Best of BAM: Deflating Darwinism with Jay Richards, and Q&A

You're just in time for the best of the Bible Answer Man broadcast with Hank Hanegraaff, the radio outreach of the Christian Research Institute. Our purpose here at CRI is to equip Christians to provide biblical answers to life's most important questions, to read the Bible for all it's worth, and counter the teachings of cults and world religions that deviate from the plumb line of God's Word because life and truth matters. For more information, to order resources or donate, call 888-7000-CRI or go online to equip.org. That's equip.org. The following program was pre-recorded. Now here's the president of the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff.

And we're going to go to colors a little later on in the broadcast, but I want to spend a little time talking to my guest, Dr. Jay Richards, who is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an author of a book titled God and Evolution, also co-author of a book that I'm absolutely in love with. It's called The Privileged Planet. Dr. Jay Richards has also written a very important article for the Christian Research Journal titled Deflating Darwinism.

The reason why we are featuring a summary critique of of a book like Darwinism and the Divine by Dr. Alistair McGrath is because he is a prolific theologian. So we have to be familiar with his arguments, and no one has dealt with the arguments more effectively, in my estimation, than Dr. Jay Richards. And he joins me now right here on the Bible Answer Man broadcast. Good to have you on the broadcast. Thanks, Hank.

Great to be with you.

This is an incredible article, and I want to just read the last sentence or so of the article and have you comment. You say that the book by Alistair McGrath provides a snapshot of a depressing moment in time where you have a leading, well-informed scholar who knows that Darwin's mechanism can't do what Darwin insists it could do, And yet he, while admitting this in print, feels a need to engage the obscure philosophical gymnastics in order to accommodate a dead theory. And that is the power, you say, of an intellectual orthodoxy that we can only hope will soon find its death, a death it richly deserves.

Well, you know, it's funny, Hank, because there's this widespread movement among Christians that we can call theistic evolution, but it's more precisely, really, it's theistic Darwinism. It's an attempt to take up the Darwinian theory of evolution, which claims that, you know, all life adaptations are a result of random genetic mutations and natural selection, so a blind and purposeless process. Well, of course, if you're an atheist, you've got to believe something like that. The question is, if you think God created the world and providentially orders the world, it really makes no sense to say, as you said, that God guides an unguided or purposeless process. And so what I found in McGrath's book, Darwinism and the Divine, I think

it's probably the most sophisticated current statement of this theistic evolutionary perspective. And what sets it apart in many ways from books by, say, people like Francis Collins is is that McGrath, he's a really smart guy. He's got a PhD in molecular biophysics and a PhD in theology, and he actually knows the gig is up in Darwinism, right?

You know, if you read the book from cover to cover, one place he says it's widely conceded that natural selection does not account for how biological forms and phenotypes arise in the first place. So in other words, Darwin's mechanism doesn't account for the thing that Darwin wanted it to account for. So on the one hand, McGrath admits that the power of natural selection is actually really, really limited.

We know this scientifically. On the other hand, he develops this very complicated understanding of purpose and teleology, which he thinks will more or less account for and accommodate Darwinism. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to accommodate a theory that you actually think is found wanting on scientific grounds.

One of the things that I have recognized of late, Jay, is that people in the Christian community seem to be gradually moving into this theistic evolution paradigm. We hear people talking about evolution and we can't walk away from evolution because if we're those that no longer believe in evolution, then we're anti-science.

I mean, of course, this happened with sort of liberal theologians a century ago. What's different now, as you suggest, is that this is generally Orthodox and conservative Christians that are talking this way. Now, my experience is that when you really press people, it turns out they often have a kind of foggy idea of what evolution is. Sometimes people just think evolution is, well, things changed over time, and there's some animals that were alive at one time that aren't alive now, or something really vague like that.

Or maybe they imagine that there's this process of common descent and God is specifically guiding things. I have problems with that view, but that's not logically incoherent. But what people need to understand is that the current sort of reigning theory of evolution in biology is Darwinian evolution. And it makes absolutely no room for purposes or design or for God to do anything. It is a blind and purposeless process. And so it's fundamentally incompatible with the Christian worldview.

I mean, one or the other At most can be true, but not both. And so that's really what I want people to focus on, is just the logical incompatibility of blind Darwinism in any kind of robust theism.

So the question has to be why people like John Huntsman in the debate, or why even Alistair McGrath, goes to such lengths to accommodate a theory that they have to know has been profoundly oversold, as you point out in the article.

Yeah, I mean, and McGrath even admits that. He's almost alone among the theistic evolutionists in putting that in print. But I really think it's because of its status as an intellectual orthodoxy. We need to sort of look at the way in which ideas function sociologically. At any time, in any period of history, there's some intellectual orthodoxy that people feel social pressure to accept, whether they know it's true or not. Later, we find out it was wrong.

But when you're in the middle of the intellectual orthodoxy, it's very hard to resist that social pressure. And I think that's what we're dealing with with Darwinism. It's sort of the litmus test that determines whether a person's intellectually respectable or not. I call it the cocktail party test. It's like the thing you're not allowed to raise at cocktail parties where everybody goes quiet. But the truth of the matter is the real task of discernment is to recognize the intellectual orthodoxy that you're currently in and to figure out what's wrong with it and to be willing, frankly, to challenge it publicly.

Now, this may require some defining of terms, but what's the real difference between teleology in a genuine sense and the Darwinian substitute?

Well, that's the crucial point, because McGrath wants to talk about Darwinism as if it's teleological. And teleology just means a process that's purposive, that has some goal or end direction to it. And if you read Darwin, he's constantly talking about natural selection. If it's choosing certain things and sifting this and sifting that, So in other words, Darwin uses teleological language, but it's clear that his goal in his theory was not to develop a teleological view of biology, but basically to provide a blind mechanism that would explain away what looked teleological in biology. So in other words, there's things that look designed. There's an apparent design Darwin thought in biology that needed to be explained. What he

wanted to do is come up with a purely materialistic mechanism that would explain it away. And the way you can really test the difference between real teleology or design, and a fake substitute is this issue of foresight. Intelligent agents have exclusive jurisdiction when it comes to foresight, right?

You know, we can think about a house or a structure that we would want to produce, and then we can bring it about. Natural selection and random variation is not like that. It can't say in a biological world, I'm going to hold on to 10 proteins for a few million years until I get a sort of functioning It doesn't have foresight, and so all it can do is select for current functional advantage. And that's how you can tell that Darwinism, at its core, is anti-teleological rather than teleological, because it doesn't make room for this idea of foresight, of planning ahead.

I want to press something, and that is many people aren't going to believe that someone like Alistair McGrath actually admits that Darwinism can't do what it promises to do.

Well, you know what's funny? I mean, McGrath officially, at least, sort of makes his living as a theologian, but he is trained in biology and highly trained. But it's sort of the trade secret in biology that when biologists, when the camera's not on and the reporter doesn't have his microphone on, lots of well-informed biologists will admit that Darwin's mechanism, natural selection, and random variation are, in fact, very limited.

They sort of can explain some little tweaks around the edges, like the thickness of finch beaks and things like that. But many, many biologists will admit privately that that you need something else to really explain the origin of fundamental biological forms. But Darwin's theory carries huge metaphysical water for people, and so biologists typically will not admit that publicly. So frankly, this is something I praise McGrath for, at least in his book several times. He quite explicitly makes that point.

And so while I feel like he sort of buckled under to the intellectual orthodoxy of Darwinism in the end, at least he has put in print what a lot of biologists know but are not willing to state publicly, which is that, you know, the power of the Darwinian mechanism is known to be extremely limited.

Jay Richards, he is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and again, he is the author of God and Evolution and The Privileged Planet. Really appreciate your article in the Christian Research Journal and love having you on the broadcast.

Thanks so much, Hank.

Thank you so much for being with us for the article. Again, this is an important article to read. And when we deal with issues like this, do remember we're not just dealing with a apologetic issue. We are dealing with the apologetic issue. How one views their origins will inevitably determine how they live their life. If you think you're a function of random chance, if you believe that you arose from the primordial slime. You're going to live your life by a different standard than if you know that you are created in the image of God and accountable to Him.

When we resume the broadcast today, we will start taking your calls right here. And remember to continue praying for an organization that is touching lives around the globe by God's grace. We'll be right back with answers to your questions.

To find out more about the materials mentioned on the show, call a CRI resource consultant toll-free at 888-7000-CRI. That's 888-7000-CRI. Our website is also an excellent reference destination to help you. Just go to equip.org and find articles by Hank, books, CDs, and DVDs, Again, that's equip.org. Or write CRI PO Box 8500, Charlotte, North Carolina, ZIP 28271. The Bible Answer Man will continue in just a moment.

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that's equip.org. And now, here's Hank Hanegraaff.

Back to the phone lines. Talk to Andy in Lincoln, Nebraska. Hi, Andy.

How's it going, Hank?

I'm doing good. How are you? Okay.

I hear a lot of people say that.

Given the choices that we have, sometimes we have to vote for the lesser of two evils. I guess it was my thought that God wouldn't have us vote for evil at all.

Yet, if we don't vote, then we're not using our responsibility as Christians to influence the culture.

So I'm just curious what your thoughts were on that.

Well, I think what you have to do is look at the issues that are involved in every election. Someone's morality is always going to be legislated, and therefore, to not be involved in the legislative process, exercising your right to vote, simply doesn't make any sense at all. Certainly, everything in the world has fallen. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make the best of all available choices.

Of course we should. This is true in all spheres of life. We should not murder, but we should also uphold a much greater good, and that is to prevent someone from murdering. And if we have an opportunity to do that, even by taking someone's life, which isn't murder, by the way, it is killing, we would do that.

So we have to make choices in a very difficult circumstance in which we live, and that is a fallen world. But are we culpable and responsible for doing that? Absolutely. I think ultimately we recognize that the way in which you change a culture is by changing hearts, but that does not mean that we should abdicate our responsibilities merely because we live in a fallen world and every choice we make is of the lesser of evils because no one is perfect. So if you were voting between Adolf Hitler and Billy Graham, it would still be voting for the lesser of evils because even Billy Graham has fallen.

Yeah, that's true.

To tighten the question down a little bit more, I guess what I'm saying is if I wrote in somebody that I thought would be a much better representative and not vote for one of the two people that would practically have a chance to win, would that be advocating my responsibility in any way?

Well, no, I mean, you're exercising your responsibility. The question is, is it wise? If you know for certain, if you have 100% certainty that the write-in candidate has no chance of winning, then writing in the candidate from a pragmatic standpoint doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

All right, I appreciate your answer.

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's still a half vote for someone you don't want to win. I mean, that's the pragmatic reality that's being created by the choice that you make.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

You got it. Thank you so much for your call. Let's go back to the phone lines. We'll talk next to Jeremiah. Listening in Kansas. Hi, Jeremiah.

Hi.

How are you? Good.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

Good.

You sound like you're a little younger than I am.

Yeah, I'm 11 years old.

You're a lot younger than I am. So what's your question?

I was wondering if Judas hung himself, or if he died because his body's burst open and his intestines burst everywhere, like it says in Acts.

Yeah. Well, it's not an either-or, it's a both-and. Because if you look at Matthew 27, the Gospel writer Matthew tells us that Judas went away and hanged himself. If you look at Acts 1.18, it adds some information, and that is that Judas fell... after he hanged himself and his body opened up and his intestines gushed out, pretty gory.

But what happened was no Jew would bury a dead corpse during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And so we can presume that Judas hung for days because of that, decomposed and ultimately fell. And that's why you got the added information given to us by Acts. And of course, Acts was the second volume written by Luke. Luke's first volume was his gospel. His second volume was Acts. So he's adding some further information. So the two aren't contradictory.

They're complementary.

Oh, that makes sense.

You know, it's something that you have to recognize. This is what happens in the Bible, Jeremiah. The Bible gives us a historical, credible core of information. Just think about it this way. If every one of the gospel writers said everything in exactly the same way, we would say collusion. It's kind of like if people go to a court of law and they testify and they're telling the exact same thing in the exact same way with the same cadence and the exact same words, people would say, whoa, I think these people are colluding to deceive the jury.

But what historians therefore look for is a credible core set of information that's complementary, not contradictory. And that's what you have here. Another example of where one gospel writer is adding some information to another gospel writer. Now, if one gospel writer said one thing and the other thing that was said by another gospel writer was contradictory, then we'd say, whoa, we can't trust this. But you never find that in the Bible. You find complementary, not contradictory information.

Oh.

Well, cool. Nice talking to you, Jeremiah.

Nice talking to you, too, Hank.

Okay. Call me anytime, man. Okay. Back to the phone lines. Dylan, listening on Belleville, Michigan. Hi, Dylan.

How are you?

I'm fine, thank you.

See, my father was born in the Netherlands, so I know a little Dutch.

Yeah, goed avond.

I have a question for you. I don't believe this myself, but a loved one believes that even a believer who is indwelt with the Holy Spirit can be indwelt and controlled by evil spirits, you know, such as if one has a temper, they have a spirit of anger, or if, you know what I mean, if someone is vain or whatever, they have a spirit of vanity. And I've tried to argue with her, but I just don't have any scriptural basis like you would. And I was wondering if you could give me the scriptures and tell me what you thought about that.

Yeah, sure. Jesus asks, how can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man?

What would the scripture be there?

That's Matthew 12. So in the case of a demon-possessed person, the strong man is obviously the devil, but in a spirit-indwelt believer, the strong man is God. And the force of the argument here leads inexorably to the conclusion that in order for demons to possess believers, they would first have to bind the one who occupies them. In other words, they'd have to bind God himself. And, you know, Jesus provides a very poignant corollary argument when he says that when an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and doesn't find it.

Then he says, I will return to the house I left. When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go and they live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That's also Matthew chapter 12. And the point here is simply this. If we are unoccupied by the Holy Spirit, we subject ourselves to the possibility of being inhabited by demons. If, on the other hand, our house is Christ's home, the devil finds no place in us. I wrote about this in my book, The Covering God's Plan to Protect You from Evil.

You can check it out online at equip.org. I want to go back to the phone lines and talk to Chantel, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Hi, Chantel.

Hi, Hank.

I was saved a long time ago, and I grew up listening to John MacArthur. And the older I get, the more I despise sin. I'm super sensitive to it. I spend half my life crying about sin in the world and in myself, and I can't watch TV because it burdens me greatly. And I'm just longing for Jesus to come back. And I have a mental health issue that keeps me away from people. And I do meditate on the things that are lovely and good, but it just makes me long more. to just get out of his body and just, like, I've thought a lot of times about suicide, but I'm not sure, I'm really not sure where I would go. Like, it doesn't say anything about that in Scripture, so I dare not do it.

Well, you dare not do it, though, Chantel, for a different reason.

The question is, where do you think we are at Daniel's timeline? Because we're supposed to be looking for the times.

Well, no, Chantel, here's the deal. First of all, let me deal with this suicide issue. Suicide is murder. It is the murder of oneself. And we dare not take a prerogative that is God's prerogative alone into our own hands. So it's great that you're longing for everlasting life. We should be. But the timing is up to the Lord.

So we can't take that into our own hands. As far as the timing of when Jesus Christ is going to return, again, there's nothing in Daniel's timeline. There's nothing in a biblical timeline, period, that tells us when. You can rest assured in that truth. So you have to be prepared as though Christ would come this very moment.

But prepare as though his coming is a long way off. And what I mean by that is simple. Prepare means that you do everything in your power to be an instrument for his service. Whether that's alone or an ambassador with someone else, because you can't be with someone else, you can't be an ambassador, I don't know about that.

All I know is you can prepare yourself. God will work out the details. Your responsibility is simply to be faithful and let him work out the details. So be faithful, recognize God, that your life, the duration of your life, all the days ordained for you, written in his book before one of them has come to be, that's in God's hand. And so is the time of Jesus Christ's return.

In the meantime, I've said this before, Christianity doesn't give you a peaceful way to come to terms with the difficulties of life. It gives us something far greater, a way to overcome them through the hope of resurrection, which you have rightly expressed. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for your support and your encouragement expressed on this broadcast. And we'll see you all tomorrow for another edition of the Bible Answer Man broadcast.

Thanks for tuning in to the Bible Answer Man broadcast. Our website, equip.org, has an abundance of resources to sharpen your discernment skills and help you grow in life and truth. We provide books, videos, and informative articles. You can also listen to the broadcast, download archived programs, get answers to pressing Bible questions, or connect with us via social media.

All this and more at equip.org. Again, the address is equip.org. The Bible Answer Man broadcast is supported by listeners like you. We're on the air because life and truth matter.

Hank Hanegraaff has dedicated his life to defending truth because truth matters. Yet an encounter with Christians in the underground church of China left Hanegraaff contemplating his Christian experience. They were experiencing something beyond truth. They were experiencing life. Truth Matters, Life Matters More by Hank Hanegraaff is two books in one.

Because truth matters, part one equips Christians to defend the essential truths of the historic Christian faith. In Part 2, Hank explains why life matters more and how we can experience the height of human existence, union with God. Prepare to move past intellectually knowing about God to experientially knowing God in Christ. To receive your copy of Truth Matters, Life Matters More, The Unexpected Beauty of an Authentic Christian Life, call 888-7000-CRI and make a gift to support the Christian Research Institute's life-changing outreaches.

Or visit us at Equip.org.

Best of BAM: Deflating Darwinism with Jay Richards, and Q&A

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