Contact me at clechner@southspring.org

Episode Transcription // Question & Response 001

Coleson: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Reconstructed Faith podcast. My name is Coleson Lechner alongside my partners in crime, Chris Legg and Bryn Starnes today, Chris Sherrod actually is starting his first day at Watermark today. So Chris, if you’re listening, we hope you’re having a great day.

We have a few things that we want to address first being that if it sounds like I’m stuffed. I am

Chris Legg: And we, so am here with you today. We’re living in east Texas.

Bryn Starnes:  I am probably down for the count.

Coleson: Yeah. So, so we are sorry for the inconsistency of our voices. But there were a few other things that we wanted to talk about. What was other thing?

Chris Legg: We’ve got some new software and stuff and obviously I’m the, I’m not the aware one on that kind of stuff, but we’ve got software stuff you’ve been doing. You may have noticed in the last podcast I’m editing. Yeah. It seems a little bit choppy.

Coleson: We are to get some transcription to help you guys maybe look back at what we’re talking [00:01:00] about rather than having to listen back to the whole episode. But in that the editing was pretty choppy and somewhat hard to listen to at some points. So now that we’re working through that the other part of being hard to listen to is kind of the sound and consistency.

Chris Legg: Yeah, that’s been kind of different for us. I mean, Coleson you’re the more expert than I am on this stuff. Yeah. Well, really the main

Coleson: thing is we’ve been we’ve been really blessed to get new equipment and stuff like that. Some of that has been though we recorded things in the past and then trying to piecemeal things to.

That’s no bueno. So we’re I’m still working out the kinks on that, but thank you guys still for

Chris Legg: listening. Oh. And about the on iTunes or whatever,

Coleson: that was the main thing was the main one. Yeah. So I dunno if you have been looking at this, but especially if you’re like listening on Spotify or apple podcasts, our first few episodes, you like can’t

Chris Legg: find them.

Yeah. So seven first, seven.

Coleson: So that’s kind of an ongoing thing talking with [00:02:00] it, and then also talking with apple to figure out, okay, we don’t know why they’re not showing up some podcast apps, kind of different ones have all of them some only have the first seven. And so it’s kind of as this kind of scratching our heads.

So

Chris Legg: all of that to say, Hey Coleson, where could we go to get all? What, 33 episodes so far, where could I go to find it?

Coleson: I’m really glad you asked Chris. You can find all of our episodes at SouthSpring.org/reconstructed-faith. And I will link that in the show notes. So yeah, on our website, we have all of them.

But we, we really are working to get those accessible wherever you listen to your podcast. Thanks for bearing with us on that.

Now today’s episode is going to be a little bit different in that we’re going to take some listener questions, which I’m excited about. And we’ve had, we’ve had a few people reach out and there’s kind of a swath of kind of different questions.

Are you good if we just [00:03:00] jump in with the first one?

Chris Legg: Yes. But Hey, let me go four out of the way it looks like at the, so I just jumped over to the. Ever so handy web link that you just gave. And I I’m looking at at them and they aren’t numbered. So you have to go by date to know who he is. So you need to, when you go, you want to go back to the older ones and then it looks like October 1st, somewhere around there is where we started.

Coleson: So here’s what I’m thinking. When I’m done, I’ll go back a number. Them. That’d be great. There’ll be numbered in this easy to

Chris Legg: just go back to number one. Why are we doing this? I October 4th, 2021 episode. Wonderful.

Coleson: Okay.

Chris Legg: Thank you for taking a look at that. Oh yeah, absolutely. Just wonderful. Just being helpful.

Yeah. Well we, the first

Bryn Starnes: episodes are really crucial just as far as setting a foundation. And I think you guys talked about truth and. Different foundations for our truth and as well, I mean,

Coleson: we’ve, we’ve been very like [00:04:00] adamant from the beginning about defining our terms, right. Because there are so many different definitions.

And so that’s a great point. But we want to make it as like, we want to make it as least confusing for you guys. So that’s why as least

Chris Legg: confusing as possible.

Coleson: Yes. So sorry though, that it has been confusing. That’s great. Perfect.

Chris Legg: Okay. Thank you for. Yeah, periodically, we’re going to do these question and I’m a big fan of, you know, the Bible podcast by the project podcast, they call them Q and R is a question response.

I’m not assuming that this is, we’re not assuming this. The answer. Yes. At the same time it is our answer as of today.

Coleson: Yes, exactly. We’re sticking with, say a question

Chris Legg: and response. Yep. Great. Okay. That’s

Coleson: awesome.

Bryn Starnes: Well, I mean the first one. Yeah, please do bread. Okay. Our first question is from Solomon and it is [00:05:00] his evolution false to the point that helpful ethical conclusions can not be drawn from it and applied today.

Chris Legg: Wow. Okay. So we talked in the past amount evolution and about creation. And one of the things that stood out as we talked about it, intentionally is one of the times I think even Coleson when you weren’t here. And, and so, you know, Chris Sherrod, who’s not, again, not with us today. His, his perspective on creation, the beginning of everything is, is very traditional.

And the, from the biblical perspective, 7 24 hour day type of thing. And, and mine isn’t. And so I actually that his, his, his, I don’t know if his is more or less common or Myers mine is more or less common in today’s world. But it’s actually, one of the things we talked about is that, you know, he and I can have these conversations, even though he thinks the earth is probably 10,000 ish, years old, total grand total.

And I think, I think the best [00:06:00] evidence is that it’s probably in the billions of years old, several, you know, the kind of standard four and a half billion. Years old makes sense to me. And I actually think an old it’s called an old earth Erie. And, and the, the older theory, I think actually answers most of the biblical questions better.

That’s my opinion. Okay. As well now I don’t think this is like a doctrinal. Listen, you have to agree with me on this, or you’re not part of the church and neither does Chris and neither to most people. Now, some people do they still have this view that it’s kind of a cause and effect domino thing.

Creates error by the way. But is, if you, if you don’t believe in a, you know, 6, 24 hour day creation, then you don’t take the Bible. Literally, if you don’t take the Bible, literally, then you can’t trust what the Bible says. If you can’t trust what the Bible says, then you must not believe in the teaching of Jesus Christ.

And if you don’t believe that teaching of Jesus crash, there’s no way you can be a Christian. Yeah. Right. And that there’s a whole bunch of errors made in that whole process. And [00:07:00] so if someone goes back and listens, you’ll hear Chris say, when we asked, you know, the question about, do you, do you interpret scripture literally?

And both he and I agree that the goal is not literal. It is accurately. Yeah. No, no. Depending on how you define the word literal, if you mean the best way possible or the way the trivial author intended it, we would all agree. Yep, absolutely. Right. If we mean the way the original author intended it.

Then yeah, we want to be literal. The problem is we don’t always know how the original author intended it. Right. And so and so sometimes the, the original author didn’t intend it to be literal, meaning that it happened exactly this way. And we know that’s the case with some stuff like parables or some of the poetry.

And so w we know those aren’t meant to be taken as historical, if so, if we use that terminology, And so the difference that, so the difference between a young earth creationist and an old earth creationist would be on what did, what were the [00:08:00] intention? What’s the intention of these first few chapters in the book of Genesis?

Is it meant to tell us how things happen? Is it meant to, to say, and so here’s, here’s some of the questions, for example. So as I was at my aunt’s, my initial answer to Solomon’s question is I’m not convinced evolution is error. Now secular evolution has an error which is that this could happen naturally on its own just by natural processes that I don’t accept.

I think it would require very intentional and close shepherding of a divine being. So it’s a creation process. I see evolution as a creation process, an ongoing creation process. And so it’s like a it’s God is having to weave and a tapestry together, a guide. It’s the, step-by-step the genetics of, of the intergeneration of creatures that lead to the top of diversity we have today.

I don’t think that could happen. Statistically. We’ve talked really talked about that though. Even the chance of like something that has 10 options happening in a certain order in a certain [00:09:00] row is like one in 10 billion. It’s the playing card example. We did a, I’m sure we’ve talked about it on one of the podcasts.

And so the, the, the odds of these things coming new just as are just not, they’re not plausible. In fact, we just did our staff retreat guys. We were just on that staff retreat and we had a astronomer reference. Gosh, there’s he said something like there’s like 13 billion possible and habitable planets in our soldiers in a.

Universe no. And our galaxy and our galaxy and gosh, that’s so gosh, it, it surely at least life is, is there on some of them and even intelligent life. I mean, just there’s so many chances and we weren’t going to engage with them. I wasn’t in the place to really like, have some big debate or something. It was late at night, it was late at night and we were tired and it was his party.

And so we were like, listen, this is we’ll just listen to what he says, but his 13 billion chances at some. Is that is, that makes something [00:10:00] likely. So what was, what was y’all’s thought in that? So if I have 13 billion shots at winning the lottery, how, how likely am I to win the lottery? And I don’t mean Texas Lauder.

I mean, just a lottery. What other information would you need

to

Bryn Starnes: know? You’re beginning odds, right? It’s like your odds at the beginning, just because they’re multiplied doesn’t mean, I don’t know if I’m going in the right direction.

Chris Legg: Keep going.

Bryn Starnes: I’m not a great math person. So this is probably not a good, these are by me,

Coleson: but, but expound on what you were saying.

Cause I think that’s good.

Bryn Starnes: cause if, if the odds at the beginning are, are really low of there being life somewhere else, just because there’s 13 billion galaxies doesn’t mean it’s increasing the odds of that factor. That

Chris Legg: much more. Okay. So the fact that there are 30, let’s go with this. And by the way, the number is way inflated.

I looked at I’ve looked it up and I knew it was like that doesn’t sound right. Very big number and so [00:11:00] very shiny number. And so even if that’s, so what if I said, okay, there’s only 10 options at something or, or, yeah, let’s say there’s 10 options and what are my odds of. And I get one attempt and all attempts are equal.

You would say, well, you know, one in 10, that’s pretty, that’s pretty easy to do. Is that a good, is that good odds or bad odds? And how much are you willing to bid on it? So there’s lots of factors that come with this, right? Are my odds good or bad? Well, I’m a, I’m a poker player. If I am 10% against you, I’m not probably gonna bet because that’s not good odds.

10% is not good enough. If you’re 90% to win and I’m 10% to win. I do not want to turn over my cards and see that your nine to one favorite. Right? That’s that’s bad. So if you go, okay, so, but there’s a, here’s the deal. I get 13 billion shots at it. Okay. That’s that’s great. But what if the odds of hitting is one in a trillion trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion trillion, that if you have 13 billion [00:12:00] shots at that, are you going to hit the.

So if you take all the, as, as there was a an engineer and an astrophysicist and an engineer at a and M who used to say it this way, that if you take all of the known matter in the universe as it, at the time, and by the way that gentlemen kept saying we could be in an infinite universe. And I don’t, I don’t know that any might actually be sad that that’s actually not like it’s always expanding.

That’s not, that’s not really defendable. Okay. But that’s okay. But you go, okay, so take all the notes. This is going to blow your minds, but that all the known matter in the universe and you, and you divide it down into its molecular level. Okay. You turn every one of those molecules into a universe and then dev and then lower them down to their molecular level.

That’s how many marbles you have. Every one of those molecules is no marble. Thanked them all white, a one black drop in a big bag, stir it up. To pull out the black marble. That’s about the odds of life in the universe, [00:13:00] as we understand it. And we don’t even know the conditions for life because we’ve never managed to recreate them.

In fact, just to nerd out just for another little second, you guys familiar with the Fermi paradox? Nope. Heard of this. Okay. The Fermi paradox is really still, I’m still, you’re still reselling the marbles.

Coleson: You said you’re going to blow up. It doesn’t take very long.

Chris Legg: It’s something like just guessing edit after seen numbers that are approximately like one time, one to 10 to the 38th power.

So that’s 38 zeros behind it, minimum. That’s why you get really intelligent people like Einstein saying that the odds of, of, of life and its diversity on earth. Coming into existence on its own. It would be about the same as a print shop exploding and all the letters falling to earth in the form of a faultless dictionary.

And so those types of the statistics there are just, they’re just stupid. The Fermi paradox asks why isn’t there intelligent [00:14:00] life all over the universe. There’s a barrier obviously. And so what is that barrier? Well, the most likely barrier is life. That the reason there’s not intelligent life all over the universe is.

You can’t get life. It just doesn’t happen. Because the odds against it are so bad. And when you begin to think about it enough published about when you think about Chris and I talked about this in one of the podcasts was that we shared it because we talked about how that first living thing had to then survive and reproduce.

Right? How has that, how was that like, what are the conditions? We don’t even know the conditions for that life coming into existence and then staying alive. And then somehow reproducing itself is, is just unthinkable. We don’t even know those numbers since we don’t know those numbers, we can’t guess at it, but apparently it’s really darn unlikely.

And so th that’s why I would say this is not no argument for evolution. Like I would have does not defend secular anything. This would require a divine intelligence, [00:15:00] so, so far so good. I would say one. Evolution makes a great case to answer Solomon’s question. It makes a great case for ethics and for morality.

Yes. Because a God who is intimately involved in the process, every step of the way he didn’t just in six days start something. And then, you know, and that was the main act of creation it’s that he is still intimately involved in creating. So a couple of fun questions that like, here’s a couple of questions.

Why I think old earth is a better explanation. Even biblically. So I’m not, so you could go study the scientific aspect of it, of cosmic expansion and cosmology and all that, but just biblically. So here’s one, here’s one of my favorites. So we say 6 24 hour, EV everybody turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter one.

Yeah. So you guys got a Bible in front of you turn over to Genesis one. Let’s have this conversation. Alright. I’ve given everybody time to turn over to scroll type in, whatever it is you’re doing. Right. [00:16:00] Okay. Genesis chapter one. So we start with this day. So you’ve got the waters, which that’s a hard one to explain, but to, to understand that the, in the Hebrew mindset, this space is water.

Yeah. And the Hebrew mindset, it’s the simplest way of saying it I’m oversimplifying it. So use me for that. But they think that they thought the Hebrew mind still in the first century thought of everything out, beyond the stars is water. Yeah. That was it’s some kind of liquid and it, and what’s funny is there turned out to be more right than we would have ever thought in that.

Matter. There’s matter out there. That’s liquid is an oversimplification, but, you know, anyway so God says in verse three, let there be light. And there was a light and God saw the light was good. God separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night and there was evening and morning the first day.

Okay, good. See, we got a day created. We’ve got a night created right there. How long are they? How long has that first day? Because he’s [00:17:00] literally on the first day he’s creating light. He’s creating day on day one. How long did that take? Clearly 24 hours. Obviously it’s a slight, it’s actually slightly less than 24 hours.

It’s about 23 hours and 50 something. This is why we have leap years. Yeah. And so it’s not, he didn’t, he didn’t exactly do 24 hours. It was more like 23 hours in something. Right. So where did he get that number? It’s not a very Jewish number. You’d think he’d have picked seven hours. 44. I mean, I was saying clearly in that

Coleson: sarcastically, I wanted to be,

Chris Legg: I knew that, yes.

Sorry. Sorry to keep going. Yes. Okay. So at the sun

Bryn Starnes: is how we get our day.

Chris Legg: Okay. So a day is, is from the sun. It’s how long the earth rotates the earth to rotate on its axis. So the part of us is facing the sun and then about 24 hours later, that same part is facing the sun. So, which happens.

Bryn Starnes: Go ahead. But [00:18:00] then the question that follows is go ahead.

When did he create the sun?

Chris Legg: That’s a great question. Thank you brand for that awesome question. When does God create the sun? That would be where we would where we would then get a time for how long a day is my founder yet looks like verse 14, verse 14. So on, on the fourth day, God creates the sun. So in other words, the biblical, the explanation would be that day one, two, and three, and apparently at least part of four was measured in an absolutely arbitrary 23 hours and something minutes by God, just because and keep in mind, he’s speaking this stuff into existence.

It’s not like it takes him that long. He speaks it into existence. And then he sits around and waits for the other 23 hours and 58 minutes to in orders before you speak something else. I [00:19:00] think it’s, I think this passions, the language and the Stipe type of language, that it is clearly communicates to us that this is not meant to be a measuring stick when it comes to how long each of these things was taking.

My personal opinion is, is that this is an Apocrypha. This is God showing Moses something just like that he does with. Just like that he does with John and the revelation is this isn’t God’s saying, okay, Moses, write this down. Here’s where I started. And I spent this long and it was a day. This is God showing Moses created.

And Moses is putting it in the terms that make the most sense to him. And so the way it makes sense to him, just like John does in revelation and just like Daniel does in his revelation is that he sees the God, shows them these things. They put it in the language, they know that makes sense to them and they go with it.

So you can imagine God like showing, and I’m now visualizing for the two people in the room, my hands going back close, like he shows him. And [00:20:00] then it goes dark and then he shows you something else. And then it goes dark and Moses would naturally call those night and day. Yeah. As he reveals them again, I think there’s a process to it.

I think it’s intentional. And, and again, I’ll say again for people who are panicked out there and freaking out about this, cause they’re, they, they, they have been brought up to believe, to believe anything other than strict six day creation is to not take the Bible seriously. Right. That’s, that’s not accurate.

I am taking the Bible very, very seriously. I just want to know that. Type of speech. The language is meant to be yes. Can I interrupt you real quick? Yes, you may. You said Apocrypha.

Coleson: Yeah. Is, is that the same thing as,

Chris Legg: like, how would you describe that to the Apocrypha again? I did that again. I’m an apocalyptic.

Okay. So you’d like an apocalypse, meaning it’s a vision, it’s a risk it’s like pulling aside of the veil. God’s revealing something to Moses. I mean, Moses wasn’t there right away. Right? Exactly. So it can say what happened. Yes. It has to be God revealing it to him. Absolutely.

Bryn Starnes: Part of this goes back to.

Because [00:21:00] Genesis is one book. We assume it’s all the same genre, which we haven’t talked about a ton, but we’ve gone John genres and scripture a little bit, but we assume it’s all narrative. Right. And that’s where we often assume that this is narrative, not a vision.

Chris Legg: Yeah, I think that’s great. So some of this is going to be passed down verbally.

Like I’d like the story of Abraham. I don’t know that God was showing, but only God could show creation because there were no humans. Nobody was, there was no one there to tell what happened. And I think I also agree with like the Bible project guys and, and the naked Bible podcast team. And there’s many others out there that when we engage with this first part of Genesis, we are engaging with God revealing something and largely clarifying other myths, other contemporary myths at the time.

That were myths. And this is God revealing to Moses. No, it wasn’t some huge battle between [00:22:00] these gods. It wasn’t a giant dragon doing this. It wasn’t an ocean being torn in half. It wasn’t this huge battle of chaos versus order. It was me expressing my authority as I just spoke these things into. There was no resistance.

The universe didn’t fight me on this. It wasn’t, there’s not some battle going on. It’s not this chaos. There is disorder water, and I brought water to it. And that was this act of creation. Clearly God had created because there was something there, there was water. Or there was this space there that God had already brought into existence.

And then he began to cry. And form it and, and it could, God have done it. And in, in seven days, six days, of course he could have, he could have done it in six seconds. So does it matter that he reveals to us this concept of day? Well, it matters, but, but does it mean it’s definitive from a, this is historically it took 6, 24 hour days.[00:23:00]

I don’t, I don’t think that’s the purpose of this beginning of Genesis. I think it’s telling us who did it, why he did. But I don’t think it’s trying to tell us how he did it in any detail beyond the, how that’s clear here. That’s so important is it’s not a. Yeah, it’s not a huge chaotic Baton. Most creation myths from that era are all this massive, the Babylonian battles and the it’s this horrific experience.

And instead the, the, the account of the Genesis creation is so peaceful. You, you don’t read it and go, oh, like, even when you picture, if you picture you don’t picture mountains crashing up out of the sea, you don’t, even if that’s part of what happened, you experience it. As God’s saying, okay, now I’m going to make an expanse in the midst of the.

And you see him gently, like, okay, now land there’s land, I’m going to, and he’s crafting something like an artist, not destroying or forcing something. There’s no like rape of the natural world to [00:24:00] quote from Jurassic park. It’s not this, isn’t a battle between God and nature. This is, this is God speaking, gently into all these things into existence.

It’s so beautiful. So one, I think there are great lessons to potentially come from evolution about as a, as a process theory. Now people, again, people sometimes get up in arms about it. I don’t understand that because the secular world has taught us when we explain when the secular world explains a, how that explains a way the who and I, I just think that’s silliness.

I don’t. And that makes absolutely no sense. No rational sense at all. Yeah. As if, as if there’s going to come a day when I understand car mechanics and engines so well that there will no longer have been a Henry Ford like this, just ridiculous. You know, when I understand, when I understand revolvers, they will have never been a Colonel Colt.

Like no, the more complex a system is the more evidence there it is that there was a designer and a creator. The more intentional it is, the more evidence that is. And so I [00:25:00] think evolution is. Is arguably a more powerful evidence for a designer, creator and sustainer. Now I don’t mean to portray six day creationists as being, deists meaning they believe that God started stuff and then he went and took a nap or something that would be totally inaccurate.

Right. That is something called deism. That is not what creationists teach. So anyway, I don’t, I don’t, I said, I don’t mean that sounds like, just because

Coleson: you’re talking about this belief.

Chris Legg: And the

Coleson: evolution, like it doesn’t mean you ascribe to like social Darwinism Verde. Yeah. So it’s not like, okay, well he believes or people who believe in an old earth, they ascribed to all

Chris Legg: of this.

No, in fact, Darwin’s Darwin is one of the proofs of Darwin’s theories where they fall apart as proof of a designer sustainer. And I think what Darwin did is he picked up on a pattern of how things have. And then he just, he came up with a motivation for why then happens, which was survival of the [00:26:00] fittest.

And, and I think sometimes survival of the fittest doesn’t work out well at all. It was one of the things that debated smally about the very first time, years and years ago was it’s amazing to me. How often atheists have no concept for what evolution. We talked about that on one of the podcasts going back where we talked about rats in the room.

And, and, and so for example, what a Solomon’s questions is, it doesn’t offer any insight into, like, if I remember correctly, it wasn’t about like ethical or moral or yeah.

Coleson: So ethical conclusions could, or is like, is it is F evolution false to the point that helpful ethical conclusions cannot be drawn from it and applied today, drawn from

Chris Legg: an applied.

Th this is a good, okay. I know I’m doing a lot of talking to teachers. This is great.

Coleson: We kind of talked beforehand of, like Chris said, he didn’t want to be the only one talking, but you have really a lot of really great insights. So thank you for

Chris Legg: I’ll keep going then the so here’s, what’s intriguing is that, and again, we talked about this on a previous episode, is that, is that I think evolution secular [00:27:00] evolution cannot doesn’t explain ethics and morality very well at all.

And so I think it doesn’t explain that stuff very well. I think what it does instead. Is it shows how there would need to be an external source for that. If evolution is the best shot you’ve got. And so I’ll ask you again, the question that we talked about was if you have evolution, the question I love to ask evolutionists Brian is the why does a draft have a long neck?

And, and what’s the, what’s the answer that. What would you get to the answer? I get like 99% of the

Bryn Starnes: time. I mean, I didn’t grow up reading about evolution in time. What would you

Chris Legg: guess? Why did, why did your ass have long

Bryn Starnes: necks? Because they need to reach the leaves at the tallest part of the tree.

Chris Legg: Exactly.

And, and it doesn’t matter how secular or atheist someone is. That’s the answer I get. That’s called teleology. That is evolution can not have a purpose. That’s that’s, that is a God thing to answer it that way. You’re putting purpose and meaning. Evolution does not serve a species evolution, serves an [00:28:00] individual because the idea is that individual gets an advantage and therefore is able to reproduce.

Right. And so it makes sense. You can see how that does work with a giraffe is that you have a horse, I’ll say you have a horse. And, and one of the horses is freak is born with a freakishly long neck. Like it’s just a genetic fluke and it works out most, obviously most Well, what are those called? When, when you have something that’s born incorrectly mutation and when you have a mutation usually that’s bad.

Like I almost always it’s destructive to the individual. Well, let’s say let’s, let’s just pretend that a horse is born with a freakishly long neck and that’s okay. It doesn’t die from oxygen deprivation that doesn’t whatever it survives, but it gives you. An extra six inches of leaves that it can eat, that none of the other horses can eat.

So it has no competition or the six inches of leaves. Right. It can get full much faster than the others. Right. Because it just follows along the others and eats what they can’t [00:29:00] get. Well, it gets full. And so it’s able to reproduce more often. Right. And so it’s more often to, to pass along those genes that allow it to reach the, the leads.

Right. Sorry. And so. So that being said here you so that you can see how that’s the survival of the fittest slowly, but surely more and more horses will be born that have the longer necks. That’s the idea because it’s offspring. If they get that same mutation, they will have the longer neck, they will eat better and they will have offspring more often fall on so far.

This is the idea. Over time, either you develop a totally other species that has longer necks and longer necks and longer nights and longer necks until you finally have giraffes that can get all the Liza. And only you have to compete with each other. And then you still have you either still have horses that eat the other stuff that fill a different niche or horses go extinct because they can’t compete with the long neck horses.

Right. Okay. That’s the idea and individual is gains the advantage and the individual [00:30:00] has to gain the advantage. That’s how the species changes through the advantage of an individual. All making sense. Yes. Now I have no idea how altruism could ever eat. Right because you have a room full of rats or room full of horses or a room full of whatever, and you go, one of them is born for summaries of, with a genetic fluke.

And it’s a nice rat. Yeah. Somebody explained to me how it gets to mate and reproduce more often than the sociopathic rats. And the answer is, I don’t think it survives a day. I mean, you just get, just gets wiped out. It may make for a good children’s story. The one rat that’s born. That’s nice,

Bryn Starnes: terrifying.

Children’s story

Chris Legg: for that one. Rat

Bryn Starnes: the sociopathic rat. I don’t know. I don’t think I want

Chris Legg: to read that. I think rants are probably sociopathic nationally, right? I mean, they, they will kill and eat each other if they have to in order to survive. And so somehow though, I’m supposed to believe. That from an ethical perspective, that there [00:31:00] was one day in one generation, an ethical rat was born slightly more ethical and someone might say, yeah, but what if it was born slightly more able to work with a team?

And that’s how we begin to develop it, I guess, with who the other rat that also happened to evolve that same trait, the very same generation. Now, what I would tell you is all of that makes sense. If it’s being done intentionally. If you have a designer and sustainer who is intentionally making these changes across the generations to evolve creation from a single cell, all the way up to what I’ve presumed to be at this pay at the apex of his creation, which is us which is by the way, how it happens every time we all start as a single celled organism.

And then over nine to 10 months, we develop into what we are now. And there’s all kinds of fascinating stages. Again, none of these are final. I just think they’re there. They’re all good scientific explanations in the Bible. What makes me curious that the Bible [00:32:00] doesn’t answer so one, it is good to know that the word Yom, this is not an issue of, it’s funny.

I had somebody tell me the day, know that the way you interpret the word Yom literally is a day like a 24 hour day. Like that’s like saying the word rain. Literally means to have move quickly with my feet. And it would be not literal to say that the word ran means my computer ran yesterday, right. Or that my nose ran yesterday.

Like those would be not literal. They are too literal. Those are literal usages of that word that that’s not a figurative usage of the word. The word sometimes means that in the Hebrew, the word young. Is most often used to reference like a day May 1st or our Nissan, the 14th, right? That’s what it normally means, but that is not, it’s only usage.

It can mean a period of time. It can mean a celebration. It can mean like the day of the Lord, [00:33:00] which doesn’t mean a 24 hour period. It means certain day. Like it can mean a lot of different things. It’s not taking it non literally to say, well, this is one of it’s. And it’s, I think that’s the one that it means here.

That’s not a non-literal usage. That’s just, that’s just bad hermeneutics. That’s bad study of scripture. And so I think the Bible leaves plenty of room for the concept of evolution. And then there are certain questions that are answered by an old earth concept, some scientific, like how we have start light from stars that would take a certain amount of time to get here, which is, there’s not great answers for that.

Our young. I think the strata only earth, which might can be explained by a flood and Mike could be explained by multiple creations. And Mike could be explained by the strata settling in place over billions of years. I don’t think those have to be contradictory. One, one is more right answer, but then you’re left with questions.

Like, so when Adam and Eve, so Adam and Eve have two [00:34:00] sons, Cain, and Abel and Cain killed Abel, and then God drives Cain out of the family system. And Kane says, but I’m, I’m afraid. It just, anybody out there could kill me. Well, who is he talking to? Is there’s Adam and there’s even now there’s just Kane and he’s being driven away from Adam and Eve.

So who is he afraid of now? Again, people go, oh, well, Adam and you’ve had tons more children and it had been 10,000 years and they who knows, we don’t really, and the answer is you’re right. We don’t those, but understand those are all arguments from silence. And if you’re gonna make an argument from silence, every argument is equally valid.

If it’s from. If you say, and then by the way, Kane went out and built cities I don’t know who he built cities with and who he filled them with, unless there were. And so there’s a lot of different ways to engage with

Bryn Starnes: these. Are you saying, so that’s an argument for greater amounts of time. Yeah. A

Chris Legg: much greater amount of time so that people, and, and you asked what was on, if this stuff was, some of this stuff was on my website and some of it is okay, these are all theoretical.

There’s these aren’t doctrine. You don’t have to have a [00:35:00] specific view on how these things played out and how long it took in order to be a Christian. If

Coleson: you want to ask these questions, you’re not the only one at.

Chris Legg: And there are Christian leaders like William Lane, Craig, who is a leading Christian apologist and philosopher.

And he’s an older iRest. Now we have this whole movement almost within Christian Hebrew studies saying that. So we’ve been looking at this Genesis thing all wrong from the beginning. I mean, this isn’t, this was never intended to be this. And we just we’re now actually saying. But, but this is the medieval English interpretation.

So it’s the literal one, like, well, it’s, it’s actually probably as far off as we could get from the original Hebrew mindset, which is what we’re trying

Bryn Starnes: to connect. So my, I have a question just because, from being honest and I think it may help others who also have, like, I, I still wrestle with this, like see the validity of what you’re saying about.

I have been a six day creationists up until fairly recently in my life, [00:36:00] at least. And so instill, I’m kind of unclear on where exactly I stand on it. And so I think it’s, it’s just fair to say this does create a lot of anxiety and a lot of people and conflict. So what would you say? I think one of my main questions originally was exactly what you said.

If I believe this, does this mean that I am somehow not adhering to scripture or even, you know, a lot of times in culture right now, we’re talking about how as topics come up, culturally, it’s easy for us to want to go back and redefine scripture. And so even from that standpoint, what would you say to relieve some of that anxiety of like, if I ascribed to this.

Is that somehow compromising on one of those fronts. Does that make sense? Yeah. So

Chris Legg: the answer is it may be, it could easily be that and we’ll, we’ll need to unpack this more. Cause we’re running short on time today. And I mean, we, I think that would be an excellent followup question is [00:37:00] so is, is there a, is it somehow wrong or immoral to hold either of these views?

Does that mean you’re not taking the Bible series? And, and I, I saw, I think, I think some of the things to reference to, to understand is this has been a discussion in Christianity for a long, long time. This isn’t a recent the had the age of the earth was a discussion long before Darwin was ever born.

In fact, hundreds and hundreds of years before Darwin was born. And whether or not Genesis was requiring us to believe in a certain age most of that, a lot of those assumptions were actually came into existence much later, like the timelines of the begats in the begats and the begats and how we add up to 6,800 and something years.

And exactly, and, and we can know what day of the week it was type of teaching and, and those are extremes on each end and there are theoretical ways to engage with it. Who’s to say that God was running time at one second per second, during this or. God created everything already old, which by the way, would be an older theory, not a younger theory, but it filed under young earth [00:38:00] theory.

It’s just, God created everything already age. Like he didn’t create a chicken. He created a chicken, not an egg. He created an adult man, not an infant or a zygote or whatever. So he did that with all of creation. I mean, that’s sure why not? I mean, he’s God, he can do that. If he wants to that, this is the, he, he created something two days old and somebody else, third, something else, 30 years old is something else.

30 billion years old. Okay. I mean, certainly God, he can do that if he wants to do, that’s not a, that’s not an issue, but that would be an old earth theory. Right. Anyway, I think there is a

Bryn Starnes: but you’re saying you’re, you are convinced that you can ascribe to either instill, be believe in the inerrancy of the word.

Chris Legg: Absolutely. The infallibility, the inerrancy of the word of God. Absolutely. Yeah. Th that’s, that’s a whole other topic. That’d be a great topic. And other days it’s the difference between those two. And anyway, so, but I think there is a so the, the answer to the question is, yes, I think you can be totally appropriately a serious student of scripture that someone who loves and fears God and who follows Christ and who would come [00:39:00] away saying, I think the preponderance of the evidence leans towards a younger.

Again, like Chris Shira does, which I highly respect to that. And I pointed that out in that podcast. Like when we did that podcast, I said, those of you who are listening out there, who are old earth, listen, that Chris wasn’t just making, pulling spout stuff out and spouting it out. He was trying, he was using evidence, worldly, scientific evidence to defend his view.

I would do the same thing and we reached two different conclusions. Right? Both. Both can leave you on the boat of Christianity. Absolutely. You can believe in an older, if you can believe in a young earth and both be valid from a Christian perspective, because we, we don’t know the right, the Knesset, we cannot speak with certainty.

What is the only right way to interpret these passages?

Bryn Starnes: Right. And it’s not that we somehow learned more about science in the recent years and then went back. And [00:40:00] are now redefining scripture or re-interpreting, and it’s just that we are looking to God’s creation and saying, is there something in scripture that maybe I misunderstood.

Chris Legg: Even if it’s that first thing that’s not wrong, it’s not wrong to say there’s been a scientific discovery. Gosh, we always thought this, the scientific discovery is calling that into question. Let’s look to scripture and see where. Over interpreting scripture. The greatest example of that was of course Copernicus and the Ford that the church taught for a thousand years, that the earth was the center of the universe, right?

To the degree that literally people who taught a heliocentric solar system were persecuted by the church that the everything wrote to our solar system rotates around the sun. Well, people were imprisoned for saying. But because clearly the Bible says everything rotates around the earth. Actually it doesn’t ever say that.

Right. That was just an assumption we made. That was an interpretation we made that made sense at the time. Okay. Yeah. I can see where we got that. [00:41:00] It turned out not to be right. And it wasn’t necessary to believe that scripturally, I think the same thing is true with the age of the earth is that as we’ve uncovered, things seem to be a lot older.

Well, which thing. What, what do we need to change? Do we need to change the way we interpret? Cause we don’t change scripture. Right. But we have to be humble enough to recognize, oh, well maybe we interpreted it correctly. And yes, we do have to do that about several things, which is part of why it’s okay to deconstruct and reconstruct our faith.

Bryn Starnes: And we don’t believe that science and scripture are at odds or science and Christianity are at odds, but it gives us freedom to dig into these hard questions.

Chris Legg: Absolutely. Absolutely.