WEBVTT 00:00.160 --> 00:03.660 As you say, scientists are fallible, all humans are fallible. 00:03.780 --> 00:06.660 Nevertheless, the massive body of scientific evidence points one way. 00:07.020 --> 00:10.960 Surely you owe it to the children to teach that massive body of evidence rather than 00:10.960 --> 00:15.680 the writings of more fallible humans who were writing in the last couple of 00:15.680 --> 00:16.300 thousand years. 00:17.360 --> 00:23.460 I think the way that science has gone since Darwin has been very defensive on 00:23.460 --> 00:25.900 the part of creationist people like myself. 00:25.900 --> 00:30.680 I think it's only in the past, let's say 50 years, since Crick and 00:30.680 --> 00:35.720 Watson, since the discovery of the incredible molecular complexity of life, 00:36.140 --> 00:37.760 that new evidence is emerging. 00:38.220 --> 00:43.120 Such as things that have been assumed to be very old are now being proved to be 00:43.120 --> 00:43.700 much younger. 00:44.020 --> 00:48.200 In this very town at the university, apparently a Neanderthal skull was found 00:48.200 --> 00:50.080 to be only 250 years old. 00:50.440 --> 00:52.340 They could still smell the tissue. 00:52.340 --> 00:55.880 Apparently is a very worrying word, it's a very pernicious word. 00:56.280 --> 00:58.940 I would question that apparently very, very strongly. 00:59.060 --> 01:02.020 There is no Neanderthal skull that is that recent. 01:02.220 --> 01:06.340 It is perfectly true that molecular evidence has shown that things are a lot 01:06.340 --> 01:07.800 more recent than we thought. 01:08.000 --> 01:13.060 For example, the evolutionary split between humans and chimpanzees is now 01:13.060 --> 01:17.100 known to be approximately between 5, 6, 7 million years, which is a lot more 01:17.100 --> 01:21.200 recent, much older than you'd think, but it's a lot more recent than was 01:21.200 --> 01:23.200 previously thought when all we had was fossils. 01:23.540 --> 01:28.120 It's true that molecular evidence has changed some of the details of what we 01:28.120 --> 01:32.420 know about evolution, but always in a productive, constructive direction. 01:33.360 --> 01:37.060 And when you say that since Watson and Crick, new evidence has come to light, 01:37.100 --> 01:37.840 of course it has. 01:37.900 --> 01:43.820 And the new evidence is hugely and overwhelmingly confirming the tree of 01:43.820 --> 01:48.420 life, with minor details changing here and there, the tree of life that we'd already 01:48.420 --> 01:52.360 put together on comparative anatomy and fossil evidence. 01:53.400 --> 01:58.560 As I said, I think the methodology behind radiometric dating is flawed, but new 01:58.560 --> 01:59.760 evidence is coming to light. 02:00.140 --> 02:03.920 The amount of helium trapped in zircon crystals, the amount of helium in our own 02:03.920 --> 02:10.160 atmosphere, with all the alpha particle decay that's going on, the number of 02:10.160 --> 02:11.220 sodium ions in the sea. 02:11.560 --> 02:16.180 There are things that would cap the age of the Earth at thousands of years. 02:16.620 --> 02:19.380 And again, on the principle of falsifiability, it only needs one of those 02:19.380 --> 02:24.380 to be shown to be correct for all the others, the dating methods, to be proved 02:24.380 --> 02:24.840 false. 02:25.080 --> 02:26.240 Let me just confirm this. 02:26.580 --> 02:32.080 You are a teacher of science in a major British school, and you think that the 02:32.080 --> 02:33.860 Earth is less than 10,000 years old. 02:33.920 --> 02:34.400 Yes, I do. 02:34.880 --> 02:35.360 Thank you. 02:36.820 --> 02:41.640 But let me go back to what I teach the children outside formal chemistry lessons. 02:41.640 --> 02:46.340 In chemistry, all I will do when I come across something that would perhaps 02:46.340 --> 02:52.700 challenge the preconceptions they have from biology is to just raise questions. 02:53.200 --> 02:55.600 And I think that is what a liberal education is all about. 02:56.260 --> 03:01.600 I'm not an American fundamentalist, right-wing, sense of this, sense of that. 03:01.640 --> 03:03.060 I want evolution to be taught. 03:03.200 --> 03:04.060 I want it to be set up. 03:04.200 --> 03:08.760 But to be able to criticise it as well seems taboo these days. 03:08.760 --> 03:13.880 I mean, I think it's right that we should teach controversial subjects and we should 03:13.880 --> 03:15.280 encourage children to think for themselves. 03:15.520 --> 03:17.600 There is, of course, plenty of controversy within evolution. 03:17.800 --> 03:21.800 I mean, evolutionists disagree about all sorts of things, and that would be fine. 03:22.120 --> 03:25.900 But when you say, people say things like, teach both sides of the controversy, 03:26.040 --> 03:29.360 that rather supposes that there is a controversy and that there are two sides 03:29.360 --> 03:29.540 to it. 03:29.560 --> 03:30.980 I mean, why teach the biblical form? 03:31.060 --> 03:35.780 Why not teach the Hindu version, the cosmic butter churn, or the Igbo 03:35.780 --> 03:38.660 version of the world coming from the excrement of ants? 03:38.780 --> 03:41.420 I mean, there's any number of creationist theories that you could pick on. 03:41.580 --> 03:43.400 What's special about the Judeo-Christian one? 03:43.600 --> 03:47.300 Well, I'm afraid I am an atheist regarding all gods other than the Judeo-Christian 03:47.300 --> 03:47.580 one. 03:47.780 --> 03:48.700 I have to confess that. 03:49.580 --> 03:51.700 But that is my belief. 03:52.360 --> 03:57.240 What I think children are taught, though, these days is very much a 03:57.240 --> 03:58.320 one-sided picture. 03:58.800 --> 04:01.600 My syllabus... things changed about three years ago. 04:01.600 --> 04:06.100 The QCA and the government put out a syllabus saying children should be taught 04:06.100 --> 04:07.520 how science works. 04:07.800 --> 04:12.040 A lot of what has happened in the last few years in my own teaching has come from the 04:12.040 --> 04:15.960 guidelines that children ought to now know, the principles of scientific 04:15.960 --> 04:16.620 methodology. 04:17.460 --> 04:25.040 Therefore, I have responded to things that are well-documented and I will pass them 04:25.040 --> 04:29.680 over at the end, to show that from our syllabuses we have to be taught in 04:29.680 --> 04:30.600 biology, for example. 04:30.600 --> 04:36.800 Children should know at GCSE the conflicting theories, plural, other than 04:36.800 --> 04:37.820 Darwinian evolution. 04:38.420 --> 04:39.420 Now, what does that mean? 04:39.760 --> 04:44.520 Lamarck was discredited 50 years before Darwin was in art. 04:44.620 --> 04:46.640 I mean, what theories do they have in mind? 04:46.880 --> 04:50.760 I could show you part of a chemistry syllabus that actually mentions the word 04:50.760 --> 04:54.620 creationism and mentions Bishop Usher, whose name is spelt wrongly. 04:54.980 --> 04:56.440 But I could show you that. 04:56.500 --> 05:00.540 Now, what is the point of the exam boards putting in things like that if they are 05:00.540 --> 05:01.700 then taboo in the classroom? 05:01.920 --> 05:03.600 Well, I'm not going to defend the exam board. 05:03.980 --> 05:08.480 I am going to defend the idea that scientific controversy should be taught 05:08.480 --> 05:12.120 and that children should be encouraged to think for themselves and there are very 05:12.120 --> 05:15.920 many important controversies within science, but this isn't one of them. 05:16.420 --> 05:19.300 Now, let me just make a distinction between teaching in general studies, 05:19.400 --> 05:23.340 which I understand you also do, as well as teaching in chemistry. 05:24.000 --> 05:28.260 Do you think perhaps that the right place to teach this kind of thing is in, 05:28.400 --> 05:30.000 what shall we say, history of ideas? 05:30.980 --> 05:34.840 Okay, I mean, I think the argument most evolutionists would come up with is to say 05:34.840 --> 05:36.320 these things belong in religion. 05:36.940 --> 05:41.740 But on a practical level, that is unfair, because I've been at the same school for 05:41.740 --> 05:46.760 35 years and I don't think I've come across any of the, well, it's at least in 05:46.760 --> 05:50.760 double figures, RE teachers, who would have any science training at all, 05:50.800 --> 05:54.440 who would feel competent to deal with the sort of questions children ask. 05:54.920 --> 05:56.880 They would just say, go and ask the science teachers. 05:56.880 --> 06:01.820 And so if you say, we cannot have this taught in science, you're effectively 06:01.820 --> 06:06.720 condemning to the children to be indoctrinated with what I believe to be 06:06.720 --> 06:07.160 atheism. 06:07.340 --> 06:12.400 Because I think atheism and evolution go together, as your book says, and your book 06:12.400 --> 06:14.880 is an apologetic for atheism. 06:15.260 --> 06:18.620 And fair enough, that's fine, as long as you don't mind me in the classroom saying 06:18.620 --> 06:20.000 there is another side of the story. 06:20.120 --> 06:22.460 I'm somewhat unusual in taking that view. 06:22.840 --> 06:26.840 The majority of my scientific colleagues, whether they're atheists themselves, 06:27.320 --> 06:31.480 would probably believe that you could be both religious and an evolutionist at the 06:31.480 --> 06:34.800 same time, as would essentially all educated churchmen. 06:36.180 --> 06:40.240 They might say that, but I think things have changed in the last few years and 06:40.240 --> 06:45.440 discoveries have been made, and the more we discover, the more staggering they 06:45.440 --> 06:46.080 become. 06:46.640 --> 06:52.080 That the Earth isn't very old, that evolution as a theory does fall at 06:52.080 --> 06:58.460 certain stages, there's no easy path up mountain, probably, if I may borrow a 06:58.460 --> 06:59.240 phrase from yourself. 06:59.720 --> 07:04.020 I'm very amused by the titles of your books, because you seem to bring religious 07:04.020 --> 07:07.800 titles into science, what are essentially science books, and you would deny me the 07:07.800 --> 07:10.860 right to do that in my lessons to bring religion in. 07:10.920 --> 07:11.600 But anyway, never mind. 07:12.220 --> 07:14.040 Religious language is a part of our culture. 07:14.340 --> 07:16.540 And so it should be in a science classroom too. 07:16.780 --> 07:20.520 But I don't brainwash the children with religion in a chemistry lesson. 07:20.520 --> 07:28.460 This year, since articles about myself appeared in the Guardian and the 07:28.460 --> 07:32.920 Independent, I've been asked by the school to teach general studies, which again is 07:32.920 --> 07:38.300 quite a difficult A-level with a syllabus, and my brief is to teach history and 07:38.300 --> 07:39.180 philosophy of science. 07:39.700 --> 07:43.380 And I was given on the first day back this school year, this is what you should 07:43.380 --> 07:44.120 teach, Mr. Kahn. 07:44.120 --> 07:50.700 And the first was the theory of evolution and other theories, plural, of origins, 07:51.080 --> 07:51.080 plural. 07:51.540 --> 07:58.700 Now, I again take that as a remit to offer the children the idea that is prevalent 07:58.700 --> 08:02.360 and growing, whether we like it or not, that there is another... 08:02.360 --> 08:03.860 You know this from biology. 08:04.060 --> 08:08.460 Well, I'm going to show you these DVDs from the Truth in Science organisation, 08:09.020 --> 08:13.200 which has reputable scientists at its head, and I will... 08:13.200 --> 08:14.520 Did you say reputable scientists? 08:14.820 --> 08:14.960 Oh, yes. 08:15.060 --> 08:17.760 There's one with a doctorate at the University of Leeds, for example. 08:17.760 --> 08:18.300 Oh, wonderful. 08:18.540 --> 08:19.900 Yes, I think I know the one you mean. 08:19.960 --> 08:21.200 I think we both know him too. 08:21.480 --> 08:23.720 Well, all right, but this is a... 08:23.720 --> 08:27.480 He, by the way, is a professor of thermodynamics, who thinks that evolution 08:27.480 --> 08:29.500 violates the second law of thermodynamics. 08:30.080 --> 08:33.600 Well, it doesn't because the sun is a source of energy. 08:33.720 --> 08:34.140 Yes, exactly. 08:34.140 --> 08:37.020 But I would say undirected energy is rather like putting a bull in a shiny 08:37.020 --> 08:37.300 shop. 08:37.540 --> 08:38.860 It does not create order. 08:39.120 --> 08:40.600 It needs intelligence and energy. 08:40.600 --> 08:44.440 Well, undirected energy won't create order, but what will create order is 08:44.440 --> 08:46.540 non-random natural selection. 08:46.760 --> 08:50.500 And that seems to be the one thing that you people don't get. 08:50.800 --> 08:52.840 Natural selection is not random. 08:53.000 --> 08:54.840 Repeat, natural selection is not random. 08:55.320 --> 08:56.760 It's the very opposite of random. 08:57.060 --> 08:59.520 But, OK, we're getting off the subject again, but it doesn't matter. 08:59.720 --> 09:06.600 Going back to mutation, mutation seems to me to damage DNA rather than to create 09:06.600 --> 09:07.220 anything new. 09:07.300 --> 09:07.940 That's my problem. 09:08.080 --> 09:10.300 The vast majority of mutations damage DNA. 09:10.300 --> 09:13.640 The vast majority of mutations are changes in the wrong direction. 09:14.020 --> 09:17.940 It's the minority that are in the right direction, which are favoured by natural 09:17.940 --> 09:18.400 selection. 09:18.760 --> 09:26.180 That's the non-random arrow that points evolution in a constructive direction. 09:26.440 --> 09:26.760 All right. 09:27.000 --> 09:30.000 I mean, I get children at school coming to me saying, Mr. Cowan, we've heard you 09:30.000 --> 09:32.400 don't believe in evolution with incredulity. 09:32.700 --> 09:33.920 And I say, well, yes, I do. 09:34.380 --> 09:36.120 But it depends what you mean by evolution. 09:36.120 --> 09:40.300 If you mean changes in time within a species, no problem at all. 09:40.720 --> 09:45.360 If you call it, whether you call that variation or microevolution, I have no 09:45.360 --> 09:46.220 problem with those things. 09:46.540 --> 09:49.240 The problem I have is with speciation with macroevolution. 09:49.620 --> 09:54.720 And I liken this to drawing a graph on a board with three points and extending the 09:54.720 --> 09:57.500 graph ten miles without any further evidence. 09:57.740 --> 09:58.980 Well, there's a lot of further evidence. 09:59.080 --> 10:02.620 I mean, you're right, of course, that we believe that macroevolution is 10:02.620 --> 10:05.020 microevolution produced over a long period. 10:05.020 --> 10:07.180 And there's no reason why that shouldn't happen. 10:08.140 --> 10:11.640 There are some cases where it seems to have happened remarkably quickly. 10:11.800 --> 10:16.040 I mean, we know, for example, that Lake Victoria is only about 100,000 years old. 10:16.100 --> 10:17.520 It's very, very, very, very young. 10:17.920 --> 10:22.120 And during that time, about 450 species of cichlid fish have all evolved, 10:22.420 --> 10:23.720 apparently from a common ancestor. 10:24.160 --> 10:26.040 And that's very fast. 10:26.120 --> 10:27.520 Again, it's not fast by your standards. 10:27.520 --> 10:29.040 You think the world's only 6,000 years old. 10:29.200 --> 10:33.480 But nevertheless, by evolution, by scientific standards, 100,000 years is 10:33.480 --> 10:33.940 an eye blink. 10:34.500 --> 10:35.900 But I would say they're all fish. 10:36.180 --> 10:37.120 They're all cichlid fish. 10:37.220 --> 10:38.140 I'm not a biologist, of course. 10:38.200 --> 10:41.100 Well, of course they're all fish, but I mean, fish are enormously variable. 10:41.480 --> 10:42.420 They're not reptiles. 10:42.620 --> 10:42.740 They're not amphibians. 10:42.740 --> 10:44.800 It just takes a bit longer, that's all. 10:45.060 --> 10:47.180 Well, you see, that's where we would disagree. 10:47.300 --> 10:51.020 And I think children need to know that even within the world of evolutionary 10:51.020 --> 10:53.060 theory, there are problems. 10:53.420 --> 10:58.440 There are problems with the Big Bang theory, as it's taught in a godless way by 10:58.440 --> 10:58.820 scientists. 10:58.820 --> 11:00.200 But back to general studies. 11:00.800 --> 11:05.440 I feel, as children already know a lot about evolution from GCSE biology, 11:05.940 --> 11:09.640 then by showing the truth in science material, I'm, in a sense, redressing the 11:09.640 --> 11:09.840 balance. 11:09.980 --> 11:11.860 And I'm basically a liberal. 11:11.980 --> 11:15.460 I'm not a fundamentalist right-winger, as you might find in the USA. 11:15.840 --> 11:20.620 I just think children deserve to know both sides of the story and make an informed 11:20.620 --> 11:21.060 decision. 11:21.520 --> 11:25.800 But the way I think things are going in education is that there is howls of 11:25.800 --> 11:31.740 protest about what I should be teaching when it came out in the newspapers that Mr 11:31.740 --> 11:33.380 Cowan is a creationist. 11:33.860 --> 11:35.800 There's a storm of protest. 11:35.940 --> 11:40.020 And I've been warned I mustn't bring the school into disrepute. 11:40.100 --> 11:47.460 But I would say it's not fair on the children to censor, to withhold this 11:47.460 --> 11:48.620 information from them. 11:48.880 --> 11:53.300 And yes, probably, maybe it does belong in religious studies, but I don't know any RE 11:53.300 --> 11:57.620 teacher, and I apologise to those listening to me who might feel qualified, 11:57.620 --> 12:01.580 but the children won't get taught that unless a scientist does it. 12:02.020 --> 12:07.480 As we were saying earlier, there are of course many Christians who believe in 12:07.480 --> 12:11.720 creation in some sense, believe that God maybe started the universe off, 12:11.780 --> 12:13.320 maybe God even started life off. 12:13.600 --> 12:17.100 But they're evolutionists because the evidence is so strong. 12:17.540 --> 12:20.340 Why do you put yourself in such an extraordinarily difficult situation? 12:20.520 --> 12:24.380 I mean, you are seriously, as a chemistry teacher, arguing that the world is only 12:24.380 --> 12:25.340 6,000 years old. 12:25.340 --> 12:26.720 I mean, that's just dotty. 12:26.800 --> 12:27.880 You cannot say that. 12:28.180 --> 12:32.440 You can perfectly well be a creationist, be a Christian, and say, yes, I believe 12:32.440 --> 12:37.680 the world is 4.5 billion years old, and that God created life or God created 12:37.680 --> 12:42.360 the universe, but don't fly in the face of what are obviously true facts. 12:43.780 --> 12:47.920 There are theologians through the ages, like, not my favourite theologian, 12:48.040 --> 12:51.580 but St Augustine, who would say, why did God take as long as six days to do 12:51.580 --> 12:51.700 it? 12:51.760 --> 12:53.220 Why is it so short? 12:54.120 --> 12:57.180 James Usher has a bad reputation. 12:57.760 --> 12:59.600 I think his work is a work of scholarship. 13:00.120 --> 13:01.560 I think it's good stuff. 13:01.640 --> 13:06.320 I've got some material about Usher's origin of the earth. 13:06.640 --> 13:11.440 James Usher was the bishop who calculated the age of the earth by adding up all 13:11.440 --> 13:16.960 those begats and who lived, and then worked out that it was 4,004 BC. 13:17.700 --> 13:19.360 On 23rd, I think. 13:20.460 --> 13:21.360 9am, was it? 13:21.360 --> 13:24.200 Well, it was evening and morning the first day. 13:24.260 --> 13:24.920 We don't know what time. 13:25.180 --> 13:29.140 I wouldn't go as far as Usher, but I would say he was about right. 13:30.120 --> 13:31.280 And, you see, this is the point. 13:31.400 --> 13:32.520 We start with a belief. 13:32.680 --> 13:34.500 I believe in a transcendent God. 13:34.940 --> 13:39.000 And once you do that, I'm afraid you can... 13:39.000 --> 13:43.480 The evidence from Scripture draws me to that conclusion, and increasingly the 13:43.480 --> 13:45.520 evidence from science draws me to that conclusion. 13:45.720 --> 13:47.260 I haven't always thought this way, of course. 13:48.920 --> 13:50.180 I became a Christian. 13:50.300 --> 13:53.480 And what I like in your book, by the way, is I agree there's no such thing as a 13:53.480 --> 13:55.880 Christian child or a Catholic child or a Muslim child. 13:56.100 --> 13:56.960 I think that was excellent. 13:57.500 --> 14:00.700 I became a Christian 21, 22 years ago. 14:01.120 --> 14:07.300 And for many years, even as a Christian, I struggled to reconcile the stuff I was 14:07.300 --> 14:12.240 taught, the way in the media one is bombarded with, evolution is a fact, 14:12.360 --> 14:12.780 isn't it? 14:13.580 --> 14:16.020 And it's taken me a long time to unlearn that. 14:16.020 --> 14:18.120 And you may think that's going completely in the wrong direction. 14:18.580 --> 14:20.580 But there was a time when I believed what you believed. 14:21.340 --> 14:23.320 And I'm not sure there's a time when you believe... 14:23.860 --> 14:27.860 I mean, one day I hope you'll believe what I believe in terms of the existence of a 14:27.860 --> 14:28.480 personal God. 14:28.900 --> 14:34.520 But on the other hand, mounting evidence that things are younger than they seem. 14:35.300 --> 14:39.360 Well, I mean, maybe one of these days I'll have a deathbed conversion and believe in 14:39.360 --> 14:40.580 some sort of personal God. 14:40.620 --> 14:43.460 But I sure as hell won't believe the world's only 6,000 years old. 14:43.700 --> 14:44.620 I mean, that's just ridiculous. 14:44.620 --> 14:46.320 Well, I'm not sure it is. 14:46.780 --> 14:48.520 I'd say if just one method... 14:48.520 --> 14:51.000 Let's look at the genetary's work on radio halos. 14:51.700 --> 14:53.600 I think it's polonium containing rocks. 14:53.660 --> 14:55.500 Again, I'm not a professional geologist. 14:55.980 --> 15:00.480 But there are studies on the internet that are available from websites that you 15:00.480 --> 15:03.000 probably wouldn't like, like answersingenesis.org. 15:03.540 --> 15:08.460 But they purport to show that the Earth cannot be more than, say, 10,000 years 15:08.460 --> 15:08.600 old. 15:08.620 --> 15:10.080 It sounds awfully like special pleading. 15:10.200 --> 15:14.180 I mean, what it sounds to me is that you've decided for scriptural reasons that 15:14.180 --> 15:15.100 this is what you believe. 15:15.400 --> 15:18.880 And then you desperately go around looking for something to fit it. 15:19.080 --> 15:21.300 And you find something on some odd website somewhere. 15:22.200 --> 15:24.840 But you don't look at the whole corpus of the evidence. 15:25.040 --> 15:26.040 But I've looked at that for years. 15:26.300 --> 15:30.140 I think you're right, that is a criticism of the way I teach. 15:30.240 --> 15:33.740 But should children have the right to decide on these things? 15:34.060 --> 15:34.840 That's my point. 15:34.960 --> 15:36.600 Everybody has the right to decide on everything. 15:36.600 --> 15:38.420 I'm not anti the teaching of evolution. 15:38.860 --> 15:40.020 I'm not going back to scopes. 15:40.160 --> 15:40.900 I mean, this is wrong. 15:40.900 --> 15:42.300 This is a common misconception. 15:42.680 --> 15:43.920 I'd like these things taught. 15:44.220 --> 15:50.540 But I'd like evolution as it's taught today to be critiqued in a scientific way. 15:51.020 --> 15:53.880 In the end, as a person of faith, and I think we all have faith, 15:54.280 --> 15:58.540 whether we have faith in the existence or non-existence or non-knowability of God, 15:58.680 --> 15:59.880 I think there are only two positions. 15:59.980 --> 16:01.060 We either believe or we don't. 16:01.420 --> 16:03.760 I think you talk about probability in your book, which is very interesting. 16:04.340 --> 16:06.800 In the end, there either is a God or there isn't. 16:07.320 --> 16:09.540 And I've chosen to ally myself with the fact that there is. 16:09.540 --> 16:10.900 But you're an atheist about all those other gods. 16:11.040 --> 16:13.220 I mean, you're an atheist about Zeus and Jupiter and Thor. 16:14.400 --> 16:16.340 So why choose that one? 16:17.740 --> 16:20.060 I suppose this does come down to personal revelation. 16:20.600 --> 16:22.760 I did have an experience of God. 16:23.180 --> 16:26.160 I continue to have that experience when I share it with other people. 16:26.640 --> 16:28.200 It seems to be a common experience. 16:28.220 --> 16:31.720 Did he say, I'm the God of the Christians and the Jews, I'm not Zeus, I'm not 16:31.720 --> 16:31.940 Jupiter? 16:31.980 --> 16:32.940 No, he's the God of the whole world. 16:33.320 --> 16:39.960 But he is what we might call Jehovah, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and 16:39.960 --> 16:41.260 Jacob, the father of... 16:41.260 --> 16:42.060 Yeah, but how do you know that? 16:42.100 --> 16:42.640 Did he tell you? 16:42.780 --> 16:45.760 Did he tell you, I'm not Zeus, I'm not Baal, I'm not the God of the 16:45.760 --> 16:46.920 Australian Aborigines? 16:47.000 --> 16:51.440 He didn't, but I went through a phase in my mid-30s where I suppose I was searching 16:51.440 --> 16:53.360 and I read the Koran. 16:53.540 --> 16:54.800 I've looked at some Hindu scriptures. 16:54.940 --> 16:56.640 I found scientific errors in those, of course. 16:56.780 --> 16:57.780 The earth on the back of an elephant. 16:57.780 --> 16:59.180 You mean you didn't find any in the Bible? 16:59.520 --> 17:01.500 Well, I thought I did at the time. 17:01.500 --> 17:05.240 But since I've become a Christian, the more I look at the Bible, it talks 17:05.240 --> 17:08.660 about God suspends the earth over nothing, which is gravity. 17:09.300 --> 17:11.540 The earth is a sphere, certainly not flat. 17:12.160 --> 17:17.940 There are things in the scriptures, actually, that would show that it had a 17:17.940 --> 17:21.380 supernatural origin, not just the words of men. 17:21.980 --> 17:25.760 There's something about the constellations of Pleiades and Orion, which you've 17:25.760 --> 17:31.460 probably never looked at in the book of Job, that were only verified in the 1930s 17:31.460 --> 17:34.900 when astronomers discovered the difference between a bounded and an unbounded star 17:34.900 --> 17:35.300 system. 17:35.720 --> 17:39.120 Now, there's a verse in the book of Job, and you might say this is coincidence, 17:39.260 --> 17:43.020 that talks about the Pleiades being unbounded and rapidly rushing apart. 17:43.340 --> 17:45.400 So, sorry, that's the wrong way round. 17:45.500 --> 17:46.680 Pleiades is stationary. 17:46.960 --> 17:51.620 So, Tito Brahe would have mapped this the same as we see it today. 17:52.760 --> 17:56.480 But Orion is whizzing apart, and all we see are the three stars in a line, 17:56.560 --> 17:56.860 the belt. 17:57.660 --> 18:00.500 There's a verse that you think, how did they know that? 18:00.580 --> 18:02.040 The water cycle is in the Bible. 18:02.820 --> 18:06.400 In the end, there are things in scripture that, as a scientist, I had to come to 18:06.400 --> 18:07.860 terms with and say, who wrote that? 18:08.660 --> 18:12.200 And, yes, in the end, it was a personal revelation. 18:12.960 --> 18:16.740 But only a revelation because I was inquiring, is there a God? 18:16.780 --> 18:21.660 And I did that, as many people have done over the generations, did Jesus Christ 18:21.660 --> 18:22.580 rise from the dead? 18:22.580 --> 18:27.180 What is the evidence, historical evidence, for the resurrection of Christ? 18:27.300 --> 18:28.460 And I came to this. 18:28.480 --> 18:29.860 It wasn't logic in the end. 18:29.960 --> 18:30.600 It was faith. 18:30.840 --> 18:34.660 But once again, the bishops and vicars would agree about Christ. 18:35.240 --> 18:37.400 They would not agree with you about the age of the earth. 18:37.640 --> 18:38.620 I think we're not going to agree about that. 18:38.660 --> 18:39.800 Let's just say thank you very much. 18:40.140 --> 18:40.860 Thank you, Professor.