Design in Fossil Organisms - 180002

Episode 2 September 06, 2020 00:28:45
Design in Fossil Organisms - 180002
The Creator Revealed
Design in Fossil Organisms - 180002

Sep 06 2020 | 00:28:45

/

Show Notes

Have you ever had the opportunity to examine a real fossil? Maybe you have seen dinosaur bones or shells encased in rock. Do these remains of once living organisms look less designed than the creatures we find living around us? How might the same engineering challenges faced by living creatures have been solved by these ancient creatures? What do the conclusions we draw tell us about the Creator of these ancient yet elegant organisms?

View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

0:04 [Music] 0:30 welcome to the creator revealed 0:33 I'm Tim Standish I'm a scientist who 0:35 works for the Geoscience Research 0:38 Institute and we are so glad that you 0:41 are joining us today I'm Shelley Quinn 0:44 I'm here to represent the average person 0:47 who's just going whoa he tells us these 0:50 things what we do in the first segment 0:53 the first 15 minutes we will be talking 0:55 about some scientific fact that I think 0:59 you will find fascinating because will 1:01 show how God our Creator is revealed in 1:06 his creation and then we'll come back 1:09 with the second half to have a biblical 1:12 application a discussion of this so 1:14 please stay tuned for the entire program 1:17 what are we going to learn today we're 1:19 gonna learn something that many people 1:21 have an incorrect view of it's about 1:25 fossils people believe that fossils 1:28 somehow other irrefutable proof of 1:33 Charles Darwin's theory of evolution the 1:37 reality is actually quite the opposite 1:39 when we look at those fossils they tell 1:43 us something about the Creator amen so 1:47 before we actually get into that I want 1:50 to draw your attention to a text that 1:54 was written by the Apostle Paul to the 1:58 people in Ephesus okay hey this is 2:01 Ephesians 5 32 and Paul wrote this he 2:07 said this is a great mystery but I speak 2:10 concerning Christ and the church the way 2:15 I want to apply that text with fossils 2:18 is like this fossils are remains of 2:23 organisms that lived in the past 2:26 unfortunately we can't do time travel 2:29 and go back and actually see what 2:33 happened so in many ways they are a 2:36 great mystery they're a mystery yes and 2:38 it's a mystery that is profound because 2:40 we can't go back in time we can't 2:43 really know certain things about them 2:46 for example we don't know what sounds 2:49 fossil organisms made is we don't know 2:53 how a dinosaur sounded he could have 2:55 been squeaky he could have been squeaky 2:57 he could have been silent 2:58 he might have hissed like a lizard we 3:00 just don't know and we cannot 3:03 realistically know we can speculate and 3:06 that's all so let's look at a dinosaur 3:10 okay oh I've got a great dinosaur this 3:13 is this is the tallest dinosaur that's 3:17 known and when you look at that it's 3:21 pretty big in fact it's about thirteen 3:24 point two seven meters tall what effect 3:28 about forty feet yes 13:13 well a meter 3:34 is a little bit over a yard it's about 3:36 39 inches so we're talking about a very 3:39 very tall creature very intimidating to 3:43 meet him when you're out picking berries 3:45 I'm sure yes you know I think I probably 3:48 wouldn't want to get trodden on by him 3:50 but the good news is this particular 3:52 dinosaur like many other dinosaurs 3:54 they're commonly vegetarian they're 3:57 obviously there are meat-eating 3:58 dinosaurs we all know about t-rex and 4:01 and dinosaurs like that but no this was 4:04 a vegetarian and probably ate an awful 4:07 lot of vegetables let's put it that way 4:11 when I look at something like this a 4:14 wood comes to them to my mind and it's a 4:17 great that's a great sounding wood I 4:19 love the way it comes off your tongue is 4:20 teleology it sounds like something you 4:23 might do in the afternoon in England yes 4:26 morning teleology an afternoon teleology 4:29 but it means something quite different 4:31 it's built off the root word tele 4:34 something out there something along like 4:38 a telescope you're looking at something 4:39 far away the idea of teleology is 4:42 something that it's a situation where 4:46 you have a goal out there somewhere out 4:49 there and it's moved towards it's it's a 4:52 goal an intelligent being has a goal and 4:55 then 4:56 makes does work to get towards that goal 5:00 it could be walking towards that it 5:01 could be engineering for example there's 5:04 a goal of making something an aeroplane 5:06 or a car or okay or a computer anything 5:10 like that there's that going a design 5:12 planning exactly but it exists first in 5:15 the in the brain and then in reality 5:18 okay yeah so that's the idea 5:20 now fossil organisms like living 5:22 organisms had complex integrated systems 5:26 that were necessary for their survival 5:29 circulatory systems muscle systems 5:32 skeletal systems nervous systems all of 5:35 those had to work together that's an 5:38 indicator that there was some sort of 5:39 teleology involved they something that 5:42 someone was working towards the goal of 5:44 making a dinosaur and yeah so somebody 5:48 anticipated their need the dinosaurs 5:50 need or or the other fossil organisms 5:53 need and thought of a solution to every 5:56 problem that needed to be solved for 5:58 them to live okay that had to be solved 6:01 first before they could come into 6:03 existence it's not something you could 6:05 muddle your way towards once you have 6:08 the dinosaur you might be able to have 6:10 it grow a little bit bigger or a little 6:12 bit smaller or something like that but 6:14 the basic systems all had to be in place 6:16 first especially that big dude oh it's 6:22 you know in our experience only 6:24 intelligence is capable of doing is 6:26 having that plan and integrating 6:28 everything and making it happen so 6:30 teleology is something we can look at in 6:32 all living things but we can also see 6:34 evidence of it in fossil things so when 6:37 we talk about that incredibly tall 6:39 dinosaur we can see that there was some 6:42 teleology involved some intelligence 6:45 involved in its production in making it 6:48 in creating it and we can do that by 6:51 looking at a modern organism the tallest 6:55 living animal director of right now a 6:58 really tall giraffe would hit about six 7:01 meters so it's pushing about 20 a little 7:04 less than 20 feet and 7:08 there are all sorts of things does it 7:11 design things we could talk about with 7:13 diners with with giraffes but let's look 7:17 at a problem that they have to solve an 7:20 engineering problem that would also have 7:22 been solved by the dinosaur so let's see 7:26 how they solve it 7:27 it's called hydrostatic pressure this is 7:29 basically the problem that they face 7:31 when they're trying to get blood up to 7:33 the top of their head when you're 7:36 pumping blood up obviously their heart 7:39 is down in their body it's it's going 7:43 against gravity that's going against 7:44 gravity it's pumping it up this so the 7:47 blood has to go up about three meters 7:49 that's about ten feet that it has to go 7:52 that's that's a lot of weight of blood 7:54 that you've got to push up so therefore 7:57 you've got to have very high blood 7:59 pressure if you want to do that and when 8:02 you look at the numbers it's quite 8:03 shocking really 280 over 180 is their 8:07 normal blood pressure a human being with 8:10 blood pressure that high we're not have 8:12 it over well they exactly our blood 8:15 vessels would explode under those 8:17 circumstances so they have to have very 8:19 strong very strong blood vessels right 8:22 and of course that also means that they 8:25 must have a very powerful heart 8:30 now some people people used to think oh 8:33 that means they have a really huge heart 8:35 but they don't they have a heart that on 8:38 the outside at least is about the same 8:40 size as as you would expect for an 8:42 animal of their sizes I've always heard 8:44 that giraffes had large hearts but 8:46 that's a they really don't but what they 8:48 do is they have very thick walls on 8:50 their heart okay so the heart is a 8:53 muscle right and the muscle there's a 8:56 lot of muscle there which means that 8:58 inside that space that you know the 9:00 ventricles where the blood is who flows 9:03 in and then is squeezed out under 9:05 pressure as it's pumped out the 9:08 ventricles are actually quite small okay 9:12 hmm so that means that every exactly 9:16 that means every time they squeeze it's 9:18 just a little bit of blood that goes out 9:19 so but they have to put out a lot of 9:21 blood 9:22 so what can they do go fast that's right 9:25 they can pump fast so their heart beats 9:27 very very fast relative to ours or other 9:30 organisms yeah so they have this rapid 9:32 heartbeat and then finally they have a 9:36 really interesting problem because we've 9:37 been talking about getting the blood up 9:39 to the top right up to the top of their 9:41 head but what happens to that blood that 9:43 went all the way down to the bottom it 9:45 has to come back up from the tip of 9:47 their foot all the way back up into 9:50 their body and back to their heart so 9:52 how does it get squeezed back tight skin 9:55 like pressure like pressure 9:57 exactly squeezing the blood back up into 10:01 their body so you can see then that 10:06 however these were created we believe 10:08 God create it had to be an intelligent 10:11 creator who looked ahead and planned for 10:16 every step for this creature to exist as 10:21 a species that's different than you and 10:23 I exactly very good teleology 10:27 intelligence yes god that's that's 10:31 that's a logical way of moving forward 10:35 then when we look at at other kinds of 10:37 fossils what we can see is we can look 10:40 at living things that they are 10:42 essentially the same as so for example 10:45 here I'm showing you a nautilus shell 10:47 and a fossil nautilus shell on the left 10:51 they're so bad how old but especially 10:54 this particular one I'm not entirely 10:57 sure but it would be millions of years 10:59 according to and yet and you can see how 11:03 much evolution has occurred over those 11:05 millions of years so we want to clarify 11:09 because I don't want someone riding this 11:11 station that we don't believe it's been 11:13 millions of years exactly but that's 11:15 what many scientists what what the 11:18 fossils do not show is change I mean 11:21 this is what a modern Nautilus looks 11:24 like but this is a grasshopper we can 11:27 see it's pretty much the same as a 11:28 modern grasshopper what's this that's a 11:31 dragon it's a dragonfly he had four 11:33 wings that's right just like a modern 11:35 dragonfly 11:35 this one I love this is a a lizard a 11:38 kind of gecko actually and geckos will 11:42 drop their tail sometimes a new one 11:44 grows back this this ancient one he's 11:46 very growing and he's regrowing a tail 11:48 so the ancient lizard had the ability of 11:51 the ancient gecko had the ability that 11:54 we see in the modern lizards what we 11:56 don't see is if evolution that's amazing 11:59 we might see things lost but we 12:02 certainly don't see evolution there's a 12:05 shock now we can recognize all of these 12:08 things but I want to get to this fossil 12:11 organisms also suggest behavioral 12:14 complexity it's not just the the the 12:19 morphology the organs and those sorts of 12:22 things their behavior the example I want 12:24 to use is a marsupial this happens to be 12:28 the largest marsupial fossil help there 12:31 Diprotodon but I want to just point out 12:35 that modern modern marsupials the ones 12:39 who carried their babies in a pouch 12:41 okay here in the United States we have a 12:44 massive every opossum I went running out 12:50 one morning because my dog was barking 12:51 and I saw this this mother opossum and 12:55 she was exhibiting a behavior she had 12:59 all of her little darlings there on her 13:02 back and she was not going to let that 13:06 can you count them I don't know what a 13:09 fabulous mother what you know I don't 13:12 want to have a pet one of those things 13:14 and nobody seems to understand why 13:16 they're just so gorgeous lovely lovely 13:20 creatures but the point is ancient 13:23 creatures they had to have behaviors to 13:27 take care of their young so what does 13:30 this reveal about the Creator I'm 13:33 suggesting at least a couple of things 13:35 first he encourages thoughtfulness in 13:40 people as we study these fossils we need 13:43 to be thoughtful we have to understand 13:45 that we don't understand everything 13:46 about them 13:48 but we can see evidence of their 13:52 creation and they tell us something 13:54 about God himself yes and we see the 13:57 same wisdom love and the value that God 14:03 placed on diversity when he did his 14:06 creation we see it in modern organisms 14:10 and we see it in ancient organisms and 14:12 it just supports that God is love God is 14:15 all-powerful and we're excited to come 14:19 back in just a moment we're gonna be 14:22 gone for 60 seconds so stay tuned 14:24 because we will come back to look at the 14:27 biblical application of these principles 14:30 [Music] 14:36 welcome back to the Creator revealed I 14:39 was telling Tim I don't know if it is 14:42 his doctorate in biology or felices 14:44 accent that makes him look so 14:46 intelligent but guess what we've got his 14:49 boss with us today 14:50 and now you've got some competition it's 14:55 it's fun working at the Geoscience 14:57 Research Institute because I have a 15:00 group of colleagues who are so 15:03 interesting and know so much trust me we 15:07 keep one another humble and it's it's 15:13 enjoyable to discuss the very things 15:15 that we are talking about in this the 15:19 Creator revealed series now up until 15:23 this point in this in this particular 15:27 episode we've been talking about design 15:30 in fossils but I've been concentrating 15:33 mainly on dinosaurs and the idea that 15:39 hey you know we find organisms living 15:42 today they look designed and we find 15:44 fossils of those same organisms is that 15:47 the same so we'd expect that they you 15:49 know it's just just sort of reasonably 15:51 consistent to believe that in fact those 15:55 fossils represent designed organisms as 15:59 well dr. Gibbs 16:01 has made a study of a kind of fossil 16:06 called an ammonite now that sounds like 16:09 something from the Bible right dad 16:10 but let's let him explain these to us a 16:13 little bit welcome dr. Gibson thank you 16:18 so I just happen to have here with me a 16:22 fossil ammonites shell it's interesting 16:26 that looks sort of white is snail yeah 16:32 except it's kind of flat there's some 16:34 flat snails - yeah it's a moment like a 16:38 snail is notice that it has a spiral 16:42 shape to it 16:44 you notice that spiral there that's kind 16:46 of cool I kind of like the shape it 16:48 reminds me of a chambered nautilus but 16:50 you've probably heard about not long ago 16:53 there's there's some differences between 16:55 the Nautilus and the ammonite 16:59 so they're there different kinds of 17:01 things but there's very little a lot of 17:02 similarity - I just have this little toy 17:08 here that illustrates what the thing 17:11 looked like if I can get in here is a 17:14 little bit like an octopus yes yeah in 17:19 fact it is a lot like a squid or an 17:21 octopus with a shell on it it's kind of 17:25 an unusual thing but notice that spiral 17:28 shape again and I kind of like that 17:30 spiral shape it's interesting and one of 17:35 the interesting things about it is it 17:37 has a mathematical basis there's an 17:41 actual you can write an equation for a 17:43 spiral well I think wow that got created 17:49 by a great mathematician maybe it's 17:53 great to think though that God is such a 17:56 genius at mathematics not just because 17:59 of the spiral this of course but because 18:02 mathematics has found throughout nature 18:04 yeah that's really kind of a remodeling 18:07 thing that in in all living things we 18:10 find these that mathematics can describe 18:13 things that 18:15 but why do they have to white why does 18:18 it have to be that way well it probably 18:20 doesn't 18:21 it's just that mathematics is is the 18:26 basis of the universe apparently but 18:28 also in living things quite quite 18:30 incredible yes I think it tells us 18:34 something about the Creator he's a 18:36 mathematician he invented mathematics I 18:39 guess well the the beauty I should say 18:45 that the interest and I think it's 18:47 beauty to the interest in that she'll a 18:50 spiral shape is kind of interesting in 18:53 fact I think it's okay to say that it's 18:55 beautiful and that beauty that I see in 18:59 the ammonite show I see it in the 19:01 anomalous shell the chamber dramas and 19:04 other things it makes me wonder why 19:08 should nature be beautiful and why am I 19:13 able to appreciate that beauty I don't I 19:17 mean I've got a couple of house cats I 19:20 don't see them admiring beautiful things 19:24 I haven't noticed other animals doing 19:27 that why me on you why do we appreciate 19:31 beauty and I think it's because we were 19:34 created in the image of a God who 19:37 himself appreciates and loves beauty and 19:42 I I find that interesting it isn't a 19:47 tree and an unnecessary correlation 19:52 really isn't it the the creation is 19:54 beautiful and we have minds that are 19:58 capable of appreciating that beauty 20:01 it didn't doesn't seem like it would 20:03 have to be that way because of the laws 20:05 of physics or or may be some other 20:08 explanation like natural selection why 20:11 why would it be that way well if you 20:14 believe that the character of the 20:16 Creator involves beauty and wanting to 20:24 give pleasure to other beings 20:28 then it makes an awful lot of sense but 20:31 if you're not talking about something 20:33 like the God of the Bible it makes no 20:34 sense at all so what I won't kill if we 20:38 go back to it I'm sorry go ahead 20:41 if we go back to that ammonite and put 20:44 take a look you'll see he's got an eye 20:47 and look at now of course this is just a 20:50 toy but it's believed that the eye of 20:53 the ammonite did look a lot like that 20:55 and part of the reason for that of 20:57 course is by comparison of the chamber 20:59 thoughtless when we can see the eye and 21:01 see that it's quite the technically 21:04 advanced quite sophisticated so there's 21:08 another thing we can learn about design 21:11 in the ammonite the eye is carefully 21:15 crafted with not only physical parts 21:20 that are put together in a in a 21:22 functional secrets but molecular 21:24 machines that are in the you know where 21:27 we can't see them particularly but the 21:29 idea of vision is spectacular our 21:34 engineering feat yeah it's nice 21:37 I see the Creator must be an engineer 21:40 beyond our experience yeah when you 21:43 start looking at organisms you can 21:45 appreciate them all the way down from 21:47 from the from the gross structure the 21:50 environment they live in all the way 21:52 down into the actual molecules that 21:55 they're made of quite quite remarkable 21:57 so what's it what's inside that shell 22:00 what's what's going on with it well if 22:03 you split the shell open you will feel 22:07 fine and here's here's an example of an 22:09 ammonite with its shell split open it's 22:13 comparable think that it has a series 22:15 you can see that spiral very clearly 22:18 there and you can see that has a series 22:21 of chambers there little lines dividing 22:25 the chambers it seems that the animals 22:28 started out living in the smallest one 22:30 at the center of the spiral and then is 22:33 it outgrew the chamber it added another 22:36 one and so in a spiral saw the spiral 22:41 as the animal group leaving a series of 22:46 chambers behind it the animal living in 22:50 the outermost chamber that is kind of 22:55 cool 22:56 and so when you have those empty 23:00 chambers you might ask well is there 23:03 anything you can do with those empty 23:05 chambers and the answer is yes you can 23:09 fill them with gas or water pumping them 23:13 back and forth through a little tube and 23:17 by doing that you can regulate the 23:21 density of the Ammon egg and then it can 23:24 move up or down in the water and so it 23:28 could control the buoyancy its ability 23:32 to move up and down in the water by 23:35 controlling the amount of gas in these 23:37 little chambers so basically I'm just 23:41 gonna say there's a definite function to 23:44 the design and that's what we see 23:46 everything God created yeah what's 23:49 interesting to me is the is the 23:51 combining of this very practical thing 23:55 that allows this organism to decide 23:58 where it's going to be in the water by 24:00 adjusting the amount of gas inside 24:02 inside those chambers and and yet the 24:05 beauty yes as well it's not it's not an 24:08 ugly thing it turns out to be a 24:10 beautiful and practical thing 24:13 form and function going together yes and 24:17 then if you could imagine this damp this 24:20 shell with an animal in the animal 24:21 living near the end here in the chamber 24:27 that isn't preserved here but then that 24:30 means all these other chambers are 24:32 filled with gas so that would tell you 24:36 that the chambers filled with gas with 24:38 the uppermost in the water so you could 24:42 predict that the animal would be 24:43 floating around something like this 24:45 with that most of the chambers above it 24:48 and that animal on the bottom so 24:50 fabulous so it's actually orienting 24:53 itself as a result of it that would also 24:54 be 24:55 tected design then right I guess so yeah 24:58 well in position okay well thank you so 25:03 much for joining us dr. Gibson it's been 25:05 a real pleasure it makes me want to go 25:07 out and get my own land fossil a monoid 25:14 you know it's just so fascinating to me 25:17 that what makes us different than 25:19 animals we've already discussed that 25:21 animals and humans were made of the dust 25:24 of the ground we have the we both have 25:27 the breath of the life in us but what 25:31 makes us different is that God created 25:34 us with a specific function and we see 25:38 that everything God creates has a 25:40 function and a form and this is really 25:43 fascinating yeah well in the case of 25:45 human beings what I love is he gave us 25:48 this particular role in his creation and 25:51 function in his creation and he equipped 25:54 us for that role so our ability for 25:58 example to do mathematics this complex 26:00 abstract mathematics is useful to us as 26:04 we care for the creation as we study the 26:09 creation and we learn so much more about 26:13 God's wisdom and God's character from 26:18 these incredible things even these 26:20 fossils where the design is so clear and 26:24 so beautiful at the same time it's an 26:28 amazing God he is the artist yes well I 26:32 want to thank our audience for joining 26:36 us for this particular episode if you're 26:38 fascinated by fossils well then you're a 26:40 lot like me but we are talking about all 26:43 sorts of different things in this 26:46 Creator the Creator revealed series of 26:51 programs I hope that you'll join us for 26:54 future episodes we've certainly enjoyed 26:57 spending this time with you god bless 26:59 you 27:02 [Music] 27:23 you

Other Episodes

Episode 13

November 22, 2020 00:28:45
Episode Cover

Sharing the Creation - 180013

Christians understand the basic facts of creation from the biblical record. This doctrine is foundational to the biblical worldview and all other biblical doctrines....

Listen

Episode 8

October 19, 2020 00:28:45
Episode Cover

Creation and Human Relationships - 180008

Where do dehumanizing political philosophies like Marxism or Fascism come from? Why do some people believe that slaughtering babies, if they are an inconvenience,...

Listen

Episode 7

October 12, 2020 00:28:15
Episode Cover

Seeing Beauty in the Creation - 180007

For a Bible-believing Christian, nature is filled with beauty. We know in the depths of our hearts that the tragedy of sin has terribly...

Listen