Well, a couple of things. Let me just say a few things about what we've gone over. We started to talk about, last week we opened up the introduction to this series on creation and evolution. I gave you three reasons for why I believe it's an important topic to discuss, even in a church setting. And then I started to talk about to lay a foundation by showing that evolution is not an observable science and how important it is to understand that, that it's not something that can be seen, obviously, or that has ever been seen and processed. The only way that someone could come to that conclusion or make the conclusions that they do about some of the evolutionary thought that's out there, especially about us coming from molecules and that evolving to man, is by looking at what's fossil records and different things in our planet and so on that exist today, but still can't tell us exactly what happened and how all those things came to be the way they are. In other words, there's different interpretations. of how we are where we are today. And evolution is one interpretation of that. Evolution is not an observable science. It is an historical science. It is an interpretation of what we see, what we observe, based upon a philosophical viewpoint, based upon presuppositions that are there. And I was trying to get to last week, in which I'll get to now, the presuppositions. There are some presuppositions that evolutionists have right from the outset. They have in place that they start with right from the moment they come to the table of analysis, as it were. They start to make some observations. Already they have some presuppositions that are in place, some givens that they don't divert away from. And there are at least, there's several, but there's at least three that I wanted to talk to you about this morning that I think are important to understand regarding these evolutional presuppositions. First is what's called naturalism. Naturalism. And naturalism is, it's a belief denying that an event or object has a supernatural significance. specifically the doctrine that scientific laws are adequate to account for all phenomena. So evolutionary scientists right from the outset would start out, this is one of their givens, one of their presuppositions, is they believe in what's called naturalism, as I've said here, and they deny anything supernatural. There's no even room to even assume in the equation the possibility even that anything supernatural has taken place. And that's obviously very serious, right? If you leave that out of the equation right from the outset, you don't even allow that as a possibility. That's very serious. And what happens is, as you draw conclusions without that, and even if your conclusions prove to be wrong over time, That's never in your possibility range. So you never go back and say, well, maybe there's something supernatural here. Maybe there's room for the miraculous or the divine. You never go to that point. It's always back to, okay, well, that's assumed. Naturalism is an assumption. Let's go back to the table with what we have and try to work through things and correct any mistakes that we have without looking at anything in the possibility of the supernatural realm. And so as a very basic and firm principle, evolutionists presuppose that everything has a natural explanation. In other words, the possibility that anything in our world has a supernatural explanation, be it with regard to origins, how things started, how things began, or even with respect to processes of change, how things have changed over time, or what has happened, How our planet looks the way that it looks today or how people have come about the change process that takes place The supernatural is a non-option with any of that In fact, I was watching a little clip yesterday On YouTube of I think it's Phil McKay. Is that the guy's name Lou you familiar with McKay? Oh Well, he was debating with, he's a creationist, he was debating a little bit with Richard Dawkins. For those of you who don't know, Richard Dawkins is a staunch atheist. He's a part of this whole new atheism movement, the idea that I don't believe in God and I hate him even though he doesn't exist. that kind of idea. And he was talking to Richard Dawkins and he was saying to him about this idea that evolution is not observable. And Richard Dawkins kind of slipped for a second and said, of course, anything that takes millions of years can't be observable. And he kind of, McKay was trying to pin him down on that to say, look, you yourself are admitting right now that evolution is not an observable science. How can you call it science and not faith? And he tried to score them a bit, but just to show you that they know themselves that it's not observational science, even though that's what our textbooks teach, even though that's what National Geographic would teach. It's just fact, it's just science, as if people look today and can have seen or can absolutely identify some type of an amphibian becoming a squirrel or whatever it might be. In a very real sense, you can say then under this system of naturalism that God Himself is not an option. That's the point here, right? There's no supernatural. God is not even an option on the table of evolutionary thought. This is a very basic presupposition held by evolutionists. And so when studying anything, that study of anything must be contained within the realm of natural explanations and reasoning. It has to be figured out within that realm. Any evidence that cries out supernatural design or supernatural intervention is just not acceptable. And so when you start thinking of bringing out the idea of a six-day literal creation that God created in six literal days, from the evolutionary standpoint, That's not even an option from the outset because they presuppose this naturalism, this naturalistic view that we cannot bring to the table as we study these things out anything that is supernatural. And to say that this was created in six days obviously would be a supernatural assumption. So that's not even an option. Miracles are not an option. God is not an option. In fact, if you were to say to an evolutionist, some of them you would say, hey, you know, what about the possibility, what about these people who witnessed, you know, people raising from the dead like Jesus and so on? And there are some that would even go so far as to say, well, that can probably be explained if it did happen in a naturalistic way. In other words, somehow with the chemicals of the body and the materials that you can die and come back to life, they would even say that if it did happen, it can be explained in a naturalistic way. So there's no data that can even be processed by way of assuming the possibility even of supernaturalism in the evolutionary theory. So it's important to understand that presupposition. Secondly, and really going hand-in-hand with that, is another presupposition is what's called materialism. And this is the belief that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all organisms, processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or interactions of matter. So again, that just goes right in hand with naturalism, right? We can only deal with physical matter when we try to explain origins and everything. We have to assume that what we're looking at has to have a physical explanation, there has to be physical data, involved, it had to have come from matter in some sense. Again, everything is bound to the natural order. The whole notion that God created ex nihilo, or out of nothing, that God actually created anything out of nothing, is just not acceptable science to the evolutionists. It doesn't even exist in their mindset. From the creationist standpoint, we would say that evolutionists borrow from the very order of God's design. We would say that, wouldn't we? We would say that they borrow from the very things that ought to lead us to God, only to ignore the God who designed everything, including the order. I mean, the fact, one of the good arguments that's made by creationists is like, look, the fact that there is order, the fact that there is any discernible order in this world is evidence of a creator. How could order come out of, right, just come out of chance? It's an impossibility in that sense. So, but what they do, evolutionists, is they actually study and embrace the logic in creation. They look at the logic with the material things that exist and how things erode and how things form. They look at the logic of all that and they deny the rational mind that gave us this logic. Rather than say, okay, this is a pattern or a design screaming out a creator, they just look at the design itself and study the logic and treat that as if it's its own God and just call it chance. It's really an insult. It's a great insult on God and His wisdom. The logical patterns, signs and elements which give us our natural laws that are there. There are logical things that we can study in science and give us natural laws so that we can develop medicines and technologies and we can know what to do and what not to do and how to live in this creation in a way that's safe and enjoyable and so on. These things that give us our natural laws ought to be one of the greatest evidences for the existence and power of our Creator. but man is desperately lost and corrupt and dead in sin, leading him to suppress the obvious and to embrace the lie." I mean, when you look at the reality of what true science gives us, of what we can observe, of the natural laws that exist, It is so evident that there was a designer and a creator behind it that the only way you can deny that reality is to be dead in sin. There's no other explanation logically. You can't say that someone's, because even a stupid person could see that. I mean, you can't say, oh, well, the person's just dumb or ignorant. It's just too obvious. So it has to be an outright moral denial, really, at the bottom of the whole evolutionary system. So you have materialism, naturalism, those are assumptions on the table when you study as an evolutionary scientist. And that's what makes it scary when you see Christians, again, good Christians, scholarly Christians, compromising and saying, well, maybe we can embrace a theistic evolution and assume that God created by means of evolution, but he's the creator still. Same God, same gospel, but the days in Genesis aren't literal. He used evolution. They want to compromise with this because they've assumed that this stuff is scientific and really what they're doing is they're bowing to these people who are assuming from the outset that there is no God and that there's no possibility of the supernatural in this whole process. Well, let me give you one more One more assumption that they make, a presupposition that evolutionists make when they come to the table of analysis, and I think this one is very important as well. And as we go forward in the upcoming weeks, we're going to start getting, again, more into Let's say next time there's some foundational things we need to still discuss, but after that we'll start to get into the meat and bones of evolution, the specific details on how they say, what they look and how they say things have changed and get into mutations and natural selection and so on. But I want to give you this one more presupposition which we're going to see. And these things are going to be laced throughout all of our studies. We'll see these principles that they hold to, these false assumptions throughout. The last one is what we call uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism, and this is important. This is the doctrine that present-day processes acting at similar rates as observed today account for the change that's evident in the geologic record. Now I'm going to explain that to you so you understand that. Evolutionists assume that when measuring the rate of change in a variety of the Earth's elements, such as things as the rate of rock decay, how quickly rocks decay. We can see that in observational science, can't we? We can look at rock decay and see how long it would take for a rock to decompose. We can also see how long it would take for rocks to form. We could study fossils and how fossils are made and all sorts of things such as isotopes, and we'll get into all that. But they assume that when measuring the rate of change in a variety of the Earth's elements, such as measuring the rate of decay, one can assume the same rate of change has always been in play and thereby discovered the age of those elements. and the earth as a whole for matter. So in other words, if we can discover how rocks decay, the rate of decay today that takes place in rocks, or the rate that it takes to form rocks, rock formation, if we can figure that out and observe that, we can assume the same exact length of time for all of history. that the process has always been the same. And if we do that, we can figure out how old those things are, right? Because if it took this long to get to this much, this rate of decay, this much is lost, and it's changed into this, right? It's changed in this way. Then that means that's the way it's been always. So we can assume and we can figure out the years. And that's how you get this whole millions of years and billions of years and stuff. However, Well, uniformitarianism assumes, this is the general statement here, assumes that universal laws have changed. So everything is operating in the same way that it always has since the beginning. Now, there's a serious problem with this, and I'm hoping you're thinking about this already. First of all, it's been proven wrong, and I'll go over that with you probably here this morning as well as in the future. The problem with this is that it doesn't take into account some basic facts. First, It doesn't take in account the potential for a supernatural creation, right? Right from the outset, who can say for certain that when God created things, what state they were in, nobody was there to see what these things looked like at the beginning, how much they've decayed since then. We don't know the starting point, right, of everything in that sense. So that's one problem. No one was there at the beginning to measure the beginning point of anything, or if the processes of change in the geologic record remain the same all throughout history. Who can say that? Who can say that nothing could have changed those processes or sped them up in some way? Who can say for certain that the light of a star automatically that God created or that it came into existence at some great distance and we can measure how the light has reached us and how much time it's taken that we can just assume that it's always traveled at the same speed or it's never when it was created or when it was first made it started out right where it was and didn't start out over here. In other words, we don't know. We weren't there to see that. And so, this is especially important, however, even beyond just creation itself, when considering the effects on change processes brought about by catastrophe, such as a global worldwide flood. See, this is the big problem. the rate of change of things and rock formation and the decomposition of things can be affected if there is a situation where there is some kind of catastrophe. That can and would speed things up and we've proven that in our day. We've proven that in an observational sense with situations like what happened with Mount St. Helens. One example, when Mount St. Helens erupted, what happened? It formed several layers, right, different rock layers, in a very short period of time, and if you were to measure that, according to the way evolutionists measure the rock layers and discern time, it would have been millions of years since that, since those things, each layer was formed. If you looked at what was observed right before our very eyes, and you pretend you didn't see it, and you used it the way that evolution measures time, you would see it and say, okay, this had to be so many millions of years. See, because catastrophe has a way of speeding the process up. And so if there was a worldwide flood, which we believe, and there's evidence of that everywhere, they would say they're all localized floods, but it was a worldwide flood. If that was the case, that would change the speed of change, the speed of formation of rocks, that would bring about the fossil evidence that we see today. Why do we have all these fossils and rocks? Well, it's not possible that an animal could have died and just sat there and eventually became a fossil, because an animal would decompose. So in order for it to be fossilized, it would have to go through a system of heating and cooling, and it would have to be condensed in such a way that oxygen couldn't get in there, and so on. And that had to be through catastrophe, through some form of a catastrophe. And the flood is a perfect example. And so the earth has changed in many significant ways after the fall. It's not been a status quo or a just general rate of change at all since the beginning. There has been change, and we see that even in our own day, and especially after the flood. Yet these changes are not even considered from the evolutionary standpoint. They are blindly passed over by evolutionists. Again, they assume that there is no supernatural. They deny things like, of course, like the flood. So what happens when you throw that out? That's not in the equation. Well, now you look at all these rock layers, the Grand Canyon, and you look at all these fossils, and you have to make assumptions that are based upon materialism and naturalism, and that there is no divine behind these things. Well, we will see, as I've just said with Mount St. Helens over time, as we go through this, that through observational science even, how recent localized catastrophes have affected change processes right before our very eyes, confirming this to be a very relevant factor when studying origins and the evident changes in our geologic record. We're going to see that, that you can even observe that kind of change taking place. Well, let me stop there for a few moments. In fact, we could really have time for discussion. I wanted to leave time for discussion because last time we really didn't have that. But based upon what we've gone over as far as what's at stake, why this is important, or the presuppositions that are in evolutionary theory, materialism, naturalism, uniformitarianism, the whole idea of the two different kinds of science, historical science, observational science, any of those kinds of things. Do you have any comments or questions that anybody would like to add to that? Dave. Yeah, yeah, eventually we'll get into that. Believe it or not, there's a small group of evolutionists who I think would even say that the universe is infinite. But most of them would say that it's proven fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the great majority. But when you look, getting back to origins, I'm going to get into that. You mean origin of the earth and universe? Yeah, yeah, obviously you come back to the Big Bang, but they start out with this infinitely small like gas thing that just explodes. yeah we always gonna come back to where did this come from right at some point you have to you can say okay well where did that come from where did that come from you know so I would have to assume that at some point they're gonna say that something had always exist right you have to I mean I unless you gonna start talking about they'll get into multiple universes even to the point where you have some of them even be willing to say that the possibility that aliens have seeded this earth you know but now I mean again God's not in the equation supernatural is not in the equation God's not in the equation but we can go to there you know Did you see the video, what was the name of the video that was out, Ben Stein? Expelled, when he was talking to, I think it was Dawkins in that video, right? And he got into that issue, and he kept saying, well, where did that come from? And Dawkins got to the point where he was saying, well, you know, there's different theories. It could even be from the crystals on the back of a, what do you say, on the back of something? It was so ridiculously absurd when you get down to that, Dave. So that's a really good question, and I don't think any of them have the, I think that, Nobody has even a good postulation to address that at this point. I think they would admit that. I mean, they would still say, well, we're getting there. We're trying to find that. But they've narrowed it down to all different kinds of ridiculous ways, but they still haven't gotten to that. That's a good question. Anyone else? Kathleen. Turn what on? Oh, I'm like, okay, wait, it hasn't been on all this time? Okay. Evolutionists don't believe that God made man, but the creation evolutionists. Yeah, the theistic evolutionists. When I'm talking about evolutionists here, by and large, I'm talking about the atheists, the ones who have these presuppositions. Obviously, a creationist, a theistic evolutionist, a creationist, someone who believes in God and even the Gospel and Christ, who would embrace evolutionary theory in some sense, would not believe those presuppositions. They would say, well maybe God did create everything. He's the starting factor, kind of like what Dave said, the answer to that. But He used evolutionary processes to accomplish. So in other words, when you read Genesis, it's not a literal six days, but God started out, maybe He created first the molecules and He evolved these things over time, over millions of years. That's just the means God used to bring us to today. Now God could have done that in one sense, other than the fact that death would have been in the world before sin was here. I think that would be a problem, but I'm just saying God can do anything, right? But we know that if that's the case, then Scriptures would be, it would compromise Scriptures, right? And we would start to question everything in Scripture. If we're going to say, well that's not six literal days, and make those assumptions, we get into a lot of trouble. Even to the point where you have people denying the existence then of a true Adam and Eve, saying they're symbolic, or saying that that's just the beginning of Israel, there were other people too. I mean, it's just, it becomes absurd when Christians try to adopt this. They open the door for a lot of trouble. But they would not hold those presuppositions, obviously. They would have to believe in the miraculous and the divine. By and large, they would. Yes, sir, Warren. You said the evolutionists believe that the laws never change. Well, in the sense that when you study the laws in place for how rocks are formed and those kinds of things, they would say that they were consistent all throughout time. Everything else changes. Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by that. What do you mean? like everything else. Like the monkeys become man. Oh yeah, yeah. So it's very inconsistent, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, I would say, I mean again, even to make that assumption that these laws, again, they've elevated the laws to the place of God, haven't they? You take God out and you look at his natural laws that he's put in place and assume that there's nothing supernatural, right? That's their God in a sense, right? Well, this is how, these are the laws that are in place. Yeah, you're right. I mean, the whole idea of evolution is that everything else has changed. That's right, yeah. Molecules have changed or evolved, etc. But the laws for how... If I were to study, Warren, you and I were to study, for example, the rate of rock decay, for example. If we took a rock and we put it somewhere, out in the oxygen, obviously, and we watched and we studied over a period of several years how long it took for this rock to decay a certain degree. They would assume that that was the same level throughout all of time. The problem is, though, what happens if you took that rock and you started smashing it with a hammer, you know, and I wasn't there, I wasn't present, and you started knocking off chips of it, right, or you started putting water into the picture, right, and all that. that's gonna affect the change, isn't it? And I'm saying that they assume that it's been consistent the whole time, and yet even we could even prove, and they even know about Mount St. Helens, but they just write these things off, you know. Well, you know, that's the way I see it. I don't see how they can't explain, you know, these differences that we see before our very eyes even, you know. Yeah. Anybody else? There he is. Hey, Rodriguez here, our in-house studying geologist, man. Yeah, you said with uniformitarianism, their mantra with that is, like Warren was talking about, they believe the present is the key to the past. So, like you said, the rate of everything decaying now, that was going on for eons of time where, like you said, they don't take into account Genesis 6 to 9. with the upheaval of the Noatic Deluge and then also when you talk about Dawkins with that movie, remember at the end, Ben Stein asked him, well, just simply, and here's this man from Oxford, Richard Dawkins, a brilliant IQ man in many other ways, but if your eyes are blind, then you look for other ways, but he said, well, Richard, just how did the world come, how did we get here? And like you said, he came up then with panspermia, that's the notion that life was seeded here from outer space. So now, they're realizing evolution's in a lot of trouble, all the past assumptions, and now they've got to move it somewhere else. Now they're moving it to outer space. And you know what? There goes another 40, another generation. So it's, you know, when you get a chance, if you can, read, I think it's important to read Romans, you know, Chapter 1. Even though we've read it before, it plays really into a... That's the conclusion of today, is Romans 1, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that has to be what our conclusion would be before we even get into this, yeah. Yeah, and I think it shows you, that's why I said when you start getting into aliens or crystals on the back of this, and even if, again, when you read this stuff and study it out and see the amount of combinations of just incomprehensible things taking place, It's not just one thing. It's not just life coming from non-life. That in itself is an absolute beyond impossibility. I use the expression that I could jump off the Empire State Building 20 times and not get a scratch and paint one side of the building on the way down. There's a better chance of that than life coming from non-life. It's not a possibility. However, that's only one aspect of the whole thing. There's all kinds of these things that are on how this happened, how when creation first started, there couldn't be oxygen there in order for life to first exist, but then it had to immediately exist right after that, so that the life could continue to exist, and it's like it was underwater first, and then came above, it's just, it's beyond absurd. where they take this stuff to try to explain this, to try to confirm their theory. And again, you've got to remember, they're operating from within a realm where there is not even the possibility of supernaturalism. It's not even like Richard Dawkins, or I hate to even use him because he's not even a great evolutionist, he's just an atheist. but even these evolutionary scientists who study this out, if you automatically assume from the outset that supernaturalism is not an option, and you cannot turn there, you're gonna come up with all kinds of crazy stuff. And I think God has shown us the foolishness of man. Another thing we'll get into in the future is in Colossians, and of course in Corinthians, when it talks about the wisdom of the world, how the wise became fools. Just the utter absurdity of mankind thinking that we can outsmart, like we're smarter than God somehow. We can get him out of the system, study his system, and draw these conclusions. And when you look at these things, it's so absurdly ridiculous that it's almost like God is laughing. Like, you know how it says, even the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of man. It's not even like it's even closely, you know, even any kind of intelligence with some of this stuff. It really, it's that absurd. What makes it so compelling, however, to people who get swept into the system is that people don't understand, as we'll get into this, that creationists are not denying the observable facts Creationists don't deny natural selection, that there are, within the created kinds, there are many different species of animal within each kind. Creationists aren't saying, okay, every single dog out there, every single cat out there, and tiger all came from different, you know, were all originally, they all had their own original prototype. We do believe in created kinds, that a lot have come from one kind, right? All the cats came from one kind, etc. We're not denying that, and that's evident, but they just assume that we're ignorant. We just so rely on faith that we throw out all science. And that's not the case. We just observe that science. We don't deny what we see, but we observe it and we use our faith, of course, to go back and help to explain why these things are the way they are. and it doesn't, the science and the scriptures, they don't contradict each other. They don't. They would go right hand in hand, you know, so. Okay, Luke. Yeah, like with the tree of life that we talked about, you know, you'll see that, right, that icon they have where there's one, the trunk and then the tree and then all the branches off. So they believe in one tree, one common ancestor where We would believe, and it's good to keep in mind, in the forest of life, where there's a lot of trees, not one tree. And one tree, like you said, here's the root, and we got the dog kind, coyotes, dingoes, wolves, right? And then domestic dogs, that would be that kind. Then you got elephant kinds, cat kinds. So when you see that, it makes more sense. So maybe you can plant that in someone's vision where, because we've seen this icon for millions. Millions of years, right? Millions of days. We're going to get into that, by the way, and I'll probably have a diagram for you, I hope, of the two ideas, the two tree examples. One is the phylogenetic trees that they draw, which would ultimately connect to the tree of life, right? That everything came from a one-celled organism, and then they kind of branched out in different directions as evolution took place. whereas we would believe in what's called, like Elisa, the forest or the orchid. There's several different plants that God had made, so to speak, from the beginning. And like, this is the dog kind that have come from this plant, the cat kind from this plant. And really, you can look at humanity, right, and get the same idea from there. Right, all of mankind, black, white, right, Spanish, light skin, dark skin, medium skin, every color came from one, right, one person, one race, one people, from Adam and Eve, from the beginning. Well, in the same way, God made every animal that he made kinds. So all the dogs would have come from one prototype, as it were, from the beginning. God didn't make a hundred different dogs. He made they all came from one. And you can see that even in breeding, right, that that can take place. So we don't deny that. That's fine. But a dog never became, you know, a dog and a caterpillar never crossed paths. or a whale and an elephant never cross paths, or a bird and a dinosaur never cross paths in the sense of one going into the other. That's the problem. That's when you get into the macroevolution, the idea of these great changes that are taking place. So we don't want to... I think that's where there's confusion from the standpoint of creationists. They see the microevolution stuff, the natural selection, and we say, well, look, yeah, that makes sense. Scientifically, that can be observed. And they begin to swallow the whole system. Remember when I told you last time, our tendency is when we hear something, somebody can tell us something, and there could be even, you know, 80% truth in there. Right? 80% truth. And we can hear that truth, and we go, yeah, oh yeah, that's right. And within that whole system of truth, there's 20% lie, or 20% untruth. And it's dispersed throughout it. Our tendency is because of the 80% truth, the things we can relate to, is to automatically adopt the whole pill. and that's what happens you see what evolution you look at they have they have observed certain facts that are very clear right very true things you can't deny that you see before you but they've inserted all their interpretation their historical science of all this evidence and people and even some Christians would swallow the whole pill and that's that's the problem we we want to be careful that we don't swallow the whole pill Anybody else have any comments? I'm going to actually end with Romans 1. Anyway, I had that in mind as well. Because I think we want to understand what's really at heart here. We want to be able to know not only what's going on, with evolutionary theory. Not only do we want to understand the presuppositions, how this plays out, which we're going to in the next several weeks, but also we want to have a spiritual understanding of these things. We want to kind of look behind the scenes and be able to know what's really going on here. Okay, well our tendency, right, is to look at something like evolution and kind of see it the way I see it, right, I've been explaining it, the foolishness of it, right, and to almost get angry about the whole thing and say, you know, what's wrong with these people? as opposed to seeing what really is wrong and being able to appreciate that from our standpoint. And that will help us as we deal with evolutionists not to be arrogant or to be angry. To be angry in the sense that this whole thing is a lie, right? And it contradicts the glory of God. But not to be angry at people, but to understand where they're coming from. we want to understand where they're coming from with these presuppositions why they're here and the scriptures explain that to us and that will help us deal with people graciously so I want to turn to Romans 1 just so I think we need to have this as a foundation as well at the beginning here as we look at this this important topic this will help give us the right heart as we understand well this is really what's going on this is at the bottom of this whole system I'm just going to read verses 18 through the end of the chapter here. 18 through the end of the chapter. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man. and birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness and the lust of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who was blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind. to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them." So brethren, what we have here, and this we'll also see in other scriptures again, like 1 Corinthians and Colossians, what we have here, I think, is a good explanation of why evolution even exists, why there are people that would even embrace such ridiculous presuppositions as we've gone over, taking them to the point where they would succumb to some of the conclusions that Lou and I were just talking about. And the reason is this, it's clearly, it tells us in Romans that this is a result of the expression of God's wrath. Right? We tend to think of God's wrath, first of all, oftentimes as His expressed wrath in the form of, you know, when He crushes someone or kills them or takes their life or puts them in hell, right? Or some form of a very visible, destructive judgment. Well, one of the ways that God expresses His wrath is by hardening people. right, giving them over to their sin, giving them over to a debased mind to even come up with just insane corrupt things such as evolution. And he says here that in fact when you look at these verses, verse 18, he says the real issue is this. This is for everyone, including the evolutionists. What are they doing? Why are they assuming or presupposing materialism and naturalism, uniformitarianism? Why are they immediately saying from the outset that the supernatural is not an option? Why? Why not even the possibility? Well, the main reason is that they're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. So God is saying here that what may be known of God is evident to them. It's clear, right? It's clear to us. We see that and say, how can somebody not see the obvious? But we have light. We've been given life. God has removed the darkness from us. But they are in darkness. They have denied the truth. It's obvious. It's evident because God has shown it to them. God has shown it to them. So they suppress this truth about God, about himself, that he has shown to them. It's not like they're ignorant of it. It's not like it's not obvious. They're holding it down, willfully holding it down, and suppressing it in unrighteousness. And what we find here, brethren, is that evolution is, like every other denial of God, every other form of atheism, is a moral issue. Really, it's a moral issue. It's not an issue of ignorance. It's an issue of morality. Notice he says, for since the creation of the world, since the beginning when God created the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen. Not justifiably seen or possibly seen, clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. In other words, people should look at creation, it's so clear, and say, God, God has done this. It's that obvious. But they suppress that truth. Even His eternal power in Godhead we're told. Even His power in His Godhead. There are things about God that can be discerned simply by creation. Now we can't discern the gospel. Creation can never bring someone to salvation in Christ. We need the message of God, the gospel. But as far as the fact that God exists, and His power and His Godhead and that there's a judgment coming and that we're accountable to Him. Those are all things that are embedded within creation. God has revealed them both in creation and within us. It says it's even written within us so that they're without excuse. So there's no excuse why, because it's a willful suppression of the truth. It's not ignorance, it's willfully holding it down, holding down the obvious so that it does not come up. They don't want to face it. So why is it that when they come to see, as many times as this has happened all throughout the history since Darwin has started this whole, well he didn't even start it, but since he actually elevated this evolutionary idea, Even though there's been many changes and many things that would have said, okay guys, you're ready to turn to God and see the truth now? They assume materialism and naturalism and these kinds of things because they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. They cannot accept God because to accept God they have to begin to deal with moral issues, don't they? Now they have to deal with issues of their heart. They have to deal with the fact that they're condemned. They have to deal with their morality the moment they accept God. They have to deal with their pride the moment they accept God. So although they knew God, we're told, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. So because they refused to acknowledge God, they suppressed it, the truth of God, they denied Him, their hearts were darkened. They became futile in their thoughts, empty in their thinking. Come up with this kind of nonsense like evolution is one example of the evidence of this very thing. Professing to be wise, you think about all these great scholars, right, who studied these things out. And again, I know I'm only looking at one issue here, evolution, but it fits so well in here. Professing to be wise, they became fools. And that's all a part of God's judgment. That's part of God's wrath. He's giving them over to a debased mind, to a foolish mind. So people think they're very wise, and they look at all this data, and they look at all these things that they study. And yet they deny the very creator who has given us these laws, who has given us the natural laws that surround us. And what do they do? They change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. They replace God's glory with the glory of other things and animals and people and so on in this world. They exchange it and give glory to the people, the creature, rather than the creator. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness and the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves. So God gave them over. That's his wrath being expressed. He delivers them over to these lusts that we see today. In fact, one of the predominant ones that he mentions here is even to the extent where women would start being involved sexually with other women and men with other men. Homosexuality and lesbianism are two of the great signs of God's wrath upon a people. When that becomes normal, when that becomes accepted, it's a good sign that God's wrath is pretty fierce against a people. They exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. They serve and worshipped man and his ideas, created things, naturalism. The laws of nature become God and God is out of the equation. For this reason God gave them up the vile passions, what I just went over with you. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, they've suppressed Him. God gave them over, He hardened them. They don't want to retain God in their knowledge. God gave them over to a debased mind to do things which are not fitting. So he gives them up even further to a debasement, sexual morality, wickedness, covetousness, envy, murder, strife, backbiters, haters of God, violent, boasters, inventors of evil things, undiscerning. I mean it goes on and on. Who knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. So, brethren, the reason why I read this to you is to simply say that when we look at this whole issue of evolution and we see some of the insanity of where they go with their interpretation of the facts and to deny God, we have to understand, though our temptation would be to be frustrated and to want to just rip people apart, to understand that these people are under the judgment of God. They're in a state of darkness. They're in such a state of darkness that they can't see right in front of them. Sometimes, I know we've had experiences, and I've talked with some of you about this in the past, where you're trying to witness to someone, and to give them the gospel, and you're pouring out your heart, and explaining all these things, and it's like they just can't even get it at notch one, at square one, and the point is that they don't want to get it. I mean, we should keep trying to convince them, because God will save. He will open the eyes of His people, so we keep doing it. But when they don't do it, we shouldn't be surprised at the level of darkness and say, wow, how can someone deny this? What we should say, brethren, as we look at this is say, thank God that He has not allowed us to stay in that state. See, the only reason that we see The only reason that we don't want to stop and be self-righteous and look at these people who are caught in this trap of evolution and say, well, look at how these people are so ridiculous and insane, and I know I use that language too, and assume that we would not be in the same camp were it not for the grace of God. We'd be believing the same thing, believing the lie. you know, worshiping the creature. And even though God's truth is in us, in the creation around us, and we would be as guilty as they are. So they're without excuse, but we have to understand that there is a blindness there. And I say all that to say this, and this is what I would end with. When we deal with people who are atheists or who are evolutionists, I think it's important for us to know the facts, to understand evolution. I don't wanna go to the extreme and say we should not understand evolution because of Romans 1, say what's the use? We should understand it because we need to have some, be able to defend or at least to explain things to people, that's helpful, our own children as well. We want to know what's going on here, what's at stake. And yet at the same time, we don't want to ever think that by convincing someone of creationism in some way, that somehow we're gonna convert the person. Right ultimately they need the gospel so you can sit there and wrestle with someone about some of these things and use it as a bridge Right creationism in and of itself can be a bridge But it has to come to the gospel right has to come to the gospel of Jesus Christ That's what God uses to to save to to to quicken to bring people into his kingdom So we don't want to diminish the importance of the gospel and just stay in the realm of debate about these kinds of things But we don't want to throw this out either in fact Ben Stein, I don't think he's a Christian, right? He's Jewish. So here's a guy even with that video, right, who did a fine job in exposing just the way that you're shunned. Virtually, you have no chance of getting a career in science unless you're able to get a job with Answers in Genesis or Institutes for Christian Research or something like that because you're shunned. You're not even looked at as scientific. You're rejected from the outset and ousted from the scientific community if you even, once you even mention creation. So he kind of exposes that well. But Ben Stein, even in all that that he does, doesn't take you to the true God, does he? He's just the creator. So what have you done when you brought someone to the position of believing in a creator? Well, they could still be a Muslim, or they could still be a Jehovah's Witness, or some other type of cult out there as well. Ultimately, we need to bring them to Christ. So anyway, I just say all that to lay down some groundwork to understand the presuppositions, where they're coming from, but yet also understand what's at the heart of all these things. Anybody have a comment or anything at the end here? Okay, next time we're going to spend more time in the area of created kinds, looking at some of the trees that Lou and I were just, Lou had mentioned before. And then after that, we'll start getting into the engines of evolution, what they're, how they believe these changes have taken place. Yes, Lou? See if a hand went up, so I didn't see a hand. But yeah, it is really pre-evangelism, because in my, let's see, about 18 years now as a Christian, I look back and I made, early on, I made a lot of mistakes with just, because I was so interested in this and the cult, you know, and of just keeping it at the creation evolution topic and walking away from conversations many a time. And even if you got a person to start thinking about it, but for many years now, I've made sure I bring the gospel in. And I remember an example I was talking about last week with this fellow Howard, who Yinka and I took a computer class together with, and you know, he thought still it was a fact today, embryonic recapitulation, where the embryo goes through these different stages of salamander, you know. I said, Howard, even evolutionists don't believe that anymore. And he was like, so he's about 50-something years old, a bright man in many ways, a Jewish man, very bright in many ways, computer, literate, everything. But I didn't leave it there, I got into the gospel with him. The teacher left the room, we were talking about that, and he came back, he goes, you guys are still arguing? But I brought it into the gospel then and talked about sin. I brought it back to Romans. I talked about my own life. So I left them with that. Yeah, you don't want to feel like, again, that you have to tie every knot. You're debating with someone who's an atheist and who's an evolutionist, right? and you don't have to feel like you have to untie every single knot of evolution and win the debate there before you can get to the gospel. Again, they're in darkness. You can debate about some little things and talk and interact, but ultimately you have every right, every right, and should, not arrogantly, but humbly, bring them to the gospel. You have every right to declare with boldness, again humility, but boldness that there is a God. To stop right at the end, right before you leave. Brother, I just want to tell you there is a God and He is a holy and righteous God. He is one creator. He is the reason that all these things exist. He is the designer of these things and we are accountable to Him. and we have sinned against Him. We have not kept His law and in fact the reason that we deny Him is because we don't want to face the moral obligation that we have before Him. But there's hope in Christ. You want to give that person the gospel, right? Even if you haven't gotten into confirming this and that. I mean, because you can get lost in this debate, right? And even if you win the argument, not bring them to Christ. But you want to bring the gospel. Paul went into Acts 17. He went into Athens, remember, into the Areopagus. These were the brilliant Greek philosophers. They used to get together in the Areopagus and just get together and kind of debate and discuss things and wisdom and knowledge. And Paul goes in there with this message about this person, this Jesus who died and rose again from the dead. It seemed like, from their standpoint, that would be like the scientific circle. These are the Socrates, the great philosophers. For them, to go in there with that kind of a message without anything else to back it up, it just seemed to be foolish. But Paul went in there and said, look, I want to tell you about the God, because he saw all these gods throughout the city. What about the unknown God? Let me tell you about this God. Paul had the nerve to assume that he had the right God, that he was serving the right God. Isn't that what they say to us? Well, Christians, you guys assume that you have the right God. What about this? What about that? We have the right to assume because it's true. If it's true, we have the right to authoritatively declare the gospel and this Christ who rose again from the dead and who saved people from their sins. And if you remember in Acts 17, there were three responses to Paul. One was they laughed at him once he talked about the resurrection, the resurrection from the dead. You can see the naturalist, right? This whole idea of resurrection from the dead. That's nonsense. And they walked away and scoffed him. And then we're told there were those who were kind of indifferent. Paul, you know, that's great and all, but let's hear this again another time. They were indifferent. And then you have those we also told, and one of the people's name was Damaris, I don't remember all the names, but there were some there, some women and so on, who believed, who God had converted in that scholarly atmosphere. Some believed, some were indifferent, and some just mocked. So we should expect those three kinds of responses and be faithful. Yellow. I know with that, it's an excellent passage in 17, but even remember before he even got to the, about the resurrection, he spoke about creation, you know. God who created the world. He got into the creation, then he said, now, you know, God overlooked these times of ignorance and he got into the gospel to even use that as, in a sense, as a pre-evangelistic tool, you know. Yeah, study Acts 17 and look at Paul from an unsafe standpoint and you'll see that guy, you know, if you were unsafe, this guy has some nerve coming in here talking about this God as if all these gods we've served and we know about, he's going to come in here like he has the only God, you know, but Paul went with that authority because that authority is backed by the Spirit of God and His power. Well, let's pray.