Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Hugh Ross: How God Reveals Himself In Scripture And Nature

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Hugh Ross: How God Reveals Himself In Scripture And Nature · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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defending biblical Christianity.
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No topic, off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Hello, friends.
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Thank you so much for tuning in, got a special treat for you today.
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You know, one of my passions is the inerrancy of scripture and defending that.
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I even wrote a chapter in my latest book on that called Attacks on the Inerrancy of
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Scripture.
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Well, we have a blessing today.
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We're going to be talking to Hugh Ross in just a few minutes.
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His book is called Rescuing Inerrancy, a scientific defense.
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There it is.
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So, I'm really excited about the topic today.
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It's very, very important and I'm so thrilled to be able to talk about this book.
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But I want to remind you our local friends next week, I will be speaking at Calvary
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Sunrise Church in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 6.30 p.m., and that's April 11th, for those of you
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that want to market on your calendar, I'll be talking about the biblical worldview and
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just responding to some of the attacks on Christians, on God's Word, and the biblical
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worldview.
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So, again, next Thursday, April 11th, there is a Facebook event invite.
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You can look that up on Facebook, but keep that in mind if you're in the Northeast Wisconsin
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area.
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So today, we're so blessed to have astrophysicist Hugh Ross.
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He's the founder, senior scholar and former president of Reasons to Believe.
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The website is Reasons.org.
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He holds a degree in physics from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in astronomy from
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the University of Toronto.
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His books include why the universe is the way it is, improbable planet, and designed to
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the core.
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Hugh Ross is spoken on hundreds of university campuses as well.
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Churches, conferences in America and around the world, and his latest book, which we'll
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talk about today that I already mentioned, it's called Rescuing in Erancy.
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Hugh Ross, thank you so much for coming on World View Matters.
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Good to see you.
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Oh, it's my pleasure.
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Thank you.
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All right.
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We get into the book, and I love the topic because we need to defend the Erancy, which
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the seminaries aren't even doing that.
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A lot of them any longer, sadly, but let's talk about a conference.
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You're going to be a part of coming up.
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It's April.
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Where is it?
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The Intelligent Faith Conference.
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There it is.
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April 18, 19 and 20.
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It's going to be in Anaheim, California, and sponsored by Cornerstone Church.
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Would you like to tell us a little bit about that?
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Well, I just heard about it recently.
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So I know I'm going to be speaking there on some science-based topic.
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So I'll have to check with our events team to see exactly what I'll be speaking on.
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But I'm looking forward to it, and I'll love that church.
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So I'm looking for aging people there, too.
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Awesome.
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And also, John Stewart, aologist author, he's going to be speaking there as well, Jay Warner
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Wallace, whom we've had on this podcast, and many others were Tony Garouli, radical truth.
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He was just on a week or two ago and just going down the list here.
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But anyway, that's the Intelligent Faith Conference.
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Hugh, I want to just remind people of the subtitle of your book, Rescuing Inherency, A Scientific
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Defense.
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A lot of people don't think that you can defend the Inherency of Scriptures with a scientific
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defense.
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So I want to give you an opportunity to just give us an overview of the book, because as
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the description says, some evangelical scholars now say it's time to rethink the bedrock doctrine
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of biblical Inherency, and they claim that new scientific findings necessitate an overhaul
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of Inherency for Christianity to remain viable in the intellectual sphere.
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Now maybe you can explain that better than I understand it.
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So go ahead.
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Oh, as a group of theologians, it came to me and says, Hugh, you need to write this book,
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because there's many conservative seminary professors who are saying we have to abandon
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or at least radically define, redefine the doctrine of biblical Inherency.
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And they're saying it's because the latest science compels us to do so.
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But they're not scientists, the scientists, please respond.
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And basically my whole point in the book is that the latest science gives us a stronger
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defense for the doctrine of biblical Inherency, as it was defined in the 1970s in the 1980s
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by the International Council of Biblical Inherency.
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So I see no need to redefine biblical Inherency.
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I think we got a much stronger case when we had in the past, but I'm reminded of the comment
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by Wayne Bruton, every generation of Christianity has to fight the battle for biblical Inherency.
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So I basically took up the challenge and said, hey, let's actually look at what the science
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Rudy says.
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Well, can you please, let's just start off with the basics here.
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Can just let's just define biblical Inherencies.
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So we're all on the same page.
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Yeah, good point, because I remember in the 1970s and 80s, you had seminary saying we
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believe the Bible is inspired, but not an errand.
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And what they meant by that is that we could trust what the Bible is saying when it speaks
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on faith, practice and morality, but not when it speaks on science, geography and history.
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And so biblical Inherency is the belief that the Bible is free of any error on whatever
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topic it addresses.
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Now there have been some theologians saying, well, we can uphold that doctrine, but we've
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made a mistake in thinking that the Bible actually addresses history or science or geography.
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But as I read the Bible, it's talking about science, geography and history, not in
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vague terms, but very specific terms.
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So yes, biblical Inherency, it's without error on all subjects that the Bible addresses
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or touches upon.
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I know this is not in the book.
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I don't know for sure, but I want to talk about someone like Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac
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Newton, and his belief in God, a creator, because it seems like more scientists of his
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day or people that were at least open to the science, the true science were believing
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that there was some sort of creator.
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Is that accurate to say?
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It's accurate to say and one thing I need to, I mean, I've addressed it in other books
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as that.
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It's a myth that modern day scientists are largely apius.
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There's a very high percentage of Bible-believing Christians, at least in the physical sciences,
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mathematics, chemistry, physical chemistry, physics astronomy, very high level of belief.
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Yes, you do see a low level of belief in the social sciences, but that's where the error
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bars are really large, so there's a lot of room for speculation.
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When you get into the physical sciences, our measurements really do constrain your speculations
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and explains why so many of us, at least believe in God on an afterlife have not been committed
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followers of Jesus Christ.
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So Hugh Ross, tell us a little bit about reasons to believe, because you were obviously with
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them for how many years, and you were one of the founders and president, and I'm sure
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there's a lot of great resources there for people that want more information, right?
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Yeah, I'm the founder, and my wife and I have founded reasons to believe 39 years ago,
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and we realize that there needed to be an organization that really upholds the two books
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doctrine that God reveals Himself in an utterly trustworthy and reliable manner through
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both the book of nature and the book of Scripture, and everybody's been exposed to the book
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of nature.
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So we do it reasons to believe is take the emerging discoveries in the book of nature to bring
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people to the book of Scripture and into a relationship with Jesus Christ, basically
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demonstrating the principle is see in Solomon Joe that the more we learn about nature, the
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more evidence we gather for the supernatural and you work at the Creator.
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Amen.
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I mean, there, there, I mean, doesn't Romans one talk about how can a person not acknowledge
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God as a Creator when creation almost shouts that there is a designer, right?
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Is that too simplistic to say?
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Oh, that, that is true, but it goes beyond that.
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It reveals the attributes of the Creator.
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Now, as I share with my scientist friends, which you see in the Bible is that God begins
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his works of redemption before he creates anything at all.
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And one of the things I've been talking about, especially in the book designed to the
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core, is that every component of the universe, every event in the universe's history plays
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a role in making possible the redemption of billions of human beings.
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That really tells you we're talking about the Christian God, not the God of religion.
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Wow.
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Great point.
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So Hugh Ross, could you please explain the significance of understanding this concept
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of the Inherency of Scripture, or as you put it, rescuing Inherencies.
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So obviously you were compelled to write the book because the Inherency was threatened
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or at least belief in the Inherency of Scriptures being threatened, correct?
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Yes.
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And kudos to the International Council of Biblical Inherency.
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That was in the 70s and 80s over 300 research theologians from all different denominations
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all over the world gathered for a 10 year study to define what Biblical Inherency is and
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what it is not.
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They produced dozens of affirmation statements along with denials and 2000 pages of commentary.
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I think they did a masterful job.
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In fact, I would put what they produced at the level of the great creeds of the Christian
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Church.
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But what's happened in the 21st century is you've been number of theologians, not just
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liberal, but conservative as well, saying science compels us to take a second look at what
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the International Council of Biblical Inherency did.
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And particularly they've been attacking the Permanutic statements, which is the core of
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the two books doctrine.
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Boy, this is another reason this is so important is that our salvation is based on the fact
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that we can trust the scriptures and that the Bible is inerrant.
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Is it not?
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I mean, what's happening on theological circles are saying science seems to compel us to
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believe that we're not descended from a literal Adam and Eve, but from a large population
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that was naturally descended from a common ancestor within the Andrithals and the chimpanzees.
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And therefore, they're now concluding that Paul wasn't the great scholar that centuries
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of Christians deemed him to be.
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He made a number of major mistakes.
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And not only do we need to abandon the doctrine of biblical inerrancing, we also need
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to toss out the doctrine of original sin.
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Now we're getting into issues that I think really do alter our conception of salvation.
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And so that's why I said we got to step in and basically take a hard look at the anthropological
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evidence, the genetic evidence, and basically, we ought to document in a long chapter in
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the book, the latest findings in anthropology, physical anthropology, genetics, sustain what
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the Bible has taught for thousands of years, that were all descended from one literal couple,
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a literal Adam and a literal Eve.
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And that this couple lived tens of thousands of years ago, not millions of years ago.
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Yeah, and one blood, one race.
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And it's really amazing that you can trace that.
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There have been people that are trying to trace the DNA back to as far as they can go.
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And that's very interesting too when you think about in the pages of Scripture, why I
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know Matthew's gospel, the genealogies.
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Why was there so much effort made to put genealogies?
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And it's all important, all backs up the inerrancy, the perfection of Scripture, and actually
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it is true.
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There's so much evidence, I mean, I know there's a book out there, Frank Turek wrote
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years ago, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, because there's so much that
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the Bible offers and seems to prove, would you care to comment on that before we move
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on?
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Well, another doctrine that's at stake is the idea that we humans uniquely possess the
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image of God.
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And so you got a number of theologians reading a few isolated scientific papers saying, well,
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the Neanderthals were just like us.
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Omo erectus was just like us.
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And so they either are forced to conclude that Neanderthals and Omo erectus were fully
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human, or they have to conclude that we're really no different than the animals.
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Or not a select image of God's species.
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But the latest scientific literature, and this is backed up by the leading atheist anthropologists,
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are saying, hey, humans really are exceptional.
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We alone have some ball of capability.
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And what's happening is we got some theologians reading a few papers saying, hey, there's this
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paper published that talks about how Neanderthals were engaged in making a fabric to intertwining
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twines.
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And the little twine that they pick out is only a millimeter long, and it's three threads
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coming together.
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I mean, we've got evidence that Neanderthals lack the brain capability and the human, the
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manual dexterity to make such knots, but such knots could be manufactured strictly naturalistically.
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I've seen them in the forests of British Columbia.
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We got birds that can make those kinds of knots.
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And so to attribute number theory to Neanderthals based on this one paper, and ignoring all
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the papers that dispute the conclusions, I mean, if you're going to look at the scientific
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literature, you need to read all the relevant papers, not just one isolated paper.
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Good point.
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And we're going to take a brief pause with Hugh Ross, reasons.org.
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The book is called Rescuing in Errancy.
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When we come back, we're going to talk about addressing potential discrepancies in the
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Bible.
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And that's in just a minute on World View Matters.
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So our guest today, astrophysicist Hugh Ross, founder of reasons to believe in the book.
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I love it.
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Rescuing in Errancy.
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One of the questions you just, I was thinking when you were talking earlier before the break.
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I was thinking about how years and years and years ago there are a lot of people who believed
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the earth was flat.
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And yet, this is interesting.
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There are scriptures, I think Isaiah and others talk about the sphere of the earth.
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And there were some beliefs that they had to finally go, okay, I guess the Bible was
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right about that all along.
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And that's what we find about a lot of things that science people used to believe.
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And then they go, okay, I guess the Bible was right about that.
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We're finding more and more of those situations, aren't we?
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Oh, what's happening in theological circles is you got scholars saying the ancients really
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were ignorant about science, especially cosmology and universe.
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And they didn't even care about science.
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When I took a course from Donald Bernie at the University of Toronto, a world's foremost
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expert on the history of ancient astronomy, and he made the point that the ancients actually
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were more interested in astronomy than we are today and best of more heavily in astronomy.
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So what a document, for example, is that the ancients were building stone observatories,
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thousands of them all over the world.
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If you don't have a telescope, you need these stone observatories structured like gun
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sites to build and make accurate measurements of the stars and the planets and the moon and
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the sun.
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And so the ancients, thousands of years ago, used these stone observatories and determined
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that the earth was spherical in shape.
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They knew it wasn't flat.
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They knew approximately the distance to the moon and the sun.
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They knew that the planets orbited about the sun.
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They lacked the mathematics to actually predict future positions from a sun-centered perspective.
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So they developed math to do it from an earth-centered perspective, but they weren't ignorant.
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And they knew the stars were bodies like the sun.
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They tried to measure the distance to the stars, weren't able to do it, included that they
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were very distant objects.
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And the other thing is that yes, you do find in the ancient literature this idea of a flat
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earth with a metal dome over it with water above it.
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But they understood Archimedes' principle.
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They knew there was a limit to how far up you could pump water.
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That was part of their fantasy literature.
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And so humans throughout all history have had a scientific literature and a fantasy literature.
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And so imagine archaeologists, 1500 years from now, digging around the ruins of Hollywood,
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digging film canisters, and concluding that people in the 20th century actually believed
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that you could ride on dinosaurs and use dinosaurs in a rock quarry and actually build a vehicle
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made out of rock.
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They would think that the Flintstones was a documentary and not entertainment thing.
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So the ancients were involved in fantasy literature too, but they knew the difference between fantasy
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and reality.
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Oh my goodness.
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We call it fake news nowadays, but talk about the fantasy literature that has to be overcome
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today.
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Hugh, we want to talk about some potential discrepancies in the Bible.
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Are we talking about apparent contradictions or please explain that?
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Well, for example, I think what's driving a lot of this, hey, we have to look at Genesis
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in a very different way.
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It's not literal.
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It's not historical because they read those chapters and say, hey, it's teaching
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that Noah's Flood covered the entire surface of the earth as responsible for almost all
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the geological features, but what I do in the book is say, hey, before you adopt an interpretation,
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read through all 66 books.
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It's not just one book, it's 66 books.
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And so what you see, for example, in 2 Peter is that the world of ungodly people was flooded.
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That's 2 Peter 2, 2 Peter 3.
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The world at that time was flooded, distinguishing the world of Noah from the world of Rome.
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Then you got Psalm 104 talking about creation day three when God transforms the world from
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water all over the surface to we now have oceans and continents.
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That's verses 678.
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Verse 9 says, now with a continent someplace, never again will water cover the whole face
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of the earth.
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And so there's no need to defend a global flood at the time of Noah to sustain biblical
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and heresy.
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The Bible explicitly says, yes, it was big enough to wipe out all of humanity and their
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animals, but hey, there weren't humans living in Antarctica or Greenland.
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There'd be no need for God to wipe out the emperor penguins or to flood Antarctica.
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And you know, that perspective in Noah's Flood is eminently scientifically defensible.
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So I go through a number of areas where I think these theologians have misinterpreted
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the context because they haven't done a thorough integration of all 66 books.
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So I'm just looking at some of the table of contents here.
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There's just a lot of great information, especially for the scientific mind because we're
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told so often that science and the Bible, there's a contradiction or that they're not,
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and that's just not true.
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It's simply not true.
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I want to mention the alignment between the book of nature and the book of scripture.
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Just share with us a little bit about that.
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Well, I mean, I put it a feature at reasons.org called today's new reason to believe.
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Basically wanting to demonstrate every day their new scientific discoveries that make
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a stronger case for biblical things.
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And so that's, that's what's my motivation writing the book.
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We have a much stronger case in the 21st century than we had years ago for biblical
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and erasing because of the latest scientific discoveries.
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And also make the point that God inspired the Bible to reach all generations of humanity.
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So this idea that 20 centuries of Christians got the Bible wrong.
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I don't think it's consistent with the Holy Spirit inspiring the Bible authors of 39
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Bible authors to write in their scripture.
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And so interpreting the Bible in the context of a message, just for all generations, I
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think helps us or prevents us from going astray.
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So one of the big things that people are conflicted about, even in the church, in the evangelical
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community, were divided on certain things such as climate change, global warming.
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I know you recently did an interview with Glenn Beck on that topic and I haven't had
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a chance to listen to that yet, but I want to.
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But I want you to share something that the lay person, the lay Christian can understand
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as far as we're hearing the talking points that about, you know, we need to be careful
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that we're humans are killing the earth and we're polluting.
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And sometimes we just don't know how to respond to that.
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Can you share a little bit about that?
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Well, a book I wrote called Weathering Climate Change basically underlines two biblical
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principles.
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Number one, we humans are fundamentally selfish.
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So trying to force all of humanity to do something counter to their best economic interest
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isn't going to work.
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But I think a more important bit of a principle, God gave a command to humanity that you see
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in Genesis 1, where to manage the resources of planet earth for our benefit and the benefit
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of all the rest of our life.
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Which means we will not have to choose between a rock and a hard place.
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God in advance designed the planet so that the resources would be available to do things
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that are for our personal benefit and the benefit of all life.
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So what I did in the book, weathering climate change is outline a number of ways that we
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can resolve climate change, restore climate stability, but we boost the world's economy
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rather than cripple the world's economy at the same time enhance the ecosystems of
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the world.
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There really are win-win solutions out there.
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To give you one example, I do agree that we need to limit our burning of fossil fuels,
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but there's one fossil fuel natural gas that releases about half the greenhouse gases
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of coal and wood and the oil.
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And so stop burning coal, burn natural gas instead.
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It would be a huge boost to the economy, number one is cheaper than coal and number two,
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there's no particulate matter pollution.
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Asia, for example, the average Asian has their lifespan shortened by more than three years
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because of particulate matter pollution in India, it's eight years.
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And so it's boost to the economy if they didn't have to deal with that health crisis and
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they're over the natural gas would be cheaper.
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And that's why America and Western Europe has done so well in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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They basically stop burning coal and burn natural gas instead.
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But I think, for example, the real solution is thorium nuclear power generation.
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And so natural gas that will bias the decade we need to scale up thorium nuclear power
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reactors.
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They deliver 300 times the energy of uranium reactors, there's some possible of a meltdown.
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You can't use them to make nuclear weapons and the radioactive waste, unlike being dangerous
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for 50,000 years for uranium, they're only dangerous for 50 to 200 years with thorium
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and thorium is way cheaper than uranium.
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It's easy to mine.
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People in the thorium nuclear reactors don't have to wear protective equipment.
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It has the potential to produce energy for less than half the price of water power, which
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currently is our cheapest form of energy.
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That's one of 30 different ways I outline the book of how we can boost the world's economy
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while we stabilize the climate and reduce global warming.
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Now, go ahead, what was the name of that book again?
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Weathering climate change.
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Weathering climate change.
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Okay, we're running out of time.
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I just want to mention, people can go to your Facebook page, look up RTB, stands for
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reasons to believe, Hugh Ross, RTB, but I just want to mention in the description this,
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the way he explores the latest scientific evidence, it says it will equip you to defend
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this historical view and instill confidence that the testimony of nature always aligns with
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the words of scripture.
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And I think that's getting back to the basics.
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What we're finding out, we have to defend biblical inerrancy and I just want to thank you
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for writing the book.
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It went by fast.
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There's so much more.
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I mean, some of it is above my head, but that's why I'm learning as we go here, but thank
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you, Hugh Ross for writing, rescuing inerrancy.
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God bless you and your work, sir.
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All right, guys, wow, that did go by fast.
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So reasons.org is the website.
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God bless you and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.