[SPEAKER_01]: Christian Parenting.
[SPEAKER_00]: a get ready to nerd out with me on Les Parental and Purpose today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Jay Holland, and this was a really fun illuminating episode that I did with SideGuard, PhD in biochemistry.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to put your big brain on today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Size the author of the book Beyond Evolution, how new discoveries in the science of life
[SPEAKER_00]: The award-winning author of the book, The Work of His Hands, a Scientist Journey from atheism to faith, so that tells you a little bit about who he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get into his background story of coming from an atheist, communist, Marxist family.
[SPEAKER_00]: through the pathway of biochemistry and visions and dreams from the Lord into faith in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this, this, this is a little bit longer episode, but it was just a really fascinating one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know we have a lot of moms and dads who, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: You have kids who are in the school system, whether it's the public school system, or even in universities, where you are faced with this threat that evolution disproves God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what you're gonna see from our conversation today is evolution in no way, disproves God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll just tell you, this is kind of an interesting conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know many of you who are listening would be what we would call young earth creationist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And absolutely believes in the special creation of man and woman Adam and Eve in Jesus Christ, a historical death and resurrection of Jesus is absolutely a believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I say all of that on the front end because sometimes if somebody doesn't believe all of the background exactly like we do, we want to dismiss everything that they say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I encourage you to listen to this, whether you're a younger or a third or have no idea, because that's not really the topic of conversation today.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we get into are all of the things before any kind of evolution, including micro-evolution, could be possible that can only
[SPEAKER_00]: only be attributed to divine design.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we talk a little bit about the origin of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about the code that's inside us, the factories that your molecules are making.
[SPEAKER_00]: This incredible research that they have done, where they're now seeing that even the simplest organisms have purpose, agency, and memory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we get into talking about that later in the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: The front end again is him telling his life story of how he came to Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, sit down and enjoy this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a longer episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read the whole book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned a ton.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a lot of highlights in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a good cliff notes version.
[SPEAKER_00]: This podcast today to see if you want to dive into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do believe it will help equip you to point out the awe and wonder of the divine creator to your kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we jump in in the interview, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you
[SPEAKER_00]: Coming up in the next few weeks, we're going to hit episode 400 of Let's Parental Purpose and personally I feel like at this point I might be landing the plane a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably won't completely shut off recording, but after 400 probably going to just come out much more infrequently as I have a topic that I want to bring to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then I'm going to take some focus and really calm through the old less print on purposes and see what what can we put together that would be most helpful for you guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would encourage you, would you pray for me as I make that transition?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an encouragement to you go back and if you don't get these every couple of weeks
[SPEAKER_00]: dive into some of those old ones that are really, really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, pray for me as I continue to do the guided by faith podcast five days a week, every single week, 52 weeks a year, and if you are a youth worker, volunteer youth worker, anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might want to check out a new podcast that I do called the five-minute youth ministry coach.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find it all at youth ministry.coach.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we put all of our training for youth workers in five-minute clips to where you can have the whole foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: for working in youth and then all kinds of training on being a great small group leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm putting this out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of the 127 project.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've produced it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in blog form at youth ministry.coach, but just more ways that we're equipping you to serve and to share these resources with others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last thing before I get into my interview, I do have the things for Thursday email that I'm continuing to put out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where you can find out everything that I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, just a lot of the equip, a lot of things that I've made to equip you as a parent, as a disciple of Jesus, as a husband and wife, and you can get that by texting the word things to 6, 6, 8, 6, 6.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's things to 6, 6, 8, 6, 6.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to all of this pre-game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, welcome to the treat of a really, really fascinating interview with
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Saigart, it's very nice to have you, very nice to meet you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Let's Parent on Purpose.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I have a lot of different interviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a myth.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was one that's kind of an excuse to just answer my own questions and now everybody else gets to come in together.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a pretty unique life story in background story.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about what you sharing
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you care a little bit to share a little bit about your personal journey?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I know you were once an atheist and are now a Christian biochemist.
[SPEAKER_00]: So would you care to share a little bit about that journey?
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was once an atheist because that's how I was brought up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't deconverted at any point.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had absolutely no experience with religion of any kind.
[SPEAKER_02]: My parents and my grandparents all going back, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: this goes back to generations where atheists and communists, my parents would members of the American Communist Party in the 30s, and when I grew up, I didn't know anything about God other than it was, there's no such thing, Christianity was evil, you know, it was a tool of the capitalist class to oppress workers, all the old
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had no interest or understanding or experience in anything spiritual.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was sure that the world was all explainable by materialistic philosophy, physics, chemistry.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my father was also a scientist.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I had a lot of that influence as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a chemist.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's how I started out.
[SPEAKER_02]: the reality of physics kind of put a dent in that because physics is not purely materialistic.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you start trying to learn about quantum theory, things don't make a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: And everybody agrees on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's true, but it doesn't fit with a materialistic view.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got very confused.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't understand that.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were a lot of things that confused me
[SPEAKER_02]: why Christianity was supposed to be so bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't really get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I started, I was also, this is a boomer.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this was during the 60s.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, you know, there was a lot of new age stuff going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: People were looking into spirituality in various ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of did that too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I looked into Buddhism and biofeedback.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember all the things that were going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't really, none of that really excited me, but I was kind of searching for something because quite frankly, I felt there was something lacking in my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you'll hear this from a lot of people who were brought up the way I was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Spirituality, I think, is central to a human existence.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people who don't have it,
[SPEAKER_02]: end up looking for it, and sometimes in bad places, but you know, it's needed, it's not enough to just say, well, I understand the world, and it's very simple, and here it is, and everything makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: That would be nice, it will true, but it's clearly not true.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was searching
[SPEAKER_02]: I got some exposure to religious ideas from a few books, a Thai hard to shadan.
[SPEAKER_02]: I read, that was interesting, but very mystical.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of intrigued me, but what really happened, and I'm not, I don't think we have time to go into detail, but I do describe it in my first book, the work of this hands.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had some dreams that were very strange, and that, those dreams, I later realized, were direct, direct, to position from the Holy Spirit, coming and trying to do something with me, trying to save my soul, I guess.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't know what they meant.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very confused.
[SPEAKER_02]: Eventually, I did meet some Christian people and one of them brought me to a church.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is, I was in my 40s.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had never been inside a house of worship before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was quite nervous.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a Catholic church, and I had heard horrible things about Catholics, but I loved the service.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the priest was great.
[SPEAKER_02]: The people were very friendly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody threw any stones at me, and it was wonderful.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I began thinking a little more about this possibility.
[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't believe the idea of believing in a God who was, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: heart, you couldn't pin it down, it would seem like just a superstition to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was interested in the whole idea of it, and I began reading the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tried looking at the Old Testament as I couldn't get very far.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I read the book of Matthew, and I not really kind of blew me away, and then I read the book of Acts, which I realized was history, it wasn't made up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I started thinking about this whole thing of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually became a Christian before, it became a Theus, because it was Jesus that grabbed me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the character of this man, this human being, who was also God, which was, didn't make sense at first, but then I realized it does.
[SPEAKER_02]: That person was saying things that nobody else had said ever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And doing things that were completely revolutionary and, you know, I grew up believing in revolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, the most revolutionary person in history was Jesus Christ, it turns out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got interested in that, but I couldn't believe in it because it was still just past just not able to get over that threshold of saying, you know, okay, I'm going to throw all my scientific training away and just go with this mystical creature called Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it took several more years, but at one point I had a waking experience with the Holy Spirit who inspired me as by myself and my car and the Holy Spirit inspired me to preach a sermon to myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was not anything I would have thought I would have said.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, the words, some of the words came, I was sure, it came from outside of me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had never thought of these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the basic idea of the sermon was that Jesus Christ must love everyone because I know he loves even me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if that's true, then who could he not love?
[SPEAKER_02]: had said those words in my sermon, I broke down crying.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, really broke down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Luckily, I had pulled the car over.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wasn't driving anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt this amazing just indescribable sense of joy and relief that just washed over me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've heard other people say very similar things after that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I set out loud, I believe, and that was it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've never even thought of or imagined of going back because I was born again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I didn't know what that meant until then until I was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, yeah, I was born again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a new creature as soon as I could confess my belief in existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such an, it's amazing how God used both intellectual stimulation and then just pure work of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: To bring you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after your conversion to Christ, did you feel any kind of, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: like moral struggle, you're in this scientific world, I think you're training as a PhD biochemist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which doesn't tend to be a hot bed of yours forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So did you feel some kind of moral struggle of like how am I going to keep doing what I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or were you like, yeah, okay, tell me about that a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't see that I, as you said, I had come to Christ
[SPEAKER_02]: through a spiritual awakening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew very little about Christianity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I only knew that I believed that Jesus was who He said He was, that He's in the sire, that He's God incarnate, and that He is our Savior.
[SPEAKER_02]: that's not very much I didn't know I didn't know any other scientists who Christians I thought turns out that's not true there were many but I didn't know they were Christians and I didn't know you know what do I do now join a church I mean how do you do that and I knew about baptism but you know how do I how do I do any of this stuff and
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually kept it quite quiet for several years, two or three years, I didn't tell very many people about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're right about the act, I was a professor, and the academic environment is not friendly to Christianity at all, to say the least, and many scientists are not really terribly interested either.
[SPEAKER_02]: misunderstanding about scientists and faith.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's true that most scientists are not people of faith, but they are not like the Richard Dawkins type.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are very few, there are some, but it's not the majority of scientists.
[SPEAKER_02]: Most of them, their attitude is mostly,
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't care.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm too busy with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing my research.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm writing papers and grants.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to think about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not actively hostile, at least that in my experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some are, but not the majority.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it took me a long time to know what to do next.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, you know, I was helped not just by the Holy Spirit, but by people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I did eventually go to a church when it was a Methodist church in my neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know anything about Protestant denominations.
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard of some of them, but I didn't know what they were or I didn't know anything about them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And anyway, at this church, I heard a great sermon and I
[SPEAKER_02]: I went back another week and the pastor asked me about myself, and I said, I'm looking to, I recently came to the faith, I'm looking to get baptized, and I was baptized a week later.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and I haven't missed a Sunday, well, I may have missed a couple, but that was 12 years ago, and I had a elder position at the church.
[SPEAKER_02]: position, a high position in the Methodist Church for lay members, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, that's how it happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: Through the grace of God and through the wonderful grace of so many Christians who have been, you know, nothing but wonderful to me along this path.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that includes my books.
[SPEAKER_02]: I started right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote my first book and published it the works of his hands.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was published when I was 72 and
[SPEAKER_02]: And this third one now is about to turn 78.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I've been busy in my return.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, speaking of books, we're going to spend the rest of our time diving in to actually have a copy for the like seven of you watching on YouTube beyond evolution.
[SPEAKER_00]: which I'm going to give some caveats at the beginning because that this podcast for Christian moms and dads and I understand I would assume probably the majority of my audience would be what we would call a young earth creationist and there are you know older creationist in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a podcast about that and I have read through this entire book and I want to just
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever, whatever you believe about the belief about the age of the earth, two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are committed, God-fearing, born again, Christians that believe both ways, and number two, this book will help equip you and encourage you about the divine wonder of God, whatever you're belief is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you are an evolutionary biologist that as I read this book,
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't, I don't feel like the purpose of the book was to convince me of the age of the earth or any of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about something deeper than evolution that we all need to understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so just first my first question to you is, many people hear the word evolution, especially parents in their kids classrooms as if it disproves God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like, how would you respond to that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a great question because, yes, you're absolutely right.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a crazy idea in the culture today that, well, I guess it came from Richard Dawkins, who said, evolution allows me to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not true.
[SPEAKER_02]: atheism has nothing to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry, evolution has nothing to do with atheism.
[SPEAKER_02]: biological theory about how life forms diversified and developed over time, and there's nothing about it that contradicts Genesis even.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, when I say that, people get very surprised because they'll say, well, wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_02]: Genesis says, God created according to their kinds.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, and that
[SPEAKER_02]: that phrase is critical.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I mentioned in the book, it's not about evolution or not evolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: What that phrase is about is that the biological fact that has been known for almost ever, that every animal only and always gives birth to its own kind.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: That phrase, according to their client, is repeated, I believe, 20 times in Genesis 1.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's an important idea, and what it's telling us is that it's not, it doesn't have anything to do with evolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: What it's telling us is that all living beings have this amazing ability to pass on their characteristics.
[SPEAKER_02]: to their offspring, whether it's a plant or an animal or a cell or a fish or a person.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's called inheritance.
[SPEAKER_02]: And nothing else, in other words, we, we life, not just us, but all life is able to make highly accurate replicates of ourselves, every cell with the vides.
[SPEAKER_02]: into two cells, a re-bacterium that divides into two bacteria.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those bacteria are 99.999 percent the same as the original parent.
[SPEAKER_02]: And only life does this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing else does.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no accurate self-replication outside of life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now people have said to me, well, what about crystals?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they do when they get very large and they break, then you have two crystals.
[SPEAKER_02]: But they're not accurate cell copies.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're the two copies that break off are not exactly the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have a, I discussed this in some detail in the book, and I described a paper that was published,
[SPEAKER_02]: which actually, it says the words, there's more mutation than replication when a crystal breaks.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in other words, you get different fragments, they look different, and once you lose that highly, highly accurate self-replication, you cannot have evolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: The whole idea of evolution depends on the inheritance according to that kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is one of the strongest points that you're getting across is that at least to the lay person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would consider myself a lay person having, I went to public school, so I had biology and science in public school.
[SPEAKER_00]: I before I went to a Christian school, I did all of my chemistry and biology and physics classes at actually at a military school, but it was a secular university.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way that I remember it being presented was that evolution is at the bottom, like evolution is the foundational principle of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, I'm not a scientist, but just common sense-wise, that it never made sense to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you make this strong case that inheritance
[SPEAKER_00]: Is far more foundational than evolution, because unless you have inheritance, you can't have evolution.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, do you feel like inheritance is at the very bottom of all of that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think, I mean, it's, we know how inheritance works, and that's what's in the appendix.
[SPEAKER_02]: If people are really interested, they can look at all the technical details.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every living thing has the same mechanism, by the way, to make copies of itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that has to do with making proteins, just the right proteins.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's incredibly complex.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no way it could have arisen spontaneously.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's nobody thinks that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people think, well, it must have evolved.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it can't evolve because you need it before you can have evolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't evolve unless you have very, very active inheritance.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've actually shown that in a paper with mathematical proof.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and I'm not the only one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Other people have as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, the point is that evolution
[SPEAKER_02]: If you go to most universities now and you want to major in biology, there's no such thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: What you can major in is molecular biology or evolutionary biology.
[SPEAKER_02]: So evolutionary biology is everything else other than molecular biochemistry.
[SPEAKER_02]: plants, you know, everything about how life flourishes egosystems, that's all covered under evolution as if that's the key thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't make any sense because, you know, and I think what this is is a reaction to perhaps, I don't know, it may be a reaction
[SPEAKER_02]: to people who don't like evolution, who think it's anti-biblical, and so the academic world is saying evolution is everything, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you don't believe in evolution, you're an idiot, you're stupid, etc.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all false, because evolution is not that important.
[SPEAKER_02]: I happen
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it applies to everything, it has nothing to do with the origin of life, which I discuss in the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think it has anything to do with the existence of humanity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it stops before there, and it started after life began.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a fairly limited thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I said several times now, it depends on something else, which is reproduction according
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there are two analogies that you use that were really helpful for me and I'm going to We'll do one and then we'll do the other and hopefully I won't remember the other while we're doing the one one of them was you were talking about code
[SPEAKER_00]: And you use this analogy, you said like the word tree, TRE, so you think about that, like at one time on the planet, the word tree did not exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the word tree in the English language to have to exist, you have like the English language has to be invented.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then somebody comes up with an alphabet like the way to write each letter and then it's put together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when we look at the word tree, like that actual physical TRE, I literally has nothing to do with an actual tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I read it, I automatically know tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't think, car, I don't think busts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think tree, and that, so think about the literal word tree
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a code for an actual thing, a tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is, if I'm correct, this is how you describe what's happening inside DNA.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have those four molecules, is it ADTP?
[SPEAKER_02]: A-C-G-T.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, man, I got two of them, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you have these four molecules, and for instance, none of these molecules are an eyeball.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when something in this cell reads these molecules in a certain sequence in certain order, it has instructions to manufacture all of the various cellular pieces and put them together to make an eyeball.
[SPEAKER_02]: So very well done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very slowly and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so so you have before any evolution can happen this phenomenally complex code.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the ability to read the code which has to be outside of the code and the ability then to operate upon those instructions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's like at least three hyper-hyper-complicated things really beyond human intelligence to figure out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything you would add to that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that analogy was very helpful for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well thanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I, I, I, I will add this
[SPEAKER_02]: several atheists who are not biologists or scientists, claiming that the genetic code is not really a code, which is nonsense, even Richard Dawkins, who is a biologist, and all other biologists say, what do you nuts?
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course it's a code.
[SPEAKER_02]: It works like a code.
[SPEAKER_02]: The letters you mentioned
[SPEAKER_02]: by themselves, they're just letters, just like TRE.
[SPEAKER_02]: But they do stand for, okay, this is an instruction.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you get to this position from the protein you're making, put this amino acid there and no other.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how we get all the right proteins made.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's nothing about the ACG that has any chemical connection
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, what the atheists were talking about is that this is pretty good evidence for God, and Stephen Meier has written two books already now about how the genetic code is so incredibly good evidence for a creator.
[SPEAKER_02]: Most recent is the return of the God hypothesis, which I recommend.
[SPEAKER_02]: that atheists were coming up with this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I began, I had several debates online with some of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I realized that the whole thing is, they don't want to accept the science.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we always hear from atheists that, oh, Christians, they don't like science.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't want to accept science.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's true for them when there's some scientific fact, like the originally universe.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are atheists who are now saying, no, the big bang wasn't the start of everything that was something else before that, that's just based on hype, that's not real.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's very threatening to atheism to have a code in life because if it's not a creator, if it's not a divine agent, where did it come from?
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, some people's eye heard one person say, well, tree rings are a code.
[SPEAKER_02]: They tell you how old the tree was.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that's not a code.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can tell how old the tree was because you're a smart human being who knows the trees grow this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And every time there's another year, it makes a ring.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not a code.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not an intentional, as you said, purposeful code to tell you what to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just something you're using.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let me think, okay, which comes first, this very hyper-specific protein that operates as a machine or they constructions to create the machine on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those are just, well, I think that from what I understand, there's no answer to at this point.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there is not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the way you put it is very good, we can look at ourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: We make machines, but we just don't, we don't just make random machines.
[SPEAKER_02]: We make machines for a purpose and with codes and with, I mean, one of the things I tried to bring out in the book and I don't know how well it came across because I'm fairly old,
[SPEAKER_02]: some of the computers we used had slots where you would put punch cards in or tapes that would then be read.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's exactly how the protein synthesis system works.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a slot in this structure in the cell where a tape that contains all the code literally goes through it physically and every part of that tape is read.
[SPEAKER_02]: and produces the protein, it's remarkable.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just remarkable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we mentioned machines that bring to me to the other analogy and it's funny because I don't remember if I read all of this in the app or just my imagination with it, but you were talking about a factory.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is either your complete analogy or like me reading your book, having a burrito, having a dream, but this is ultimately what stuck in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about having a car factory.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a car factory there's like, let's assume it's like the Tesla one where they just manufacture it and put it all together right on site.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you imagine having a car factory that has every single machine in that one factory to produce a fully functional car.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now, inside that car is a factory with every single machine to produce itself again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, you're talking about something ridiculous when you try to imagine that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is literally every single cell in your body is not just a cell, it's a cellular factory
[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning on a molecular level.
[SPEAKER_00]: the production instructions, all of the parts, the assembly of the machines of the parts on a molecular level.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then those machines putting together the actual parts you need to make up the next cell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like that, that degree of complication is not something that human beings have remotely approached in the world with the combined intellect of everybody who's ever put together something on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: that's exactly right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got it perfectly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I guess I'm a better writer than I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, well, so in your mind, um, you talk about like in your book, you talk about, um, intelligent design and how you don't really care for the term intelligent design.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you have a different
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I, you know, it can come right off from what you just said, the design of the way cells reproduce themselves, which involves something called the ribosome and the DNA and the genetic code and RNA and many enzymes just in a credible process, that's not intelligent, that's
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I've spoken to some ID folks who are friends of mine, and they agree with me, but it's an old term, so they're not going to change it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I like to say divine design, and I think that you can't deny it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can't deny this basic fundamental feature of life,
[SPEAKER_02]: It has all these amazing characteristics of design.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not just that, you'll probably get into this, but if not, I'll bring it up now anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's really interesting, and to me, besides this part, because so far, we've only talked about the first three chapters.
[SPEAKER_02]: but what's really striking is that we are now discovering and these discoveries are not being made by Christians that being made by mainstream scientists.
[SPEAKER_02]: That life is unique in many other ways as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And all you have to do is think about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no agency in physics or chemistry.
[SPEAKER_02]: A volcano never says I'm in a bad mood, I'm gonna blow up, I don't like something.
[SPEAKER_02]: No chemical ever says, oh, I think I'll bond with that chemical.
[SPEAKER_02]: She looks nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, these things just follow the rules of physics and chemistry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Beautifully, that's very nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not true in biology.
[SPEAKER_02]: In biology, a bird can be sitting on the sand, standing on the sand, mining its own business.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then all of a sudden, it flies off circles around in the sky, comes down and eats some of the crumbs that I threw at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: through the sand.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's called agency.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing in physics or chemistry explains why that happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now when I make that argument, I often get the response, well, it's the neurochemistry, there's things in there that there's no free will.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing has free will, not even humans, it's a illusion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Come on.
[SPEAKER_02]: The argument that there is no agency, that there is no purpose to anything that people do or other animals is another sign of the end of atheism, because it's so obviously false.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's just...
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's no free will.
[SPEAKER_02]: So why are we arguing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you debating with me?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's no purpose.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you not just sitting in a swamp eating Toads is something.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you give that analogy of a bird or a human,
[SPEAKER_00]: it makes sense, but one of the things that was pretty fascinating to me, and I don't think I'd ever read anything like it before, you talked about this on a cellular level, like singled cell organisms that seem to have agency, purpose, and memory cognition, so can you explain that in a way that a normal people can understand here?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the subtitle of the book is new discoveries, how new discoveries of the science of life point of God, and that's what I'm referring to, and these are really new.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is research that's within the last five years or so, and that takes a long time to come out and reach the public, and most people, I didn't know about it, and many scientists don't know about it, most biologists don't even know about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: certainly none of the public does and here's what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It turns out and these are these are come from laboratory experiments.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not theoretical stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even bacteria and single cell creatures like Amiva and various molds act with agency and purpose.
[SPEAKER_02]: In other words, and the way they do that is they
[SPEAKER_02]: And once they can sense, for example, the fact that there are many of them in one place, they can act on that in a way that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: One example is, let's say there's something threatening this group of cells.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this each cell can put out a little bit of poison, but a tiny amount, and that won't do anything to kill the invader.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when they find out that there's a lot of them together, like a few hundred thousand, they all together at the same time, coordinate and put out each one puts out a little poison.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is enough to get rid of the invades crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And not only that, but this is even more crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree, that's the best adjective.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was one experiment done.
[SPEAKER_02]: with some cells that are able to change their metabolism if the oxygen level goes down.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're able to switch to a non-oxygen based metabolism so they survive.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what some researchers did was they took these cells and they raised the temperature a little bit and then they lowered the oxygen level.
[SPEAKER_02]: And after they did that a few times, the cells had learned that when the temperature goes up, there's gonna be an oxygen decrease.
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's switch now before it happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's an actual factual experiment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're talking about back to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: No brains, no new talk in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking of people know how they'll stop it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where they're like, they really don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time they feed the dog, then eventually they ring the bell and there's no dog food and the dog salivates.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're saying that this happens in bacteria.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because they
[SPEAKER_02]: and what happens afterwards, which is that the oxygen goes down.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't, I haven't seen an explanation for how that works.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some theories, but I can't go into that's very complicated.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it works, it happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, so far, it appears that everything alive, all microscopic cells, all bacteria, all, well, everything, plants,
[SPEAKER_02]: They all have cognition, which they use to do things on purpose.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this sounds like it's really way far out, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a book published by MIT Press two years ago, and it's called Evolution on Purpose.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an incredible book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I recently had a review published on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an incredible book written and edited by Oh, 25 scientists.
[SPEAKER_02]: None of whom, as far as I know, are Christians.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is mainstream science, but the implications for Christianity for God, for the implications for understanding the reality of creation are enormous.
[SPEAKER_02]: because we have no idea how that could have happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know how you could make a bacteria that says, oh my God, the temperature went up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I better switch my think, my metabolism, because you know what happens next, the oxygen goes down, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We know that folks, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a smart bacteria.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so all of this points to if the smallest bacteria, the simplest bacteria have purpose and have meaning, then it is not a major dot connector.
[SPEAKER_00]: that they were made with the purpose, that they didn't, they didn't just happen that this is not a blind process, that this is not a chance process, that like you said, this is divine design.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we, as we just try to think through this, there's so much other stuff we could talk about, but at some point they're going to have to actually read you about.
[SPEAKER_00]: for parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can parents talk to their children about science in a way that celebrates discovery but also points to God the creator?
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a great question.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason it's such an important question is because it can be very hard to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things
[SPEAKER_02]: how to vote in our lives to now is to destroy the myth that science and faith are like science has disproved God.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one of the way that they put it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or especially that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's just completely false.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is nothing, I mean, there are some wonderful Christians who are excellent scientists, not just some, quite a few.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, how do they do it?
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not all crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, when I first announced that I was following Christ, there were people who said, well, you lost your mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're insane, you're, you're, you have dementia, whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's completely ridiculous and I'll tell you why.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because science grew out of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_02]: The science we know today, whether it's physics, chemistry, electricity, geology, even biology, Louis Pasteur, was a devout Christian.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Robert Boyle and Michael Faraday wrote as much about theology as they did about science.
[SPEAKER_02]: These were devout Christians.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what they knew, and then got lost at some point, the turn of the 20th century,
[SPEAKER_02]: What they knew was that science is the way we explore God's creation and understand it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't contrast the idea of God at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you can communicate to your kids, something along those lines and there are some pretty good books out there that can help.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a couple specifically directed to its children, which I can tell you later on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what you can put the links in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's really important to try to get across this idea that we're facing problems on so many fronts.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can't even get started on that, but one problem that we've had for a long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: and it got really bad during the new atheist phase.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is this idea that, you know, you have to be defensive if you're a scientist who believes in Christ.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's crazy because that's the history.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody did that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I mean, how to tell you what to tell your kids is, first of all, you have to, if the child is in a school or a learning environment that is not Christian, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's say it's a public school where the teacher is,
[SPEAKER_02]: telling you that science, I mean, this is depend on the grade level, but we're science and faith are not compatible.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just have to combat that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, that can be done.
[SPEAKER_02]: As I said, there are several good books that can inform adults and a few that can also be directed to as kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's become a field now, this idea of science and faith compatibility.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's just, you know, the reason this is complicated is because, you know, there's all this idea that you can't bring up religion in a public school, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's separation, church, and state, whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's hard to deal with, but it's usually the teachers who bring this up and if a kid will say, well, you know, I went to church and they told me that God created everything and the teacher says, well, church is wrong, you know, we know it's all science that it can explain that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you have, if that's what the kid tells you, you have to tell the kid,
[SPEAKER_02]: There are scientists who know a lot about how everything is created, but they don't know all of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the parts that are missing is where God is definitely involved.
[SPEAKER_02]: And those are not just little things.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're huge, like the origin of life, the origin of the universe, the nature of humanity.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are not little tiny things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking as you were sharing,
[SPEAKER_00]: At the beginning of the Bible tells us who created it, God created it, and in Revelation there's this scene around the throne of God where I like how the King James says it.
[SPEAKER_00]: For that was created all things, and for thy pleasure they were created, and so okay, the beginning we have the who created it, in Revelation we have the why,
[SPEAKER_00]: It was created.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was created for God's pleasure, including you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's one of the neat things to tell a child.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, new were created by God for God's pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, science, when it's all said and done, science cannot tell us who did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it cannot tell us why, but it's a fun exploration of how like all of the different howls of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's, you know, scientists best guess along the way, because like the science is, you know, quantum physics, you know, 200 years ago, you try to tell anybody about quantum physics, they would think you're a source.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even now, like you explained it to me, it doesn't, it's like Harry Potter makes more sense than quantum physics.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, I don't worry about who.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know the why and the exploration of science might at first toe in the water shake somebody's faith in God but in truth it should draw like it did with you an atheist from a communist background draws you into the wonder and all.
[SPEAKER_00]: of somebody who can design something far beyond anything that we could possibly imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think, yeah, I thank you for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really exciting for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun to, as I have three teenagers in public schools right now, to be able to equip them for the conversations that they have.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, there's science should not scare and, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: science should bring us into on wonder of God and if there's something that they say that directly contradicts our faith, you don't have to be afraid of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just be like, just wait, the science will change, you know, because because when it's all said and done truth is truth, God made you, he made you for his pleasure, and hopefully when we get up to heaven, we get big brains and then have a really cool science lesson from God of how he did it also.
[SPEAKER_02]: that's definitely what I'm looking forward to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll list a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you so much beyond evolution can be found on Amazon and every other place that books are sold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And do you have a website or anything that you would point people to?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it's quite easy, it's just my name, CyGardSY, G-A-R-T.
[SPEAKER_02]: S-Y-G-A-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T, E-R-T,
[SPEAKER_00]: As always, I want to thank you so much for listening to Let's Parental Purpose this week for sharing it with friends and for subscribing, like, buttoning, and all of the things that people do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's Parental Purpose is a ministry of the 1-2-7 project.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to be a part of producing this podcast and then more than that, taking care of the orphan and at-risk around the world, you can do so by going to Let's ParentalPurpose.com-support.
[SPEAKER_00]: or clicking the give button at the bottom of my things for Thursday email that I send out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can be a part of transforming not just our families, but the other most part of the world with the gospel of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I want to thank you for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to remind you that parenting is a marathon, not a sprint, we'll talk to you soon.
[UNKNOWN]: Thanks for watching!