Latest / Relish: a Christian podcast / Is Science Pulling People Away from God—or Back to Him?

Transcript

Is Science Pulling People Away from God—or Back to Him? · Relish: a Christian podcast

• 0:00
  What gives you the most hope for the future? And with a young guy like you,
• 0:05
  I have so much hope going around. How long has Earth existed?
• 0:09
  So tell me something. How did these critters get into rock formations as whole critters?
• 0:18
  I've heard a little science brings a man away from God, but a lot of science
• 0:22
  brings him back. Exactly. Yeah.
• 0:26
  Relish. Pleasing or zestful flavor. A quantity just sufficient to flavor,
• 0:31
  to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
• 0:34
  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
• 0:40
  Welcome back to another episode of Relish. I'm your host, Ro Miller.
• 0:44
  This is Pastor Don Patterson.
• 0:45
  Don, how are you doing this morning? We're doing all right. Yeah. That is good.
• 0:50
  I'm glad. Some energy to this episode. There you go. Yeah. And if it doesn't,
• 0:53
  we just turn things around, you know, go that way.
• 0:56
  Oh, well. never a dull moment right right
• 0:59
  yeah okay so what gives you the most hope for the future and with a young guy
• 1:06
  like you i'm so much hope going around right yeah there's a lot of a lot of
• 1:11
  a lot of hope out there yeah but um what gives you the most out of all those things,
• 1:20
  yeah i'm trying to think um.
• 1:26
  I mean, as I just, I just love golf.
• 1:29
  So golfing in college, I think that every time I think about that, it just brings me joy.
• 1:37
  So we mark this episode. What if you end up on the PGA?
• 1:41
  I mean, Rowan Miller, PGA golfer.
• 1:45
  And we actually were able to sit with him in the same room and do radio podcasts
• 1:52
  with the great Rowan Miller.
• 1:54
  I'm sorry. We sort of went beyond questions. Yeah, we got a ways to get.
• 1:59
  Oh, well. Yeah. But hope is one of those things that it really is powerful because
• 2:07
  hope moves us into the future.
• 2:12
  Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.
• 2:16
  And hope and faith are so closely tied together that it is a powerful piece
• 2:22
  that moves us into the future.
• 2:25
  And without it, it's really hard to live.
• 2:29
  Yeah. It's really hard to live without having something to hope for.
• 2:34
  And we see that a lot of victims of catastrophes, either they're consumed by
• 2:41
  the catastrophe or they've got hope that gets them through the catastrophe to the future.
• 2:48
  And, yeah, so. I've heard. The most hope.
• 2:51
  I don't remember the statistics of it, but that people that were like terminally
• 2:57
  ill or had cancer or something, if they were hopeful that they would survive
• 3:03
  it and make it to the other side,
• 3:05
  make it through it, then they were, their chances of surviving went way up. Yeah.
• 3:11
  And I've seen people who have a hope, knowing that they're in Christ and going
• 3:17
  to move into the future with Christ, actually embrace those final moments with celebration.
• 3:24
  So it's a powerful thing that drives us, that can drive us into the future.
• 3:30
  Yeah. Yeah. Hope is good stuff. And I hope everybody's got some this morning, you know? Yeah.
• 3:36
  I hope you're ready for these questions. I hope.
• 3:40
  Woo. Ooh. Okay. That's a good switch over. Yeah.
• 3:43
  Let's segue there. Yeah. Yes. This one shouldn't be too hard.
• 3:47
  Okay. Did Jesus have a middle name?
• 3:51
  No. The. Jesus the Christ.
• 3:56
  Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of. Yeah. Something else.
• 4:00
  Yeah. It really didn't have a, in scripture, didn't have a middle name at all
• 4:07
  that I can think of. Now, if they are pointing to a certain scripture that I've
• 4:11
  missed, I'd love to have that.
• 4:12
  So if you know that and I missed it, I'd love to have the correction on that one.
• 4:18
  Because trivia is one of my things, and I want to make sure I get it right.
• 4:23
  But no, not a middle name. No, not like Alan or Keith or Joe.
• 4:30
  Yeah, mother's man. What's your middle name? Rob. Really? Yeah.
• 4:36
  My mom's side. Grandpa's surname. Okay. Yeah.
• 4:41
  That's neat. I didn't know that. I just got my dad's name. Okay.
• 4:44
  Younger brother is just a random name. Just a random name. Just picked it right
• 4:48
  out there. Crosby. Yep. Oh, Stills and Nash. Okay. Yeah.
• 4:54
  Sorry. Okay.
• 4:59
  There wasn't anything in the water before this.
• 5:04
  Certified dirt water. How about the coffee this morning?
• 5:08
  Well, I did have different coffee. this morning so it might have been that foo-foo
• 5:12
  reversion you know had something else in it but uh.
• 5:18
  Okay how long has earth existed okay
• 5:23
  i would say less than 8 000 years uh i
• 5:27
  i'm a young earth believer and i believe in the text that says you know it was
• 5:33
  without form and void and uh was developed from there and and i even think that
• 5:40
  more and more of the, not archaeologists,
• 5:43
  but the guys who study rocks, what are those?
• 5:48
  Geologists? Geologists are also moving in that direction as they retrace what's going on with the,
• 5:59
  carbon-14 molecule and how they have sort of reprocessed how that molecule breaks
• 6:06
  down, and that's been their test of time and how they could go out to millions of years at one time.
• 6:12
  And now as they look at the decay of that module molecule, they're rethinking that some.
• 6:19
  And so that, I mean, the carbon 14 could have existed a long time before it
• 6:23
  was brought into this present form. And,
• 6:26
  Yeah. But I'm short. I'm a young earth and I'm just go right to the biblical text.
• 6:35
  And what would the opposition of young earth be? Like old earth? Old earth.
• 6:42
  Okay. So at one time I would have believed, see, I, I grow up over time.
• 6:47
  At one time I would have believed the millions of years and that even I,
• 6:51
  even the biblical texts then could be taken out to millions of years and a thousand
• 6:57
  years is a day for, you know,
• 7:00
  in second Peter, it talks about that.
• 7:03
  And so I would, I wasn't, theocentric evolution, I think, is what it's called.
• 7:12
  So it's God doing evolution, but over a long period of time.
• 7:16
  So that's what I used to think.
• 7:18
  The difference is, as I've gone to the text and then sort of teamed up with the newer um.
• 7:35
  Christian archaeologists and scientists, I see a lot more evidence,
• 7:41
  and even in the fossil record.
• 7:42
  Here's the one that really gets me, is the fossil record.
• 7:46
  So if those fossils are millions of years old, and how'd they get there?
• 7:54
  And if they, I've lived on a farm, lived around, uh, animals long enough that
• 8:00
  I realize that if something croaks,
• 8:03
  it decays really within 24, 48 hours, you can be down to a skeleton depending
• 8:09
  on how many scavengers you have in the area. So tell me something.
• 8:14
  How did these critters get into rock formations as whole critters?
• 8:22
  And get sealed up so that those impressions could be made of a complete critter.
• 8:30
  Well, that would happen. No predators. No predators.
• 8:34
  No atmospheric interaction with the carcass. No natural weather disaster or anything.
• 8:42
  Right. It don't happen. I'm sorry, folks. It just don't happen.
• 8:45
  So the most decisive piece to me to go young earth was the fact that the flood
• 8:52
  had to happen in a certain time frame. It was very short.
• 8:57
  The critters that were killed were put into that sedentary level layer all at
• 9:03
  one time, all full form, not bloated,
• 9:07
  you know, because a critter that's croaked will bloat rather quickly and sealed.
• 9:15
  Not only there in the layer but in that layer deep enough it could be sealed,
• 9:21
  yeah and that's how you get the fossil well yeah.
• 9:27
  That doesn't match with the long earth.
• 9:31
  And so that's how I got to the short earth. When I started looking at the scientific
• 9:36
  evidence that, wait a minute, that's not millions of years,
• 9:42
  maybe three or four days to get into that sedentary layer in one whole piece and covered up.
• 9:51
  That didn't happen. I'm not saying even weeks.
• 9:55
  I'm saying that happened to happen in days to end up in the lat layer in one whole piece.
• 10:02
  Eggs that are in that layer.
• 10:05
  That didn't happen over weeks and months.
• 10:09
  I mean, an egg rots and pops and all good stuff.
• 10:13
  But eggs they're finding in the fossil layer. Yeah, I'm short earth. Yeah. Yeah.
• 10:20
  Yeah yeah i i would date it young i i uh i think it's hard to explain it otherwise
• 10:27
  yeah but that's you know i'm becoming biased to the other i was one extreme
• 10:31
  at one time and now i'm here yeah,
• 10:34
  i've heard that like the carbon dating is that what it's called that they do
• 10:38
  is like if something went through a natural disaster of some kind like it's
• 10:46
  it hard it's hard for it to account for that and they,
• 10:49
  it'll just add many, many years onto the actual life or whatever it is.
• 10:54
  So when you get something like the flood, then.
• 10:57
  Well, and even excavating in mines and some of the mines that have been excavated over time,
• 11:03
  that would be maybe a hundred years old, they're finding hats and,
• 11:06
  and shoes that are actually rock because they've been in that environment for
• 11:14
  a hundred years. Well, that's pretty short term.
• 11:17
  And so those present day examples of fossilizing and making into rock things
• 11:27
  that we know in like a hat or shoes,
• 11:31
  we know they're less than 200 years old and all of a sudden they're rock.
• 11:35
  Well, how did this happen? And they give the examples.
• 11:40
  So, yeah, short, short. Yeah.
• 11:44
  I've heard a little science brings a man away from God, but a lot of science
• 11:48
  brings him back. Exactly. Yeah.
• 11:50
  And yeah, it has a lot to do with heart. It's amazing how many scientists,
• 11:56
  especially early scientists, were Christians and actually brought their faith
• 12:04
  to science in the process, like Isaac Watson. Yeah.
• 12:11
  Who is your favorite Bible character and why?
• 12:18
  Favorite. Now there's the key piece. Favorite. Have you answered this question
• 12:22
  before? I don't know that I've answered it with the favorite. Yeah.
• 12:26
  Because that would be different. Right.
• 12:30
  Which is the most I'm like? Well, then I've had Simon Peter.
• 12:34
  Simon Peter. But my favorite, of course, Jesus. uh
• 12:38
  if i could just be a little more like jesus that's
• 12:41
  that's my favorite um i i i've come to realize how much i'm like peter and then
• 12:49
  how much he did and so i i sort of like peter but he's not my favorite jesus
• 12:54
  has is my favorite uh i respect paul but i'm not like paul.
• 13:01
  Uh yeah my favorite would be jesus i i i'm just amazed,
• 13:09
  But maybe we're supposed to answer beside Jesus. Sure.
• 13:12
  And then I still like the prophet Elijah, not Elisha, but Elijah.
• 13:22
  And in the fact that he was so sure of himself that when he went up on that
• 13:27
  mountain and challenged the prophets of Baal, he knew the outcome.
• 13:35
  Yeah. I, yeah, I'd like to be more like Elijah as far as my certainty.
• 13:40
  What's interesting is he polarized that certainty and came down off the mountain and, oh, I'm dead.
• 13:47
  Oh, so he had a polarity there. But just if I could be like Elijah on the mountain,
• 13:54
  that would be cool. Yeah.
• 13:59
  Got a lot of favorites in there. Yeah. we watched
• 14:02
  a the only reason i'm bringing this up is because
• 14:05
  you asked me before or who and who i think i'm like and um we watched a chosen
• 14:12
  episode this last week in chapel at school and they portrayed thomas like doubting
• 14:17
  thomas as someone that's like very rational and thinker and like,
• 14:25
  just kind of fits my personality. And so when Jesus was turning water into wine,
• 14:30
  he's like, it's not possible.
• 14:33
  Like you don't like filling all these jugs with water isn't going to do anything.
• 14:38
  Like we're just going to have water now.
• 14:40
  And I guess it's my fault that we miscalculated how much wine we need for the-
• 14:45
  He was a mathematician in the bud. Yeah, something.
• 14:49
  So like kind of just seeing him being pictured as very rational and a thinker
• 14:54
  kind of, just made me connect with him.
• 14:57
  Yeah, I could see that. I could see that.
• 14:59
  Because you are a rational thinker. Yeah.
• 15:03
  That being said, rational thinkers can have faith. Yeah.
• 15:08
  Right. It just comes from a different source. Well, it's interesting because
• 15:13
  with Thomas, he's known as Doubting Thomas, but then the one time he's just
• 15:18
  like, yeah, let's just go die with Jesus.
• 15:20
  John 11, yes. He was willing to do that. His heart was there.
• 15:25
  He was bought into what Jesus was doing. That was no doubt about it.
• 15:30
  But the rational side of him would have been, oh, it only makes sense to go and die with him.
• 15:37
  And then after the resurrection, well, I've got to make sure until I put my
• 15:43
  fingers in those wounds. Yeah.
• 15:47
  And yet. You can't come back to life. How did you? Right. But do you notice
• 15:52
  in the invitation that he's given by Jesus to put his fingers in?
• 15:56
  I mean, Jesus says, put them here. He doesn't. We don't see in that passage,
• 16:01
  I'm actually going to stick it. He doesn't actually stick it in.
• 16:04
  He's, oh, my Lord and my God. Yes.
• 16:11
  Thomas gets it. Yeah. Yes, he does.
• 16:15
  Yeah. It just, Jesus appeals.
• 16:21
  He ordered his ministry in such a way that he could connect with a variety of personalities.
• 16:29
  And maybe that's why we have the 12, because all those personalities were different.
• 16:33
  Maybe James and John were the same, you know, the sons of thunder.
• 16:36
  Yeah. They could have been, you know, brothers and that kind of thing.
• 16:38
  You're just like your brother, right? No.
• 16:42
  But closer to my older than my younger, but yeah. But, you know,
• 16:46
  brothers aren't always alike, but Jesus did say, these are the sons of thunder.
• 16:51
  So there must have had something similar.
• 16:55
  But Jesus sort of connected with each of the disciples, just a little different.
• 17:00
  Yeah. And so it's rational, rational, shall we say, that Jesus would appeal
• 17:06
  to us. there'd be a certain aspect of Jesus' ministry that would appeal to us
• 17:11
  more than others just because of our personality.
• 17:16
  But that being said, isn't it neat to know God provided that?
• 17:21
  Yeah. That God provided that ability to connect with different personalities
• 17:25
  through the soul Savior, Jesus Christ.
• 17:31
  That's a God who thinks ahead, isn't it? He knew what I needed. Knows what you need.
• 17:39
  That's God. That's why he's worthy of praise and worship.
• 17:46
  Yeah, this is an interesting question. Oh, I noticed that viral thing going.
• 17:51
  I'm trying to think of the answer before you answer. Oh, okay.
• 17:55
  I don't know if I got this one.
• 17:57
  Oh, okay. So I didn't know that process was going on. That's cool.
• 18:01
  How many times have you read the Bible? Oh, man, I haven't got a clue.
• 18:07
  Yeah, I didn't either. So I haven't got a clue.
• 18:12
  Well, and, you know, and part of it is I've read it.
• 18:16
  So many different times in different ways. In other words, I approached it differently.
• 18:21
  So as a kid, I approached it one way. Oh, I got to do this.
• 18:25
  And as a new believer, I approached it another way.
• 18:30
  I don't know this at all. How am I going to get through all this book?
• 18:35
  And as I grew in ministry and over time, I can't read enough.
• 18:42
  Can't get enough. I want to know,
• 18:45
  i want to read it in such a way not just passing through
• 18:48
  it i want to read it in such a way that when some young fellow sits with me
• 18:53
  in asking questions i can give book chapter and verse that's my goal is to read
• 19:00
  it in such a way that i i know and understand the text and i'm not just,
• 19:05
  oh yes in scripture it says yeah i mean saying no this is paul speaking in first
• 19:11
  corinthians chapter 15, verse 14, and give the answer.
• 19:16
  And so maybe I haven't read it as many times as you're thinking I have,
• 19:22
  but my reading of the text has been very intentional so that I know,
• 19:28
  book, chapter, and verse when I'm talking about and formulating answers.
• 19:35
  So I, yeah, 2020.
• 19:39
  25, 20? Yeah. That's not seeing it directly through every time either. Right.
• 19:46
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your passages and your... Right.
• 19:51
  And, you know, even my Bible studies, both of them, let's see, no, both of them.
• 19:56
  I've had more than one Bible study go all the way through the New Testament together.
• 20:01
  Yeah. And so I congratulated them, the one Bible study a long ago,
• 20:07
  saying, basically, if you stayed with this Bible study, you have gone through
• 20:10
  the entirety of the New Testament.
• 20:13
  And they're actually starting on it a second time.
• 20:17
  And, you know, for us as Christians, the New Testament's primary.
• 20:20
  You should know the New Testament as a Christian verbatim, not verbatim, but very good.
• 20:27
  And then be able to read the Old Testament in such a way that,
• 20:31
  oh, this points to Jesus.
• 20:35
  And this is what Paul is talking about. That's why he quotes this passage.
• 20:41
  And Jesus quotes scripture, even on the cross, Psalm 22.
• 20:48
  So you read it in such a way. So maybe I haven't read it as many times as somebody might think I have.
• 20:54
  But I try to read it so I can recall it. Yeah.
• 21:00
  So, yeah, how many times? Hmm.
• 21:05
  Maybe 20. Yeah. A lot of times. Yeah.
• 21:10
  Well, it's been a long time, too. It's not like two years. Right. Right. It's a long time.
• 21:20
  All righty. Well, thank you guys for joining us. I think we're going to close
• 21:24
  this one out. I think we probably better.
• 21:27
  Thank you, Don, for as always. And you, Roland. Thank you. We'll see you guys
• 21:31
  next time. Lord willing.
• 21:33
  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. feel free to become part of this
• 21:37
  ministry by sharing it with others.
• 21:38
  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
• 21:42
  and is calling to us in our daily lives.
• 21:45
  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.