All right, we can sit down. All right, we're back in this series on creation apologetics and things of that nature. Let me again recommend this book, Did God Create in Six Days. It's a series of papers, lectures, that sort of thing. I think there's 12. 12 or so. Some of them you might care about, some of them you might not. We're obviously not going to cover everything that they talk about in here. But there's a few more things that they address. And I'm not just straight up teaching these chapters, but I am drawing from it some. So I want to redirect you to this book if you are interested on a few things like evidence for a young earth as well as the topic we are doing tonight, which is largely about the framework hypothesis. So before we move past Genesis 1 and just talk Things like, I mean, I think we're going to naturally have to go into direct evidence against evolution. We'll do that. We'll get into flood stuff and dinosaur stuff. Naturally, we'll kind of dovetail with that. But before we move past directly addressing Genesis 1, I want to talk a little bit about the framework hypothesis. I did reference it before. And if you're not familiar, I kind of explained what it is a little bit. But the reason we want to do that is even though it might not be something you come across that often, if you ever did come across it, it's probably the most sophisticated way to that people tend to go away from a literal reading of Genesis 1. And I don't mean that in the way of like it's complex, but more in the way that it's not, it doesn't have an undermining or liberal bent to it per se. It's something that you could like agree with what is being said, but then somebody might draw unnecessary conclusions from it. I'll kind of explain what I mean by that. So what it is, is an exegetical argument that, and it is exegetical. It's an exegetical argument that the creation account is actually organized topically instead of chronologically, as in like it's not a sequence of what happened, it's more a topical arrangement of what happened. So hopefully you can see the immediate presupposition when I say that, and that is an unnecessary presupposition that people do use when they go for this, that is that if it is topical, it must therefore not be chronological. And I'm going to say that's completely not the case at all, and I'll seek to prove that, but that is a presupposition for a lot of people that hold to the framework hypothesis. And I'll explain more about what it is. God's own intentional chronological acts can just as easily be arranged topically as well. Like he can actually act in a way that if you record it Sequentially, it is naturally arranged topically. I don't know, God acts in that such a way. I guess I could say it that way. I'll fill this in a little bit more. Just like we see analogical ordering of the days and rest, right? We have six days of work and then a day of rest. And we say that corresponds with the old covenant demands of do this and live. That's what Adam is told, do this and live. Work these six days and rest on the seventh. That corresponds with our covenant theology, right? There's work to rest. And the pattern of life that God gives to Adam corresponds with the message of the covenant, the demand of the covenant, do this and live. Work to earn a reward, right? God did it that way, and it arranges topically that corresponds with an analogy later in our covenant theology, and that's perfectly fine. And somebody could say, well, because it's topical, it must not, it's a silly conclusion to say, because it's topically and analogical that way, it must not have been literal in the way that God did it. And we're like, no, they correspond because God acts that way. Anyway. Both the chronology of creation, but the analogical reading of covenant theology, those ideas are not mutually exclusive is the point. Those that hold to the framework hypothesis and those that oppose it. Both will call framework hypothesis a figurative reading. They'll both say it's metaphorical or poetic, non-literal. They'll describe it different ways. It's not like a knock on it to say that's what it is. They admit that's what it is. Some who do hold to the framework hypothesis deny a historical atom. That's important to know. They'll deny much of the historicity of Genesis, in fact. But some do not. So holding to it doesn't mean you're going to deny a historical Adam or the historicity of the rest of Genesis. Probably the biggest name that we would know in our circles that holds to the framework hypothesis is Meredith Klein. He was a professor at Westminster, Philadelphia and Westminster Seminary, California, both. He does loom large, pretty. big out in Westminster Seminary, California. That's where I went to seminary. He was very present there. Some of my professors studied under him. There's a lot of Presbyterian in reform seminary professors that do hold to the framework hypothesis. Not that they talk about it a lot. I think they do tend to shy away from it. And I think I know the reasons for that. I think it scares people off and they don't want to be vocal about it. But it's not something that if you hold to it, therefore, you're probably a liberal in denying a lot of scripture. I still think it's wrong. I mean, no secret here. I'm going to argue against it. But just don't think that someone holding to this necessarily must be off their rocker and everything else, I guess. So the argument basically says that the creation days are arranged in a very stylized framework, hence the name, the framework hypothesis. So what they say is days four through six, they divide the six creation days in half, right? And days four through six kind of parallel days one through three. Days one through three create the space, or Klein would call it the kingdom. And then days four through six, each one of those corresponds with the day before it that he kind of creates the rulers that fill up that space. The things that fill that space are the rulers that rule that kingdom. So for instance, they'll say, you know, the heavens and earth are created in day one, and light and darkness are separated. And then day four, which is like the first of the second half of the days, day four, he puts the sun, the moon, and the stars into that space that's created on day one. And then day two and five correspond. The skies and the waters are separated in day two. And then day five, which corresponds to that, parallels it, he does the fish and the birds. They fill up the skies and the waters. Day three corresponds to day six. Day three he separates the dry land and the seas and he does the plants and the trees and then day six he does animals and man. So you see how there's kind of like these parallels across there, right? And they point out that there's, you know, four creative acts in day one through three and then four again in days four through five. 6 so they see parallel on each of these halves You know, there's two on day three. There's two on day six. I Don't know how strongly you can push that but that's kind of how they explain it the first triad of days those first three days concludes with land and vegetation the second with the animals and man and so they say the purpose of this is therefore the the structure of In arranging it topically, the structure is to point out that God created all things and that man is the climax of creation and appointed to rule over all the rest. And, okay, great. We actually have no problem with that. We have no problem even seeing those parallels. We have no problem seeing that topical kind of arrangement. And we have no problem, obviously, man is the climax of creation. He's the only one made in the image of God, and he's the last thing made. We have no problem with any of that. We can acknowledge the structure, it reinforces a theological point about man being the climax of creation. Great, on board with that. In fact, that's exactly what we're saying with our covenant theology, that the structure of how he arranges it and the pattern of life that he gives to man, reinforces and analogically points to our covenant theology. So yes, this is something that we see because we say, yes, this is how God acts. We'll see, here's the bigger point though. Seeing structure in a sequence doesn't mean that sequence is non-sequential. It doesn't mean it's non-chronological. So for instance, the narrative about the plagues in Egypt has clear structure and has clear theological purposes as well. And no one tries to argue that those 10 days, those 10 plagues, are not sequential, literal days. No one argues that. The 10 plagues are arranged into three groups of three, leading to this climax on the 10th plague. And it plagues one, four, and seven. The first of those three groups of each one, Moses is sent to Pharaoh early in the morning with a warning in Exodus 7, 8, and 9. And then Plegs 2, 5, and 8, the second of each of the three, are introduced with a warning to Pharaoh in Exodus 8, 9, and 10. Plegs 3, 6, and 9, the last one of the three sets, are sent with no warning at all. So OK, great. Clear structure, clear parallels. Right? But this proves our point even more thoroughly that God acts in a way that when the biblical writers record history, there is observable structure in the narrative because that's how God acts. He has symmetry in his actual acts, but it's still obviously a chronological development. It's still sequential. They're not mutually exclusive. The structure we see does not conflict with sequential order, and that's the important thing to take from this. If there is indeed structure and symmetry in the narrative of creation in Genesis 1, great. We simply ask, what does that have to do with whether or not the narrative is sequential? Nothing. The answer is nothing. It has nothing to do with the sequence of the narrative. It's observing structure, which is pretty cool because God does that. Would this change anything about the interpretation of the word day? No. The same arguments about the word day still all apply. So none of that would matter anyway. So you're still not going to get away from those arguments. There's also the issue with these day-to-day correspondences that they call out when examined more closely. They're maybe not as precise as they might initially appear. It's not just a super clean cut. It's a general structure that we can observe, yes, but it's not so precise that we're going to, you know, try to force everything into this neat little packets of correspondence. As a singular example, you know, day three where the land and sea are separated, that's supposed to correspond with day six when the animals and man are made. But there's nothing to fill the sea where the land and sea are separated. There's nothing filling the sea in those days. There's nothing created to fill the sea. That's already been happening. That's already happened back on day five, not on day six. And day five is when the air and the waters are separated. But it does, admittedly, this draws in a lot of people when you point out the structure, and it's like, ooh, that's interesting. And it should be, because it is interesting. And it can be a convincing point. And one of their most convincing points about this is, hey, look, light and darkness are separated on day one, right? Well, the sun, moon, and stars aren't even created until day four. So how can you have the creation of light with no sun, moon, and stars? Well, obviously not moon. The moon doesn't emit any light. It only reflects it. But they'll say the sun and stars. The sun is a star. So there's no stars creating light. So how can they're basically saying day four and one. Day four takes us back to day one. Day four is kind of a recapitulation really of day one. It can't be chronological because how can light exist without the sun and stars? And people are like, oh, I never thought of that before, right? And that's really what draws them in a lot of time. They effectively say day one and four are really the exact same activity. That's really what they're saying. Day one and day four are the same thing. Day four is day one. And then day five is day two. And day six is day three. more or less. I mean, they won't come out outright and say that, but that's what they're implying with the parallel between one and four like that, saying that light can't be created unless the sun and stars are created right then. So God created it in three days, but described it as if it were six is ultimately kind of what they're saying. And then he rested on the fourth day, but he said it was the seventh day. I got a problem with that. That's not convincing to me in the slightest. So what they do with these days really, it kind of makes a mishmash of the text when you really get down to it. But take that parallel on day one and four, right? Light is created on day one and the sun, moon and stars are created in day four. What do we do with that then, right? Is that a problem for us? Are those really the same act? Does the creation of light mean he created the sun and stars? That's really what we're asking. No, we do not say that. We do not say that the creation of light has to be the creation of the sun and stars. We do not see day one as creating those rulers of light or those specific light emitting objects. There is no light emitting object. in day one in terms of like an object, a physical thing that gets made. We see day one as the creation of the reality or the phenomenon of light itself or of energy because light is made of protons. Protons are packets of energy, right? The sun and stars are not the only source of light. Yes, they are the only natural objects that we know existed, I guess, until there's animals that use processes that create light. Yes, we get that, but that's neither here nor there. Another blatantly obvious fact is that day one literally included the creation of the heavens and the earth, right? The earth was formless and empty. It says formless and void, but it still is covered by empty waters. So the earth exists and it's covered with waters and it's dark. It's covered in darkness. Now, darkness is not a created thing. He doesn't create light and create darkness, right? Darkness is the absence of light. So the earth, even as it's created, if there is no light yet, then it's covered in darkness, but then light is created. So light's created, but its function is not assigned on day one. So day one is the creation of the heavens and the earth and light. Those are the three things that created on day one, not just light, but the heavens, the earth, and light. So all of space, and then the earth, and then light in some form or fashion. This just, it doesn't fit nicely into this proposed literary framework, and honestly, that oddly kind of gets ignored, that that's what happens on day one. Space and earth are created. It's in fact almost so obvious that it doesn't even get noticed, because all they talk about is the light portion, not the actual creation of space and earth. They don't adjust that with a parallel at all. So day one includes space, it includes matter or energy, and it includes time because time is a natural function of matter existing. Once matter exists, time exists. So space, matter and energy, matter and energy are not the same thing but they're interchangeable almost because energy can be converted to mass, E equals MC squared, right? Energy equals mass times speed of light squared. So they can kind of be converted in between each other. So they're not two, they're two different things, but they're not, it's, you know, it's complicated, right? But that's what, that's what day one includes, space, matter, Energy and time. This is sort of like a trinity of trinities, right? God creates space. Space has length, width, and depth. It's three-dimensional. Matter is created, has solid, liquid, and gas. Three things there. Time is created. Time has past, present, and future. There's like a trinity of trinities, and it's all right there in verse one. And I think we've addressed all this before, but it's far more complex than a simple correspondence to the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, in my opinion, in day four. It's just, it's more complex than they want to make it out to be of like, oh, he created light and he created the sun, moon, and stars, and there's perfect correspondence there. It's like, no, day one's a little bit more full than just that. So, now, the distinguishing of the light and the darkness as day and night that does happen on day one, because he says he creates light, he distinguishes light from darkness. That is, that distinguishing is assigned because it designates the most observable purpose of the light and darkness on day four, or sorry, on day one for man on earth, you know, as if it was for man on earth that was just created on day one. So I'm not saying this well. He creates light and he designates light and darkness and that's relevant for man on earth as light and darkness. Like that's what matters. That's why it's talked about in day one. But the creation of the sun, moon, and stars are to mark those times on earth, again, for man, and the sun is to provide us with necessary energy for life. If the sun goes away, we all die. There's no surviving without the sun. And the stars are for us to be able to observe the heavens, right? We're not just surrounded by seemingly infinite darkness in space. If there was nothing in space for us to look out into, we would have no, it would be literally empty. We would have no scale of its depth of what's out there at all. You would be looking into nothing. You wouldn't even know where, you would have no gauge of distance whatsoever. And these bodies also allow for navigation. And the moon obviously governs the tides. They all mark time. So they're there for us to mark time. And again, that points to man as the climax of creation. They are light bearers, but here's the point, light itself was created before them. And that might be weird for people to understand. I don't know. I mean, it is a concept that seems. wildly comprehensible, incomprehensible to some. But if so, if that's wildly incomprehensible to you, let me cite for you a description of the new heavens and the new earth. So speaking of the heavenly city in the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21 says, I saw no temple in it for the Lord God Almighty, the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it for the glory of God has illumined it and its lamp is the Lamb. So there's a description of the new Jerusalem with no sun and moon. And it's got light. without a light emitting physical object up in the sky giving light. So will the new earth revert back to like an early creation like situation where light exists but not because of the sun? I don't know, maybe, but we have to admit that at least the concept is possible of light existing without the sun to give it, right? I propose to you that yes, God is light. We acknowledge that, but he does not, Emanate physical light wherever he goes right in eternity past prior to creation. God was not emitting light in the sense of like what we see kind of light because that's photons that's energy that's Creation and so he's not emanating light in that physical sense. Obviously, he's omnipresent, right? And there's dark places. So it's not like, well, God's here and everywhere he goes emits light and everywhere is lit up. There is no such thing as darkness because God is everywhere, right? We're not saying God is light in that sense where he just emits light everywhere. We acknowledge that. Physical light is a clear manifestation of his glory. When he sees fit, he does do that. He manifests himself in incredibly bright, splendid light. And furthermore, he never, we'll say this too, he never emitted the physical phenomenon of light prior to creation. That doesn't mean that God was not light before that, but not light in the sense that we see light and there's photons. That might be kind of weird, but that, For that physical light to exist, it requires the existence of space for which the light to exist and to travel, right? So prior to creation, there's no emitting of physical light. There's no energy, there's no photons, there's no space. So. Day one was likely the first instance of God manifesting his own glory as physical light into the realm of creation. Now that space exists, photons can be emitted. They can exist and travel and go in light. Physical light can emanate for the first time because God created. And he's going to do so again in the new heavens and the new earth. So there you go. Light can exist without the sun, moon, and stars. So bottom line, there is nothing in the text that requires the abandonment of clear sequential reading. So when we hear about this structure in there, that doesn't mean like, oh no, that must mean our sequential reading is wrong. That's not. The case, topical structure and parallels are observable and we can agree with them, but they're not as clean as may be proposed by those that adhere to the framework hypothesis. They're there and we observe them and agree, but they're not so clean cut as sometimes they make them out to be. And even if we agree on the presence of topical structure and parallels, That literary characteristic is perfectly compatible with a literal six-day sequential reading of the text. Just like when you see the same patterns in the reading of the plagues, that doesn't make us be like, oh, well, they could have happened in any order. No, God just did them that way, and they recorded it, and they're sequenced there, and clear arrangement as well. Also, don't forget the fact that Exodus 20, 11, the activity of God is presented to man as a pattern that we're supposed to follow, right? This is our pattern of life, work and rest. And in the new covenant, rest and then work from our rest, it's different, but there has to be some genuine reality there in his activity for us to mimic. He actually did it that way and we actually mimic what he actually did. Not just like, this is a good literary device for you to live. No, it actually happened that way. And it has to be rightly asked by many, how could we be held accountable for working six days and resting one day if God himself had not actually worked for six days and rested one day? So again, we return to the fact that the grammar used and the elementary elements point us back to a sequential, literal reading in the genre of historical narrative, which is kind of what we've already talked about in the past. It points us right back there, even with the observation of the interesting things about the framework hypothesis. Grudem actually has a, Wayne Grudem has a good quote about this. He says, the strongest argument against the framework view, and the reason why comparatively few evangelicals have adopted it, is that the whole of Genesis 1 strongly suggests not just a literary framework, which he can see, he's like, okay, the literary framework is there, but it's not just a literary framework, but a chronological sequence of events. As in, also, it's both and. It's like, yeah, we see that, but it's also a chronological sequence of events. When the narrative proceeds from the less complex aspects of creation, light and darkness, water, sky, and dry land, to the more complex aspect, like the birds and the fish and the animals and man, We see a progressive buildup and an ordered sequence of events that are entirely understandable chronologically. It's what we would expect. He's gonna, obviously the natural ordering of a creation, if you thought about it, if you're gonna create a man, you're gonna create land for that man to dwell on first, right? So why wouldn't the creation of land come before man and animals, right? And plants, all that, like you're gonna have to separate the waters from, you're not gonna put them all in the waters and be like, oh, you know what? I should give him some dry land to live on too while I'm at it. Just tread water here till tomorrow, I'll be back. It's the natural ordering of it. It's from chaos to cosmos, as some people put it. Chaos into order. God brings order out of this mess. Another overlooked fact is the framework folks also see sequence, right? They admit the sequence to it. They see that the land and the sea were made and divided before they were filled with birds, fish, and animals and man. They have to understand what we understand of like, well, yeah, you would have to make the simpler things, the space before you put the thing in the space. So they have to admit as well the fundamental principle that topical structure does not preclude a chronological sequence because that has to happen, not just sequentially in a literary sense, it needs to happen sequentially in a literal sense. Literally there has to be land for man to stand on. because we're land dwelling creatures. So they too, even though they see this topical arrangement, they too have to say, well, yeah, sequence still happens. So it's like, well, what are you disagreeing with us about then? I'll also point out that there's the Bob consecutives used throughout the reading. So Bob consecutive, it's, It's the prefix letter Vav, which is just a Hebrew letter, and it basically means and, for the most part. And that is used in Hebrew and narrative for chronological sequence, and that's what is used all through Genesis 1. So it's basically, think of it this way, it's the grammatical version of someone telling you a story that says, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. All those and thens, that's just a Vav consecutive. When it tells a story, it's saying, this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. It's telling you a sequence of events, usually in chronological order. So that is present in Genesis 1. That's a clear indicator of sequential historical narrative. So again, we're pointed back to that. There's no justification for dividing the complete narrative in half and then folding it back onto itself so that you see those parallels when the grammar in the actual text itself makes the whole thing linear. You can't justify just chopping it in half arbitrarily in the middle with those Bobkins when it's and then this and then this and then this. You can't just cut it in half and be like, well, this and then is actually back here and we're starting over. It just doesn't make sense. So it should be asked of them, if God did indeed do these things sequentially, like we claim, and in chronological order like this, how would the text actually look any different from what it does? How would God have said that or needed to have said that to make that any clearer than it is in the text? And the fact is that text would remain exactly the same. God would write it the way that he wrote it. I think that's a strong argument. Why do they force a conflict where there is not a conflict? Because I think that's what's ultimately happening. They see this topical arrangement, and they force a conflict with a literal sequential reading. Why do they do that? And sadly, I think the bottom line is the same as always. It's to get out from under the shame, the worldly shame, of upholding biblical claims that the world thinks are stupid. Ultimately, that is their motivation. They're not going to say that. I know I'm like reading into their hearts a little bit on this. That's what's happening. It's the same as always. They want relief from having to reconcile biblical teaching with modern scientific claims and it cannot be done. This framework like you might be able to claim old earth or at least say, well, it doesn't demand a young earth. But all your other claims are still going to be stupid to them. No matter what, the cross will always be foolishness. The resurrection is going to be a joke to the world. So they keep doing this. And for instance, this is what Klein said. Klein said, the conclusion is that as far as the time frame is concerned, with respect to both the duration and sequences of events, the scientist is left free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about cosmic origins. That, like Klein, is brilliant. He is. You read him, he's brilliant. But that is terrible. No scientist should ever be free of biblical constraints. Free of biblical constraints means you can just say God didn't do it, because that's a biblical constraint. It's a philosophical constraint as well, obviously, but That's being free of biblical constraints. This is where so many of these dumb theories come from, right? Is scientists being free of biblical constraints. Abandoning biblical constraints is how they, you know, they saw overwhelming evidence for a beginning of the earth, the beginning of the universe, but then they argued for this idiotic idea of the singularity, right? They say all matter and energy and heat is condensed into an infinitesimally small point. matter that is present in the universe was condensed into an infinitesimally small point. All matter and energy. Imagine that. That's their claim. But if that was the case, using their own cosmological principles, how they say the world works, then it would have been incredibly massive, right? And when I say massive, we mean literally it has all the mass. Not like it's large, but it has all the mass. It's infinitely dense because all the mass is packed into a point so small that it's infinitesimally small. It doesn't make sense, right? But it would be an incredibly massive black hole from which nothing could ever escape because the gravity, it's matter pulling itself to each other. If all matter that exists is in that singular point, nothing could ever come out of that because the strength of that, it'd be infinitely strong. Right? Nothing would ever explain, and then it remained that way forever. It was that way forever, and it existed in a stable state until every principle that was keeping it together, all physical principles keeping it together, as physics says, they just suddenly stopped working as they should. No longer does gravity work as gravity, and instead of all of it pulling in together into itself, it suddenly exploded with no reason and no cause. That's what they have to come up with, right? Because what? They deny God. They don't want to submit to him. They don't want to give thanks and honor him as God, as Romans 1 says. This is a fundamentally idiotic idea, and we should be willing to say it. It's fundamentally idiotic. And the expansion from that singularity, after it exploded for no reason whatsoever, was 10 to the 22. That's 10 with 22 zeros, one with 22 zeros after it. 10 to the 22 times faster than the speed of light. That's how fast it expanded. And that's in spite of the fact that even they say that the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit of physical objects. Things can't go faster than the speed of light in their own system. But it was 10 to the 22 times faster than the speed of light, faster than the upper limit of what things can go. So what they claim then is that the universe can expand faster. That can happen, that expansion can happen faster because what is happening is not that the objects themselves, follow me here, It's not that the objects themselves are moving apart that quickly, but instead, the space between them, which is an empty vacuum, it's nothing, that is stretching rapidly. And therefore, they're moving apart, but not because the things are moving apart. So those objects are farther apart at a rate that is impossible, but not because they are traveling farther apart, but because the space between them is getting bigger so that they are farther apart. That's, I'm not making that up. That's what they're saying. And yes, that space that is expanding is nothing. Nothing is expanding. It's not a thing. There's nothing there, like literally no physical object. So what is expanding? Nothing is expanding. Nothing is getting wider and deeper and taller. And it's happening really fast. Nothing is. Because see, right? Space is a fabric. It's a fabric of nothing. And that nothing fabric can expand. So how is it bigger upon itself? How do you compare a large nothing to a larger nothing? Which one's bigger? How are you comparing it? Do these ideas make any sense? It sounds really smart, right? If a really smart credentialed PhD gets up and says it. It sounds like, oh man, this is beyond me. It's beyond you because it doesn't make sense. We can't say that. We're not allowed to say it, right? We're just stupid nobodies. We're not scientists. Well, I can tell you nothing can't get bigger than nothing. Objects are getting farther apart faster than they're able to go, but they're not traveling farther apart. Space between them is getting farther apart. And so they're farther apart, but they're not traveling farther apart. All right. I think there's the same fabric. You know, space is a fabric of nothing. I think it's the same fabric that the conmen used who pretended to be weavers when they made the emperor's new clothes. I think they use this nothing fabric of space. It's invisible. Nobody can see it, right? So these ideas survive purely because of an unwillingness by the general population or the scientific establishment to criticize them or call them out for being as stupid as they are. That's why these ideas persist, because we'll get made fun of. And yes, they're smarter than us. And yes, they have more degrees. But they can't deny fundamental facts like nothing comes from nothing. As George Costanza says, it's not a lie if you believe it. All right? Where's Alan at? Alan knows it. Yeah. That's really how they operate. All these scientists. It's not a lie if we all believe it together. Or we could go a little bit more sinister than that. Like, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. You know who says that? Totalitarians. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist. Adolf Hitler said it in Mein Kampf. Lenin said it. They all use the same mentality. They all have some version of that quote. Like, just tell the lie. Tell it big. Keep saying it. and say it like you really believe it, and people will believe you. That is how this scientific consensus operates, right? And they're gonna make you feel stupid for denying it. And the evidence against them continues, right? We could just go, and this is hard because really you can just give lists of things like, here's why it's impossible. This evidence, and this evidence, and this evidence, and it's hard not to do that. Sometimes you just have to do it. And here's more of it, right? Here's more evidence that the Earth is young, and this is not even touching the tip of the iceberg of it, but the distribution, the age distribution of stars. According to their own models, does not reflect the billions of years that they claim, right? Because they think looking deeper into space, you're seeing farther back into time. Because the light that's just now getting to us started, you know, billions and billions of years ago is just now getting to us. So it's like we're looking at something that happened billions and billions of years ago. But they're not seeing what they ought to be seeing, the age distribution of stars. Same goes for the age distribution of galaxies. They keep looking deeper into space, which Looks deeper into time. The James Webb Space Telescope is doing that recently. It's helping us to see better and more clearly back into time. But they don't see what they're predicting according to their own model. It's not working. They see relatively young galaxies and stars, and that doesn't make any sense to them, their own models. And even the billions of years, if that was granted, if we said, OK, it has been billions and billions of years, it still wouldn't be enough time for gravity to gather all the particles and the bits of matter, all the big bang debris. It wouldn't be enough time for gravity to draw it into the galaxy clusters that we do observe. It still wouldn't be enough time. Same goes for the temperature of the cosmic background radiation. It's not what they said it would be. It's not what they thought it would be if things had been around for billions and billions of years. They thought it would be more uniform, but it's not. There's like pockets of heat, and they don't know why. And it's a different temperature generally than they thought. So continually, their model fails again and again. With what we observe, the more we observe, it proves them wrong. Their predictions are wrong. The evidence is abundant in our own solar system as well. If you just zoom in just on our own solar system. And we're not gonna bother to explain all these, but meteor dust that's accumulated on earth and on the moon, it's not enough. according to the billions of years. Crater creep, literally the angle of the craters, the edges of meteor craters on the moon and Venus and Mercury, they're too steep given the observable slumping that occurs because of gravity. Stuff like that, it's just like, okay. You just hear it and it's just like more and more and more. The recession of the moon, the moon recedes from the Earth's orbit because there's like a drag coefficient but the Earth needs to maintain its angular velocity because if it doesn't then it will just stop so the moon is like compensating by Anyway, the moon's orbit grows, but it's far too close now than for it to have been doing this for billions and billions of years. And that's even if it started literally touching and then this process started, it would still be too close than what they claim. Short period comments. Too many that exist. They should have long ago been vaporized if the universe were billions and billions of years old. The planets are too hot. Earth, the moon, other planets, they're too internally hot to have been around for as long as they claim they've been around. Small icy comets, these strike the earth at a known rate. We know how often it happens and that water gets vaporized and it adds to the earth and it works into our water system. And if that had been happening for billions and billions of years, as they claimed, then the volume of water in the oceans would be multiple times larger than it is now. So we know that's not the case. The geological column has a multiplicity of properties that discredit the old earth as well. There's circular reason, and even they admit it, right? How do they date fossils? Well, they look at the strata that they're in. And then we know the strata is this old, therefore the fossil is this old. You know how they date the strata? They look at the fossils. The fossils in it are this old, therefore the strata is this old. They admit this. That's how they date strata and fossils. There's obvious presuppositions there going on, that they use one to date the other. And you can dig up a fossil and say what strata you found it in, and you can get back the date that you want, or at least the date range that you want. Because you tell them, when you send it in for a sample, like, I found it in this strata, they're like, oh good, we know that strata's this old, so this fossil's probably about this old. There's a complete absence of transitional forms among the fossils. Again, even they admit that. There's out-of-plate fossils, out-of-place fossils, like human footprints that are alongside dinosaur footprints in the same rock strata. There's man-made objects in the strata that they believe to be long before man ever existed, where dinosaurs existed. And this is all reinforced by countless petroglyphs. or these are cave drawings of literal dinosaurs that are so obviously dinosaurs, multiplicity of species, and we find them in caves by an area where we know that those dinosaurs did exist. And we have drawings of them. And you can look at it, and you can look at the recreation from the fossils and be like, that's obviously what this is. It's clear, like they're good enough artists to know a brachiosaurus when they see a brachiosaurus or whatever they are. There's not nearly enough volcanic debris that is accumulated, and that's not even close, it's by a factor of 10. For this to have been happening for billions of years, not enough. And we'll get into this later, but the Earth's surface layers and all the sediments that they find, the fossils they contain, they were clearly laid down by a catastrophic upheaval. All that we see in the earth layers is catastrophic upheaval. And even they are starting to admit, OK, these were massive, super massive floods. And then they have to come up with a reason for it. These strata span continents. And then you bring the continents together and they all line up, not just with the strata, but the fossils and the animal types. It's like a puzzle piece that is completely explainable by the biblical narrative and the flood narrative. And they're never gonna get there because what do they wanna do? They want to abandon the biblical constraints. If we say that they are free of biblical constraints, they're gonna come up with Constant reasons. And they'll constantly readjust and tweak it when new information comes out, bit by bit by bit by bit, and they'll always be just tweaking it and coming up with some reason why the biblical account is wrong. But these lists like this where you just say, well, this doesn't work and this doesn't mean, it's endless. We could just do it for session after session after session, just listing reasons why it doesn't work. And we'll do a little bit more here and there, but we're not going to have lists like that constantly. We've done that a little bit with some of the other topics we've covered. And I think they're good, and I think they're helpful, and I think they help us to trust the Bible more and more. So we'll sprinkle them in throughout. There you go. I just didn't want anybody to be thrown off by the framework hypothesis. If you came across it, or if you'd heard it, or heard any of these arguments, it does not conflict with our model at all. So any questions about framework or anything else that we've covered here tonight? You? I have a question, for a second. It's something that's occurred to me, and I appreciate the closing point about freedom from constraints. It's like when we get an alternate explanation, there's that manufactured conflict that you're talking about, and it's not so much trying to secretize and say this is how we explained it. Yeah. Too much of modern science, and I think you see this now in like the pop-level atheists and scientists, so much of modern scientist is just an ongoing intellectual battle against God. How can we continually justify our own belief? And man needs that. They need everybody to go along with it. The emperor with no clothes needs everybody to pretend together. Otherwise, everybody feels stupid and nobody wants that. But they don't want, the alternative is worse to them of, okay, you must honor God and give him thanks. And you don't want to do it. You suppress the truth and unrighteousness. But if you admit the truth, you know you have to honor him and give thanks. That means submit to him. That means obey his law. That means you have to serve him. That means you are not the autonomous great man that you think you are. And man hates that, and they never want it to be true, so they'll continually fight against it the rest of their life. Anybody else? All right, let's pray. Lord God, we remember that through natural revelation, you have revealed your greatness. You have made it clear. You have given so much evidence that all men are without excuse. We don't claim the intellect to be able to understand it, and we don't claim that we were smart enough to figure it out or humble enough to believe it. We give you all praise, glory, and honor for opening our eyes to it and softening our hearts by the power of your Holy Spirit. So we look at these things, and our faith is encouraged because you've given us a spirit within us to look at them through unblinded eyes. to see it as true evidence of your glory and true evidence of your creation. And so we offer you the thanks and the praise for this. We pray that we can study these things and glorify Christ in our lives and live to his glory all the more because of the facts before us and that you would encourage us to walk boldly and call out lies when we see them and to live for the truth in all that we do. We pray this all in Christ's name, amen.