Are We Losing The Evolution Argument – With Ken Ham – Joining us today to discuss an important topic is Ken Ham.  How we view the creation of the world will influence our worldview and how we live, are we in America losing the evolution argument? Tune in to find out!

Air Date: 10/18/2021

Guest: Ken Ham

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live. We are taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. When I say we, that includes David Barton, he’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders and includes Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and you should get him to speak by the way to your church or your organization, to your event, telling you he’s on fire right now for such a time as this, you need to get him in. Anyway, my name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach, thrilled to be here and thrilled to have you here listening.

And I want to encourage you to be a force multiplier. Take today’s program, or any of our programs throughout the week and share them with your friends and family. Push it out there on social media, get this truth in the hands of people. You know, it is hard right now to find truth. People are seeking that truth, but there is such an effort to have the old Orwellian ministry of truth, literally rewriting history and rewriting what’s happening in the culture right now. And that’s why each of us as citizens have to take it upon ourselves to be a voice of truth, to be a voice of reason, to be someone that is engaging with our friends and family, and on all of these topics.

That old thing about don’t talk about politics and religion and Thanksgiving or Christmas with the family. No, no, no, that’s exactly what we need to be talking about every single one of us engaging in these conversations, obviously, from a position of love and encouragement. But opening those conversations, asking the right questions, and sharing the information, and WallBuilders Live programs, that’s a great place to start in terms of sharing that out there on your social media outlets, and just directly with your friends and family.

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Alright, guys, little later in the program, we got Ken Ham back with us from Answers in Genesis and of course, the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, all of which is incredible, encourage people to visit there. But the topic today is, are we losing the evolution argument basically? Are there more and more people buying into evolution and fewer people that believe in creation? It’s a very important topic because as we’ve talked about before where you stand on this issue is really kind of determined so much of where you stand everywhere else. Because if you don’t believe in God if you don’t believe that God exists, or there’s, of course, those in kind of the middle that say, well, I think there’s a God, but he did everything through evolution. But then you have to start questioning a lot about the Bible.

So anyway, this is an important topic with regard to what we often have with George Barna with regard to biblical worldview, and whether people actually believe the Bible has the answers that it has. So we’ll have kin on a little later. But this affects everyone in our country really when you look at the policies that result from your belief system with regard to evolution,

Tim:

It does. And one of the interesting connections to see this is even when you look at the Founding Fathers on what they wrote in the Declaration of Independence when Thomas Jefferson wrote that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, they started off with a what they thought was a self-evident notion. It was this truth was so obvious to everybody. Everybody ought to understand this, that we were all created. And because we were created, there are certain things that flow from that, that from our Creator, we have inalienable rights, that government exists to protect those rights.

The very foundation of our nation was built on the notion that there was a God, there was a Divine Creator, and a Divine Creator is different than the notion of evolution. Which I understand, Rick, as you pointed out, there’s some people that believe there was a God, but that he used evolution along the way. It’s even interesting the way we define evolution because you have macro and microevolution. Microevolution is the change within a species within a kind over time. Well, of course, I think people can change over time, and I think things have changed over time.

But one of the distinctions is macroevolution, and again, but people even calling it evolution I think is a little skewed on some level. Because if you go back and look at the early American period, maybe back to the American Revolution, where the average height of the male in America, or at least that defined the American Revolution was around 51-54. And you could argue, well, right now the average height of the meal is significantly taller than 51-54. Well, have we evolved? Well, know a lot of things have changed. Our diets have changed. Our health procedures have changed. A lot of things have changed over time which make us now look different, which our lives we’re now living longer.

And this is where I think sometimes historically, people might look back and go, well, that was evolution. Well, I would not call it evolution on any level because nothing’s really changed other than some fundamentals about life and the way we live life and the way we eat and our diets and our health and our exercise. Fundamentals have changed. But this is where this would be a difference between microevolution because you’re talking about a change within a species where we now we grow bigger, we live longer, as opposed to macroevolution. And macro is where you have a dog becoming a horse becoming [inaudible 05:12], or whatever the case might be. That’s where you have species that are changing.

And this is where again it becomes important that we recognize as a Christian, and even really, maybe as evident as an American to understand the fundamental principles how America was founded, is we believe there was a God and that God created things. And because God created, not only was there a creation order but there was certain principles that flow out of what God created. Because when God created, God gave responsibilities, and God gave rights, and God gave choice. But then there were other things that flowed from those rights and opportunities and responsibilities and choices.

And this is the fundamental thought of America that has made America different for so long, because we understood our rights have come from God, they don’t come from government. But if you don’t believe there’s a God, then God hasn’t given you the rights nor could he give you those rights, and therefore the only other option is government. So this really is much more than just about having a biblical perspective. This is understanding the biblical connection to even the American understanding of the Declaration of the Constitution, the foundation of how we think and how America operates as a government.

David:

And one of the things that stands out to me on what Ken is going to talk about creation, evolution, is really how old the argument is. You can think of any civilization and their philosophers are always going to say, where did man come from? How did he get here? What is man’s purpose? What’s he supposed to do? And so every civilization has dealt with those questions and their philosophy and their literature and the writings.

Certainly, the Judeo-Christian perspective, we go back and we have the scriptures and we say, well, Genesis 1, God made man, real simple. But there are a lot of other cultures that didn’t go that way. And so today, when we talk about evolution, we tend to think of it more as something in the last two centuries, something that’s more recent in science, Darwin comes along 1859 is Origin of Species. And yet from a historical perspective, virtually everything Darwin advocates in 1859 had already appeared somewhere in writings across the world with other philosophers by the time of Aristotle, which is 400 years before Jesus was born.

So if you go through Anaximander who is 600 years before Jesus, he was teaching spontaneous generation. That’s how it came to be. You’ve got Diogenes who’s 400 years before Jesus, and he’s teaching the primordial slime, which is another evolutionary theory. Empedocles which is 500 years before Jesus, he taught the survival of the fittest and natural selection, which I thought that was Darwin. No, Darwin’s about 2000 years too late in that argument.

Then you have Democritus, who’s again, 500 years before Jesus, he taught the immutability of species, the species evolve: you do transfer from one species to another, and one species becomes another. And so the intermediary species kind of philosophy that Darwin put out. Lucretius who taught that all why spring from Mother Earth. It was formed from Mother Earth. It didn’t come from any god, it was a secular process all the way through. You get more to the time of the Founding Fathers. Giordano Bruno is teaching that that evolution is how man came to be. And he’s quoting all these guys from before Jesus. And Leibniz, who’s a French guy taught the theory of intermediate species.

I mean, all the stuff that Darwin is teaching, and none of this is new. I mean, even the time Founding Fathers [inaudible 08:27] was teaching that man descended from the apes, that man used to be an ape and he ascended. Now, that he’s doing this a full century before Darwin comes out with anything. So it’s interesting that at the time of the Founding Fathers, they had been exposed to all these evolutionary teachings and the Big Bang and the primordial slime and innumerous species, I mean, that’s not new to them. This is stuff they understood.

And that’s why it’s interesting that when you look at someone like a Daniel Webster when he was 17 years old in 1801, his senior paper at Dartmouth was creation versus evolution. He went through the arguments back then and came down strong on the side of creation. So it’s not like that people didn’t know evolution or the thought of the concept. I mean, that’s been there for thousands and thousands of years. So it’s interesting that when you go back and say okay, it’s been there for a while. What did scientists do with that?

And if you take people the greatest scientists in world history that we study in our textbooks and they created so much, I mean, you take someone like Copernicus, he is a big creation guy, not an evolution guy. You take Sir Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, is the same thing. You take your Johannes Kepler, we have so much that’s done in outer space where because of Kepler and his laws. He was a big God guy, not an evolution guy with William Harvey and with Van Leeuwenhoek, and with Robert Boyle. And you take Isaac Newton and you take Carl [inaudible 09:54] and as you take Joseph Henry and Charles Babbage and James Jewel, and I’ll just keep going through all these famous scientists. These were all guys that had studied science and they came down on the side of God and creation, not the side of secularism and evolution.

Now, where are we today? Completely reversed. There’s a survey from Pew. And the Pew survey says that today 33% of scientists believe in God while 83% of the general population believes in God. So what you’ve got is only 17% of the population doesn’t believe in God, but 67% of scientists don’t believe in God. So that’s like a 3-4-1 margin. 20% of scientists say they don’t believe in God or higher power. Only 12% of the public says that.

So scientists are a whole lot more secular today than our citizens. Scientists today are a whole lot more secular than we’re any previous generation of scientists and that’s a result of what’s happened in science education. This is what’s being taught in schools. That’s what’s been taught specifically in public schools since about 1968 when the Supreme Court said, oh, you can’t teach creation, that’s a religious doctrine. No, it’s not. That’s a scientific doctrine. I don’t need religion to prove creation. It’s not just a religious argument. This is something that scientists have been advocating for thousands of years. And so I can study science and come to the conclusion of creation.

So when the Supreme Court in 68, and Epperson versus Arkansas said, oh, you can teach students about creation because that’s a religious teaching, well, maybe it isn’t religious, but it’s also a scientific teaching as well. And then there was another case in 73 where the court assembly said, you can’t even put parallel stuff together, you can’t teach creation versus evolution side by side. You just got to teach one view only. Well, since the court intervened and said you have to teach one view, America certainly become more secular in science. And so a recent study came out to show what do Americans think about evolution and creation? And that’s what Ken is going to talk about because it certainly is moving away from creation toward evolution. But then the Supreme Court has not allowed students to be exposed to the scientific arguments that are out there on the other side, which is very unfortunate.

Rick:

Yeah, if you’re only getting exposed to one side of the argument, of course, more and more people are going to move towards that. Quick break, we’ll be right back. Ken Ham is with us from Answers in Genesis, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out, wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Always good to have Ken Ham with us. You need to be using Answers in Genesis materials, not just for your kiddos, but for you as well. And if you haven’t gone to visit the Creation Museum or the Ark Encounter, put it on the schedule. You got to do it. It’s absolutely amazing. We love going there. Ken, love you brother. God bless you for what you do out there. Thanks for coming on the program once again.

Ken:

Hey, our pleasure anytime.

Rick:

Hey, man, I hate to call you when there’s bad news, right? I was like kidding you when there’s good news as well. Apparently now, I don’t always believe polling. But supposedly, according to this article in the Christian Post, more and more people are believing in evolution. And they say it’s because of better education, college level education, and declining levels of religious belief. That sounds more to me like it’s because of more indoctrination and less getting the truth. But I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but we were just curious what you thought about it, and whether you think the same trend is true?

Ken:

Well, yes, I’ve seen that particular research. In fact, I had one of our researchers read through the actual paper. Keep in mind that this particular research was done by the National Center for Science Education, which is really nothing more than a center that is anti-creationist. And their whole mission is to try to get creationists out of school and make sure evolution is taught as fact and so on. So I’m always a little suspicious when people like that are conducting this sort of research.

But I actually looked at the graphs, and by the way, before I even tell you about that, I agree with what you’re saying there and that is that the more people are indoctrinated, and the more they go to these secular universities and schools that are become more anti-God, more anti-Christian, and teach evolution as fact, the more people are programmed, the more they’re brainwashed. And so I would expect in that sense to see particularly with some of the younger generations, Generation X, Y, and Z that have gone through a much more evolutionized, much more atheistic education system that they’re probably indoctrinated more in evolution.

But it’s interesting when you actually look at the graphs of the research, what they don’t tell you is since 2018 those who reject evolution started to go up again, and those who accept evolution started to go down again. So that’s just a little interesting part of their graph say that they don’t tell you. But it certainly looks like then in around about 2017 there was a peak of those who accept evolution, and it seemed to go up from about 2007 onwards.

The interesting thing is that actually coincides with those who said they don’t know, the number of them went down. So it seems those that said they don’t know, that number went down as the number who said they do know it was evolution went up. So who knows what all these statistics actually mean. But I suspect that some of this definitely has to do with the fact that the education system has become much more secularized. And the younger generation Generation Z, I mean, Generation Z is a high percentage of nuns now, those who say they don’t have a religion, whereas they do. Their religion is they don’t believe in God, and they believe everything happened by natural processes.

And you know what they do sign the research too is the more liberal someone is, the more likely they are to believe in evolution; and the more conservative or Christian, the more they’re to believe in creation. Well, I would have predicted that. That’s for sure. That doesn’t seem to be anything startling or anything new. You would expect those that are liberal to accept evolution, and those who are conservative or Christian, if they believe God’s word is certainly going to believe in creation.

But I might just add here as well that when you read a report on this particular research, for instance, they say the theory of evolution is based on the idea that all species are related and gradually change over time and it relies on genetic variation, and so on. But one of the things that we have to remember is that evolution is a belief, it’s actually religion. And the changes that we see over time are changes within a kind.

For instance, we don’t see one kind change into another, and we never see matter producing new information, or matter producing a code system. And yet, life is built on information, and there’s not just millions or billions or trillions, I know I’d have to say zillions of bits of information in living systems on earth, and there’s no way that could have come about by natural process as we’ve never seen matter produce one bit of information. And there’s no way our code system because DNA has the information for a code system to read all this information, well codes then it comes from intelligence, so there’s no way life would have ever come about by natural processes anyway. And that’s why for people to believe it they have to be brainwashed and programmed. And that’s what’s happening sadly in much of the secular education system and through the media.

Rick:

Well, and so many of those distinctions that you’re making even right now, we failed on our side as the church as Christian parents to teach those things so that our kids were prepared when they got to those college. And frankly, I think we failed by sending them off to these schools of indoctrination, they’re doing everything they can to tear down everything that we taught them for 18 years.

And that’s why what you’re doing with the Creation Museum and with the Ark Encounter is so incredibly important and with of course, all the materials and the Answers in Genesis books is you’re literally teaching us to be ready to answer, to be able to respond to those things and to answer a lot of the questions that frankly we all had grown up when we would read these verses in the Bible and then go well, what about this and what about that? You just do an amazing job at it. And that’s why I always challenge people to go spend a few days at the museum and at the Ark Encounter.

You blew me away a couple years ago when we were there when you told me that something like, remind me the number 50 or 60% of the people or something crazy that come there are not Christians, that are actually either atheist or no faith and that they’re just curious, they want to see what our side says and they’re blown away by what you present.

Ken:

Yeah, at least 30% who come non-Christians. And we’ve seen tremendous fruit as a result of what the Ark and the Creation Museum do. We just had 40-days of gospel music festival at the Ark Encounter, 40 days and nights of gospel music, had over 100 artists, and so on. But people come in, lots of people came in, we’ve had record numbers actually. And they go through the Ark and see all those exhibits and many went through the Creation Museum beforehand.

And during that 40 days and 40 nights, we saw 800 people commit their lives to the Lord publicly there at the Ark. Now that doesn’t include lots of other people that we didn’t get to talk to. But we know there’s been hundreds and hundreds of people converted. So there’s no doubt the apologetics and that’s what you’re talking about that we actually teach at the Ark Encounter in the Creation Museum where we give answers to all these skeptical issues and the attacks on God’s word today certainly challenges people. I’ve had many, many people tell me we’re never taught this to school, we never heard this, this is so new to us. We never had these answers before. And God uses it open their mind and convict them and bring them to himself

Rick:

Powerful, powerful stuff. Answersingenesis.org, there’s links there that’ll get you over to the Ark Encounter and the other things as well. And Ken, I mean, if to all Christian parents that are listening out there, you got to take your kids because they need to know this stuff. And Ken’s done a phenomenal first-class job of being able to take your children and you frankly, we all need it, through these exhibits, and answer so many of these tough questions and go home with really a strengthening in their faith. It’s really getting grounded, where you can stand firm and God’s word, not only to defend it when it’s attacked but just to be confident and just to have the stronger faith. So I love it, brother, God bless you. Keep up the great work. Thanks for being on call for us when we see some of these things and coming on and helping us to make sense of it. But hope to see you again soon out there at the Ark or at the Creation Museum.

Ken:

Oh, great. Well, thank you, lovely to be with you.

Rick:

It’s Ken Ham, folks, the website answersingenesis.org. Back with David and Tim. And guys, I say it all the time when we have Ken on or whatever I get a chance, the experience at the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum will help solidify your belief, and it’ll give you what you need to be able to defend and be ready to answer as we’re supposed to be, but be able to defend against all these arguments out there. So really encourage people to go.

David:

Yeah, and it’s interesting that they can was pointed that actually, if you look at the most recent stats or even the study that was just done, in the last two to three years, it looks like is turning around and moving in the right direction again. And so I pulled up another poll that goes back and looks all the way back into the 80s. And what you find right now is the percentage of people who believe that evolution only without God’s involvement, that’s only 22% of the nation. I mean, even though it’s a growing percentage, it’s still a definite minority. The rest of the group, about 70-75% says it’s either divided that God did a literal creation by himself or the God created man through evolution, but they still say God’s involved.

So a secular non-God involved belief in how men got here, only about 22% of the nation actually goes in that direction. So while the numbers have been going up in recent years, the good news is that most people still believe that God had some part in man coming to be. And as Tim pointed out, that’s really significant because that’s the philosophy our Founding Fathers had. And again, they went through the same evolution creation debates that we do today, but they came down on the side that there is a Creator, and this Creator is the one that’s the base of our government because he gives certain rights, inalienable rights and government exists to protect the rights that God gave. I mean, you take the Creator out and American government is just not the same thing.

Tim:

Well, it’s also something interesting considering like the principles of the law of sowing and reaping, that whatever you sow that’s the kind of crop you’re going to grow. And we’ve been sowing such secularism and such anti-God, anti-Christian rhetoric and philosophy for so long that it’s not surprising we’re seeing this grow. But it also is something that as parents, we need to make sure that we then are laying the counter to that the foundation for our kids. And we talk about it often that we need to have the apologetics knowing why we believe what we believe, what is the defense for this.

And this is where Ken Ham, the Ark Encounter, Creation Museum does such a good job of helping give evidence that even though as Christians, obviously, we live by faith and faith is an important part of how we live our life, and without faith, it’s impossible to please God. Faith is so important to us. Our faith is not based on nothing. There is something that gives us a foundation that actually our faith is logical. There’s a reason that it’s okay to believe in creation, to believe in God because it does make sense there’s a logic that you can apply to it understanding the way this works. And Ken Ham does a great job of helping connect those dots.

Rick:

Well check out their websites, you go to the Creation Museum, you go to Answers in Genesis, you can go to the Ark Encounter. If you haven’t been to the Ark Encounter, you’re missing out. I’m telling you. It’s an amazing experience. I’ve run into people all the time that had been there that was blown away by it as my family was. So really encourage you to check that out.

Appreciate you listening today to WallBuilders Live, encourage you to go to our website wallbuilderslive.com. Also, be sure to check out biblicalcitizens.com, that’s where you can get the course for free, that’s where you can host a class in your home or at your church. Get it in as many hands as possible, Biblical Citizens in Modern America. That’s how we’re going to say this nation, folks, we got to become biblical citizens in this nation. And here at WallBuilders, we want to equip you, we want to inspire you, we want to give you the education that you need, but also the truth so that you’ll be inspired to know, hey, these principles work. If we apply these principles, these biblical principles in our culture, we can turn it around, and we can once again restore our constitutional republic.

And by the way, our Monday night class, many of you know and many of you’re in our Monday night class, it’s a live class with tens of thousands of people from across the nation on Monday nights. You can get into the class at biblicalcitizens.com. And we’re going to do something special. We’ve been doing the Biblical Citizenship in Modern America on Monday nights. We’re going to dive further into biblical citizenship by doing Foundations of Freedom. This is the television series that David Barton, myself, Glenn Beck, Carol Swain, Michelle Bachman, a lot of different folks did a couple of years ago, and it actually dives deeper into what does the Bible say about the law, what does the Bible say about civil justice, what does the Bible say about economics and science and all of these things? It’s a really fun class.

We’ve got a special six-week class coming up soon on Foundations of Freedom. We’ll be doing that on Monday night starting November 8th. You can get into that class totally for free. Get your friends and family to do the same thing. You’ll enjoy the live Q&A at the end of class. It’s a great time. Mark Meckler and I will be hosting. We’ll have David and Tim as special guests and other folks as well. So check that out at biblicalcitizens.com. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.