 Mars discovery. And so you could actually watch the announcement live. That was kind of new that everybody around the world could watch the NASA announcement live of this amazing discovery they've made on Mars. And these are the two most critical quotes about the discovery, at least in my opinion. They had two astronomers there who were part of the study and you know one Jennifer she said we found organic molecules and rocks from an ancient lake bed and her peer joined it and said keep in mind organic compounds are fundamental to our search for life. So that's how it was put out there and you know the problem is when you use terms like organic compounds that are fundamental for life late people think DNA RNA proteins or not that they're thinking amino acids the bioactive amino acids and nucleobases the ribose sugars they didn't find any of that and you know I've written an article about this is actually up on our my Facebook page I wrote it right after the discovery because people in the office says hey they announced this discovery you you got to get an article you got to get it out today well literally did get it out although my policy is I don't throw out an article until the peer-reviewed papers appear and those peer-reviewed papers didn't come out until Friday morning so I put my article up on Friday afternoon because I didn't want to just read the NASA announcement all the web noise is going on but actually see the peer reviewed articles and in the article that I released on Friday I give you links to the NASA announcement the video announcement that you can watch also gave you links to the two research papers that are the basis for this announcement but here's the problem for a lay audience late people think organics are things like DNA RNA and proteins or at least amino acids and nucleobases the scientific definition of an organic is a hydrocarbon any molecule it's got hydrogen in it and carbon in it we call that organic and the one that they got all excited about is they found methane well methane is CH4 it's one of the simplest hydrocarbon molecules that are out there now they said well why was all this buzz well it's because here on earth most of the methane that we have here on earth comes from a biological source that's because our planet is filled with methanogens say what are those those are bacteria that expel methane to the atmosphere in fact there's a lot of those bacteria inside our digestive tract and so we expel a lot of all animals expel methane I won't go any farther than that there were a lot of jokes about what was happening to a little green men on Mars a while ago but but and the other thing is people got the idea this is the first time that they had seen methane on Mars it's not we've been seeing methane on Mars while we I mean the rovers particularly the Curiosity rover they've been seeing it for four and a half years so this is not the first discovery of methane that was seen long time ago however what was brand new it's the first time they saw methane on Mars from a core drill into the crust of Mars and the thing that for Curiosity I'm going to show you some photos of what Curiosity's look like but for 18 months its drill device has been at a commission and you know one of the most amazing stories and you know a lot of you guys I work here at JPL hats off to you because Curiosity had a major repair issue and they were able to repair it from here now that's pretty remarkable when you think about it here's this drill device has been at a commission for 18 months and they were able to repair that device without actually going to Mars and trying to fix it they did it all from here and literally just weeks ago that drill got back in operation and so they had Curiosity go to a little place drill through the rock and pull a specimen out and they found methane in that which tells them there's underground methane and and of course I mean if that methane is there maybe life is responsible for the methane so that's kind of what they're thinking hey methanogens as where most of the methane here comes from earth now NASA in their announcement was conservative and saying we're not claiming this methane is a signature of life it's a possible signature of life but what got them excited is the for decades geophysicists have been aware there is an abiotic source of methane here on earth that abiotic source is a volcanoes so whenever there's a volcano a lot of them will admit a lot of methane and so that's been kind of textbook geophysics for the past several decades is there's two sources of methane in earth's atmosphere from life and then from volcanic activity but it is well known that Mars has been volcanically dormant for at least the last billion years and perhaps even the last three or three and a half billion years so it says this and can't come from volcanic activity it must come from life okay what is new and this has only been around for the last couple of years is geophysicists have found another abiotic source of methane here on earth and that is what's called a water gas rock mixture if you've got underground liquid water coming into contact with rock and pockets of gas that will make methane and until about a few weeks ago it was presumed that that process could only make a tiny amount of methane in the article I posted I give you a link to a research paper basically making the point we now know that here on earth the water rock gas mixture makes a lot of methane not just a tiny amount of methane but makes a lot of methane and makes it all the time whether or not there's volcanic activity going on well could this work on Mars I'll get to that but let me show you some pretty pictures first okay this is a looks a lot better my computer than up on the screen but this is a photo of Mars taken with the and it's from earth so that's that's one of the highest resolution photographs of a Mars from earth this is from space and this is the old Cirrus mission and so that's a fairly high resolution and yet the color is distorted it really does look red not that color and now you can see the polar caps and how small the polar caps are I mean it's basically spacecraft that have gone to Mars that have revealed to us that the polar ice caps on Mars are very very thin and it is such we now realize why they're so thin because the rotation axis of Mars flips over like this by about 60 degrees on time scales of tens of millions of years and what happens is when it flips over like that that ice at the pole now becomes exposed to warmer temperatures because it's closer to the new equator and what that does it melts away the polar cap and I shouldn't use the word melt because of Mars the melting point of water is identical to the boiling point so let me be ever been up in the mountains you realize that when you boil water up in the mountains it boils like at 160 degrees not 212 that's because you've got a thinner atmosphere while the Martian atmosphere is so thin that the boiling point of water is 32 degrees Fahrenheit the same temperature as a freezing point which is when you get ice and you expose it to heat the ice basically evaporates pardon me well it is possible if you got a liquid drop of water on Mars it'll stay liquid for a maximum of two seconds so yeah yeah so yeah it's right on 32 so it's kind of like dry ice you don't see dry ice in liquid form that's because the boiling point and the freezing point are the same well that explains why you don't have liquid water on the surface of Mars okay anyway these are actually some selfies believe it or not they set up curiosity to be able to take selfies so these are not artistic renditions they're actual photographs and so this is looking back from curiosity across the Martian landscape and once again the true color is kind of a reddish orange now what you see there but you can see the tracks that were made and this is looking forward on the surface of Mars and as you can see it's all rock and dust there really is nothing else but here's something that was quite exciting I don't know why NASA didn't make a big deal about this because what you see here is a discovery by curiosity a meteorite that's not Martian mature that little rock you see there that's actually something that came from outer space and they know that because how different its composition is it's basically one of those nickel iron cobalt meteorites and incidentally there's a lot of earth meteorites on Mars haven't found any yet but they keep looking they're going to find them after all we've got 22 Martian meteorites here on earth and you're going to have a whole lot more earth meteorites on the surface of Mars this shows a curiosity climbing something called the Vera Rubin mound or mountain and Vera Rubin is a famous astronomer and so here it is on top and this one actually is not done on Mars but done in a lab here on earth basically this is a shot showing what curiosity did in order to get the drill it basically went up to a rock slope like this and over towards the right you can see the drilling device and it went into the rock and drilled several inches into the rock pull of the sample and they found methane there now as I mentioned our water in a frozen form on the surface of Mars won't melt it evaporates and if it's at the pole it's cold enough that it won't evaporate however as I already mentioned the pole is not stable and when it tilts over the rotation axis tilts over it gets exposed to warm enough temperatures that the ice evaporates but that means you got a new pole and a new ice forms they where does that ice come from comets so comets keep replacing the polar ice caps that keep disappearing so it's kind of a cycle of ice cap disillusion and reformation thanks to comets coming on the moon and for what it's worth there's actually a tiny ice cap on a moon at the south pole of our moon there's an ice cap not very big it's basically inside a crater where the walls of the crater are so high that sunlight never reaches the crater floor and commentary delivery has caused a nice thick layer of ice to form there sufficiently thick that there's actually plans put up by a number of nations to actually have no not a hockey rink I can't imagine trying to play hockey with those 250 pound things on your back but that could be interesting but no the whole idea is that would be a great place to set up a colony on the moon because you can tap into the water and that that gives you water to drink you could break the water up and that would give you oxygen to breathe and the hydrogen would give you fuel that you could burn so even our moon as a pole and that's simply because of commentary delivery now as I wrote my article in this I think we already have really good evidence that this is not biotic methane and that's because this is an effective place for the water gas water gas rock reaction to work because we know that there's ice below the surface of our bars that's been discovered before and you have us below the surface and even when it's near the equator the rock layer above it is sufficient to keep it cold enough that it stays in frozen for now also this thing just drilled a little way into rock which means that you're probably at a place where occasionally the surface of the rock is warming up that it actually melts the water below and because it's not exposed to the atmosphere you actually get the frozen water going into liquid form albeit in very tiny amounts but that tiny little bit of water will work with the rock and the gas there to release methane I think what confirms this is there are two papers published in science about this discovery one paper was how they found the methane and his drill but the other one was basically looking at the atmospheric methane or the past four and a half years now keep in mind Mars has a much longer year than we have so four and a half years of our time is a little less than three years of Martian time but it's long enough that they were able to test whether or not there was a seasonal variation in the atmospheric methane and indeed there was more methane is released in Martian summer than the Martian winter which I think is strong evidence that the methane indeed is from a water rock gas mixture below the surface of Mars because you would expect the surface to be warmer which means you're going to get more of the ice below melting the liquid form which is going to cause more methane to react whereas in the wintertime you're going to have a higher probability that the surface will be so cold that the frozen water below the surface will remain frozen not much of it is going to go in the liquid form and they can actually see a nice sinusoidal signal of the car of methane release going up and then going down completely in sync with the summer winter cycle of Mars so and incidentally we already know you can't have life on Mars because of the known conditions of Mars Mars has a very thin atmosphere and no magnetic field what does that mean you're going to get ultraviolet radiation at short wavelengths coming in from the Sun and bathing the surface of Mars although some NASA astronomers pointed out well that would certainly rule out life on the surface but what about life a few inches below well even a few inches below you're going to get significant radiation exposure because also the cosmic rays are going to be coming in unimpeded and just like the origin of life from a naturalistic perspective is not possible on earth it's even less likely on Mars because of something known as the oxygen ultraviolet paradox if you got oxygen in the environment that oxygen stops pre-botic chemistry it stops the formation of the amino acids in the nuclear bases and the sugars that you need and it stops the assembly of amino acids into proteins but if you don't have any oxygen there's nothing to stop the ultraviolet radiation coming in from the Sun and ultraviolet radiation is just as catastrophic to origin of life biochemistry as the ultraviolet radiation is which is why they call this the oxygen ultraviolet paradox if you got oxygen that stops pre-botic chemistry if you don't have oxygen that stops pre-botic chemistry because the only way to block out the ultraviolet radiation is with an ozone shield and the only way you can get an ozone shield is if you got oxygen and so that's why in all these laboratory experiments where they're trying to you know use a flask experiment to assemble amino acids they make sure no ultraviolet radiation and no oxygen which is why we've written on our book on the origin of life the URI Miller experiments are irrelevant to the origin of life because we know those conditions are not possible on earth and they're certainly not possible on Mars either however I closed my article out by restating a prediction I made in the 1980s it was interesting when I put this up on my Facebook page a number of people said yeah actually remember you're saying that in the 1980s so I actually got some people that can document that I really did say that back in the 1980s and what I said back in the 1980s was that of NASA or other space agencies look hard enough for the remains of life on Mars they will find those remains for the simple reason that there's a calculated 200 kilograms of earth soil on every 100 square kilometers of the Martian surface just like that little meteorite I showed you every time as sufficiently large meteoroid strikes the earth it causes earth soil to be exported throughout the solar system and that earth soil falls on all the different planets and moons of our solar system and because earth has been so prolific with life and because it's been bombarded for such a long period of time literally throughout the entire history of life here in planet earth of 3.8 billion years we know there's going to be 200 kilograms of earth material in every one of her square kilometers and when I put my Facebook article there is 20 quadrillion microbes in every ton of earth soil take my permit take those 200 kilograms 200 kilograms of earth soil contains 20 quadrillion microbes now because of the trajectory between here and Mars and the exposure to radiation from cosmic rays and sun during that trajectory I believe we're talking the remains of earth life there's actually a very very very tiny possibility that an earth microbe could get to Mars and still remain viable there's a couple of bacteria that exist on the face of the earth that can withstand extreme radiation and desiccation and vacuum conditions yes well that's one reason they got excited because we do know just like here on earth methane in the atmosphere doesn't stick around Mars has way too low of a gravitational pull to keep methane and sunlight will break the methane down and so it escapes water space just like it does here on earth that explains why for example Jupiter has so much methane or why Pluto has so much methane Pluto even though it's small it's got lots of methane because it's so incredibly cold so cold that the methane remains in frozen form Jupiter keeps a lot of methane because of the gravity is so strong but both earth and Mars are too warm but a gravitational pull too small to hang on to methane incidentally make the earth just slightly more massive we would keep methane but our mass is just low enough that that doesn't happen and so we have people worried about methane as a greenhouse gas hey unlike carbon dioxide you wait long enough it escapes water space and so it gets away so that's why they're saying this methane has to come from a current source and that's why I'm making the point I think it says water gas rock reaction that's responsible for the release of methane but yeah they're NASA scientists say well maybe there's methanogens there that are pumping out the methane and so they're gearing up to spend more of your tax dollars to look for that however I closed my article off by basically making a point that NASA looks hard enough they will find the remains of life on Mars but what they're gonna find is the remains of Earth life it's not going to be Martian life it'll be the remains of Earth life but also close the article off by saying if they want to find the remains of Earth life on an extraterrestrial body it's far cheaper and easier to find it on the moon than it is to find it on Mars because the moon's got a hundred times as much life on Mars and we find life on Mars is either way it's an exciting discovery and I wound up closing my article off by saying you know what we Christians can easily get the reputation of being naysayers you know look at how you know they keep spending our money and they keep coming up with nothing they're not coming up with nothing I think the biggest in fact I'm when I spoke at NASA Houston in fact it's when I spoke at JPL I made the same comment that in terms of getting the public behind interplanetary space exploration I think we'd be smarter really promoting the geophysical benefits of this exploration so the fact that curiosity can drill into the rocks and I'd be excited about sending a mission to Mars where they can do a deep drill is that will tell you a lot about the geochemical physical history of the interior of Mars that's an exciting thing to explore moreover I think that we can learn more about Venus and Mars and the moon through core drills that's going to tell us a lot about our planet Earth and what's special about the interior geophysics of the earth I think we're going to discover a lot of design evidence that makes our planet habitable for humans thanks to these explorations of Mars and Venus and the moon and it's going to take core drills to be able to pull it off so I think this is step one to that whole discovery so it says you know forget about the life issue let's really focus on finding out about the amazing geophysics of the different planets and moons of our solar system and what's so special about a planet Earth and frankly I think the US taxpayer could get really excited about that and so because I know NASA is worried how much longer can they count on the generosity of the US taxpayer and my advice when I get to speak there say well why don't you advertise things where you're likely to be highly successful I mean if you never find life on Mars eventually the taxpayer is going to you know give up on you but if you promote something where he can actually deliver I think you can get somewhere we've got a JPL engineer here yeah what comment for you exactly that yeah inside mission is on it all right geophysical a mission where they are drilling deep and they're going to be detecting Earth with our Mars quakes with just one seismometer they'll be able to determine where they're from so yeah that's good news and you know thanks to all you guys here at JPL I think you're the ones that are really focused in trying to get the science out of these missions so I always have a difficult time when I have NASA Houston because they want to send people to these places it's like hey once you do that Mars or farther away than Mars it's becomes exponentially cheaper to send machines and to send people and you don't kill anybody when you send machines it might take a little longer because you know obviously humans are more adaptable and can do things on the fly but hey if you discover that you made a mistake on a presupposition with one mission you can always send another one so and that's kind of what JPL does they they send these spacecraft out and based on what they discovered they designed ones that are appropriate for the discoveries and yeah it takes a little bit longer but I think you get more secure results and boy does it really save you a lot of money I mean when I spoke at NASA Houston it says you know if you guys actually work out the money in terms of trying to get a human to Mars and back without killing them you could easily send 10,000 unmanned missions to Mars for less money and well a human mission actually learn more about the science of Mars than 10,000 unmanned missions and I think curiosity basically is a no-brainer look what it's been able to achieve and hey it was only a billion dollars I don't know 1.1 billion I forget the exact number but yeah a little bit more okay but still yeah in the back well I would agree with that and I'd also say finding life on Mars of the moon basically confirms that God has put so much life on earth with such great diversity for such a long period of time it's simply inevitable that the remains of that earth life has been deposited on all the solar system bodies well that's true as well there's nothing in the Bible that says that God couldn't have created life elsewhere I mean that's a major theological debate that's going on and it's actually going on the hallways that reasons to believe because we got different people with different opinions and basically the theological debate splits down into two compartments one you read the Bible and even when you look at Psalm 104 God packing the earth with as much life as possible as diverse as possible as long as possible and look at all the life here on planet earth today 8 and a half million eukaryotic species exist on the earth it kind of gives you the idea that God really enjoys creating and that one theologian put it this way it looks like God is a compulsive creator and he says more over he made us humans and we humans are compulsive creators and we're declared to be created in the image of God and therefore they said that being the case God's not going to stop of one planet he's going to have created life all kinds of places but you know it's going to be by God's miraculous hand in fact one astrophysicist I talked to said I'm really excited about trying to find life on another planet because that mean God performed two sets of miracles not just one set of miracle and wouldn't that be great for the Christian faith if we could actually promote that message that's one theological camp the other theological camps is when you look at especially the New Testament Gospels notice how resistant Jesus was in a number of occasions to perform miracles where he basically refused to perform a miracle and notice when you especially look at the Gospel of John it seems like God constrains his miraculous interventions to just that which fulfills the spiritual purpose and so those theologians are basically saying does God need to do it on another planet to fulfill his stated spiritual purpose for creating and their answer is I don't think so which case they argue this is the only place that God has created physical life in the universe on the other hand they would argue the remains of that earth life will be on the solar system bodies but not elsewhere while meteors can take earth life from the earth and deposit on the different solar system bodies it's not going to be able to take it all the way out to say ten night years away from us with that kind of travel distance the earth life will be so broken down as to be unrecognizable by any current technology and so now what theologians point out is there really aren't any biblical constraints that are explicit the constraints you have is whether or not you think God conserves his miracles to fulfill his stated spiritual purpose or whether he so enjoys creating he's just going to create an abundance everywhere throughout the universe but there's no explicit biblical constraint in either one the only biblical constraint I'm aware of is what you see in Hebrews 9 and 10 maybe a little yeah 9 and 10 basically making the point that the creator of the universe came to one planet died one time one place for all and so a lot of theologians make the point that seems to imply that we humans are the only life form in the universe that is spiritual and in need of redemption but they said that doesn't rule out God making dolphins on another planet they don't need redemption so they're not spiritual and some the elite theologians even argue maybe it's possible that Christ's death on the cross was sufficient not only to redeem all humanity is so desires maybe it extends beyond our planet and so they've been arguing maybe that they had the broadcast capability to see the death of Christ on the cross through some kind of technology but now we're getting kind of speculative so but here's the whole point many years ago I commissioned an article on this very question and I had three astronomers combined to write the article and the three of us ahead of time had different opinions and perspectives on this and so you got to see three Christian astronomers come up with you know here are the varieties of interpretation that are available to the Christian but we concluded the article by saying if you're an atheist someone who believes that God was not responsible for life on earth or anywhere in universe you've only got one option your only option is the origin of life is such an easy step scientifically that it's everywhere and we're going to find life everywhere so the Christians got options the non-theist does not have options yes sure okay all my comments are relative to physical life that's constrained to the universe the Bible is clear that God has made at least one other species of intelligent life he's made human beings he's also made angels but the angels are different they're not constrained by the physics of this universe they can live beyond the spacetime dimensions of the universe what's distinct about them they can come into a realm and leave our realm we can't we can't go into their realm we're constrained to just the physical universe so I'm talking about you know did God create life elsewhere in the universe I'm purposely limiting it to physical life that's constrained by the physics of the universe like we are but yeah there's these angels and it talks about these angels being able to come into the air it's basically making a point that they can come into our dimensional realm and so I think we need to look at that term air is much more broadly than just the atmosphere what's interesting about angels they can come into a realm and they can briefly manifest themselves in any physical form they want so they can come as your dead grandfather they can come as a UFO they can come as a leprechaun they can come as an animal they can take whatever physical form they want but it's always temporary and interesting you'll see in the pages of the Bible that sometimes angels come into our realm and they're actually able to participate in physical activity so for example we got Abraham feeding food to angels they're able to eat food but they don't need to eat food to maintain their physical sustenance incidentally I think that's the way it's going to be for us the new creation you'll be able to eat but you don't have to eat eating will be an option whereas right now eating is not an option we have to eat and likewise yeah I'm whether it's going to impact your physically or not probably not because I definitely doesn't have any impact on the angels same thing goes about the oxygen we need oxygen to breathe the angels are okay breathing that oxygen but they don't need it so because they have powers beyond ours are there calories in heaven well you can enjoy food but you don't need the food and there's not enough scripture in the Bible it tells us what happens to that food that we eat at the marriage feast of the land I know people are asking me questions what that what is that I just a track like I says that's not revealed in scripture I don't know so but it will be an option and the whole point is there's something that happens when spiritual beings get together and they eat and drink together notice how there's kind of a fellowship union that takes place when we do that and we're basically told that's not going to go away we enter in the new creation we're going to have these times of celebration and intimate fellowship as we eat and drink together there's a question here yes well that could be to I mean I think we need to look at that term very broadly how broadly I don't know I mean again you're trying to base an entire theological you know book on one word so hard to do but we do we know from experiences that we've had with the angels and with demons the kinds of powers they have what they can do and incidentally we're told in scripture that these angelic interactions that we have here are a lot more common than we think as it says in Hebrews 13 to many of you have entertained angels unawares I mean there's all kinds of stories where people are really deep trouble and suddenly there's man or woman shows up help them out and two minutes later they're gone they just disappeared so but we think it's just some you know good Samaritan that came along with a good Samaritan was an angelic being that happens and we see examples that in the book of Acts where we see the apostles being rescued by angels yes everybody derails me so don't worry well notice what we see in the Gospels Jesus does two things he demonstrates through his miracles that he's someone much greater than any of the Old Testament prophets and his Old Testament prophets did amazing things including raising people from the dead but Jesus actually raised somebody from the dead had been dead for four days he also performed miracles that were far greater than anything that the demons could perform so he basically was putting on public display I am one who is more powerful than any of these angels that you fear because so much of the world worships demons and you know I've been to places like that in the world and people are kind of in the grip thing you know what can we do with this of power that were under the influence of well that's often when you see and you see this in the book of Acts as well where the demons are active God's angels come through and God comes through to show hey there's someone here that is greater than the things that you fear don't fear the demons God is more powerful his angels are more powerful than the demons after all only one third of the angels rebelled so the demons are out number two to one just based on the angels and then you got God coming in as an ally so but often you'll see this in missionary annals that when they go to places of the world where the people are under powerful demonic oppression God comes through and basically shows the people there is one more powerful and therefore you don't need to fear this as often how people come to faith in Christ people say well why doesn't that happen here the demons aren't as active as here and therefore people aren't under that kind of influence you know God's got other ways of showing you hey this is stuff that's true basically people need two things they need to see that God is powerful they need to see that God is true and so where it's not a power issue truth now becomes the big factor that you need to display but I've been in places of the world where the demonic activity is very strong but the book I got coming out September tells the story of what I was speaking in the Soviet Union when it's still being run by the communists and how one audience I addressed philosophers and physicists at least 25% of those in the audience were demon possessed and I could tell because here's one sign of a demon they will scream and yell and try to stop you from speaking but in their screaming and yelling they're accusing Jesus of committing vile moral crimes now I've heard people take the Lord's name in vain who are not demon possessed I mean just go down of the the ports you'll listen to people throwing up the Lord's name in vain a lot or I've heard this with people who are picking up trash anyway that's another issue but notice their restraint they don't accuse Jesus of being a serial homosexual rapist and murderer they don't do that but demon possessed people do they accuse Jesus of horrible moral crimes and they do it repeatedly and you know the first time I spoke at this one place in Russia this the demons through these humans there they're deemed as s we're yelling and screaming so loudly and accusing us Christians and Jesus of these horrible moral crimes that I couldn't give my message I basically went straight to Q&A but the next time I spoke to them I took a Christian with me and I said I want you at the back and I want you to pray throughout the whole time that the demons be quiet and you know what happened that's exactly what happened not a peep out of all those demon possessed folks the rest of the audience realize there's a greater power here and I had their attention and a lot of them came to Christ so again it doesn't happen that frequently here but that was a time in the Soviet Union when the Soviet government was trying to get a military edge on America by funding occult physics you know that went into the different universities they actually had a department of all called physics incidentally I knew a physicist at Cal Tech who's doing occult physics research so it's not just Russia happens here as well but it's a lot lot nowhere near the degree that it was and incidentally it's nowhere near in Russia today but it was back in the 1980s it's different in the back then come to you okay you all hear that question that's a loaded one what's the difference between the brain the mind and virtual reality okay big debate today if you go to my office it reasons to believe you'll see I got 50 books basically on that question almost all of them written by people don't believe in God and what they're trying to do is figure out what makes the human brain or human mind work but they're trying to come up an answer based simply on known physics and chemistry and what's interesting about these books all of them end the book by saying we haven't got a clue they come up with suggestions I mean probably the most sophisticated ones to say well maybe human consciousness is buried in the quantum microtubules that are inside these neurons but they end the book by saying well that can't work either so and the real debate is are we purely physical beings or we physical and spiritual that was actually part of the debate I had with Peter Atkins because he was promoting the idea we humans are a hundred percent physical I said well the Christian position is different he says yeah I know it's different that we are doulits we have a physical nature and we have a spiritual nature hence the spiritual nature that explains the mind I mean if you take away the spirit of a man the brain basically doesn't do anything if you want evidence for that look at a human being who has just died okay the brain is largely intact but it doesn't do anything there's nothing to control it the controller has left and because the controller is left all you got is this physical computer like machinery and it's kind of like your computer your computer doesn't do anything unless you get behind the computer and begin to use it or software well I should probably bring red pills to the class so that's that's some of you haven't even seen that movie so okay yeah we'll bring red pills and blue pills next time for all of you to choose okay but no virtual reality is just simply trying to simulate reality just through software and to point out your question it was the British physicist Roger Penrose said the interesting thing about the human mind it's not just hardware it's hardware and software and it's not just hardware and software there's a programmer and this is where you really come in with a dualistic nature of humanity it's the spirit within us the programs yes there actually is some software that's in the brain there but notice it's really our spirit that develops software to make the hardware work and the interesting thing is there is no more powerful computer we humans have built than what's actually inside your head they're still trying to come up with a computer that actually has a computational capability of one human brain so yeah John consciousness that's true I mean even committed atheists who study consciousness read admit that they can't yet come up with a physical explanation they think they might as they keep studying it but the whole point is they haven't come up with it yet and you know even the consciousness of animals is something is difficult to explain as the Bible tells us God made three different kinds of life life is purely physical life it's physical and soulless like the birds and mammals and one and only one species it's physical soulless and spiritual but yeah I mean our best non-theists even struggle trying to explain what goes on with birds and mammals I mean how do you explain emotions clearly we have a level of consciousness far beyond that of even the smartest non-human animal but even trying to explain that lower level consciousness of a parrot a dog or a cat has basically stymied the scientific community from a physical perspective and I think this might actually lead to some kind of revival in the scientific community what I'm seeing the scientific community is a growing recognition that we humans really are distinct and exceptional and the big breakthrough came in 2007 with a research paper that had the provocative title it got past the editors Darwin's mistake basically saying Darwin made a big mistake and thinking we humans are simply an extension of the animals on this planet says no all of our research tells us there's an enormous gulf between a human being and the smartest non-human animals they said the biggest gulf is symbolic capability the fact that we come up with alphabets we come up with number systems we come up with equations we communicate not just in a word or a sentence we communicate in paragraphs and books and you know this is what really enables us to be able to communicate and spread technology this is what distinguishes us when the Neanderthals for example Neanderthals have been your whole lot longer than we have but what happened to them their technology did not develop with humans our technology exploded they especially exploded once we got claim the stability yes well that's you mean you're raising a good point an excellent challenge the idea that consciousness is purely physical you'd expect identical twins to have almost identical unconscious behavior but they don't I mean that happens all the time with you know identical twins you can tell they're two very different people yeah the spirits are different yeah and so and it tells us in Psalms that it's God who bestows a spirit upon each one of us so our mothers we can thank them for our physical attributes but God's the one that gives us spirit yeah so I missed you go ahead yeah before Dick Anderson came here in the 1950s and early 1960s there was a lot of they're actually holding seances here in the church so yeah it was going on yeah yeah that's all true a lot of activity is going on the canyon and you know when this church basically left the liberal don't live congregational denomination and decide to go independent the first effort was to go up into the canyon where all this spiritual oppression existed and demonic activity and occult activity was going on within the first year they led a hundred adults to Christ and that was basically the beginning of the rebirth of this church yeah if you want to know the history of this church it was founded back in the 1880s very conservative Bible believing church that was a case for decades the church got built up to 500 adults and then it got to be taken over by liberal theologians and in its last days by Pete theologians that were deep into the occult the membership dropped from 500 down to 12 adults when it got down to 12 those 12 said I think there's something wrong with the church and so it was those 12 who went over to Lake Avenue because that was a growing congregational church and they said can you do a study in our church and tell us what we're doing wrong what was interesting Ray Orton who was a pastor at that time said we don't have to do a study we already know what's wrong at Sierra Madre congregational church well tell us you guys let the Bible out oh is that all it's going to take to turn things around bring back the Bible they said that would really help moreover why don't you interview this young man that just joined our pastoral staff and see if you'd be interested in having him do a renewal work here at the the church and Dick Anderson told me about that interview he had so here are these 12 people and he said I quickly discovered none of them are Christians but I asked them that they were interested in the Christian faith they asked me all kinds of questions he said during my interview as to whether or not they wanted to employ me I let all 12 of them to Christ incidentally some of those 12 were members of this class you know they've passed on since but yeah we have people here 40 years ago that were part of that original 12 and the literacy within a year the church was at over a hundred people and what I got involved here is running about 350 so and incidentally we hit a high watermark of 1200 adults and so now we're trying to rebuild it to get it back up to that yes extremely rare it does well you know I'm getting a little bit political here but I'll stick my neck out anyway well my home the reason why I'm not excited about gays and lesbians coming into public schools and promoting their lifestyle or transgenders coming into the schools and promoting their lifestyle children as they grow up inevitably struggle with gender identification I mean I could ask do a survey here when you were between the age of two and 15 did you ever go through a period of gender identity I mean I think that's common to everybody what bothers me is these groups are coming to public schools and taking advantage of that and basically persuading these young children that they were born this way hey the Bible tells us all of us struggle with sexual purity all of us struggle with our sexual identity this is normative to all human beings it's part of the sin nature that's within us and the Bible tells us we who are parents those in authority we need to be helping our children through these inevitable crises and not basically encouraging them to give in and incidentally I think you look at the history you can look at the Roman Empire or the Greek Empire when it reached a point where they no longer were concerned about sexual purity and the preservation of the family is defined by one man and one woman giving birth to children and raising children to replicate families when that happened those empires crumbled it actually reached a point in the Roman Empire where 40% of the male population was in the gay lifestyle and it basically collapsed the Roman Empire and the whole point is people think this is something that is neutral it's not well about one person in a billion is born with at least some female and male that's one in a billion what I'm hearing today is a 1% of the population is born transgender that 1% is a whole lot bigger than one in a billion and so my thing is yeah I believe that everyone who has issues with their gender identity if you simply in fact we actually invited someone to speak at our Amp Conference who came out of that was raised that way he actually had you know two two mothers and no dad and his advice was very good he says whenever someone who is bisexual homosexual lesbian transgender identifies you as a Christian says okay what do you think about my lifestyle because before you answer that question what does the Bible say about this before you answer this question say I want to hear your story every time you ask that question you'll get a story of pain incidentally I find that a good way when I taught the atheists okay tell me your story I mean I wish I had more time with Peter Atkins to really explore okay what happened to you during your Anglican upbringing because it's obvious there's some painful experience there and until you get people actually talk about that until you as a Christian can show some compassion for what they've been through then it's difficult incidentally what this gentleman was saying actually pastors of church it's filled with people who have come out of these you know bisexual homosexual and a lesbian backgrounds and he says it's crucial that we accept them as people who've been created by God people who are in need of healing and basically says isn't that true of every human being and isn't it true that every human being at some level struggles with maintaining sexual purity that's a struggle we all face and actually you'll see this in the book of Corinthians you know our pastor right now is taking us through first Corinthians he just finished chapter 4 we get into chapter 5 and 6 you're going to see Paul talking about some of the Corinthians who are now faithful followers of Christ in the church and was you say says many of you were homosexual many of you were lesbian but you came out of that you were healed from that and so basically the church is a hospital to help people get healed but you can't heal them until you first find out their story but the problem is a lot of these people think you're a Christian you're going to condemn me you're going to tell me I'm a terrible sinner no first tell me your story I want to hear your story tell me about the pain that you've been through and I will say this is a generalization every form of sexual impurity is symptomatic of some experience in their background of failed intimacy all forms of sexual immorality stem from failed intimacy and so when you ask people their story tell me where did you experience a failure in intimacy was it your mother was it your father was it a girlfriend was it a brother was a teacher you're going to find something it's always there matter of fact I think that's true of all of us all of us have experienced failures in intimacy so but I know a guy is a friend of mine he has a men's ministry and what he does he gets 12 to 15 men to spend a week together up in the wilderness of Montana and what he does during that time is that he has every single man communicate their story of failed intimacy says we all have a story but most men keep it to themselves and so this is an opportunity and basically he sets a ground rule whatever is expressed here stays here it doesn't get out but I want you to tell if your deepest pain of lost intimacy or failed intimacy don't give me a surface one I want to hear the one that's pained you the most and it's amazing the healing that takes place because it only works because I've got them for a whole week it only works because we are not focusing on anything else and also it's a small group but there's no reason why that can't happen outside the wilderness in Montana yeah John it's all based on learned behavior apparently stands from the blurring of sex roles in the society and there's a lack of clear sex roles and also supportive of factors to encourage them and also a lack of clear theory as to how the ideal produces a strong personality formation in the strong society the what's called the traditional home it's an excellent way to degrade the country is to attack that aspect of society we have this or the worst rate now and the secret of a strong and during society is to have a strong family relationship it's based on an indecisive union and confidence well I'll have to make a couple of comments on that number one the paper that's cited most frequently to say that these forms of a sexual behavior are genetic and the not behavior base it's a paper that was written by several homosexual men but they said they look at the chemistry of the practicing homosexual men and they said the chemistry is different than that of heterosexual men now the failure of the study they weren't able to show that that also shows up in boys who are not yet sexually active that was not in the paper I mean they really want to make their case they got to show that the chemistry is there from the time of birth they didn't do that the other thing they didn't do was to compare homosexual men that are sexually active to those that are not sexually active or those that are a lot more sexually active than others that was not part of the study either but yeah I'm of the persuasion that what's happening is the behavior is generating the chemical changes in the brain not the genetics yeah well I mean what would have been good to follow the study because the average homosexual men who is sexually active has over a hundred partners a year okay let's compare what's happening the chemistry the brain of those individuals with those that are celibate and see what kind of difference you see then of course looking at the age differences so but that's where that whole thing is based but and a lot of you know focus in the family organization was founded right here in Arcadia and I remember when Jim Dobson founded focus in the family he said I believe that Satan's number one strategy is a destroy the traditional family because if he destroys a traditional family he basically defeats the Christian worldview so he says we should expect that this is going to be Satan's tool and he says look at it it's been that way throughout world history and therefore if we really want to prevent the collapse of the American Empire we need to restore the family because look what happened in the Roman Empire when the family crumbled so and that organization is still going on there in Colorado now so day in the back well that's another paper has been cited where they say hey it's not just humans that engage in homosexual activity non-human animals do as well well you'll see this I mean God made animal life to be sexual and fat farmers will tell you this if the cows don't have any bulls around when they reach you know sexual maturity you'll see them engaging in what appears to be lesbian behavior but bring a bull in and that disappears so the availability of partners makes a big difference and you see this in our prison system the prison system here in America is rife with homosexual and lesbian activity why because the availability of heterosexual partners is removed and just simply makes the point God created us as sexual beings and we're not animals I mean yeah we have a spirit nature that can control that but a lot of people struggle with controlling that so we shouldn't be surprised that you see these behaviors outside the human species and incidentally there actually are some species especially fish that can switch from one sex to the other they're biologically designed to do that and it's actually crucial for their survival because that are there you know the way the predators feed on them they often wind up with a huge surplus of females or a huge surplus of males but they actually have the biological machinery to be able to bring that into balance where for a lot of other species that almost never happens therefore there's no need for that to happen so yeah be careful with people who cite these few instances where we see that outside of the human population while I'm getting a little concerned because next year I'm going to have to apply for a renewal of my passport and I'm wondering whether or not I'm going to have 52 places to indicate my sexual identity birth certificates have three options okay I won't ask what those three are so hopefully two of them are male and female so well I think we better get off the politics actually I'm at a time on Mars too so yeah I got about two minutes anyway check out the the blog that wrote in this you can access it out of the reasons.org or through my Facebook page and likewise you can get the debate that I had with Peter Ackens there and let me at least use my two minutes worth to get back to the book of Isaiah I got the least another minute and 20 seconds these are the verses we're going through and let me see if I can pick up where we left off at at least I can give you a homework assignment right okay this is where we left off God isn't thrown above the circle we covered that I'm not going to go into it again but look up and see who created these he brings up the star he hosts by number he calls them all by name because this is great power and strength not one of them is missing I think we covered all that how God actually knows every star that exists out there all 50 billion trillion of them how we can actually name 7 trillion stars after every human being and not run out and he knows the names of all those stars chances are he knows your name so let's see if we can pick up the passage we haven't covered yet Isaiah 40 28 do you not know have you not heard Yahweh the Lord our Creator is the everlasting God the Creator of the whole earth he never grows faint or weary there is no limit to his understanding here's the homework assignment how can you use this passage to get someone from deism to theism because a lot of people say I believe in God but this text is saying it's not just deism we're talking God that's theistic what's the difference between deism theism deism God creates the universe sets it all up and then just lets it run by itself or another way of defining deism it's a God who creates and takes a 14 billion year long nap he's basically not involved in his creation I think it's quite obvious this passage is saying something quite different but I'm also going to ask you the question next week okay it is saying something different can you explicitly identify what it is saying that is different and what is your evidence that this passage is true what evidence can you close you know if you run into ideas it says okay you threw this verse of me prove it how do you prove this verse is true okay that's my minute and a half gone let me close in prayer father in heaven we do live in a day in an age when deism is becoming the favored worldview and Lord even people who call themselves agnostics even those who call themselves atheists we press the really deists but father pray that you be the equipping us to take these people who have this deistic worldview and be able to show them that reality both in scripture and the book of nature tells us it's not deism it's theism there really is a personal God out there who cares for every component of his creation through every moment of his creation including every moment of our human lives for each of us as individuals so Lord equip us in that way and pray you give us many opportunities to actually persuade those from a theistic worldview to adopt theism and Jesus Christ as a creator Lord and Savior in Jesus name amen