 Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3 verses 15 and 16. How can we do a better job with apologetics? Is it possible to stop being just a fax machine? Let's discover some concepts that will better position you to always be ready with that answer. Coming up on today's edition of Origins Beyond the Facts with Jay Siegert. Origins, I'm Ray Hypal. It's an honor to be your host today. During this program, we showcase interesting guests who present evidence from science, along with other important facts validating the truth of creation and the accuracy of the Bible. Today's guest, Jay Siegert, is an author and international speaker and holds degrees in both physics and engineering technology. He currently serves as the managing director of the Starting Point Project, which defends the Christian worldview. And he is also the president of Logos Research Associates. Jay has been speaking on the authority of Scripture for over 38 years. Welcome to the program, Jay. Great to be on the show. We're going to be looking at beyond the facts. What could be beyond the facts? Well, I didn't think there was anything beyond that when I was younger, but there's a lot of information we can learn about defending the Christian worldview and has a lot to do with facts, but to really be an effective communicator, we need to learn to be able to go beyond that, in addition to to be able to get through to people and help them understand things better. And I usually say, don't be a facts machine. And what I really mean is don't be a facts machine, just spewing facts. Been there, done that. When I first started studying everything 38 years ago in college, I learned a lot of facts and couldn't wait to share them and in a sense spew them kindly on other people thinking it would change their minds and it really was not an effective approach. And so this show is going to be all about taking those facts but then going beyond that to have effective communication. And so we're not saying there's something beyond truth or there are facts beyond facts, but we're talking about how we present it in a way that actually would be more effective. Right, how we present it, so we'll get started with it. All right, let's get started. One of the reasons we can't just throw facts out there as to do with this, the facts don't speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted to really have any kind of meaning. For example, we might weigh a rock and find out it's 15 pounds. That's just a fact. What does that mean? Does that mean it's heavy? Does it mean it's light? You know, it needs to be interpreted to give it any kind of meaning. And the way you interpret facts is by using what you already believe, your worldview, your starting point, the shameless self-promotion or the starting point project, because it's all about our starting point. What are we using to interpret these facts? Very, very important. Our starting point is Christians. We believe that God exists and He's a Creator. And secondarily, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God. That's our starting point and we use that to define everything else. It's really about the ultimate authority of Scripture. So yes, facts are important, but we need that foundation to interpret these facts. And we don't want to use evidence to conclude that the Bible is true. Many Christians do that. I actually did that for many years starting out a long time ago. But when we do this, we're actually putting evidence in authority over the Bible saying it's because of these truths that we know the Bible is true. Well, we're giving them authority then over God's Word and that would mean theoretically maybe new evidence would show that the Bible is not the inspired Word of God or the same evidence being interpreted differently would show that the Bible is not the inspired Word of God. So we don't want to use this approach. We want to use the Bible to properly understand or interpret the evidence, including facts from biology, astronomy and geology as we're talking about creation and evolution. Another point beyond the facts, choose your words very carefully. This is important in many areas of life, but certainly defending the Christian worldview. Here's an example. Some Christians and creationists would say there are no transitional forms. Years ago, I actually would say something like this and I actually believe there aren't any transitional forms because I don't believe that Darwinian evolution is true, so you wouldn't have the transitions. But when we make a statement like this, the skeptic might jump all over it and say, well, we've got Archaeopteryx, Tigtalic, and maybe they'll have a few other examples. And anyone listening in would say, wow, he showed that Christian. He's uninformed, doesn't really know anything about evolution or science. So a better option would be to say, according to evolution, there should be an immense number of transitional forms, but all that exists is a handful of questionable examples. And that's true. The examples that bring up are very questionable and there are reasons why they don't really count, but we can say, fine, we'll give you those questionably, but we should be drowning in these things if evolution was true. That's a better way of approaching that. Another claim, mutations do not create new information. Again, this was something I said many years ago, but I find my approach a better option is to say, mutations do not provide the type and amount of information required by evolution, even if granted, multiplied millions and millions of years. This is a very, very important point. We'll go into just some details briefly. I'm on the board of directors of Logos Research Associates. It's probably the world's largest consortium of scientists who are six-day creationists. The founder of the group, Dr. John Sandford and Dr. John Baumgartner, along with two other scientists, wrote a paper called The Waiting Time Problem. And it was all focused on how long would we have to wait for mutations to create the amount and type of information required by evolution? Jumping to the end of the story, they calculated it would, even if you gave the evolutionist 3,000 times more the amount of time they want. They want 6 million years to go from an ape-like creature to a human. You give them 3,000 amount that time, 18 billion years. They could still only produce 0.00000 to 7% of what's needed. This is screaming. Even if you want to rely on mutations, it's not going to happen. And Jay, from that conclusion is drawing from the rate and what we actually see, how mutations happen, how often they happen. Yeah, their software program simulated what's actually going on in creatures when they reproduce real mutational rates and then they use that to ask the question, how long would it take to get what's required by evolution? So you're taking observable results that we can see right now and saying this is a fact and putting it in that context. Latest I heard there have been over 10,000 downloads of this publication. It was in a secular publication. There have been over 10,000 downloads. The number of people tried to refute it? Zero. Wow. Very powerful argument. Another tip beyond the facts. The topic of the age of the earth. It's a fascinating topic, but we need to be careful how we approach it. I caution people to not start with the age of the earth. Many, many Christians that I know and creationists, they jump right into it. It can be a can of worms and it's too difficult, especially for skeptics, let alone Christians to wrap their head around the concept that maybe the earth isn't billions of years old. There's a lot of powerful evidence for a young earth, but it's a tough topic to start with. If you start with that, you're probably not going to get beyond that and you'll never get to the gospel message. I say don't start with that. We're not really going to talk about flat earth. I'm going to make an important point related to this, but before we do that, a little bit of humor. I saw this. The only thing that flat earthers fear is fear itself. I thought that's clever. Even if I was a flat earther, I would have to admit this is a good humor. They say that we're all flat earthers if we don't believe in billions of years. We get connected with that concept, unfortunately. My point is when someone brings up the idea of flat earth, where is the focus? The focus is on the shape of the earth. Is it flat or is it spherical? When someone says young earth creationists or old earth creationists, where is the focus? The focus is on the age of the earth. Well, guess what? The age of the earth isn't really the thing that's that important. There isn't one age that's more spiritual than another. It's really connected to the concept of death. How did death get into this world? When did it get here? Your belief on this will drive what you believe about the age of the earth. And it has to do with the question that everyone needs to answer for themselves taking us back to the garden. We know for a fact there are many layers in the earth and these layers are filled with billions of fossil. It's just a fact. Atheists know that, Christians know that. We also know for a fact that fossils represent death, disease, pain and suffering. There were creatures that were living at one point, died and got buried. That's just a fact. So Jay, you're not talking about how long those layers take to lay down or what might have caused it. We're just saying, hey, we see layers and there's skeletons in those layers, fossils in those layers. Everybody can agree about that. That's just a fact. At that point no one disagrees. We're all in agreement on that. The question comes in then, how did this happen? How did we get those layers with billions of dead things in it? If we conclude that God just used natural processes over billions of years to form those layers, natural history, that means those creatures were living and dying, eating each other. We have evidence of cancer and dinosaur bones. If that was God's process, then apparently when it was done, then God planted a garden in the top, put Adam and Eve in it and they're saying, oh, this is such a perfect world. Well, that would make God responsible for death, disease, pain and suffering because he did all that before Adam and Eve were even here. On the other hand, if we believe those layers were laid down catastrophically in a flood, that makes man responsible. Adam and Eve's sin got kicked out of the garden, death and a curse into God's creation. Romans 5-12, it was by Adam's sin that brought death into the world. That makes a big difference. So the question is, is what we're seeing these layers with dead things in it? Is that just a snapshot of God's process of creation? Yeah, that's just how we did it over millions of years. Or is this a graphic picture of God's judgment on sin? Mankind's sin brought all that death and it required Jesus Christ to come and die on a cross. Very important question. Do you think of the statement that Scripture makes at the end of God's creation process and God saw all that he had made and it was very good? And that's after he made Adam and Eve, which if we're looking at that from that evolutionist viewpoint, then death is very good. Cancer is very good. Suffering is very good. I think that's a significant point. We'll have to stop right there, Jay, and be back after these messages. Stay with us. We hope you're enjoying Origins TV. It all started at Cornerstone Television in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We've been producing new episodes for over 37 years now. We praise God for the success of the program and are excited to introduce you to Origins and to us. If you're interested in watching more episodes of Origins, you can find them on our YouTube page. Simply go to YouTube and search Cornerstone Television Network. Click the Like and Subscribe buttons, then you'll find the best episodes of Origins in our playlist. You can also visit our website at ctvn.org-origins. One more way you can stay connected with us is to subscribe to our free Monthly Hope Today newsletter, which you can do from our website. And if you have any questions, call us here at Cornerstone Television at 888-665-4483. We'd love to connect with you. Thank you for watching. Welcome back to Origins. We're talking to Jay Siegert, who's been sharing about beyond the facts. Jay, why is it important that we go beyond the facts and really worry about how we present things? There's a lot of information we can learn about defending the Christian worldview and has a lot to do with facts, but to really be an effective communicator, we need to learn to be able to go beyond it, in addition to to be able to get through to people and help them understand things better. So we're not saying there's something beyond truth or there are facts beyond facts, but we're talking about how we present it in a way that actually would be more effective. It's really the meaning behind the facts and how we convey them and in this particular topic that we've been discussing, in a sense the age of the earth, which we conveyed, it's really more about the idea of death. I presented this segment in different talks as I travel around the country and out of the country, but I've had a number of pastors come up to me afterwards and they say, hey, when you had that graphic up there of all the layers in the earth and everything, they said, I never thought about that before. And I really appreciate their transparency, but it's a little surprising that going through seminary and then leading a church, and these are actually great churches, they're not the extreme liberal churches, very solid churches, but I think typically what happens is in seminary they can be taught, there are different views on Genesis, smart people on both sides, it doesn't really matter, it's too divisive, too controversial. We're just here to focus on Jesus, so we can stay away from that. So if anyone approaches them saying, hey, we should have a creation seminar, they say, no, there are different views, it's too divisive, too controversial, it doesn't really matter, we're just here to focus on Jesus. So it doesn't really compel them to look into it deeper. When they see things like this, they realize this actually does matter, it's very significant. And that's because the Bible says that the creation is good. At the end of each day it's good, it's good, it's good, it's very good, and this question really gets at the connotations and the consequences of your position, because at seminary I can say it's exactly what you said, that the day, age view, the ascensionist view, the literal view, or whatever it is, all the views are sort of, well, everybody has their own view and let's just affirm creation in some sense, let's affirm Adam in some sense is possible right away. And I've come across the question or the separation of, well, you can have animal death, but that's not the same. And that animal death maybe was natural, you know, people eat animals, and that might have been the case before the fall. And I remember even having someone say, well, you know, when an elephant walks across the ground, he's going to kill ants even before the fall. And so, you know, this idea that, well, death is natural. How do you deal with that? A lot of different angles we could approach that with. The Bible uses the word nephish for the breath of life that God instilled into human beings and into animals, but it doesn't use that term for plants. And even insects aren't really described as being alive in the sense that we are, you know, self-aware. So whether or not an elephant stepped on an ant, it wouldn't really even address, you know, the death issue. But also God says in Genesis 1, 29 and 30 that God gave the green plants of the field as food for all of his creatures. They were vegetarian in the original creation. But in the fossil record, we have evidence of animals eating other animals. We have evidence of cancer and tumor and dinosaur bones. If that was part of God's original creation plan, when he restores everything, like in Revelation 22, apparently the new creation could have death, disease, pain, and suffering, cancer, tumors, and all that because if that's what his original one was and he's going to restore it, we should expect that or not be surprised by it. It's not really about what God could have done. He's all powerful. It's about what did he tell us he did. He tells us that he made it perfect. Adam, you've sinned that, brought a curse in and all of creation groans, not just mankind, but all of creation groans because of the curse, but the shed blood of Jesus Christ is the solution and the new creation that curse is going to be lifted. You know, there are scriptures that talk about God's concern about animals, even in laws that he gave to Israel, how they were not to be cruel to an animal in the way they yoked it or not to take the mother with the young and so forth, or even the idea that man himself is not given permission to eat the animals till after. Know his flood. Genesis chapter 9, 1-3, God says, hey, remember how he ate all the plants? He goes, now I give you everything. They could eat meat, they were allowed to eat meat after the flood, but prior to that, God's mandate was that they were all vegetarian. It is a more biblical position to say that death in any sense doesn't enter into creation until the fall because when God restores, he says, there will be no more suffering, you know, no more sorrow, no more pain, cancer, and no more death, and so how that couldn't extend to the animal kingdom seems difficult to me. One more step beyond the facts. A little bit of practical advice that this should be useful to everyone. I have two keys to effective engagement. There are a lot of keys, just two that I'm going to bring up now. Listening and asking questions. And it sounds easy, but it's a skill that I had to learn. I was so eager to just tell everyone what I knew. I didn't take time to listen to what they were saying and why they believed it. My wife has helped me with this quite a bit to actually listen to the skeptic first and then ask follow-up questions about what they believe before he even started and I think that does something on another level too as a minister. We're supposed to care about people and if I'm just going to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, throw my answers at you and then move on. The person knows I don't care about them. I don't care about what they think. I just have this inner need to throw everything I know at them and then I move on to the next thing and really it's all about me at that point. Whereas to do what you just said to ask questions, I have to really care about this person, get to know this person and understand what we should be doing when we're talking to unbelievers is loving our neighbors. We shouldn't just have an agenda to win an argument. We should be caring about them. This is a spiritual issue. They're spiritually blinded. We need to care for them and eventually get as quickly as we can to that gospel message. The scenario I'm going to take you through is a typical scenario of a conversation a Christian might have with the skeptic. We'll go through it and then we'll also revisit it but a lot of people might relate to this. Evolution is a fact and the Bible is just mythology. Christian typically would say, well I don't believe that. I think creation is true and the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Skeptics is fine, prove it. Give me one fact, just one fact that proves creation is true or that the Bible is truly from God. Well I can't really prove it but that's what I believe. Just as I suspected, well you can have your faith but I live in the real world and I'm sticking with science. It's pretty accurate, at least from what I've seen. That's what happens. So the Christian is humiliated they're embarrassed or thinking I don't ever want that to happen again. I'm going to do whatever it takes to avoid that scenario. Well, let's try this again. We're going to go through this conversation that skeptics are going to make the same claims they made before but this time we're going to change how the Christian responds and all the Christian is going to do is ask follow-up questions which anyone can do. It doesn't require you to have a degree in physics or biology, Greek and Hebrew. You listen and you ask questions. So skeptics making the same claim. Evolution is a fact and the Bible is just mythology. Christian, what do you mean by evolution? They use the word evolution showing you heard that you're asking for clarification. What do you mean by that? Well that life arose from chemicals billions of years ago and slowly evolved into every life form we see today. How do you know evolution is a fact? They mentioned it was a fact you're asking follow-up question. Well all the scientists believe it. How do you know that all the scientists believe it? Well all real scientists believe it. Which is even an admission I think most people would admit that there are scientists who don't believe in evolution but even that point shows that what they said these sweeping assertions and I think that's what you're showing that really the objector is guilty of a lot of fallacies that they're not really seeing what things we can do by doing this is helping them to see what you're saying really isn't true without even considering the end of the arguments here. You're making some mistakes. It's called elephant hurling when they say well all the scientists believe it it's backed up by evidence from every area so they said all the real scientists believe it so then you ask how do you define a real scientist? Anyone who believes in evolution well isn't that circular reasoning which is it is and you can keep moving. How do you know that God exists or the Bible says so? How do you know that the Bible says so because God exists so it's neat to throw back a circular reasoning charge because they are doing it. Yes and then they'll say well you believe that God created everything magically out of nothing in six days and made Adam an even some mystical garden that's really believable. This is where you say actually I haven't said anything about what I believe you however have made some very serious claims so that's a really important step there. The person is trying to shift the pressure throw all these assertions that the person has never made I haven't said anything. And then suddenly sometimes I think as a Christian we make the mistake of getting back on our heels and we try to explain ourselves where they really haven't answered any of the questions that we've asked them. Very important. So you say so why do you believe the Bible is just mythology that was the second thing they said because it's full of errors and contradictions there will be some examples. Well there are tons of them. I don't really need tons of examples just one or two would be a good start. Well I can't think of any right now. Could you tell me the general storyline of the Bible from beginning to end just one minute over you? It's been a while since I looked at it. Tell me if you can't think of any actual errors or contradictions and you don't even know what the Bible is all about why do you have such a strong opinion against it? You're not simply repeating what you've heard from someone else as opposed to your own well thought out research and you want to do this very gracious thing kindly. You don't want to be sarcastic but you want to get them to realize they're making a lot of bold claims with virtually nothing to back it up. And it's hard because we are I mean a lot of times we do get animosity condescension mocking even in the questions and you really have to like I mean I think a big part of this right to not only love that person but to give a real answer with what's Paul say or Peter says with respect and fear. We want to give an answer but we want to give an answer that shows who we are as Christians that we do love our neighbors and even when they do evil to us we do good back to them. Jesus was full of grace and truth so we'll wrap up with this because this scenario was that they didn't really have answers. What if they do have answers? Well you qualify them. My wife has helped me with this as well and this is what it looks like. You ask them are these top reasons why you don't believe in whatever you're discussing? Existence of God, creation Jesus if they say no could we temporarily set these aside and you tell me what your top reasons are. They say yes. If you were to find out that these are invalid reasons would you be willing to hear more about that too because if they say no then why waste my time? Then they're not being serious but if they say yes you get your homework cut out for you and you need to go find them answers. So there's so much more than just viewing facts at people we really need to be more well rounded and if people don't see Christ in us nothing we say is going to matter. Here we're looking towards the goal. The goal is not just me winning an argument me showing what I know but me getting someone to really think about the eternal consequences of what they believe or don't believe and that's what we should be about as Christians. Jay, thanks for being on the program. My pleasure. We're out of time so hopefully you can be back with us again sometime. As Christians we affirm truth facts and reality. We do not believe all is relative or that there is no such thing as truth or that we couldn't know it even if there was. Reality exists. Truth is real. It's recognizable. In fact it's undeniable but those facts by themselves don't really say anything. When defending the Bible or the Christian faith we need to listen to the objector. We need to ask questions and see if we can't allow the truth that they already know by the common grace of God to be brought home to them by the saving grace of God and it just goes to show you that we do know in the end that the Bible is true and the proof it's all around you. We do believe in the origins. We sure could use your help to keep this creation television program on the air. It's by your support prayerfully and financially that we're able to make these programs and they are by the grace of God making a big impact and so let's work together to reveal how awesome our Creator really is and we'll see you next time on Origins. Thank you for watching this edition of Origins. For a DVD of this series buy or send a $12 donation to cover shipping and handling and write to Origins program number 2306 Cornerstone Network Wall, Pennsylvania 15148 This presentation was made possible by the faithful prayers and financial support of you, our Cornerstone family.