Catholic vs. Protestant - 2019-11-06 - Michael Jones

Author Recorded Wednesday November 6th, 2019

There are 31 episodes in the Versus:Protestant series.


Michael Jones is a self-proclaimed idealist and theistic evolutionist who runs a Christian Apologetics project called Inspiring Philosophy. Because I am a Young Earth Creationist, most of our discussion revolved around evolution vs. creationism.


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These YouTube transcripts are generated automatically and are therefore unformatted and replete with errors.
hi my name is Michael Jones and you're listening to Catholic versus Protestant so just tell us a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe and how you came to believe what you believe well I run inspiring philosophy ministries it's an online apologetic resource we create videos for Christian apologetics out there I became a Christian probably a little bit over a decade ago it was a long drawn-out process I never had a point where it just became a Christian I studied different things and I was probably the more hideous for a while never an atheist though and it just I slowly progressed to where I'm at now just by reading debating challenging myself things in that way interesting do you mind telling us there's a little bit of background in terms of family life how were you raised what sort of first Inklings you had of God and religion in the home or maybe at school just talk a little bit about your earliest memories if you would please yeah I was raised in a pretty fundamentalist home you know tended young earth creationist Church tribulation rapture all that kind of stuff and they really didn't really click with me I didn't really like going there I didn't have any I rented have a lot of friends there I got picked on there I told this before one time I was taken from church to the hospital because I got a concussion so it wasn't it really wasn't a really good place for me and so I think the reason I started to leave Christianity was because I had some friends that were more atheist or agnostic from high school or in my family even who were more friendly to me and I was like well these are I like these people more I'll just go more store this way and slowly I did come back I probably was help from a lot of my parents in some ways because they kind of changed their tone a little bit and just realized you know that maybe we shouldn't really be this super fundamentalist emore mm-hmm I'm not familiar with your work so maybe just paint a little picture of your project in terms of where you place the emphasis place well I mean that's a good question because I I cover a lot of areas I don't do politics I will say that I've only maybe done one video related to that and was on abortion but no I'm not big politically but I do cover a lot of areas with regards to apologetics and the intellectual side so I defend New Testament reliability the resurrection argument I've defended various arguments for God's existence I've defended the Trinity I'm working through the Old Testament now so I'm gonna do a whole series on Old Testament reliability explaining all difficult passages in the Old Testament as well as Biblical Archaeology so I do a lot then I also do other videos as well like problem of evil problem of Hell that kind of stuff and I've done things that are sermon s click little videos like that okay then one recently on depression so I cover a lot I don't know I tried I would get bored and I just specialized in one area so I want to branch out and cover a lot of things I'm famous for a couple debates have done where I defend Christianity with regards to it being beneficial against atheistic linked Christian these dangerous or harmful and I've gone through a lot of the studies on that and I know too much on the social sciences regards that so I mean I I cover a lot of different areas ok ok ok and I know you don't like talking about denominations and stuff like that but do you have a label for your denomination and do you worship on Sundays or on Saturdays or do you have a congregation that you'd like to attend one day a week I do I don't like to talk about it that much because I don't think it's that important and I try to work on neat Christians together and defending the faith in general so the only dispute I really get into is evolution versus creationism because I you see some of the creationist ideas as being more detrimental than fighting it so that's about it oh ok are you willing to talk about that because I'm a young earth creationist yeah sure I can talk about it so my position is is that I and although I do accept evolution when I talk about Genesis and I debate this I just simply argue Genesis is compatible with any view of science whether it's a young earth old or a theistic evolution it says nothing about origins and so that's what I tend to focus on ok yeah I agree completely the Scriptures can be interpreted to agree even with her own raw world view I mean he uses the scriptures to defend his own worldview so yeah when it comes to interpretation if you're using private judgment you can interpret anything to mean anything so yeah I definitely was not brought to youngers creationism by Holy Scriptures I was brought to young with creationism by the Holy Roman Catholic Church and her dogmas so there's not really going to be a lot of push and pull between us because we're speaking completely different languages right yeah I see I've talked to a lot of X Christian atheist who they say that's the first thing that got them down in Christianity was they they were told it you're a Christian you have to be a creationist and so that's why I tend to talk on this and I tend to present a case that's compatible with theistic evolution and what I think is the most compatible with what the ancient author intended to tell us you know a lot of people leave the church because of sexual morality it's too strict so they just decide I'm gonna keep sinning with my favorite sexual sins and I'm gonna say bye-bye to Jesus Christ in this church so do you think that would constitute a good reason to change your stance on sexual morality of Christ in this church because you want to send no okay so it's the same thing with young Earth Creationism people leave because they don't want to believe in y'all north creationism they'd rather be part of that consensus that evolution is the case I don't think it's a good reason to endorse evolution do you see the connection I make with that yeah I would I would try to draw a distinction between the connection and the first one you mentioned if you believe because they personally want to be sexually immoral that's fine but what I hear from atheist is they start doubting Christianity not because it was a desire to leave for shame even because facts were not lining up and Christianity started to not see be consistent with reality it seemed to be more of a fable to them and so they find they're told that if you're a Christian you have to believe yours is 6,000 years old reject evolution and they go off to university or college and they find that there's a lot of evidence for the theory of evolution and for the age of the earth and they go well this just must mean Christianity got something wrong and I can't come from an omniscient God yeah this is like usually in songs about adultery or whatever they emphasize that notion that it can't be wrong because it feels so right it's so natural it's so pleasurable so this is the hard reality that people are confronted with with their sexual morality so it's the same thing with evolu versus creationism people say well it doesn't feel good to look like a in front of my classmates at University so I'm going to go along to get along and it feels so natural feel I feel so much better now that I joined the evolutionists and all of that pressure has been relieved and how can something so wrong feel so right it's the same it's exactly the same thing I would say but we don't need to dwell on this I mean if you have a something else you want to add to that and then we can move on to other aspects of evolution because I do have some questions about evolution for you yeah we can talk about that I would just say that when you know someone is in that situation and they're told you have to hold you a young earth to be a Christian if they knew there were other views out there if they knew the Genesis annotation area of some context it says nothing about the material origins of the universe then they can't use that excuse and again it would be a little bit harder because they wouldn't look stupid they wouldn't feel like it's stupid so the feeling results from bad intellectual knowledge about the situation if we can attack that intellectual misunderstanding and show that well that doesn't exist then they wouldn't have that feeling and again it would be much harder for them again I do admit as David Hume said reason is and not to be a slave of the passions and can never pretend to serve any other area I understand that but it's still on the other aspect people still have reasons that cause them to start doubting and if you can nip those reasons in the bud there's gonna be a lot less doubt and a lot less people to pursue other desires they have because I don't think every ex Christian just had desires to leave Christianity I think they had desires for why they wanted to stay Christian and desires only Christianity and ultimately the other desires won out and so we have to recognize the you know the human psyche is a mixed bag it's much more complicated is a mix of desires motives reasons and a whole host of other issues and if we can show Christianity is intellectually superior that's going to make people want to desire to be a Christian because it's not only right it actually looks intellectually superior so with the flood do you think that God promised that they would never ever again be a local flood or do you think he promised that they would never ever and be a worldwide catastrophic flood which do you think is more likely well I think in what he's talking about there is the scale of the flood that actually happened we can actually look in the geological record from that time period and we can actually see that there was in the Persian Gulf period a catastrophic flood unlike proportions of what we've seen since then we're talking about a flood that would have not only filled in the Persian Gulf which used to be a habit of a landmass but also flooded parts of Arabia and up the Euphrates and the Tigris River Valley up to the aratu mountain range which is a very far extent and since that time that region that land has not been flooded so I do think that that is fully consistent with a regional flood do you think that Jesus believed in a worldwide flood or a local flood like what you described well he doesn't really talk that much about it or make that claim but however I think I can argue from Genesis 8 itself the flood it can be understood quite easily to be regional how many people do you think were alive after the flood 8 or more than 8 well more than Native it was a regional flood however there was a decrease in population around this time but I don't think it was in a global sense ok it's a dogma of the Catholic Church that the first woman was formed from the side of the first man and that we all descend from that first human pair but your picture will be a little bit different I think you're gonna have some sort of primates giving birth to creatures and just paint a little picture of what you think was going on when Adam and Eve came on the scene well let's be clear the Bible never actually does say Adam and Eve were the first humans who ever existed people tend to jump to first Corinthians 15 when I say that but that passage also says Jesus is the last Adam and the second man I mean okay obviously he is not the last human to ever be born or the second person ever be born this is a metaphorical language so I there is no place where it says Adam is definitively the first human in fact I would suggest that Genesis 1 directly says there were other humans that existed before Adam let's remember that what happens a lot in Genesis is you see the phrase the these are the generations of like Shem or the generations of Ishmael or Adam when you see that that phrase it's about 11 times or so but it always introduces what comes after that person or his genealogy is to descend from that person it never is it talking about something that came prior to the person now it shows up in Genesis 2 it says these are the generations of the heavens in the earth but by that same logic what is happening is this is coming after everything that happened in Genesis 1 but that would mean that when the you see the imago day in Genesis 1 that's not referring to Adam and Eve that's referring to all of humanity in general all of humanity has been elected to be the image of God in that passage then in Genesis 2 God sets up a specific sacred space the first temple and then anoints two priests Adam and Eve to be the first priest and Priestess of this temple so if you have human a human population prior to the introduction of Adam and Eve that I would say already existed and that is because of the phrase these are the generations of that's introducing what happens after the seven days in Genesis 1 do you think Adam and Eve enjoyed special privileges and supernatural gifts from God before the fall and that they lost them after the fall of course it it I always ask young earth creationists there if enemies were originally immortal what's the point of the Tree of Life god never curses in their bodies in Genesis 3 or changes their bodies he just says alright well you know to prevent human from becoming immortal we have to cut them off from the Tree of Life okay well that implies Adam and Eve we're already mortal and what made them immortal was a special tree that God gave them and so all God had to do was cut them off from that tree don't have any were already immortal in that and no so they did have special gifts they did have special tasks special purposes when it talks about Adam working the garden and taking care of it those verbs are used elsewhere to defer to priestly activities in like the Book of Leviticus for example so when you think I don't if you've ever seen Star Trek or any sci-fi like that where they have like these hyperdrive warp drive and you can kick into a higher gear on your spacecraft and go really fast this is sort of what the tree of life is like your ordnance have to be dialed in right you need the proper orientation toward God if you're in a sinful state that's kind of like your coordinates are wrong and you're gonna be launched hyper warp speed into something that's not good for you so the orientation has to be there before you hit this hyperdrive on your spaceship and that's what the Tree of Life is it's just an analogy but that's why we were protected from eating on the fruit of the cross or the fruit of the tree of life as it's called in the book of Genesis so but I do want to ask you about death coming into the world through sin and death and disease and the sort of thing and do you picture millions of years of suffering and death before the fall yes there was animal death obviously before the fall there was human death before the fall as well as I said I think Adam Eve were made immortal yes so explain to me the significance of death coming into the world through sin sure so this is a base basically on one passage it's Romans 5:12 therefore justice sin came into the world through one man death through sin and so death spread to all men because all sinned so people say we'll see physical death came because of Adam's sin well the problem is if we just keep reading a little further we can see that what Paul is actually talking about a spiritual death because in verse 14 he says death reigned from Adam to Moses okay obviously he's talking about spiritual death because death still happens today it didn't just stop when Moses came on the scene and then later in the same passage he contrasts life with grace offered in Christ and condemnation with death so he's obviously talking about spiritual death here so I figured like people take this passage on context and I think in Genesis 1 we actually do see the command that that there is death implicit at some of the commands so remember they says that you know to all of mankind subdue and roll over the earth you know you if you if you like me remember hearing sermons on these passages about how were supposed to nurture and care for the animals and everything but these these verbs are actually a little bit more violent than people realize Josh well Jonathan he wrote a paper called death and the garden and he has pointed out that these are referred to enslavement they refer to conquests they refer to trampling underfoot these are very harsh terms and what he's basically arguing is he saying in the command to subdue and rule over the earth humans are given animals for their full use we can use them to till the ground we can eat them and whatnot and that seems to be pretty inherent in the passage itself and then in addition to already having animal uses we're also giving vegetables as well so the the command you can eat all the herbs and the greens that's in addition to already having animals for their full use but in your worldview your understanding of Christianity just describe to me that first human how they came into being place they were have evolved for a baby part of a population that evolved slowly from earlier hominids if they had siblings is it guaranteed that their siblings were also human or is there a chance that they were the only one that was human among the children of their parents well I mean I think that's hard to really say because that's not really how evolution works it's a very slow gradual process for the most part now there is some evidence that evolution can happen more rapidly like through Barbara mclintock's work on a stress-induced evolution as well as on what James Shapiro has been arguing but even that is still very slow in terms of you know what we think is is rapid but no I think there was early hominids that slowly had brain science getting to the point I don't think it was ever really a point we could say that yes this was a human and its parents were not humans because everything always produces what it already is and so I don't think that there's really a point where humans come in this was a gradual process he's gradual but there is definitely a first human know and what would that have looked like and are you superior to that human or is that first human superior to you in terms of proximity to God wisdom understanding freedom from disease and all these sorts of things that the Christian Church has attributed to Adam and Eve they were far far superior to us well I don't think they were superior to us they basically have the same brains as we do for the most part they just you know worked a little bit differently because these were the early humans were more versed in different areas for in terms of survival or as we more specialized in one specific area and focus our brains in that ways the brain is quite plastic so it can go in many different directions regarding what your environment is there is no evidence that we are smarter than our Homo sapiens some ten to fifteen thousand years ago I think you'd have to go back like somewhere between 15 and a hundred thousand years ago to the intelligence starts to actually decrease in terms of what the humans were but those were Homo sapiens we're technically Homo sapiens sapiens that's a little bit different even in that so uh no I don't think we are better off than them or anything that's not what evolution even says I want you to paint a little picture of the Garden of Eden as a paradise because this is the traditional Christian understanding of Eden is that it was a paradise and there were no thorns or thistles or disease or death but your vision of the Garden of Eden it doesn't sound like a paradise it sounds like a savage bunch of dimwits who are barely above the beasts so it would paint a little picture for me to convince me that you believe that our first parents inhabited a paradise well let's back up I don't think it was inhabited by dimwits again I said we the same brains as them so calling our ancestors dimwits is calling us stupid because we had the exact same brains as them it's like what I love on atheist say that the Bible is written by moronic goat herders well you have the same brain as them so I wouldn't want to make that decision but no I do think the Garden of Eden was a paradise that was the whole point of making a garden because you know obviously God tells them in Genesis 1 you needed to subdue and roll over creation if the whole earth was already a paradise why is God telling them to basically create a violent warmer conquest on the earth if it was already perfect so God sets up a base of residency that is a paradise Eden and he says I want you to spread this to the whole earth subdue enrolled what I did here in Eden I want you to do for the whole earth and of course we failed so I do think Aidan was a paradise we were meant to spread that out and we failed when God punishes on him if he just exiles them from paradise and they just go back into the chaotic wilderness from whence they were taken out of him so you don't think they were dim-witted but they had advanced so marginally over their hominid parents the you hesitate to even say that there could be any distinction made whatsoever between their hominid parents and themselves as humans if you're assessing someone's intelligence today and you compared them with an ape most people would find that insulting because Apes are dim of wit so explain to me how a creature that evolved from apes and only marginally so is not dim of wit well again it's the data shows that we have the same brains basically as them in terms of size I mean there's a little slight variations and change but I mean we still the same brains we're still the same Homo sapiens sapiens we're not bound to our environments and have not been for thousands of years so we're not being constantly forced by our environment to go a certain way also there have been Studies on brain size and they have shown that if your brain gets a little bit bigger you actually get them you actually wouldn't be as intelligent because information will not be able to travel as fast it'd be too big and it would be too large would cook itself if you get a little smaller of course you get get a little less intelligent as well so we are actually event like the perfect medium we're right in the perfect middle in terms of how big your brain at hotels you can get so we're actually in a perfect place and that's why brains haven't changed much since then so to say that our earlier ancestors were dumb they're dim-witted it's just not understanding science they have the same brains as us because our brains can't evolve to get any smarter at this point the only reason we are doing so much better than them is because we're standing on their shoulders you know we have people who came before us who figured things out and made small progresses and their children made small fortresses and so on and so on so again we have the same brains as them and when people say it's an insult to be called an ape I'm technically Amon they're still classified as a so it's just more about the person making the insult and the person they're insulting okay so it seems to me that you want to have your cake and eat it too you want to say that a nonhuman beast gave birth to a human at some point in time and that the difference is negligible but on the other hand you want to say that that negligible difference is very very significant because they were human and because there's that quantum leap in terms of intelligence I think unless you're telling me right now that you would not consider it an insult if I evaluated your intelligence and compared to an ape I think you're going to have to choose which way you want to go with this right that confuse on what you're saying cuz I don't say Abby's gave birth to an animal that's not what evolution says evolution says you what's what the offspring is is always the same thing as its parent with slight variations just like it is today you know I have blue eyes neither of my parents have blue eyes so I mean my hair is suddenly my facial structure is slightly different there's just you give birth to the same species always that's that's what the main theory of evolution is just with slight variation so we still inherit everything our ancestors were so were still Apes we're still hominids we're so Australopithecus we're still tetrapods we're still eukaryotes so the same way a Great Dane will always be a dog and it will always produce Great Danes its descendants will always be Great Danes they will just keep modifying and descending into other variations as well so we still are hominids were still primates we're still tetrapods so there was never a point where a nonhuman gave rise to a human there was a hominid that gave rise to a human that we could classify as homo sapien sapien may be based on slight brain size differences but again there was never a perfect point you could say that a human came in because that's just not how evolution works yeah this is why theistic evolution falls flat because you have to on the one hand you have to deny that there were first humans because this change is so gradual and then on the other hand you cannot deny that we are made in the image and likeness of God right we have free will and reason whereas the Apes don't right so let me let me ask you this then about that so you would say that to have free will reason is to be the image of God that's what it means to be in the image and likeness of God yeah ok so then that's as Michael Heizer has pointed out that's a pro-choice argument you're giving arguments to pro-choicers because you could say that a fetus doesn't there can't reason yet it doesn't have free will so when it when does it become the image of God at some point during gestation when it gives those things but even the single-celled a zygote it has a free and rational soul it has it has a soul there's AI goat has a soul yes ok so where where in the bible does it ever say the humans are ontologically different from animals because we see several places where it says animals also have what we commonly translated souls and nefesh I don't actually think that means soul yeah they have a soul that's just not a rational soul and plants have a soul it's not a rational soul but I'm not a Bible alone Christian I'm a Catholic so I have a sacred tradition and sacred scripture and I have a living legend serum that tells me how to interpret the scriptures and how to interpret the sacred tradition and as it says in the Bible the church is the pillar and ground of the truth and if everything were written down that the world could not contain the books as st. John said so we can't be a Bible alone Christian that doesn't make any sense we need a living Magisterium to explain the sacred deposit of faith which includes sacred tradition hold on let me let me respond so let me get to my point I was trying to make earlier okay so the problem is is that ancient Near Eastern scholars people that specialize in Hebrew are argue that's not what the imago Dei means this is a common misunderstanding the imago Dei and actually they the grammar of Genesis 1:27 is actually more verbal and how it states in Hebrew it's more about saying let man image God it's actually the same thing it means in the New Testament when it says we are called to conform to the image of his son the image of God is the exact same thing in Genesis it means we are called to image God we are elected by God to be as representatives on earth it's not again it consistent with my view of Genesis they sound up about material creation and you can read Michael Heizer in the unseen realm J Richard Milton in the book the liberating image as well as John Waltons book the lost world Genesis one or the lost world of Adam and Eve there's just a lot of data which shows that that's not what the image of God ever meant it doesn't mean a soul it actually refers more to being elected do you believe that humans have free will and reason yes okay do you believe that any non-human animal has free will and reason yes okay so that's not the Christian understanding traditionally so this is something of a novelty or an innovation and I mean there are lots of lots of innovations and heresies floating around but the traditional Christian understanding of being made in the image or likeness of God has always been that we are endowed with freewill and reason that and that we are the only animals that are endowed with freewill and reasons so that's my that's my Catholic position that's that is you're absolutely right that is the traditional Christian understanding it the problem is is it all just flat out saying the traditional understanding can be wrong and a lot of traditional Christians don't like it when I say this but that's just a fact the Golden Age of biblical interpretation is now those early church fathers did not have the Dead Sea Scrolls they did not have the archives at Mauri they did not have they couldn't even read Egyptian hieroglyphics in Amethi Code of Hammurabi the Enuma Elish they didn't have the wealth of knowledge we did in fact they didn't even have as many manuscripts as we have in terms of understanding the cross cultural analysis different eras we're able to bring all this together whereas they were isolated from different areas and can only communicate very little by different letters so the fact of the matter is is that I rely on scholars today who have a far more wealth of data I'm not saying that the early church rollers are wrong and everything but the data just constantly keeps coming in giving us a far better understanding of the biblical world in terms of what it was understood within its cultural context we know far more about the Bronze Age today than they did in during the church age you know fifteen hundred years ago hmm come let us make a name for ourselves do you believe in the Tower of Babel story that it literally took place as described yes okay so this is what I think of when you start describing the genius that we have today and how we are finally being enlightened by these scholars to me that's laughable but I want to get back to evolution I mean you picture a universe that's billions of years old so you picture a cold dead universe and then suddenly life arises and then one configuration changed into this more sophisticated configuration are you willing to admit that that cold dead universe in the beginning 14 billion years ago or whatever it was are you willing to admit that that cold dead universe had the potential for human life built into it and that that potential is merely being expressed as it actualizes before our very eyes today yeah I've done videos on this that argued life was inevitable I've actually argued that life is constrained to bring about certain structures in fact I say that God finally tuned the universe to produce life the way it is right so everything has the potential for everything else right this is this is the grand Web this is sort of the pantheistic view everything is contributing and so when Kent Hovind makes fun of evolutionists for believing that rocks turned into humans you say yeah because the rocks had potential to turn into humans right no we don't say everything has a potential to be everything else that's just not the way the science works or anything no but no no take a snapshot 14 billion years ago that cold dead universe and then take a snapshot today so in the first snapshot you've got everything that is 14 billion years ago and then compare it with the second snapshot today and that's everything that is today so everything that was before had the potential to become everything that is today that configuration of matter energy in space time was rearranged because there was the potential within it which actualized this is all I'm saying ok so that's your picture of evolution right that's not evolution that would be cosmology ever going 14 billion years back no but listen there was the potential within that cold dead universe 14 billion years ago there was the potential it has been actualizing for 14 billion years and then today we have the picture that we see today with humans and all the diverse flora and fauna on this planet and perhaps on other planets right so that potential was there everything that was 14 billion years ago had the potential to become everything that is today right that's what you see mm-hmm yeah and you don't want to use the word evolution you could just use the word change the change from potentiality to actuality this is a fact of history according to your worldview that that potential was there and that potential has been actualizing right yeah okay and that potential of a cold dead meaning not alive universe changing into what we have today with all the life the diversity of life that we have stay on earth you would see that as largely a natural process right it was a natural process yeah and do you think that the human soul is created by God for each individual conception what is a soul it's the essence of the person it's a non-material supernatural essence of a person it's a rational essence and a volitional essence there is free will and reason so I would define that as the conscious self-aware agent for me the soul is defined in terms of when theologians speak of a soul building theodicy so the soul is different than the mind in that sense the soul is your personality your will your thoughts your dreams your hopes your desires and that's build up over time your soul changes every day and that on that definition and I you're referring to is like be conscious self-aware agent the mind and so when I talked about the conscious self I don't think God is up there chucking Minds and the fetus is from heaven or anything I'd said that consciousness was since I'm an idealist I say consciousness is sort of somehow fundamental to the universe and so consciousness has always been there in different souls spring up within the conscious environment and so different self-aware agents begin out of that underlying consciousness of the whole universe are you aware that it's a dogma of the church that the soul is the form of the body this is uh this is an infallible doctrine of of my church to the Catholic Church and it's been traditionally understood ever since the Council of Vienna that this is the definition of a soul it's the form of the body I mean it sounds like you're just trying to make a name for yourself in the Catholic Church instead of trying to discern the evidence in truth of what is out there so I mean you could say that about me and my scholars but I could say the exact same thing about you and your traditions yeah I didn't start my own church though but are you aware of the fact that the soul is the form of the body this is the traditional teaching of the church and what do you make of that dogma I reject it what do you think about the miracle at Cana when Jesus turned the water into wine and there were six jugs of water right mm-hmm did that wine appear to have a history no was there an apparent history to the wine where the guests taking it for granted that there was actually a history to the cultivation of those grapes and the fermentation of those grapes and the process by which that wine came into being or not no they were it was a miracle you think that the guests were aware that it was a miracle that there were no grapes that underwent a process a natural process of evolution right because it says in the Bible that the guests thought that this was a better wine than had been served at first and that usually they used the good one at first and then they served the bad wine right mm-hmm they thought it was real grapes that were made but we know from reading the story that it wasn't yep just because there's a perceived history doesn't mean that there's an actual history right so when you look at the evidence revolution it doesn't necessarily mean that the story unfolded the way that you assume that it must have unfolded based on natural science and and evidence because those people that were drinking that wine they assumed naturally that this wine came about through natural evolution but it didn't it was a miracle so the god plant fossils and the various rock layers to date to millions of years old - as well then I don't know but I know that God can do what he wants to do and there's only one Immaculate Conception and this is what brought me into young Earth Creationism is that Mary is the unique one and only Immaculate Conception so Adam cannot be conceived sinless in any womb the womb of a human or the womb of a nonhuman it's absolutely impossible for Adam to have been conceived without sin this is the teaching of the church so natural science is not an impediment to me well what is thin sin is the choosing of a lesser good over the highest good this is what sin is doesn't Paul say in Romans 5:13 where there is no law there is no sin well there were laws the law is written in our hearts right it's not just written on the tablets the law is written in our hearts that's what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God because God is the law well I mean the image of God is an election point as the same it is in the New Testament or how Israel was elected to be the nation but do you deny that the law is written in our hearts no I don't deny that at all but obviously you agree with me - law changes this is why you would say to Cain married his sister even that I was later outlawed in the Levitical law right yeah there are concessions made just like with divorce Jesus explains that in the body okay so then if there was not a specific law yet given to Adam prior to Adam being the first priest then obviously there was he could not have sinned against something like that like for example there was no law to get against the tree of knowledge of good and evil prior to God actually giving that law so my main point is Adam could not have broken any covenant prior to God giving him the Covenant so I don't see what that has to do with anything else coming after this because that's fully consistent with my worldview and that the reason why there was a fall because there was a covenant given there couldn't have been a fall unless God gave Adam and Eve a covenant to begin with well the law is written in our hearts and the first law is the first commandment put God first love God above all things and be obedient to God so this law was in Adams heart before he fell that's the only way that he was able to fall us because he had the law as you're trying to say you cannot transgress a law that doesn't exist so this law was in his heart the law of love love God first and love creatures only for God's sake so he violated that law because the law was there in his heart but but the law that Adam fell from was the Adamic covenant it wasn't this sort of Lauren and our hurt that Paul's talking about in Romans 2 it's talking more about a covenant that Adam fell from yeah but the covenants or formalities the covenant presupposes a natural law written in the heart it's absolutely absurd to say otherwise we have to have the law in our heart before God can manifest some sort of test or some sort of covenant so was it written in Adams heart not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil it was written that he should obey God yes but what that specific law that he broke was revelation it wasn't we don't need everything to be manifest in order to acknowledge that the law is written in our hearts right and once God gives us an order then that law that's written in our heart can become manifest are we gonna put God first and obey God yes or no right and God could have tested us in many different ways and Satan and his demons were tested in a different way than Adam was tested right and they failed and the good angels passed the test but the law of God was made manifest as a test but it already resided in God's creatures and that includes the Angels the good angels and the bad angels is just that the test makes manifest what's in the hurt and when I say hurt obviously I'm not speaking of a physical hurt I'm just was talking about the the essence weight but Adam I mean you you're admitting to me that when Adam fell he fell from a law he talked through Revelation the law written our heart is just moral laws like do not murder do not steal the law that Adam fell from could only have been revealed by revelation so Adam fell from a covenant to law they can only be revealed by revelation not the moral law in that sense he where he fell from the Covenant he had with God no it's all a violation and he'll break one command you've broken them all and if you violate your covenant with God you violated all of the Ten command we're finite creatures and we need to have manifest concrete reality by which we can show forth our love of God or by which we can show forth the evil selfish rebellion that's in our hearts right so it's neither here nor there what the test was what the Covenant was by which God saw that his creatures strayed from him the fact is that that law is in the creatures heart to begin with and then we can show forth what's in the heart but I want to talk a little bit about the future of humanity you have this picture of evolution and you say that only a human can produce a human things produce after their own kind a lot of transhumanists would disagree and Friedrich Nietzsche talked about ubermensch and all this sort of over man and some heretical Catholic theologians have speculated about some Omega point in the future where humanity is going to evolve into some sort of wonderful union with Christ and I want you to talk about the future of humanity as you see it in the context of your theistic evolution because it seems completely absurd to me that we evolved from lower creatures and yet we're done evolving and there's nothing more fantastic in our future so just paint a little picture for me of the future of humankind you know you've all seen that icon of the different primates standing more and more erect and you're able to imagine some sort of evolution in that way in the past right yeah we have an evolutionary past for which we sort of diverged into this certain branch that we're on now well your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother all the way back will according to you go back to a eukaryote right right okay so if you were just sort of paint a cartoon picture of some of the highlights on that journey from eukaryote to human and then project that extend that into the future why is it stuck on the human or is it not stuck on the human phase is it going to evolve into something equally fantastic when you compare a human with eukaryote and then the future thing with the human is it not bound to be just as exciting and wild and you know I mean well no I as I said earlier there was a paper called evolution of human brain when bigger-is-better by Michael Hoffman and argued that basically in terms of our brain size humans have basically stopped evolving and you know a lot of evolution results because organisms are constrained by the environment we're not constrained by our environments anymore we're bending environments to fit us so I think in a lot of ways we are basically not evolving into new ecological niches as you know other organisms still do today so no with our the future is basically human this is why I have said before that my view of evolution has not neo-darwinism it's more of a structuralist view where if you were to Y to take of life and start over you were a human life again or something very similar because in nature their inherent structures that are meant to come about and there are in gold points human life is an end goal point and that's our future so it's like a tree you've got the seed and then it develops and you get the roots and the trunk and the branches and the flowers and the fruit you're saying in a sense that we are the fruit of this beautiful tree but we're still connected with those ugly and dirty and smelly roots down below well I wouldn't describe them as ugly and dirty or anything like that well if I slapped it on your dinner plate I think you would change your mind right I don't get what you mean by the well if I offer you an apple you'll say thank you but if I give you a dirty smelly worm covered root of the apple tree you're gonna say what the heck are you doing this isn't an insult to me take this off my dinner plate you soon I mean that's why I refer to it as ugly smelly and dirty because it's full of dirt the root right this is common sense and there is a hierarchy and being I mean between the rock the plant the Beast and the animal but you're admitting as much when you say that we are the termination of this fantastic evolution from eukaryote to a human being we are the sort of the apogee or the climax of this right well you're describing in terms of what you've subjectively find disgusting and this is actually a weird argument I get from Muslims against God being omnipresent cuz they don't like saying that God is omnipresent in crap but the fact is this matter just cuz you're disgusted by something it doesn't mean it actually objectively is we're disgusting to God right I'm not saying that dirt is ontologically bad or evil I'm saying that dirt is dirty that's the word I used and it's smelly this is a subjective human thing I mean when you would rather smell an apple-pie than a dirt pile that's just the way that we're made but you're getting hung up on that characterization what I'm saying is that you are admitting that that journey from eukaryote to human is a one-way track and that there's no going back and there's actually no way going forward because you can't imagine something having more than five senses physical senses the sight smell taste touch and so forth right you're saying we've pretty much maxed out our brain is optimized we're completely optimized and there's nowhere to go from here right that's what you said right well I said we basically reached the point where our brain is not evolving to larger or more or more intelligent levels I'm not arguing from a credulity that I can't imagine extra senses therefore there's no senses that we could actually obtain in the future I'm just saying based on the data naturally we're not evolving anymore I mean I obviously think the resurrection will be different but that's a supernatural event and a change of natural laws in the future okay so it can you name for me a four-legged creature in between the eukaryote and the human that's on that same lineage of mother - mother - mother - mother - mother all the way back to the eukaryote is there a four-legged Beast in there somewhere you could name I mentioned when tetrapods it was the first animal to walk on land per se its first population of animals walk on land so we're still tetrapods and that we're a vertebrate with four limbs okay so the tetrapod let's say the tetrapods they have a family reunion then take a picture and they're all a bunch of tetrapods mom dad and the kids and the cousins and the aunts and uncles and then there's this human photobombing and they're like which one doesn't belong in this family photo right because there's one that just looks a lot different right so it's the same thing if I took a family portrait of you today with mom dad kids the uncles and aunts and that your your Grandma and Grandpa and then there's this weird creature there that is just as jarring and obviously different to your family portrait as the human is in that family portrait of the tetrapods right but you're saying no no matter how many millions and billions of years of evolution we add-on from the present time we're not gonna have some kind of strange alien looking creature evolving from humans is that what you're saying I don't understand where you're going with this do you understand the family portrait with the tetrapods and if they had showed their distant future ancestor the human in there he'd stand out like a sore thumb right he'd stand out like a sore thumb yeah okay so today if we take a family portrait with you and we have this guy from the future one of your descendents from the future photobombing is he gonna fit writing Z looks just like us or is he gonna be wildly different as radically different as a tetrapod looks through a human I don't know I'm not in the few take a guess which do you think is more likely okay I don't know I've not been there again I don't think humans are gonna be evolving into changing in different species over the next several million years though okay like I said I think we're pretty much at where we're at okay but I do at the end of my interviews I do ask the guests to give the closing thought just a little message of hope so what do you think you might be able to say to anyone that's out there listening though one of the things I would tell people is the reason I'm a Christian is because the evidence really supports it the same reason I'm a theistic evolutionist that I don't have to shy away from the evidence because Jesus Christ said he is the way the truth and the life he said he is the truth so obviously God wants people to find the truth he wants people to study these things and not just be mindless slaves and that's one of the beautiful things of Christianity is that it claims to align with what is truth and so when you study Christianity you will find that it does really much align with the evidence out there and there is nothing to hide away from there's no problems for it in regards of studying the evidence or things we find in scientific data and that is beautiful ramifications as well as very interesting ramifications for reality and how we operate it means that Jesus has risen from the dead and if Jesus has risen from the dead then all of our works are not in vain that there is hope that there is a bright future to come and that anyone who wants to can participate in the resurrection itself and so I don't look at the past as bad or horrible I work as God making some new and better and as he's doing right now and so the best is yet to come and we all get to be a part of that which is very exciting if you like it we'll view if you've got some questions piano go all you got to do is all you're about to do do