Welcome to evolution. Impossible. A production of three ABN, Australia.
Television. Our host is Dr. Sven Ostring with special guest Dr.
John Ashton and our panel. Welcome back to evolution. Impossible.
I am Dr. Sven Ostring. We've been considering so much evidence that shows that evolution really is impossible.
But is there an alternative to evolution or are we left in scientific limbo with nowhere else to turn? Joining me for this very important question is Harley Southwell. Thank you for being with us. Tim Turner, good to have you back in the studio.
And Morgan Vincent, nice to have you as well. And last but definitely not least, we have Dr. John Ashton.
And Dr. John Ashton has been doing research in this area for almost 50 years. And we're really fortunate that he has written all of this research up in his book Evolution Impossible.
In his own personal experience, dr. Ashton has discovered that while evolution is impossible, there is a God who exists and who is able to intervene in our lives. Now, that's a really exciting thought.
So let's explore the evidence. Now, John, you mentioned a few times that evolution cannot explain consciousness. Can you explain what you mean by that? Well, as I've alluded to, another time we talk about our brain.
Our brain has mass and it stores information and has certain processes in it. But our thoughts or our will are non material. We can't weigh our thoughts, we can put our brain on a balance, weigh it, we can squash it then into it.
Well, somebody else could. We'd be dead. Squash it in not too hard, squash it into a measuring cylinder and measure its volume.
But our thoughts we can't. And this is a fascinating this is who we really the inside this frame is a little boy John sort of thing. And that's my thoughts.
That's who I am. Who I am is really a non material. This body is just a transducer that converts my thoughts into physical action so I can operate in this physical world.
But who I really am is non material. And it fascinates me that the God who created us also describes himself as non material, as spiritual. And so it's through our mind that we communicate with God and hence prayer.
And also God can impress our minds and so forth as well and communicate with people. And the Bible is a history of people who God communicated with. And this has fascinated me and there's so much evidence for this.
So turning to our panel here, if the God of the Bible exists, he's God of love and he's powerful as well, what would he be capable and interested to do? Well, one thing I heard once that was really, really beautiful was that God exists and he looks like Jesus. And that is a personal, friendly person who wants to invest in us and to see us grow. And that's something I think I've discovered in my own life I journeyed through deciding whether I was going to believe evolution or creation.
And in the end, when I saw the evidence pointing towards creation, I accepted that God was real and that the story of the Bible is true, and that this God believes in me and loves me and wants the best of me. And then that faith that reciprocated back to God helped transform my life and has grown me into, and is continuing to grow me into the person I am today. And I find that to be a beautiful thing, that there is a God who is capable of taking a person and transforming them and making them useful and beautiful and believing in them.
What about you, Tim? What would God be capable or interested in doing? Yeah, well, when I think about just from a scientific perspective, the universe had a beginning. Everyone agrees that's the case. But I guess according to Richard Dawkins, it came from nothing.
And then he goes on to define what nothing actually is, which is kind of funny, but according to the Bible, god was the one who created everything. And so if you can create an entire universe, not to mention setting up all the laws of physics, creating information in DNA, and just the magnitude of his intelligence must be completely off the scale and his power as well. And I guess why would he do that? I think the Bible has some really cool answers about that.
And it's for his pleasure. He loves being relational and like Harley said, it's something that he's craving, that interrelational, I guess, space. And so I think if he's like that, then that's awesome.
What about you, Morgan? Yeah, similar to what Harley alluded to, that God orchestrates times and events, seasons, situations, and not just one in our life, but multiple and many at different times in our lives to get our attention. I like to think of God as someone who pursues, like the hand of heaven. Yeah, he's the one who takes the first step.
One of my favorite words at the moment is the word provenient, which comes from two words that combine to basically mean that God's the one who takes that first step. And when I look at my own life and his stories of other people's lives, we can see how God takes that first step in terms of relationship with us and with humans. And so it's a fascinating thing to think of God being the one and wanting to be the one who enters into that relationship with us.
So much so that even though someone can reject him, can slide him, put him away for decade after decade after decade, god will still pursue them, god will still be the one to want to dwell with them. And we see that absolutely personified in the life of Christ as both Tim and Harley mentioned as well. Thank you very much, Morgan.
That's really amazing. And Morgan, mentioned the concept of times and seasons, and that brought me back to your fascination with the philosophy of time, which we have talked about before. But in relation to God, the whole concept of time is very fascinating, particularly with regards to prophecy.
And that's one of the key evidence that you raised to bring to our attention in the book. Can you give us one of the best examples of a prophecy which allows us to see to what God can do in our lives? Wow. Well, there are lots of prophecies in the Bible.
Of course there are many prophecies. I think perhaps one of the most outstanding ones relates to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, because Nebuchadnezzar is a very famous historical figure. He was king of Babylon well, yes, founded the Babylonian Empire.
He built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon for his wife, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, according to Herodotus. And so it's very interesting. The Bible recounts Daniel, one of the Hebrew captives after Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, and that Nebuchadnezzar had had a dream.
And in this dream he dreamt of an image. Well, he had a dream and he couldn't remember what the dream was, but he knew it was a very significant dream. And he asked his wise men, what did the dream mean? And they said, well, tell us what you dreamt and we'll tell you what it means.
But Nebuchadnezzar was pretty cluey guy, and he said, well, if I tell you what the dream meant, what the dream was, you could make up anything, but I can't remember it anyway, so you tell me what I dreamt, and then I'll know you can tell me what the meaning is. And of course, Daniel was one of the wise men at the time, and he prayed and God revealed to him what the dream was, and he told Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar said, wow, that's it. I remember that's what I dreamt.
What does it mean? And essentially, it was a vision of his empire and the succeeding empires of the world, that his empire would be followed by the Persian Empire, would be followed by the Greek Empire, would be followed by the Roman Empire, and then that essentially would disintegrate into strong and weak kingdoms. And essentially that's exactly what happened. After Nebuchadnezzar died, his grandson, I think it was Nabonius, was the king.
And while his son Belshazza was in Babylon, cyrus's, General Gobius came in and marched in. Yeah. And took Babylon in 539 BC.
And then we had the Persian Empire, of course, followed. Then Cyrus and Darius and so forth. And then we had Alexander the Great came in, marched over yes.
And defeated Darius in 331 BC. And then we go on. And of course, then the Greek Empire was divided up and then subsequently conquered by the Roman Empire, which then degenerated into the states of Europe, some strong and some weak, some like iron, some like the fascinating thing is, of course, that a rock hit the bottom of the statue and filled and became the whole world.
And of course, that represented that one day God will destroy the world and recreate it again. So that part of the prophecy hasn't happened yet, but all the other bits did. So what time period are we looking at here from when Nebuchadnezzar had the dream all the way to the end of that fulfillment of the prophecy? What sort of time frames are we looking at? Well, of course, Nebuchadnezzar was about 600 BC.
When he first conquered Jerusalem, first took Jerusalem. And of course, well, we know Europe is still there now, so it comes right through to the Second Coming. So it spans the last part of the history of time.
But some of the details are things that fascinated me. For example, Belshazzar was not recognized in any of the secular historical records until recently, and yet it was written in the Bible. And so the critics said, oh, well, you know, it's another made up story.
But then they discovered all these cuneiform tablets that recognized that Belshazzar was the co regent with his father and was actually the King of Babylon at the time, while his father was actually fighting a diversionary action with Cyrus. So archaeological evidence is supporting the biblical account. Yes, and also the Bible talks about how Belshazzar was in an all light, drunken rebel rethiste that they used to have.
The Bible talks about that. And cinderes. Xing Xenophon, a later Greek historian records that.
Yes, that was actually the case of what was happening when Gobius took in and that Belshazza was slain next to his throne. So we had later all this confirmation and corroboration of the historical accuracy, and there's so many of the other prophecies that are like that. And what about you guys? Have any of the prophecies in the Bible really impressed or inspired you, or have you ever seen the effect of this particular prophecy in your own life or work or ministry? Yeah, I guess for me, some of the most powerful prophecies, I guess, are in relation to Jesus.
Like, you have the ones in Isaiah, and it's like hundreds of years before Jesus was even there. You have the ones in Psalms. There's like, over 300 different prophecies that Jesus fulfills, every single one of them.
And I think just the surety of that, like, you talk about the probability of how the universe could come into existence by itself or life forming, and that and just the probability of one man fulfilling all 300 prophecies is just astounding. And so being able to see that God has provided us enough information to say, okay, well, I'm pretty sure that that was who he said he was. One thing kind of in a similar area, but not necessarily a prophecy, but something we can look back at is the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Is something that is a historical verifiable fact that Jesus Christ lived and died and there's argument over whether he resurrected or not. But the evidence that is seeming to mount and mount and mount is very clear that there is evidence that he did resurrect. He appeared to so many people the records of being written down by the apostles so soon after his death, as well as there definitely was an empty tomb because that's what Jesus'enemies acknowledged, that the tomb was empty.
And they made a story saying that all these Roman soldiers were asleep, which is a very impossible story for these Roman soldiers whose life depended on them staying awake and their highly trained elite soldiers to fall asleep. But they recognized that the tomb was empty and so they had to make up this story to explain. And how would have they known it was the disciples if they were asleep? Exactly.
So there was just all this there's all this evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which I mean, and if you were going to found a religion, there's been a number of men over history who founded religions, but Jesus found his religion based on the fact that he was going to die and resurrect. That is such an unlikely, astronomically unlikely thing to happen in just a materialistic world. But Jesus did found his religion upon that and everyone went around and proclaimed he's risen.
And everyone's like, well, there's proof for it. And so Christianity just exploded so rapidly and Jesus actually predicted his own resurrection while he was still doing his public ministry. So what you're pointing out is that there's supernatural miracles, supernatural prophecy as well.
And John, I guess the question I have in mind is know, I go on the Bureau of Meteorology and I look up the weather report and I can get about seven days in advance. And sometimes they get it pretty wrong, which can be a bit sad. But predicting two and a half thousand years in advance, hundreds of years seems like a bit of a long stretch.
So how could God actually predict these things so far in advance? What power does God have? What's the nature of God for Him to be able to do this? Okay, well, that's a fairly deep question to get into and I guess a number of people have argued with, well, is there free will and so forth. Some of my own thoughts on this is that God does help influence us and help us make choices. He doesn't force us to make choices, but he can change circumstances so that we make choices over time and he knows the future.
Also, there's been different models portrayed that God we often hear God can see the beginning of the end. And there's been in some of the philosophical journals, for example, they say, well, if you imagine you had a plain sheet of paper and we're living in this two dimensional space and we're like little ants crawling around on this space. But you've got a pen going through your piece of paper, right? And this has the future on this side and the past on this side.
And God is out here and he sees the whole lot, but we only see this little bit here, but he can see the whole lot. So, I mean, these are just primitive models to sort of try and explain that God is outside time, transcends time and the whole concept of time and choice. But there's evidence that humans have known the future, certainly through premonitions and dreams and this sort of thing.
And so what you're saying is not only in the Bible do we have prophecies and dreams like Nebuchadnezzar had, but also more recently, there's been dreams. Could you maybe share with us some stories people have had dreams? Well, it's a real life scenario. I mean, earlier on we talked about Professor Werner Gidd.
Now, his story is really interesting. He grew up in East Germany, which is very close to the Russian border. He was born 1937, so well before the war.
When the war broke out, he was only a little boy. And of course, towards the end of the war, as the Russian soldiers came in, the people had to flee and his mother was captured by the Russians, taken to the Ukraine, where she died. His older brother was taken away and never heard of again.
But Werner and a couple of aunties were actually he was quite sick at the time. They tried to flee, but they were actually captured and hurled and then later expelled to a town on the island of Wick, I think in the North Sea. After the war, they were put there to be dealt with until everything was sorted out.
Now, meanwhile, his dad had been captured and was in an allied prisoner of war camp. And he had no idea where his family where his children were, where his family were, had no idea what happened to his wife or anything. But one night he had a dream.
And in that dream, he dreamt that he visited a particular uncle. And he asked this uncle, and his uncle was saying to him, oh, you should come and visit us. This is the dad has dreamt this dream in the prisoner of war camp.
And in his dream, he asked his uncle, Where do you live? And his uncle told him an address. And so he woke up straight away and he wrote the address down and he decided to write to that address. And at that address was an uncle that he hadn't had contact with for years and had moved there.
And everything was topsy turvy after the war, but knew where his son was and put him in contact. And his son was the sole werner was the sole survivor of his dad's family. But that's just one of many dreams.
I mean, I can remember having a really powerful premonition myself of I was just returned. I was the tutor for the first year med students in chemistry at the University of Tasmania and I used to give some Bible studies. And one night traveling home, I was eager to get home.
It was a rainy night coming into Hobart. As I'm driving down the hill towards the city, I was strongly impressed. Slow down, slow down.
And I thought to myself, I'm only doing 60 km an hour, but it was slow down, slow down. So I slowed down just a little bit, but I saw these green light ahead and I thought, I want to get through the green light. And I was trying to balance, I'm slowing down, but I want to get that green light.
And it was on a blind intersection corner where there was an office block on the corner. And just as I came into that light, a blue Datson sports car came through at high speed and I hit him. I was in a 56 chev and I hit him and I spun him around but a fraction of a second faster he would have slammed into the side of me and killed me.
If I had a properly slowed down as God was prompting me, my shed wouldn't have hit him and I wouldn't have had this big dang mudguard on the front. Praise the Lord, that's a lesson. And I did a study among our research group when I wrote on a topic, on this topic of evidence that people had seen the future because the future is random or chaotic from a human perspective.
And so how can anyone know the future? And there are so many cases where people, particularly Christians, have had powerful premonitions that have protected them. And even among the staff we had about 100 staff and I think out of 100 staff, there were five people who had had powerful premonitions that warned them of danger. I have a question in regards to this.
I was reading recently about a magician by the name of James Randy who created a competition. Basically he was an atheist and he created a competition for anyone who claimed to be a diviner or a psychic or telekinetic or have some other kind of clairvoyance supernatural power or whatnot. He created a challenge for them to be able, if they could prove under scientific verifiable testable conditions that they had a supernatural gift, he would give them a certain amount of money.
It eventually grew up to being around about, I believe, $100,000. It might have been a million, if I remember correctly. But over a period of 50 years, not a single thousands of applicants came through and not a single one was able to demonstrate a supernatural power, a supernatural gift.
And it kind of seems that when we try and prove supernatural things in science we can't verify it and test it. And also, I guess, coming back to evolution. We've remarked on how it's impossible to be tested and verified in a laboratory setting and so forth.
So if we have these two different things that can neither be verified, where should we go? Well, I think we have the testimony in Christian literature of so many Christians who have testified to God's leading in their life powerful changes in their life, like and Werner Git's story is just one of thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably, of examples. And people know and experience in themselves, and I do too, similar to you that God has changed you. When I accepted God, my whole attitude to life began to change and God began to change me.
And you realize that's a real experience that happens. And I guess God has warned these people. So there are so many stories of miracles, of people surviving under different conditions.
We think of that soldier in the Second World War that rescued all those people. Desmond Doss. Desmond Doss.
I made the film about on Hacksaw Ridge. He made all those trips up there, people being shot all around him, but he wasn't shot. And people say, well, hang on, there are good people that die too.
But it seems that God, at certain times, there's God when God has miraculously protected people. I think of the story of Harriet Tubman that led all those slaves to freedom. An uneducated woman, but she said she heard the voice from God.
God would tell her to go this way or back that way, and she made all those journeys, and she was never caught and took all those people to freedom. So it seems that when there's a purpose, that there are times when God intervenes and blesses his people, he protects them. I mean, my wife and I have had answer repair just this last week while on holiday sort of thing.
I've had so many personal answers to prayer. I'm writing that in a book at the moment. I'm up to about 60,000 words.
I've experienced this myself. And of course, there are many other Christians that have written these books, particularly out in the mission field where there have been no resources. And I think of, say, Mary Slesser here was this young Scottish woman who went to the Congo in the 18 hundreds, walked barefoot into the jungles and converted the cannibals.
So we can see the power of God is working where it's working in the power of good. And there are so many stories like that that I think they all add up, that there is an intervening God that we can come to and we can trust. And while we don't necessarily have specifically our answers to prayer necessarily at the time, what I've learned is that we can trust that God has our good in the long term.
And I can see that now of prayers that I've prayed over ten years ago on particular personal matters. And now I can see God didn't answer the prayers. And I remember praying and saying, god, I can see you're not answering my prayer.
You're blocking my path. Each time I make a move, you're blocking it. And now, ten years later, I can see why and all the extra good that has come out of it, because I didn't pursue that particular path at that time, but I couldn't see it at the time.
I thought that I was right, I was pursuing the best path. And certainly this whole concept of the supernatural, but also the limits of science in terms of being able to test it. Tim, did you have any questions in that area for John? I did, actually, but partly comes from my own experience.
So when I was a little tacker, I've actually still got a genetic blood disorder and they had to do an operation when I was really little and my hemoglobin levels were really low and they weren't not able to operate when their levels are so low. And so my dad got his Bible out and saw you anoint the kid, get the elders of the church together and stuff, and my hemen globin levels almost doubled overnight, which is medically unheard of. And so they're able to do the operation after things like that, where I'm laying in a hospital bed and there's pain all through my abdomen, and I look at my mom and just say, pray.
She prays, pain disappears and goes away. I'm kind of wondering, what does science do to personal experiences? I know that in some areas of science they will validate someone's experiences. This is something that is actually, we can test this, it's happened, and it's repeatable, all that sort of thing.
But what do they do when they have supernatural experiences in the human realm? Well, some of those have been recorded in books and there have been studies, but they don't have an answer. That's the problem. Do you think that's because the supernatural is not able to be put into a test tube? Well, that's right.
We can't force God. That's the bottom line. We have to trust.
And it's incredible to reflect on how God can work in our lives. He is a God who really does want to intervene and show us that he exists. This is the last episode in our journey, Evolution Impossible.
However, your exploration of this fascinating topic can continue if you haven't already. We invite you to get a copy of Dr. John Ashton's book, Evolution Impossible and delve deeper into the origin of life itself.
It could change your life forever. But even more importantly, we would like you to continue this journey with God himself. The last book in the Bible called Revelation paints an amazing picture that God will recreate this world to be a new world, a place where there's no more pain or suffering or death.
We want you to be with us in the new Earth. And I'd like to invite you to join with me as I pray with you, as you consider this decision for eternity. Father in Heaven, we've been on this journey of exploring evolution together.
We have discovered that all of the evidence points to the reality that you created life and this world, just like the Bible says. Please be with every person who's been watching this program. May your Holy Spirit speak powerfully to our hearts.
May we know that you sent your only son, Jesus to die on the cross for us personally so we can accept the free gift of a restored relationship with you. In Jesus name, amen. Thank you for joining us on Evolution Impossible, a production of Three ABN, Australia television.
If you have any comments or questions, send an email to
[email protected] Au or call us within Australia on 024-97-3456. We'd love to hear from you.
