 What has evolution actually proven? It seems we have two options. Nothing created everything or something created everything. Noted evolutionist Hubert Jaqui stated, the belief that life arose spontaneously from non-living matter is simply a matter of faith. Discover some powerful tools when defending creation with skeptics. Coming up on today's edition of Origins, the Big Picture with J. Seegert. Origins, I'm Ray Hypel. 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, J. Seegert, 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 is also the president of Logos Research Associates. J has been speaking on the authority of Scripture for over 38 years. Welcome to the program, J. It's great to be on the show. Great to have you back. We are looking at sticking with the Big Picture today. I'm really interested. What is this topic going to lead us? Well, this should be very helpful to everyone watching, whether they're a seasoned apologist or someone who just wants to get better at defending their faith. It helps them not to get caught in the details of things, but sticking with the Big Picture in a simple analogy that I use is, when you're fishing, you don't want to get caught in the weeds. It's not a good thing. And often that can happen when we have discussions with skeptics or atheists. We kind of get caught in the weeds, so to speak. So when this is related to the whole creation-evolution controversy, we also don't want to get down into those weeds in some of the details that aren't quite as important as the Big Picture, so we'll get started with that. I can see where this would be very helpful for folks as well. Yeah, we'll get started. Yeah, let's go ahead. So related to the whole creation-evolution controversy, getting caught in the weeds might look like this. The evolutionists will say, well, evolution has been proven because bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. So all creationists know a response to this, but a typical Christian isn't quite sure what's happening here, other than they know that sometimes bacteria change and they become resistant to the antibiotics. But this gets kind of technical, and a typical Christian isn't going to know exactly what to say. So we kind of went down into the weeds here, and how can you possibly respond when you don't really even understand the details of this argument? So an analogy that I like to use that everyone can relate to is you've got a used car lot, and you're looking at a used car and the salesman comes out and he says, can I help you? I said, yeah, I'm looking at this car here. I'm interested in it and he goes, let me show you something. Takes it around to the passenger side, opens the door, flips open the glove compartment, says, bend down. Look in the back there. See where that bolt is? It's holding it in place? Yeah, kind of. Well, that is the most precisely manufactured bolt on the planet. You won't find a better bolt anywhere else on earth. You're like, well, I can kind of see it. I guess I'd have to take your word for it, but I have a few other questions for you that maybe you can answer first. It's like what? Well, before you got out here, I was walking around the car and I noticed it didn't have any wheels. And then I sat inside and I don't want to complain, but every car I've had in the past had a steering wheel, but this one just has this column sticking out. And then I popped the hood and I noticed there's no engine. But if you can show me how these things will not be an issue for me, I'll still be able to drive the car, no problem, then you can tell me more about the bolt in the glove compartment. But if you can't answer these questions, honestly, I'm not interested in knowing about that bolt. You're sticking with the big picture. Everybody relates to this. This is what they would do naturally. So this is kind of what we need to do when talking to some of our creation and evolution, stick to the big picture. Well, what's the big picture? It has to do with the origin of a number of things, starting out with the origin of stuff, matter and energy. It's a lot of matter, energy in the universe. Where did it come from? How did dead chemicals form a living cell? How did we get pink and blue, male and female? We'll get to that. The origin of information itself and then the origin of consciousness. So we're actually going to go through each one of these kind of quick showing how you can stick to the big picture when talking to someone, even when they want to get you down into the weeds. So starting out looking at the origin of stuff, the matter and energy in the universe, kind of have two options. Either nothing created everything or something created everything. Now, we know there's another option. The universe has always existed. Most secular scientists don't even buy into that. So with the time we have, we're going to look at nothing created everything or something created everything. Stephen Hawking. He was arguably the world's leading theoretical physicist. Died a few years ago. But he had to answer this question because he was an atheist. How do you get something from nothing? This was his response. Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Now, most people don't want to debate the world's leading theoretical physicist. But let's forget about how smart he was for a second and just look at what he said. I'm going to reword this slightly. Because there is something, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Wait a minute. If you have something, you don't have nothing in what was it something he referred to. Well, it was the law of gravity. What is the law of gravity? It's not a physical thing. It can't take into the laboratory and weigh and paint and bend it. It's a description of how the universe operates. But you can't have a description of how the universe operates unless you have a universe to describe. But if you have a universe to describe, you're not creating it out of nothing. So here's an example of a statement from a truly brilliant scientist that didn't actually make any sense. And even other atheists called him out on that. Looking at this further, the idea that nothing created everything in our society, in our public school systems and state universities, we call that science. They teach that nothing really created everything and they call it science. If you say, well, I think something created everything, I'll just say, thank you for bringing that up. See, now that's a religious concept and you can't have that in the school system separation of church and state. Let's think about it further. Nothing created everything. That's never been observed. Science is all about observing things but we've never seen nothing create anything let alone an entire universe. It goes against the known laws of science, particularly the first law of thermodynamics. It says you can't get something out of nothing and it's completely illogical that nothing could do anything because nothing is nothing but nothing. Let's take a look at the other one. Something created everything. It's actually been observed. We've seen something create something else. We've all created things. It's consistent with the laws of science and it's completely logical that something could actually do something and create something. So the idea that nothing created everything, that's actually more like a religion, like a blind, unreasonable faith or something created everything, it's consistent with everything we know about science. What you're saying, Jay, is the top one really is there is no evidence for they're just believing this without a reason. The bottom one, there's evidence. We can see it. We can reproduce it. That's what we call science. This one's more scientifically based where this one is just more of that blind faith religion. The opposite of what is often claimed. Definitely. So then we move quickly along to life. We've had chemicals come together to form a living cell. You've covered this on your shows before. I give talks on it. We only have time for one question in a second. Stanley Miller put the experiment back together in the 1950s and we're not going to go through all these details because of time, but we will ask one question. What are the chances that somehow chemicals over millions or billions of years could come together to form a living cell? The number I'm going to give you is still one of the world's leading astronomers and mathematicians. He was an atheist for most of his life. He said that the chances that chemicals could form a living cell over even billions of years is just one chance in. Now before I tell you the number I have a question. It's very important. What's your cutoff? What does that mean? If you find out that the chances are less than one chance in some number you're going to conclude that that can't be an accident. There's no way. Well what's your number? If people don't come up with a number nothing I share would have any meaning. So for argument's sake let's say they come up with a number. If it's less than one chance in 10 million billion they're going to say that can't be an accident. What was Sir Frederick Hoyle's number? He said one chance in 10 rays to the 40,000th power that is a one with 40,000 zeros after it. What is number bigger than the number we came up with here? A little bit. It's 10 million billion times 10 million billion times 10 million billion times 10 million billion two and a half thousand times you have to dig your number multiply by itself to get to this number. Now at this point it's kind of impressive but it's so big you don't have a clue what it means. So let's use an analogy here. A Rubik's Cube. A Rubik's Cube has a lot of different combinations to it and only one is correct. It has 10 million trillion combinations. So if you are blindfolded and spinning it away randomly you have one chance in 10 million trillion of getting it right. No sane person says yeah I could do that. So let's compare solving this cube by accident to Sir Frederick Hoyle's number. It'd be like me blindfolding you giving you a cube you start spinning it randomly and you get that cube 2,105 times in a row getting it right every single time. There's no way that that's going to happen. Cause one evolutionist to say this the belief that life on earth a row spontaneously from nonliving matter is simply a matter of faith. Wait a minute scientists don't have faith they're in the laboratory proving things right? No he's admitting it is a faith and not only is it faith Next origin of pink and blue this one's an interesting one for many reasons there's a lot we could say we got to be brief here but talking about the origin of male and female quick brief history evolutionist say 3.8 billion years ago molecules and chemicals came together to form that first living cell and then that living cell copied itself by copying its DNA and passing it on now we have another single cell here the process went on for millions and millions maybe a few billion years it had to then switch to making a pink and a blue one a male and a female or each now is only going to pass on half of the genetic information to the offspring so you can ask the skeptic step me through that process because this is so complex you can't do it step by step all the components have to work the very first time or you don't have life that could reproduce itself this could not evolve one piece at a time by making random changes to the DNA this is a massive massive challenge for evolutionist skeptics to explain the origin of pink and blue I have a lot of questions but unfortunately we have to take a break right here stay with us we'll be back right after these messages 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 button then you'll find the best episodes of Origins in our playlist you can also visit our website at ctvn.org slash 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 and sharing a little bit about really common mistakes that Christians make when they are put on the spot to defend their faith I had a question Jay on this male and female that I've often thought about if we had a cell that could reproduce itself by itself why would it ever go to a system where now it needs something outside itself to reproduce it seems to me that that's less dependable, less effective and less power I mean if I could just make myself whatever I need food, money I'm not going to go to something like this where I need another person to provide half of the information much simpler to just copy yourself and the complexity gain is so tremendous again you can't step through that one piece at a time because it either has to all work right away or it's not going to work at all if it doesn't work it doesn't reproduce if it doesn't reproduce it can't be part of evolution it's a really complex process it's so complex the vast vast majority of scientists don't even touch the subject even talk and didn't want to really talk about it a small percentage admit yeah we're working on it and then a tiny tiny percentage claim that they have a solution but then when you read their writings you find out they're just describing the complexity of male-female reproduction they're not explaining its origin it would be like if I told you how did you become a billionaire you'd say wow that's fascinating how did you become a billionaire and I would say you know what I can buy anything I want I can pay my bills I can pay your bills and you'd say yeah you probably can but how did you become a billionaire I just told you I can buy anything I want I can pay your bills I'm not explaining how I became a billionaire I'm explaining the advantages of being one so they will explain the advantages of male and female reproduction how did it ever get there especially when we've been told over and over again that molecules to man evolution is always going to do what's more effective what's more advantageous to the organism it's always going to jettison those changes those random mutations that don't work as well and again this would be I mean we're just talking about how it works and how difficult that is we haven't even got into the idea well the females actually have to like each other and get along we have to bring emotion and personality to what we're talking about people just be a safe space for them or animals so yeah that's way beyond just okay how does this even work we're just scratching the surface and the next part of the big picture that we should stick to with these discussions is the origin of informational everyone uses information but we typically don't think about what information is so we're going to discuss this whole idea of like especially how would a skeptic or an atheist explain where all the information came from when you think about it a newspaper can hold a fair amount of information using paper and ink books can hold even more information again using paper and ink and then we have thumb drives made out of metal and a little bit of plastic they can hold even more information in each of these instances these physical materials do a great job of storing information but none of these cases did those materials create the information you can always trace the information back to an intelligent source every case then you switch over and you look at DNA DNA is also made out of physical stuff and it does an even better job of storing information typical human has about 100 trillion cells in their body and each one of those cells is more complex than the space shuttle you go into the nucleus where most of the DNA is you pull it out from a single cell it's about six feet long super thin to fit in the nucleus there but about six feet long so how much information is on that strand coming out of just one cell well we call that the human genome you can go and basically any cell in your body you know the nucleus take out the DNA and all the information is on it to make your entire body even though if it's a cell from the tip of your finger it knows not to make an eye or a spleen there but the information is there and we call that the human genome so how much information is that first book I wrote is about 300 pages the human genome is equivalent of 5,444 copies of my book and when I say copies I don't mean one book that same information copy I mean it would take 5,440 books of that size to record all the information we're seeing in just one tiny, tiny strand in each cell in our body if you were to take all of the DNA out of every cell in your body and line it up end to end you'd be dead so you don't want to do that but the point is if you did line all that up and you wanted to go for a walk from the beginning of your DNA to the end of your DNA and we can walk about three and a half miles per hour on average how long would it take us to walk to the end of our own DNA five minutes, hour and a half how about three million 706,339 years to get to the end of our own DNA our DNA would stretch from the Earth to the Sun which is 93 million miles but it wouldn't stretch that distance just once over 1,200 times and again all that's in our bodies right now now let's say you want to go that far you don't want to walk, that's too slow let's say you could go the speed of a rocket over 3,100 miles per hour that's the speed that Apollo astronauts went to the Moon I did another calculation this is almost as fast as my wife drives I have permission to say that she's actually a better driver than me but let's say we're going that fast how long would it take us you'd think what a half a second a thousandth of a second 4,180 years going the speed of a rocket to get to the end of our own DNA one of the things that I know in the technological world what we're trying to do is get smaller and smaller I mean I remember days and you probably do too where you would have a record player a record was like this big and then they got down to the 8 tracks and then the CDs and of course each one could hold more information and I remember playing cassettes and then when we went to the computer and the disks and the floppy disks and now like you showed that thumb drive and smaller, smaller, smaller I mean now we have these incredible computers that for some reason we call phones that just hold a ton of information but when we're talking about one DNA strand in one single cell we're talking about something so small that man could not even dream of making and yet has way more information than we could even possibly consider putting on some of the most advanced technologies that we have and yet we want to say that this happened by random chance random chance, as the particles banging together created DNA and DNA is capable of a pinhead amount of DNA it's equivalent to about 2 million 2 terabyte hard drives, 2 terabyte hard drives can hold a lot of information just a pinhead amount of our own DNA could hold 2 million of those things so it's absolutely phenomenal Sounds like God made a more effective system Kenny knows what he's doing Last topic we'll touch on very briefly is the origin of consciousness very simple to think through an evolutionist, an atheist has to explain how did particles that came out of the Big Bang produce some hydrogen, helium maybe a little bit of lithium these particles interacting how did these particles interact over time to all of a sudden become aware of their own existence and have opinions about other collections of particles so your collection of particles has an opinion on my collection of particles ask an atheist to explain that process of how they were just banging together and all of a sudden like hey we know we exist and we like this, we don't like that I was talking to the head of the Atheist Association in Southern California we were having a great conversation super smart guy really nice we had a blast for three and a half hours we were really enjoying it but at one point I told him with a smile on my face that he doesn't love his wife I said what are you talking about they're interacting particles don't love things they just interact so you can't love your wife now he kind of smiled but I showed him his own world view couldn't account for this and then he sat back he was oh no now you're talking about the conscious and I said yes I am and he said scientists have been debating that for years said you're right they have but all of their theories have to come back to particles interacting a certain way if there's no God so just the fact that they gave it a name is not an answer as to how these particles could become aware of other particles so the point we're talking about here again is stick with the big picture stay out of the weeds and what is that big picture well the big picture is asking the skeptic to explain briefly the origin of stuff the origin of life, pink and blue, information consciousness there are other topics too but you could start with those and this doesn't require the Christian to know a lot of technical details it's just you're asking questions making a lot of bold claims without anything solid to back it up this is really helpful and those five topics are self-evident topics you have to admit that there is information or we can't even talk they can't argue against us if there's no information and you know all the rest those are simple things those are things that everybody can see and know one more step, a little bit of practical advice that this should be useful to everyone two keys to effective engagement listening and asking questions and it sounds easy but it's a skill that I had to learn I was so eager to just to 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 I even started to say anything I think that does something on another level too as a minister we're supposed to care about people 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 to do what you just said to ask questions I have to really care about this person get to know this person isn't that part of 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 and so this is something that I think really ought to help people in defending their faith well Jay thanks a lot for being on the program my honor I want to thank you for joining us today let me remind you that in an increasingly pagan culture we put on the defensive as if their beliefs are obviously wrong don't make sense or no intelligent person in the world whatever belief such things and really because of the ignorant and infantile nature of those kinds of attacks I think we're often tempted to try and answer everything all at once and I think what we've looked at today is a better approach a better approach that really takes that person where he is and challenges him to stay with the big picture asking questions and allowing the objector therefore to really begin to see wow my objections don't make sense that's really not what's going on and that's because underneath all that we do when we're talking to someone is that there really is a God he really did make all things and that we really do know that we know there's a God we can't help but know that and so as we like to say in this program remember the bottom line remember what's true as you're talking to someone who says that they don't believe and what's true is the Bible is true and the proof of the Bible's truth it's all around you the author himself has written it into the creation and so you can use what God has made in order to show people that he really is there rather than trying to do everything well if you enjoy Origins and keep this creation television program on the air your support both prayerfully and financially will make a big impact and so consider how you can help us and let's work together to reveal how awesome our creator truly is and we'll see you next time thank you for watching this edition of Origins for a DVD of this series you can order online or send a $12 donation to cover shipping and handling this presentation was made possible by the faithful prayers and financial support of you our cornerstone family