Episode Transcript
Welcome to faith and science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
I think one of the things that is still an obstacle for many people, accepting the Bible and the faith in a creator God and the amazing life of God as he came to earth as a human, as Jesus Christ, it's hard for people to perhaps accept this. Was Jesus really God? And of course, one of the reasons that we have as evidence for this, of course, are the huge, increasing Christianity or the christian message, the gospel after the death of Jesus. And this was based on the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, the fact that he appeared to so many people in person, he taught again, met with his disciples, and the disciples saw him change, lifted up from the earth with the angels, which is we call translation.
And this is, of course, the hope that Jesus gave to us with his message that God loves us all and wants us to choose him. God has. Obviously, the Bible talks about how God made the earth and sustains the earth and sets up purpose.
But even though God sets up purpose and may use people in different ways, God still leaves open the choice for us to make that decision, to follow him. And I heard a very interesting sermon over the weekend on Sabbath that even with Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, he had the choice to repent and choose God's salvation, but he didn't. So even though he was used, and in a way, he was predestined to betray Jesus, what he did doesn't ever.
Or how God uses people in ways doesn't eliminate their ability to make a choice, to follow him and be saved. And hence, we have the text that nothing can separate us from the love of God. We can make that choice now on the basis of this.
The picture that is given is that one day all the people have died that have chosen, made this choice to want to be with God, to want to be a good person, a person who doesn't do bad and evil things. And we know that there's so much badness in the world. Sin, badness entered.
Evil entered, according to the Bible account, back just after creation, with what we call the fall. I'm sure that most listeners know this story as well. And so there's been a battle between good and evil down through the ages.
But all that time we've had the choice to choose to follow God, choose to do the right thing. And Jesus'message was that he came and died, took the punishment in our place, and we can choose to follow him. So I think one of the issues that stopped people from accepting this message, because we have so much evidence that Jesus lived, the calendar is essentially based on his life and so forth.
And the rise of Christianity, the testimony of so many christians of how faith in Christ has changed their lives for the better. And all these is this powerful evidence. But still, for many people, it's, what about evolution? What about the Bible says that God created us and only thousands of years ago? How can that be when we have all this evidence for long ages and evolution in the fossil record, all the different creatures that as you go up through the layers, they seem more developed and so forth? I think one of the answers to this, of course, can be found in the evidence that we have that evolution is impossible because in creation is very important, because after we've died, when Jesus returns, if we're going to be recreated, God has to have that ability to recreate us again, to reform us.
Even after we've died and we may have been burned, our ashes may have been thrown in the sea, or we may have been drowned and eaten by an animal or just blown up in some explosion, how can God put us all back together? And obviously it's a miracle. It's a supernatural recreation from nothing. So God has our blueprint.
And of course, I believe that our mind, which is non material, and remember, our thoughts are non material. We can weigh our brain, we can measure its volume, but you can't weigh your thoughts. You can't measure the volume of your thoughts.
Your thoughts are non material. And that's who we are. And I believe the evidence is that somehow God preserves this.
And when we are given new created bodies, who we are, this non material part of us will be preserved and we will once again have bodies that we can use. As Paul talks about getting rid of the current tent that is in his current body and God will one day replace it. And that's the apostle Paul, who again had an amazing, miraculous experience of Jesus, again after Jesus'resurrection.
So we have all this evidence, but still, for many people, there's the narc. Well, what about evolution? And I was reading just recently about the platypus. I have a grandson who's very interested in animals and we often read books about animals or look up about different animals on the Internet and so forth.
And one of the ones that I think is powerful evidence for creation is the platypus because it's a very unique animal that really just doesn't fit any of the evolutionary trees. And to me it's powerful evidence how God created animals and put together whole range, whole huge variety of different functions. When we look through the fossil record, there are some amazing animals and dinosaurs, insects, reptiles, fish and so forth that lived in the past.
And of course, the evolutionary model attempts to trace these through some sort of development of the physical changes. And mind you, of course, now that we've been able to map the genomes of least of living animals, where we have a dna availability, we can see that the genomic patterns, the patterns in the dna, don't fit what we would guess as being the physiological development of, development of arms, legs and so forth. This sort of progression that you see in diagrams, in illustrating the supposed course of evolution.
The platypus, on the other hand, or the duck bill. Platypus is a combination of really unusual parts. So we've got the duck bill, we've got a mammal, but it's an egg laying mammal.
And although it suckles at x young, it doesn't have nipples, it's got little patches for the milk. Again, as a mammal, it lays eggs. So it's very, very different in many ways.
Matter of fact, when it was first discovered and a specimen sent back to England in the late 17 hundreds, the taxidermist who examined it thought it was a fake, thought that somebody had sewed a duck bill onto some sort of little mammal animal. So it's quite a fascinating thing how it's completely different to other animals in so many ways, and there's a lot to it. So when we talk about these animals, they're a member of what we call the monotreme family, which includes the patypus, and then four species of echidna, which are anteaters.
And so these are mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. It's interesting that these monotreams, including the platypus, sense their prey through electrolocation, and so they sense their prey through electrical signals. Also, of course, the male platypus has a spur on its hind foot that delivers a very painful venom.
And so it's one of the very few species of venomous mammals that are around. And so you've got this little furry animal that has a duck bill, a beaver like tail, it has otter type feet with little webs. And that's why I said it really baffled the european scientists, particularly back in 1799, when they first examined it and thought it was a fake.
And they're quite an interesting animal. I've only ever seen a few. I've seen a couple in the wild while bushwalking in Tasmania, and I've seen them also in zoos.
I haven't seen any platypuses on the east coast of the mainland Australia, they generally avoid the bright daylight. So on a cloudy day, you're more likely to see them, or in a shady, particularly in a rainforest area where there's a lot of shade, can see them during the day. So they're in many ways like a little otter.
But the body and broad, flat tail of the platypus are actually covered with a dense brown fur that's actually biofluorescent, which is also quite interesting and different to other mammals. And it traps a layer of insulating air. At the moment, I don't think scientists understand the purpose of the biofluorescence.
I haven't been able to find anything on that. But the fur, it's quite waterproof and traps air and keeps the animal quite warm. It's textured a bit like the fur of a mole.
So the platypus has this broad beaver like tail which it stores a lot of fat for energy, and it has webbing and the front feet. And so when it's walking on land, it folds the sort of its little paws up, little front, feet up, and sort of walks on its knuckles, and that way it protects the webbing. Now, the elongated snout, which looks like a duck spill, again, is covered with this soft skin that forms the bill.
And the nostrils are located on the top surface there, and the eyes and ears are just behind the snout in a groove. And it's interesting that when the platypus swims underwater, the eyes and ears are actually closed, and that's why it senses where it's going and so forth by this echolocation electro location. They're not a very big animal, I suppose.
They're about 50 centimetres long for the males. The females are a little bit smaller and they weigh about one to two and a half kilos. They have a slightly lower body temperature than most placental mammals.
So the body temperature of mammals, 37 degrees, like us, whereas for platypus runs about 32. Also, the platypus has a reptilian type gait, so it walks like a reptile because it has legs. Its legs are on the side of its body rather than underneath.
But like mammals, the bones that construct its ear are fully incorporated in the skull. But the platypus has extra bones in the shoulder girdle that are not found in other mammals. And so from an evolutionary picture, it's very, very different.
To put this species together has different jaw opening muscles and so forth to mammals. And of course, it's quite fascinating that young platypus have three teeth in each of the jaws, which they use just before or just after leaving the breeding burrow. And they lose, sorry, they lose these teeth just when they mature and they're replaced with sort of grinding sort of areas.
So it's quite fascinating there. And when you think about it, this little animal is programmed by its dna. Our evolution has to account for all these amazing properties in the dna arising by random mutations and random blind mutations.
And of course, the whole argument that they put up for evolution is, well, you've got these gradual changes from one animal into another, next species into, and so forth. There's so variation. But when you look at the platypus, its dna is just from all over the place.
And so to me, this is evidence to me of a creation, a designer who designed, decide to put a bit from this, a bit from there, a bit from this and a bit from there all together, and made this amazing animal. I'm fascinated by the electro location. With this electro location, of course, it's got electroreception areas, and these receptors are arranged in stripes on its bill, giving it high sensitivity to the sides and below.
So what happens is it's moving its head as it swims along, it's swinging its head around and this, then again, as it's moving its head and it picks up a density of, an increased density of a signal in one direction or other, it enables us to, of course, find location. So it's interesting that the monitoring. So the only mammals apart from the Guiana dolphin, that have this sense of electroreception, and the platypuS's electroreception has been measured as the most sensitive of any of the other monitorings.
And so the platypus, when it's feeding, close its eyes and ears and nose when it's diving, and its electroreceptors actually detect tiny electric currents generated by the muscular contractions of its prey, which might be little worms, little shrimp, these sort of things that are swimming around insects, other insects that are in the water there. So as they're moving, of course, they are producing slightly little voltages that are stimulating their muscle contractions. And the platypuses can pick this up.
Now, I think this is absolutely fascinating. And when you think of the design features in this, like these receptors have to be set up and designed, they've got to be incorporated into the DNA, you've got to have the structure, the electrical networks for these all have to be programmed in. And then, of course, the nervous system, to take these impulses, generate by its receptors to its brain.
The brain then has to have logic systems so that it can interpolate these signals in terms of direction and then sort of activate its need to swim in those directions. When you think of the control systems to this in terms of the DNA, but also the DNA that is required to set up the assembly of these circuits to actually measure this. So not only do you have to have the design, but as the little baby platypus is growing in Seg, you have to have also a programme to assemble the relative cells to make up these construction.
Now, again, for a system such as this to arise by blind chance mutations, I think we can all see it's absolutely impossible. It's absolutely powerful evidence for a creator. It's interesting that, as I said, there are these electroreceptors there, and they've done quite a few experiments with this.
The experiments have shown the platypus will even react to an artificial swim if small electric current has passed through it. And I said these electroreceptors are located in rows on the skin of the bill, but there are also mechanical receptors for touch that are distributed across the area of the bill. And there's sort of evidence that suggests that the platypus can sort of feel these little electric pulses here, much like we would feel something we touch as well.
And again, of course, they're not quite sure exactly, but they sense that the platypus not only detects the signals, but can detect signal strength, particularly as it's swinging. And this again, gives it an idea of distance as well as location that gets from the fact that it's rotating its head from time to time. Yeah, I think it's quite fascinating.
This also enables the platypus to hunt and find prey in murky, muddy water. So you can imagine that after heavy rain, you have a lot of soil washed into the creeks and rivers that would. May greatly reduce visibility.
But the platypus can still find food under these conditions. It's interesting that the eyes are quite different to those of mammals. So, for example, they contain double cones and most mammals don't.
And so the eyes are more similar to that found, for example, in a hagfish populace, of course, don't use their eyes underwater. It's quite fascinating how they're quite different. Of course, the biofluorescence aspect of the fur, too, is another very interesting aspect that gives the platypus a bluish green biofluorescent, grow under uv black light.
Of course, the platypus here they feed on, as said, little worms and shrimp and so forth. Again, popus are quite different to many the other mammals in that the female wild has two ovaries. Only the left one is functional and it lays small, leathery eggs that are quite small, about eleven millimetre in diameter and quite round, much rounder than bird eggs.
They develop in utro for about 28 days and then they have about ten days of external incubation. So that's quite different to, say, a chicken egg, which spends about one day in the tract and then 21 days externally. And the female platypus curl around the little incubating eggs and keep them warm that way.
And so during the embryo goes through different development phases, of course, then, and in the last phase, the egg tooth appears. This is quite interesting for it, getting out of the egg. So again, when you think all these things have to be programmed in for the little am amazing design features.
And of course, one wonders how can these things develop by random chance blind mutations. So there are so many fascinating things about platypuses, really. The young platypus, by the way, are called puggles.
P-U-G-L-E-S which is a really cute name. I think it's interesting as we're talking about the genome. The draught version of the genome sequence was published in Nature back in two eight on the eigth of May nature.
And it revealed both reptilian and mammalian elements, as well as two genes found previously only in birds, amphibians and fish. And of course, back in 2021, a more complete genome was published. And it turns out this creature is no less strange than in terms of its genetic code.
So it's got about eight and a half thousand protein coding genes. And so the platypus is fairly similar to a lot of other mammals, but the platypus shares some of its genetic parts just with mammals, reptiles, birds. And the ordering of these parts is not what we would expect.
And so this mixed up nature of the outside body is further reflected in the body plan. And so it has a whole lot of reptile features, as we talked about, birdlike features in terms of type of yolk protein, some of its chromosomes, mammal like features, in terms of chaosin milk genes and so forth, marsupial features, in terms of antibacterial proteins and so forth. So very, very fascinating structure.
And again, this genome powerfully points to specific creation, and in my view, again, powerful evidence that the account in the Bible of creation is the true account of how we came to be here. You've been listening to faith and science. If you want to re listen to these programmes, Google 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the radio and listen button. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
Have a great day. You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
