statistical studies of the Vayaktoll verb in the early chapters of Genesis.
And he makes the compelling case based on data that the Vayaktol verb is the backbone of Hebrew narrative.
So when someone says early chapters of Genesis are poetry, you can say, nope, it's not poetry.
The author is writing just like the author of Joshua or 2 Samuel wrote, just like the author of 2 Chronicles wrote.
The author, absolutely, if you're following his intent, he thought he was writing history.
If he had thought he was writing poetry, he would have done what poetry does, which is studiously avoid the viaktole verb form.
And I mean, you can even be a lay, you don't have to know Hebrew for that because you can read a chapter in Psalms and the author hits enter every couple of syllables.
Like, there's more white space on the right side of the page because it's poetry, and because Hebrew poetry works around parallelism, and there's not the presence of parallelism in the early chapters of Genesis.
Point being, just thank you for using Dr. Boyd's data to inform and shore up the faith of Christians.
I guess this is where we'll wind around to, as far as practical applications for a born-again Christian, should they really latch onto creationism in an evangelism conversation?
Or if the person's willing to skip over it and talk about the gospel, should they talk about the gospel?
Is it bad to get bogged down in the fossil record and carbon dating, or is it good?
Bad.
Initially, that's what I would say.
It would, you know, hey, I'm the president of ICR.
You wouldn't think, I didn't think I would say that was, it's bad to do that on there.
And by the way, thank you for bringing in Dr. Boyd.
I mean, he shows that this is historical narrative and that we don't have to have someone interpret the Bible for us and place ourselves under their authority.
We're under biblical authority on that.
The reason why I just immediately said bad is because when I'm talking to a person in the gospel, I want to share with them about their sin.
I want to share with them about their relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
That's what I want to talk about.
I'm not really interested right up front in talking about carbon dating or any of those other kinds of things.
When does that come in?
It comes in with something that goes along like this.
I'd love to believe your claims about Jesus Christ, but I can't because I can't believe the Bible is true.
And I can't believe the Bible is true because science has proved it wrong.
And then you would say, well, where is scientists proved it wrong?
They might say carbon dating, blah, whatever it is.
That's when you have to jump into it.
But until they go down that road that says, I can't believe the claims of Christ because I can't believe the Bible, then I stay on, I keep my eyes on the prize, which is the salvation.
Does that make sense?
We talked about that earlier because they were trying to convince me in there about the age of the earth and all these things.
And I was like, I need to at least talk to someone about being a sinner before I get into, oh, and you have to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old.
Like that's like walk before you run.
Well, yeah, I didn't believe that the earth was 6,000 years old and I didn't even believe, I believe people evolved from any black ancestor and I still came to faith in Christ.
Yes, that's going to really like get all of the other things before, you know, Christ comes first.
And then because if you don't believe in Christ, then what's the point of believing in Adam and Eve?
And what's the point of believing in creation or that we're not monkeys or but you also don't want to go to the opposite extreme?
I can totally picture the op-ed now from some like progressive Christian magazine to where it would be like, stop being a creationist.
It's a bad testimony.
Like that's not the correct extreme either to just abandon what you believe because there's good reasons from Romans 5 theologically to latch onto the literal or what was the word you used?
I said it's clear, historical.
The historical view of Genesis 1 and 2, because Romans 5 says we died in Adam, but we can be made alive in Christ.
If there's no literal Adam, if those early chapters are just poetic and figurative, it does impact, if not gut, the theology of Romans 5, the gospel.
And Romans 8, where it says that the whole creation is under this curse and it's awaiting just like our liberation and from this bondage.
And I was on, I didn't know it at the time, I was on a massive collision course.
I had come to faith in Christ, but what was out there was the whole idea of which is going to be my higher authority, the Bible or man's thinking?
The Bible or something else?
And it was coming.
It was like a freight train that was barreling down on me because you can't reconcile the two, and it was going to happen.
Where am I going to put the Bible in terms of its authority, in terms of man's thinking?
And I would have hit a massive crisis.
There is no doubt about it because the two are not reconcilable.
As you said, was there a real historical Adam who really sinned, who brought death and judgment, meaning we needed a real historical savior to save us from that?
You can't strip away that, and you're going to run into conflicts in Romans 5, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15.
It will happen because they're referring to the first Adam, the second Adam.
They're referring to these things.
This is beautiful.
No, I mean, yeah, this is great.
Let's go ahead and make the hard pivot.
So your recent research is exciting because you're, I'll ask it this way.
Would you say that evolutionist presuppositions have limited the creation of new theories?
And would you say that you're on the cusp of creating some new theories?
Yes, yes.
I would say that we have been evolutionized in our thinking even as creationists for the longest time, mainly because we didn't really understand what evolutionary theory was about.
You ask, is it in conflict with Christianity earlier in the conversation?
The answer is yes, because evolutionary theory is set up to be the anti-design theory.
Everything about it is the exact opposite of what a real engineer would do.
So if you were to ask an evolutionist, I see a genetic change.
I see a change in a creature.
Interpret that for me.
They would immediately think it's random.
They would immediately think it's accidental.
They immediately think something is broken here.
They immediately think it's purposeless.
They would immediately think it's sorted by hit and miss.
Now, all of those things, random, accidental, hit and miss, purposeless, they are the opposite of what a real engineer would do.
And what most creationists, intelligent design advocates, and even evolutionists don't realize is that what Darwin was setting up was not a theory that says there is no God.
He's setting up something and those disciples of his following that said, everything you see in biology as we interpret it is the exact opposite of what a real engineer would do.
Life looks like it's cobbled together.
It looks like it's accumulation of accidents.
Therefore, anybody who would believe that life was really engineered is way off base.
And then we have their mystical selective agent where nature is like acting like this selector and arbiter of what's right and this and that.
You bring in this mystical agent which can act like God's agency.
And the moment you accept that, while I accept mutation and selection, you have bought into the anti-design part of the argument.
Whether you believe it's limited or unlimited is irrelevant.
You've just bought into the anti-design elements of it.
That's bad from a theological standpoint.
It's also bad because the Bible says that death is a curse.
Death is an enemy.
Death's one day going to be destroyed.
And in this worldview, death is the means to good.
It's creature on top of God's.
Getting rid of the weaker link.
weak extinction and all that of which Darwin says there's a grandeur to his view of life and that's also anti-Christian.
It's also perverse in the sense that when we look at creatures, we see the evidences of a good, beneficent God.
And Darwin says all these features which seem to fit, which seem to show the wisdom of God and his goodness, you know really, that doesn't come from the hand of a good God, that comes about as one creature steps on the top of another, of another, and Stephen Jay Gould said it was Darwin's perversion and that was his word of truth.
And then finally, it leads you off base scientifically, because you're looking at things as mutations, you have this lens, and you're seeing them as accidental broken, loss.
But what we should really be seeing them as?
Okay, this organism adapted and I see these change in traits and I see these changes in genes, but that's all they are.
They're just changes.
I'm not going to characterize them as broken or mutation or loss.
It's just different.
And how did that difference come about?
Is it due to something broken?
Or maybe there's mechanisms in you that enable them to change purposefully?
And that's your current area of right.
Well, real quick, you brought up Darwin.
I have a question, if we could get our friend Elon Musk to invent a time machine, would you be interested in going back and having a rap battle debate with Charles Darwin.
You better believe it.
All right, you bet.
And if we could get Ken Ham to back you up and Bill Nye, the science guy, to back him up, would you still be game?
Yeah, that would be good.
Have you haven't debated Bill Nye, have you no?
The science guy yeah yeah, and I don't need him to tell me what the Bible says either, any more than I need a holy man um, or any other scientist on that.
That's the point.
I don't want to insert him between me and the bible.
But the current area of research is okay.
Let's let's assume that we really are handiwork.
Let's assume we really are workmanship.
Let's assume that we really are adaptable entities, and if I look at a human made thing, i'm looking at three things that are absolutely essential for any adaptable entity.
I'm looking for sensors, got to find out what's happening around me.
I got to have some logic inside that if this happens, then I want to do that, or if that happens, then I want to do this.
If, then logic and I have to have some way to respond.
And if any of those are missing, a human-made thing, or even a god-made thing, cannot adapt.
So I am now approaching biology by looking at creatures as if they were designed to adapt, and they have the innate ability to adapt and even their ability to relate to the environment is innate to them, and if you don't have that ability to relate to the environment, you won't relate to the environment.
So I am looking for sensors that can detect environmental changes, conditions.
I am looking for the logic and it's there.
It's there in the cellular level.
I'm looking for these output responses and the cool thing is the latest research that's coming in is not characterizing genetic change or change as broken or random.
It's characterizing it as as highly regulated.
I'm quoting you right from the scientific literature.
These are words are coming in, highly regulated changes, usually rapid and not gradual, repeatable.
In other words, you see these changes in different populations happening over and over and over again, and even in different populations, and you see solutions to problems that are so targeted to solve that problem.
They're even predictable, and i'm using the words right from the scientific literature, regulated rapid repeatable predictable, sometimes even reversible.
And when you're hearing those words, are you thinking broken?
No, you're thinking.
You're thinking, engineered.
So science is coming in on the side of engineering.
What is the cutest animal example that has the sensors and the logic and the output?
I'm cute.
The cutest one.
I'm going to have to go with my fish on that because that's an icon of evolution is these blind cave fish.
You have fish that live in the surface and then they're trapped in a cave somehow, some way, and then their eyes are gone.
Their pigmentation is gone.
And how did they go from a sighted fish with pigmentation to an unsighted fish and no pigmentation?
I mean, and how long does that take for that to happen?
What is the mechanism?
Well, the story you're told is what?
That they had broken genes for eyes.
And when those genes broke, they actually became an advantage in the cave.
And that, you know, maybe your eyes didn't get scratched and therefore you survive and reproduce more.
And over a long period of time, evolutionists initially came, claimed 8 million years.
And then that dropped down to 2 million and then to 100,000, 20,000, and now maybe 2,000.
So it's rapidly been dropping on that.
But actually, how does it happen?
Well, what if, what if, when the Lord made creatures to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth, what if that included caves?
And what if when they find themselves trapped in the cave, they can detect cave conditions, and then rapidly within one or two generations, eyes shut down, pigmentation decreases, there's changes in their circadian rhythms, there's changes in their other senses, there's changes in their skull, there's changes in the way they feed, there's changes in their aggressiveness, there are changes in all of their behaviors.
You have a whole suite of changes, not in just these fish, but in other cave creatures as well, that enable them to fit the cave so well.
And our experiments that we're doing right now, believe it or not, we've taken some of those hypopigmented fish, put them back in mimicked river conditions, and their pigmentation comes back.
And the pigmentation comes back to the level of a surface fish, and it happens in two generations?
Ten generations.
Ten generations?
In about 33 days.
Oh, amazing.
So if you trap a group of people in a cave, will they stop having eyes?
I don't know on that.
And if the Lord wanted us to fill caves, he might have.
I can't believe I asked about the cutest animal, and you described a blind, soggy cave fish.
No pigmentation.
And in your opinion, what's the ugliest animal that exemplifies what you're talking about?
The ugliest one is maybe just one of these, they have these blind centipedes that are like they're like the centipede from the depths and that, and evolutionists refer to them, these other centipedes from anyway, from Hades.
And they're these ugly, hypopigmented, blind centipedes that also live in caves.
Is that technically animal cruelty?
If you take a blind fish and put them in a river and they're bumping into everything and they're like, at least my skin is looking better.
I'm getting more tanned.
Right.
Actually, they don't bump into anything.
They've got these really cool sensors, particularly down their lateral line, where they are able to detect things.
And so they swim right up to the side of the tank.
They divert.
They swim close to each other and this and that.
Do you have one?
Oh, yeah, we have them.
And not only that, they mate.
You get two fish that can't even see each other.
And they swim in this cool formation.
They can't see each other and they're impressing each other with swimming.
Yeah, that's right.
Is it just sensing that they can swim really well?
Yeah, that's right.
Sounds like something from avatar.
I know.
It's really kind of cool on that.
But think about it from a scientific standpoint.
How do you get two completely blind fish to mate?
And how do they swim in this formation?
They don't bump into each other.
It's this beautiful choreography and then boom at the right minute the female goes inverted.
She releases her eggs.
Boom, he releases a sperm.
They're fertilized instantaneously.
And then she goes off and leaves them alone after that.
Boom, after those things.
That's incredible.
Other animals you all work with?
I'm liking these animal examples.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're working on these cavefish.
We're probably going to pick up crickets.
And then, you know, just those common lizards that everybody has in their backyards, the anols.
and geckos and things like that.
They're another creature which shows this ability to have these highly regulated, rapid, repeatable changes.
I mean, geckos and these anoles, they're out in the forest, but then they live in cities.
And city life is not rural life.
It's hot, it's crowded, different kinds of food, different kinds of this.
And they rapidly adjust to living in the city so that their offspring are better at living in the city than they would be in the wild.
I mean, that's kind of cool.
When I was in college, the class I took for my science lab and lecture, because there was only one required for the gen ed requirement, was birds of California.
And we had certain birds that we'd like, oh, it's another useless phenapepla.
I've seen a million of those.
I'm looking for something new, like a Lawrence's goldfinch.
Right.
So this is my question.
What is the most unbiblical uncreationist bird, and why is it the finch?
Oh, man.
But the Galapagos finches.
So they've got the beaks, you know, big seeds, little seeds.
Can you elaborate on, was Darwin observing the same kind of things you guys are testing, just coming to different conclusions?
Yes, he was.
And you can't really observe how fast these finch beaks are changing at times.
You can observe that they oscillate back and forth.
But what he couldn't observe and what nobody is really looking at is what is the mechanism to change these finch beaks?
And some recent research has been done on Galapagos finches.
Some that are kind of like the rural finches.
They're living out in the woods and they're eating traditional finch food, the traditional stuff.
But some of them are the urban finches and they've migrated in.
They're living amongst humans and humans throw their trash out.
Now these finches are like heating human trash food.
And a paper came out maybe three or four years ago that noticed that the beaks changed quite rapidly.
And not only just beaks, but other parts of their bodies were changing quickly as well.
And it wasn't slow accumulations of mutations.
It was another type of regulation called epigenetic regulation.
These are chemical tags which are placed on your DNA that change the expression of your genes without changing the genes themselves.
Now that's cool too.
And they noticed that these birds could rapidly adjust in beak and in other features, not through slow accumulations of accidental breakages, but through epigenetic regulation.
Is there pushback against those journals that come out that some evolutionist hates it, so they get shut down or something?
Well, they don't really get shut down.
They get expelled.
They don't really get expelled, but they do get questioned.
So, you know, it's not like a creationist that would get expelled or put down.
That's a great question.
Because another area of research where I was subjecting another creature to some toxins and repeatedly over and over again, it had the exact same genetic change, generation after generation, population after population, that enabled it to resist this toxin on that.
So it's clearly not a random change.
It's clearly a directed change.
Yeah, that makes sense.
It's a directed change.
And other evolutionists, some of them would say, I'm not so sure.
And one of them even said, I think when people are thinking like this, they're trying to, and this is a quote, reinject religion into biology.
And that goes right back to your question.
Why is it the fact that when someone sees something that's happening purposefully and with a directed mechanism, why would he think it's religion?
It goes right back to the whole idea of Darwin's idea is to explain it as something broken, random, purposeless.
And all of those things, those are the words that have been characterized evolutionary thinking because it's the anti-designer approach.
And now they're running into, as research shows, more and more purposeful mechanisms.
And they're like, ah, how do I cram this into my theory?
So this, I mean, you're saying evolution is a package deal.
It's like a bundle to where if you buy into their presuppositions, you're stuck and it gets circular and you're bouncing around within it.
You're trying to inject, you're trying to give creationism, you know, I guess, a similar standing to where the truth that people can acknowledge about your specific research can open the door for them to get out of the evolutionary box.
It sounds like evolution is a package deal.
Creationism is a package deal and it can lead people in a better direction.
You know what else is a package deal is if you go to BabylonB.com slash plans, you can get a bundle.
You can get Babylon B and Not the B bundled together.
There's so many combos.
Well, if I'm supposed to trust the science, what science am I supposed to trust?
Yeah.
That's a great question because science can be perverted.
And it can be, it can, as we saw even in COVID in many ways, and I'm not even getting into that, but people were saying, I'm going to trust the science, and this person is saying this and this person is saying that.
I thought that was a great illustration of what's been happening to creation for decades, is someone controls the microphone here, and that's the science they want you to trust, and they won't even let someone speak on a microphone, and therefore you can't hear another version of science.
I had two things come to mind.
I was thinking, your experiments sound kinder than Dr. Fauci and those beagles.
I was worried it was going to be beagles.
And then I also, something that just like flashed into my mind was that, well, we do have to throw to our subscriber portion, and maybe that's where I'll cover the other piece that I want to talk about, that look at that.
It's an incentive for people to go to BabylonB.com slash plans and get into our subscriber section.
Before we do, is there anything else?
Because again, we have a broad audience here at the B. Anything else about your research specifically or creationism overall that you'd like to touch on?
Well, I want to answer Emma's question.
You know, when we publish results, that we take these fish and we clip them and we get their genetic baseline and we photograph them in a genetic baseline and then we expose them to the simulated environment and we publish that 30 days later and we show the pictures.
I mean, that's pretty compelling evidence that the systems have always been there.
They weren't broken down.
They were switched off and they can be switched back on again.
I mean, this is real hardcore science that people can look to.
And in terms of subscriptions, I mean, you can subscribe to ICR's new YouTube.
And we have a lot on ICR and you can subscribe to our YouTube and you'll be notified of when these results come out and when the YouTubes come out for that.
And in terms of, you mentioned earlier, like where do you get your data, you go to ICR.org and we will have these published results and address a whole bunch of other stuff that you've been talking about as well, even Dr. Boyd's research.
And you can come to ICR.org or you can subscribe to our things and we will keep you informed.
We will keep you equipped.
Even though we're not working together with Babylon B, we are aligned in that thinking of keeping people educated.
And I don't want to even dominate and hold the microphone myself.
I want you to read what the evolutionists say.
I want you to be exposed to them.
I just want you to hear what we have to say and see our research as well.
Do you think they should present this as an alternative in schools?
Because when I've heard about creationism in the past, it was the exact animals and Noah's Ark are the exact ones that we see here.
And so it's kind of like a conflict because there's millions of different animals.
How could two of each have been on that arc?
I've seen it at Ken Ham's exhibit.
It's still not that big to have all these animals.
Right, exactly.
So they present this side as like Bible people who are just not going to pay attention to any changes or adaptations.
And it's just exactly that.
But this is kind of completely different.
That's totally different.
Yeah.
And so you ask, should it be presented in school?
The answer I would say is yes.
Children should be exposed to alternative views.
But then you also elaborate on the problem.
What if someone who doesn't accept these views teaches it to the children?
Will they constrain, will they color, will they shade the way it's being presented to the children?
Will they put their spin on it so that, okay, I presented it, but they present a false version of it.
You see, there's a feel like it would be better than not presenting it at all.
Because I was that kid in class who was like, I don't believe in evolution, but I was bad at science.
So I was like, I don't believe in it.
That's why I'm getting a seat.
Oh, no, that's it.
Wow.
And I was like, and it also, you know, I never really got over the conflict of human beings because I don't look at humans as animals.
Right.
And so this class would tell me that, you know, if I really believed in evolution, then murder's not wrong.
It's just natural selection and morals are irrelevant.
Right.
But I think even if they present a false or, you know, example of it, it would still at least pique someone's interest out there.
Oh, you bet.
It would be good.
And it would be good in colleges if guest lectures, guest lecturers did not get kicked off the stage and that.
And I guarantee you, if I went to one of these universities and I presented and I showed this cavefish and I'd say this and that, and we explain our methods and materials, which are the same as anybody at their university, but here are the results.
I'm going to hear this.
I never knew that.
I never heard that.
I was never exposed to this before.
This is really interesting.
Where can I get some more information?
ICR.org is what I would say.
But that's what people need to be exposed to.
And even for the Christians on campus, they need to see someone who can come in and take on their professor, so to speak, stand toe-to-toe with them, answer their questions, and therefore they're not seen as some kind of intellectual pygmy or second-class citizen.
I'd like to slam Bilo for a second.
The only class that I had available for, or the only one that I picked for science, like there was only a couple.
And the one that I picked, we went over evolution.
We didn't even go over creationism at all.
I mean, this is a campus where you would think it's a safe space to have that kind of discussion.
And it was still the same thing that you would see in secular college.
Like if I disagree with it and I wrote an essay that's counter to the topic, I would get a lesser grade.
So I have to write an essay and do research on evolution to get a good grade in that class.
Like Why don't colleges, especially universities who are Christian, offer creationism classes?
They should.
They should.
Why they don't, I have to tell you, it's the same reason why you don't hear it taught in churches.
It's called fear of man.
There's a fear of man that's out there that everybody has to deal with.
You do, I do.
All of us have to deal with some fear of man.
And for some reason, humans just hate the idea of being thought of as intellectually inferior to something else.
And then in some churches, of course, some pastors, some leaders are afraid that some of the people in their church will leave.
It'll cause a division and on and on and on.
And when I speak at pastors' conferences, a pastor will come up to our table and say, almost like this, hey, I believe what you're saying.
And it's true.
But if I said that in my church, then, and I'm saying, I understand, but pastor, you're the pastor.
You're the leader of this flock.
You need to lead, feed, and defend your flock.
Stand up and don't be afraid.
That is a doxological note and a good pivot point for us to go ahead and go into our subscriber portion.
In our subscriber portion, we are going to let our hair down.
We're going to let our proverbial hair down.
Continue with some fun questions.
Yeah, we were in the subscriber portion.
That's why I slammed bio.
Oh, that's so funny.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
What process today is trapping literally billions of fossils in such fine detail that we can still study them around the world?
I mean, where are billions of fossils being trapped today?
This isn't happening and they're trapped relatively fast.
And when I look at these geological records, I find marine creatures in every single one of those layers.
This has been another edition of the Babylon Bee Podcast from the dedicated team of certified fake news journalists you can trust here at the Babylon Bee, reminding you that fake news of the people, by the people,