Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
The 13 November 2009 issue of Science, one of the world's top magazines, had an article by the editor in chief which was Harvard University educator biologist Bruce Alberts. And he presented his thoughts on what makes a good scientist was actually on page 916. He points out that training to be a scientist requires learning not only technical skill, but also how to think and function as a scientist, that is to learn how to identify relevant problems, how to think critically, how to design effective research plans, et cetera.
And Dr. Alberts also suggests that perhaps one of the important aspects for a scientist training is his or her choice of a mentor or the supervisor that they choose to study under. And it's important to.
He says he believes it's important to choose supervisors or mentors who are interested in the. The student's development and will nurture their creativity and confidence. And I would fully agree with that.
I think that's really good advice. But one of the things that didn't mention and I think are very important is that moral integrity is very important. Being honest, being truthful about what you're reporting.
And I think that the Bible and Christianity in particular, provides a basis for this because it provides a moral framework. It provides a framework because it says there is a creator, God who created us and one day there will be a judgement for wrongdoing. And God defined wrongdoing through a series of commandments that he gave the people of Israel.
They're referred to as the Ten Commandments. As God set up the people of Israel at a time to become an example of what moral values were. And these people were given laws, laws of health, laws of government, laws for agriculture at that time.
And the idea was that they would become a moral group of people that would show the rest of the world how to think. Because the world at that time had really deteriorated, particularly morally into very, very sort of living at the time. And so the idea was to improve this.
And of course, unfortunately, Israel itself was succumbed by. Succumbed to the local influences around them and eventually adopted the same depravity that was going on at the time, such as child sacrifices, all sorts of other really bad practises at the time. And it's interesting, of course, that Christianity prevailed from the Roman era onwards and grew.
And we have particularly the Reformation. And under the Reformation, science really blossomed because one of the other factors that the Bible points out is that wisdom comes from God. The ability to think clearly comes from God.
But what we have seen in Recent times, particularly in the past few decades, is the increasing politicisation, to use a word of science. In other words, you know, you have to toe up a particular political view if you're going to get on. And it's interesting that as this has happened that people who have been critical, for example of the anti biblical, atheistic, political sort of framework of science that has evolved over these decades, people who are critical of this are often censored or deemed unfit for their profession and you know, often they can't get published or they don't get the grants.
So when we go back again back to 2009, that was the year that one of the leading advocates of the teaching of evolution, Oxford University professor and atheist Richard Dawkins, published a book titled the Greatest show on Earth the Evidence for Evolution. And I bought a copy of this book and went through it and it's about 470 pages and I could only find in actual one example where he claims evidence of new meaningful genetic information rising by chance, which of course is essential for evolution to occur. We have to have in the DNA code which we know underpins the development of life, we have to have new code form new meaningful code.
And this referred to the work of Dr. Richard Lenski and team of researchers in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University. And Lenski and co workers studied mutations in 12 separate but initially identical populations of the bacteria E.
Coli. And back when this was published in Dawkins book time, they'd been following it for about three decades. And during this time the bacteria had gone through tens of thousands of generations and experienced billions of mutations.
And yet the only significant evolutionary type change was was that one of the populations after 31,500 generations had incurred a mutation that enabled the bacteria to use the chemical citrate as a source of food. Now in his book Dawkins makes a big claim that this finding is proof of evolution that new genetic information could occur. I notice this is the only example that he's found.
However, what happened was of course that E Cola actually has the internal metabolism to utilise citrate. It just lacks the transporter molecule. And in the citrate utilising the mutant strain a mutant has led to genetic information being available to generate the transporter molecule.
So Dr. Lenski and his researchers at the time weren't actually quite sure what happened, but it seemed that it was very likely that an existing transporter gene had been co opted for citrate transport mechanism. So when we see in actual fact Then it was just the use of pre existing information and just slight rearrangement for an enablement.
No new body parts were developed, it was still E. Coli bacteria, nothing had actually changed. And it's interesting that the theory of evolution, which is claimed to produce new eyes or new organs, eyes, legs and so forth, then in actual fact today there is still no known mechanism of how this can occur.
And it's interesting that one leading educational website, the University of California Berkeley website puts it. Biologists are not arguing about these conclusions, that biologists believe life on Earth has evolved. I'd say they're teaching this, but they admit, but they are trying to figure out how evolution happens and that's not an easy job.
And that's it, they still haven't figured it out, there's still no explanation. And over the years I've met many scientists who have realised that the scientific evidence that we have available today strongly supports the biblical account of how we came to be here. For example, I learned some time ago that the former Cornell University geneticist Dr.
John Sanford, who invented the gene gun to facilitate genetic engineering of plan, became converted to a young Earth six day creationist on the basis of the growing scientific evidence that shows that human DNA is deteriorating at an alarming rate and thus cannot be millions of years old. So this is, you know, here's a guy working at this front line and he now works in this area. And of course people often say to me, well you know John, what about the very old radiometric dating of rocks? But again, many years ago this question was answered for me when I met another geologist who was a Christian and had similar experiences with radiometric dating.
During his PhD studies of uranium mining deposit in northern Australia, he'd found that the rock samples on the site gave quite different ages depending on the particular isotope method that you used. And this scientist had first class honours in geology from the University of New South Wales and his doctorate from the University of Sydney, again two of Australia's top universities. And after working as a geologist for a number of years, he decided to work full time in the area of creation research.
And some of his research again he found that the radiometric dating for historically known rocks less than 100 years old came back as being millions of years old. He organised for the Australian National University to radiometrically date some historically 50 year old lava from New Zealand Mount Nauhoe volcano. And it was some of them, depending on the method they used, dated either 133 million years using Rubidium strontium 197 million years using, sorry, 133 million years using Rubidium stronTium method, 197 million years were using the Sumerian neodymium method and 3,908 million years using the lead LEB method.
It's interesting that this scientist, right, this geologist, began questioning this science and other geologists and other geologists wrote to the university asking that his doctorate be revoked. Fortunately, the university didn't do that. But it's interesting, I've also noticed that there are increasing scientists speaking out about the lack of scientific evidence for the Big Bang theory.
So again, we've got this theory that's being taught alongside evolution as an explanation of how our Earth solar system and universe came to exist and provides this long ages time frame. However, not only does the theory rely on unproven hypothetical entities such as inflation field, dark matter and dark energy, but in actual fact, the Big Bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have since been validated. You know, that's so important and there's a growing number of leading astronomers now acknowledge that there are major problems with this theory.
One of these problems was illustrated by the observations of the professor of Astronomy at the University of Bonn, Germany, Professor Prav Krupa, who has his doctorate from Cambridge University. He, for example, states we see only about 1% of the predicted number of satellite galaxies. It is, and he goes on to say it is the cleanest case in which we can see there is something badly wrong with our standard picture of the Big Bang origin of galaxies.
You know, really science is the study of creation involves observing nature, carrying out experiments that give us insight into how we can best be stewards of God's handiwork. And being a Christian and reading God's word, the Bible in my view, gives us great insights from the Creator itself. Because we know that the Bible was inspired by God.
There's powerful evidence for that through the prophecies. So we have powerful evidence that being a Christian can give us the framework to be actually the best type of scientist, both from a moral value perspective, but from the worldview that recognises that the only viable explanation we have for our existence is supernatural creation by God. You've been listening to faith and Science if you like to re listen to this programme.
These programmes, remember you can just google3abn australia.org au and go to the radio button and look at the programmes that are available there. And of course there are also television programmes.
My programme, if you go to the TV section and look at Evolution Impossible, I go through and discuss a number of questions there on the evidence that evolution is impossible we must have been creating. Remember also to if you've enjoyed these programmes, to share them on your social media pages with friends and let other people know that these programmes are there. We have a massive amount of evidence that support the Christian Royal View.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
