Joshua Swamidass

Interview Transcript

Note: transcript was automatically generated by YouTube, so there may be typographical, gramattical and spelling errors.

Shalom and welcome to this edition of revealing the truth where we cover the headlines the heartlines and biblical truth I’m your host Masonic rabbi Eric Walker evolutionary science teaches that humans arose as a population sharing common ancestors with other animals most readers of the book of Genesis in the past understood all humans descended from Adam and Eve a couple specially created by God these two teachings seemed contradictory but is that necessarily so in the fractured conversation of human origins can new insect guide us to solid ground in both science and theology in his new book the genealogical adam and eve dr. s joshua swami das tests a scientific hypothesis what if the traditional account is somehow true with the origins of adam and eve taking place alongside evolution building on what established but overlooks science dr. Swami dasa explains how it’s possible for Adam and Eve to be rightly identified as the ancestors of everyone his analysis opens up new possibilities for understanding Adam and Eve consistent both with current scientific consensus and with traditional reading of Scripture these new possibilities open up a conversation about what it means to be human dr. s Joshua Swami das is an MD PhD out of university California Irvine he’s a scientist physician an associate professor of laboratory and genomic medicine at Washington University in st. Louis where he uses artificial intelligence to explore science at the intersection of medicine biology and chemistry he’s a Veritas forum speaker and blogs at peaceful science and you can visit his web site and read his blog at peaceful science dot RG here to talk about this breakthrough work the genealogical Adam and Eve the surprising science of universal ancestry is dr. s Joshua Swami das dr. Swire das welcome to revealing the truth and for having me it’s a pleasure to be here I’d this is just such an amazing topic as a matter of fact recently read that the site of some scientific publications finally agree that mankind has descended from a single meeting pair at the same time they announced that 90% of all animals appeared on earth at the same time so there’s now new new things coming out new information coming out new research coming out in different scientific communities that are no longer refuting the biblical account but actually science is now supporting in many cases because we’re getting down to mitochondrial DNA or getting down to an understanding of the impact of the flood in its impact on carbon dating and some sciences which have been used to date the earth is billions of years old but yet you are a young earth I’m a young earth believer but before we get into the science and the understanding about this fracture that’s occurred I want to get back to the early years of your development of your faith and your your your maybe inner conflict between your love of science and the academic contradiction being taught to you myself as well in the school systems that didn’t line up with it so your journey to faith and your reconciliation between faith and science yeah it’s a good question so I was raised any on earth creationist family I’m not actually young earth creationists anymore what happened was as I got exposed to science I saw things in God’s creation that really didn’t seem to fit now what I saw in Scripture it did seem to sit what I saw in Scripture had a harder time fitting it with what with what I’ve been taught and on earth creationism now that being said I do think a lot of what I’ve what I was taught in terms of reading scripture was correcting our inspirations and I don’t actually think that’s in conflict with science this she really came down to whether I was going to trust what God said in his word or if I was gonna trust what men told me God said in his word and as I kind of went more and more back to God’s Word I saw less and less conflict now how did I become a Christian it was actually the story is a little bit it’s funny I have two kids right now they’re really small so I can’t imagine this happening with them because they’re not thinking about the things apparently and I was and I was two years old but when I was when I was two years old the story goes my mom my mom got concerned because I had a fever and she thought if she you know is you know you do what you you have kids that are that are really sick you go and try and take care of them and I and I apparently asked him her as a two year old you know what happens when you die and she thought that the only reason I was asking that is because I was actually about to die and so she like rapidly sets their shares the gospel of me because she wants me to go to heaven and I and I believe this on what my mom believes and I and I just trusted her and that basic belief that Jesus really rose from the dead and and died for my sins you know began there I think it was things to true belief but it was also you know at least as a child and you know as I grew up I was challenged by science and as most of us are and over and over again I would return to all these scientific arguments against evolution and I got like a temporary peace out of that but it end up being really unstable because it all be susceptible to some new scientific finding be always accessible to someone smarter than me coming along and I remember one time when I was and about you know in late elementary school there was a there was a young earth creationist actually who came and visited my house and said you know I think that he said you know I think that there’s actually a lot of legitimacy devolution it actually makes sense it’s just that I know it’s not true because the Bible tells me it’s young the earth is young that’s what he told me and I said well no there’s no legitimacy to evolution there’s this this and this and I put and I kind of start listing off things and then he started to kind of systematically dismantle all of those arguments even though he was the an earth creationist and that completely terrified me and I remember just bursting into tears and and my parents walked in and and this poor man was like trying to piece together back this elementary school yeah it was who was crying over this and my parents were trying I was going on well you know I thought about that a lot I think what happened for me was that I was putting my confidence in the wrong things I was putting my confidence in human arguments against evolution rather than trusting what God did to reveal himself in history through Jesus and as I came to realize that Jesus really is the Messiah the one that was prophesied by scripture prophesied in Isaiah and that he was in this physical world and he physically died and three days later rose from the dead and that’s how God makes it clear to the entire world including me that he exists that he is good and that he wants to be known and that’s the cornerstone that’s the one sign he gives to skeptics and there’s no there’s no human argument not even an argument against evolution that stands next to that that’s what I was able to turn from my idols my anti-evolution idols and really follow him and that’s what gave me the confidence to really enter science so when I approach evolution you know I don’t think it’s a complete story but it’s but it makes it a lot of sense of the world and that left me stuck trying to figure out how does this actually fit with scripture because I know Scripture is true too and so now that’s really the tension that I’ve lived in for a while and this book is really the product of trying to figure out and work through that tension you know growing up Jewish there was absolutely no question that of creation however being a child of the 50s and the 60s there was this heavy embracing of Darwinism all of your high school biology classes were you know around this and what I began to realize in in both my Jewish studies and science studies is that this not intelligent design but divine design an intelligent design doesn’t have to be deity intelligent design doesn’t have to be it could be you know of alien creation so it’s got to be heaven divine deity that’s got to come from God and as I became older I began to question things like how does my body regenerate itself sure how does it know how does the autonomic nervous system actually work and how does my immunity system work knowing how to target an enemy and how to dispatch how does bacteria I watched a TED presentation the bacteria actually communicates and this bacteria lives in our body all the time but when you have a cut there’s a communication system and it it rallies of the bacteria to this location and that becomes an infection Wow amazing it’s it was incredible my favorite tears ever because the the doctor actually presented this and showed under the microscope the movement of bacteria toward a common target fascinated blew me away and I began to think about the fact that what we call evolution it is linked to Darwinism which is linked to this we share all this we evolved from a cell or from primordial ooze into a human being but I do believe in God’s gift of adaptability and God’s gift of our developing skills talents and even alterations to physical attributes to accommodate environmental conditions so the sloth the all the animal kingdom there’s no question that we share a common DNA and RNA because all creation was out of the dust of the earth so just go to the dust of the earth and there you’re going to find the basic building blocks of life a tree shares a lot in common with me and you any living things shares a lot in common but that doesn’t mean that I evolved it into this being so I came to a better understanding of it and wonder it began to wonder why this huge division this and it really it’s almost a militant yeah Darwinism that’s turned into a cult ish yeah so it’s worth explaining what I mean by evolution I don’t mean Darwinism so Darwinism is well first of all it’s an outdated scientific idea on one hand if you mean atheism that’s clearly not consistent with being a Christian right right if you mean purposelessness and a replacement for God well that doesn’t make any sense I mean evolution you know in a different way I just mean merely that it would be I mean as a Christian I would say it had to be a god a providentially governed a process by God that includes common descent that’s all I mean yeah and there can be a lot of questions about that and it’s not really about whether or not God created us it’s rather about how and as I talk about my book that that can be true that God created some of our ancestors by a process of common descent but then he also created Adam and Eve literally out of the dust like God actually scoops up some dirt and forms Adam into a statue of mud and then breathes into his nostrils and then later puts them to sleep takes out a rib out of a side and then makes Eve that that could have literally happened as literally as you can imagine it to so both things can be true I think what we forget is that we have we can have multiple lines for our family right and and there’s been historically a very fruit you know for thousands of years readers of Genesis have wondered about people outside the garden you know the the Genesis really just hints at that and it doesn’t tell us that they evolved to be clearer but but it leaves a question mark it doesn’t tell us precisely how how they got there and it suggests certain the image of God too it suggests that they have morality but it’s not it’s not as if it rules out evolution is certainly not talking about creation from the dust for those people it’s as saying other things so I think that the stress ends up being an interesting thought experiment even if you’re young earth creationists you can sit down on one roll what if we enter that science fiction what if we enter in that theological fiction and see how much really changes and I don’t think very much changes at all so maybe the earth is old but at that time they didn’t really know the earth when genis was written they didn’t know that the earth was a globe well the word for Earth your your Messianic Jewish the word is the rats right yes and that that’s you know that was you know that defined the area that they knew that was around that them up and so we can wonder if what with what Genesis is saying is it’s talking about in six days six literal normal days the creation of Adam’s world the garden or that area and so it would still be right to say that the Adams worlds and as descendants of Adam and Eve you know our world starts 2008 I’m sorry and now 2000 it starts well through Christ maybe it does start 2000 years ago it interesting enough in the Hebrew in the first line of Genesis in the beginning God created the word created as bara ba ra now we see the exact right right Genesis 1 we see the exact same application of creation which man does not have that attribute you and I do not have the ability to create something from nothing we have to use elements but those elements God created so we can do lots of things with lots of things but we didn’t create the building blocks of life but Jesus at the pull of sallam dealing with the man who was born blind he was it was stated he was blind from birth now the only way that you can know your doctor right is there a visual acuity test on the Apgar is there visual acuity and the answer is no okay you’ve got minute you can’t measure the visual acuity of a newborn child so blind from birth the only way you can absolutely know without question and confirm that a child is blind from birth is if they’re born without eyes hmm a genetic defect so that’s what you think you put the mud and the fits exactly what he did so he created he did exactly he says I only do what I saw my father do so he reaches in to the dust to the dirt he spits in it he puts it on the man’s eyes and creates eyes this is unbelievable so they want to verify and the only people that were there were the mother the father and the Midwife who was delivering there weren’t hospitals so they went to the parents and said is it really true that this child was blind from birth or born without eyes and they gave testimony to say yes that is correct this is a it’s an act of God only God can create from nothing something okay but wait a second he didn’t create from nothing he created from dirt well he didn’t create from the dirt exactly so that’s so the same that’s nothing that’s not nothing no that’s not nothing but but to create from to take the way God did in the creation of Adam is the way Jesus created eyes or for this for this blind man yeah I hadn’t heard that interpretation before but it’s really beautiful I think he might be right well you know unfortunately we’ve gotten this habit of believing that the New Testament was a contemporary document and that Jesus lived in the New Testament okay there was there wasn’t a New Testament at the time of Jesus okay so these are euphemisms and idiomatic illustrations so blind from birth you know you don’t hear that everyday conversation but as a medical doctor okay you can understand that there’s there was wasn’t science back then and there wasn’t the kind of doctoring and those medical technology but there wasn’t it was medical sure yeah I think you’re right and to get to this idea of the different words of creation so it’s interesting though that I mean this does brah occur that’s in the John passage for the blind man’s John 9 if I my bride is it is it the word bara sees there well because we have it in Greek we would have to reverse engineer I you think well so if here’s the thing that’s interesting that I didn’t realize when I when I first read Genesis so in like this and at least the version I know there’s many versions of young earth creationist I’m at the version that I heard it was almost like God was poofing things into existence and he kind of neglect actually what the text says the text doesn’t actually say God is poofing things into existence except for maybe you know in the again and God created the heavens on earth in Genesis 1 but it actually says that he created them out of the dust and the word isn’t brought it’s actually a saw which means make right whatever God’s are you probably know how to pronounce it much better than I do and then in Genesis 1 the thing that really struck me as I started reading it closer was that it does use the word bara but it’s not actually God directly creating things what it says that God calls out and that the land and the sea make plants and animals of many kinds which completely surprised me when I first realize it so it’s talking about a mediated creation and saying that God’s creating but he’s doing it by asking the land and the sea to make things which isn’t precisely a God creating things out of nothing either which was surprising to me okay what’s actually a story not of creation but a story of separation yeah if you if you if you really dissect these 33 verses first of all there’s an order and the order is is in the beginning God created the heavens the earth and the earth was without form and void and the Spirit of the Lord hovered or over the deep and then God spoke well guess what we see that exact same scenario when Jesus goes into the water John the immerser and Jesus came up out of the water the spirit fell like a dove upon him and then God spoke so we see these parallels to this new creation there’s this guy now we have have God speaking through the holy spirit that’s what the catalyst for creation is that’s where the power of the word is of speaking the word those in the tongue is powerful life and death we save it all the time but this verifies it then you have this account that’s the exact same account okay Jesus comes out by the water before God speaks the Spirit has to fall then God speaks and makes a declaration and so it’s it’s there’s there’s very specific in the in the study of what what I’m taught in it was this first century Judaism not first century Christianity first century Judaism so in in your hypothesis and and I want to kind of take the scientific approach one I I love it because it falls right into the trap of the Greek the the trap of the Greek is that everything must fit neatly into a box it must be labeled tagged or it doesn’t exist until I can identify it well in in God’s economy I we do only have authority over that which has a name so God brought everything to add him to name and he had dominion over everything that had a name the only thing God didn’t bring to him to name was himself so man does not have dominion over God God has dominion god man doesn’t define God God defines man so we come to this to this crossroads of now we enter into not only the Greek written language but we enter into the Greek thought and the Greek thought is the identification classification genus species type got all these things that’s bigger than just Greeks that’s just what language works I mean like languages is right so this is probably written in Hebrew context and I mean I think it’s just kind of very natural human thing to want to name things right the Hebrew mind is were ok with I am that I am we don’t we’re not drawn to the Yahweh’s and the Jehovah’s and well we’re we’re perfectly comfortable with an undefined aspect to that even though there have been many rabbi trail people so that’s interesting actually as you say that Erik because I mean a big part of my book is really emphasizing how there’s there’s mystery in the John this account which is things that are undefined does that does that really fit with how your absolutely and we’re basically perfectly comfortable with not having to explore and define the mystery which keeps God as as this almighty god almighty el shaddai he’s he’s if it when we try to make him like us we’re created in His image so forensic ly two parts invisible one part visible okay I can’t see the Father I can’t see the Holy Spirit but I can see the Sun okay I can’t see your soul I can’t see your spirit but I can see your body so two parts invisible one part visible forensic identity if you will of the image of God okay you know starting with that is the basic principle and then building from there but in your hypothesis which is what the book is is all about is the the what if scenario what if traditional account is somehow true and the origins of Adam and Eve take place alongside of this concept of evolution so what I want to do before we go to break and and in the next two or three minutes I want to hear about your approach okay you started with the hypothesis and using the scientific method which is not changed it’s been expanded upon a little bit wider margins than the original concept but still the same thing you’re proving to you’re looking to prove to not rule out different than in the practice of medicine or oftentimes you’re ruling out before you can prove – well I wouldn’t say I’m making proof – out of me what I’m asking is is there any evidence like if we take Genesis is true scripture itself is testimony that that there shirt there but stick it in a very literal way as literal as I learned it in creationism but then just ask is there any evidence if we grant that evolutionists Cruz or any evidence that that’s false and then what you do hypothesize what you know that that view would there’s a mystery outside the garden with people that were created by some providential governing process of common descent and then what I do is just look to see if there’s any way I can I can demonstrate the Genesis account false and they sort of conflict and I can find and I do that I worked really hard at it and I convinced a lot of scientists including atheists scientists and including a lot of scientists that were very skeptical in the very beginning that I couldn’t actually disprove the Genesis account that both could actually be happening at the same time and of course it’s not meaning that God creates the entire earth in six days but I don’t think Genesis says that anyways but he could have very well created the the garden were separated the garden as you put it in in six literal days six thousand years ago or ten thousand years ago in the Middle East or however you want to have it and Adam and Eve could have been de novo created and they’d be ancestors of all of us and that’s that’s a surprising finding I don’t think most people entered that conversation expecting to come away with the conclusion that we can’t show that false now that doesn’t show true from science but it makes space for us to read Scripture as some of us really feel like we should well I completely agree with you I think the tale which reveals to us something about why God talked about who he talked about was given to us in genesis 3:15 when we hear about the emnity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent now he’s telling us i’m taking you on a path of the seed line and this lineage this genealogy this genetic path that’s going to the seed is going to pass through and we’ve actually discovered in Qumran in the same vessels that we found the Dead Sea scrolls three palm kernels were found and those three palm kernels were taken put into soil add water and light and one of them actually blossomed and bore fruit after remaining 2,000 years dormant well we see the seed of the woman being passed genetically through and then the catalyst of the holy spirit is what brings about so under the right environmental conditions life can exist with light water and the right environment soil so it was called the Methuselah seed there’s a large right up in the jerusalem post about it so yes there can be many other people but God talked about the people that mattered in the establishment of the seed line to Messiah there are lots of peripheral lots exactly right actually a really beautiful point so I remember reading Genesis 11 and 12 where it has the table of Nations where it talks about we’re all about I’m gonna use descendants go and I remember you know I’m I’m from India right and my family’s from India I was born here so I’m an American a different American Indian you’re probably imagining but just go with a for me and I remember I remember reading that and wondering okay so where does it talk about India and it does it doesn’t mention India and I kind of miss me and you know if you’re from Australia it doesn’t matter mention Australia if you’re a Native American I doesn’t mention America if you’re from all of the other places it just doesn’t mention them and in what’s going on is they’re really listing out what they saw the world to be and it’s not that in covering the entire globe now eventually when you get over to the New Testament when Jesus says to the ends of the earth and Paul talks about how Death Comes to all mankind there’s a good reason to think that you know that’s a story that covers the whole globe but you don’t see that in Genesis so it really makes sense I mean you add to that – I I mean there there’s one chapter in the book where I explain a lot of the original language and and in Genesis and that there isn’t the word human or mankind in Genesis 1 into the word the word is actually a Dom or the word for Adam and so it really makes sense to read Genesis as you know the rise of the lineage of Adam and Eve that spreads across the earth and becomes all of us so we are the lineage of Adam and Eve but that doesn’t mean there weren’t other other lineages before us that we also are connected to as well that we’ve just forgotten about them because Adam and Eve’s lineage was the really important one because Adam sinned and the thus the seed line and so the entire narrative of the Old Testament the Tanakh is a narrative telling you prophetically and showing the hand of God and the various battles and how the seed line was protected all the way and then who the lineages can be so we only go on up a certain trunk over a certain branch out to a certain limb that’s the exploration and an exposition of the Bible is to the line that mattered there were many of the lines then the line of Judah and the end the birth of Messiah and the Masonic line but the narrative is about establishing a clear path and whether God went before and he cleared it or he equipped them to battle to protect it you see that seed line and from a genetics standpoint or genealogy standpoint you see that that we’re given that lineage and that lineage is rather diverse in its its origin you don’t just have Jewish lineage you have some Gentiles in there you’ve got Ruth Raab here we have you have ruth the moabite us so we see that there’s there’s this concept of the nations right and then ultimately through the incarnation of Messiah and then the promise of John 3:16 and John 3:17 then we have Acts chapter 2 or we have the the vision given to Cornelius to Peter and Cornelius and now the nations are now capable from the two he shall make one so there’s just you and Gentile ethnos is not a part of the narrative of there’s just there’s just Jews and non-jews that’s it and predominantly the narrative is about Asia Africa and Europe those are the only three continents mentioned by name in that narrative so it’s extraordinary so I want to talk about in the book you talk about genetics is not genealogy and I think that’s a very important point to be clarified yeah so this is a really great point so this is where I think a lot of us got confused when we were thinking about ancestry so from church tradition we’ve always thought that Adam and Eve are the ancestors of everyone and in science studies ancestry too and so we started to kind of line up the concepts of you know as Adam and Eve Oliver ancestors and we all go or look over at the science to start to ask that question to what we didn’t realize is that we’re talking about two different types of ancestry they’re just different things so in scripture what’s being talked about is genealogical ancestry which is idea of parents and offspring now you might think well obviously that’s what science studies but actually that isn’t what scientists usually mean when you talk about ancestry it’s kind of crazy but that’s not what actually we think about typically what we usually are meaning with when you think about all of the studies on you know human ancestry or even ancestry.com and all the tests for ancestry it’s not actually about parent-child relationships it’s about DNA relationships and how genetics passes which means DNA passes and one of the weird surprising things is that DNA just doesn’t pass the same way as parental relation chips does it turns out fairly quickly just go back a few hundred years the majority of your genealogical ancestors didn’t give you any DNA it turns out the DNA just gets lost over time in our case our genetic connection to our ancestors diminishes over time and so when you think about things from a genetic point of view come to very very different answers than if you think about things from a genealogical point of view and why is that important well scripture doesn’t tell us about DNA it tells us about do you know logical ancestors so theological questions about ancestry are really rooted in questions about genealogical ancestry not genetics so if you kind of get that straight you understand the difference in how it works and a good part of the first of the book the first the the first several chapters are really trying to tease out that distinction so we understand that then a lot of the conflict just disappears we found out that Adam Eve could have been living just 6,000 years ago and they’d be ancestors or all nearly all of us by 81 when jesus walks the earth and when he and the his ascension where he Commission’s the dots with the the disciples to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and that’s surprising and that’s exciting and it’s beautiful too and we see the divide take place after the flood with the three sons you have ham Japheth and Shem and the the the lineage that God decides to pursue are the shemites the Semites the Jewish lineage that births this this line of monotheists beginning with Abraham and then he takes us down that path through the patriarchs to explain this and to explain the scepter will not leave the hand of Judah the lineage of the King the lineage of Messiah going all the way back to Genesis where we have to follow the plight of the seed of the woman and understanding the unseen realm of the angelic realm the seed of the serpent would be the Antichrist and so there are narratives to support that that adversary that father of lies this this angelic realm this this this hierarchy of and we and we do understand atmosphere and outer space but we tend to neglect is the third heaven which we don’t have much of a concept of other than we don’t have the science to take us past outer space to be able to look into that we have the Hubble which does an amazing job of discovering and and telling us about outer space but we don’t have anything that’s going to show us the court yard and the court of heaven with God sitting I think it’s it’s really interesting the connection it has to revelations so revelations so Genesis there’s a tree of life and revelations it talks about how there’s there’s trees of life you know just decorating the the roads and and it talks about how God’s going to put the City of God that will come down out of the heavens and actually dwell on earth with us and and what you see is really is that heaven is an image of the garden yes it’s got GaN Eden in the Hebrew is exactly what you see your return to so God being perfect only creates perfection so he’s not the flawed God he’s not the Frankenstein dr. Frankenstein he created the perfect environment for man and beast to prosper for them to be in fellowship for there to be complete and absolute serenity and unity among all of life let all creations sing let everything that has breath praise the Lord and we see all this commentary throughout and this is a return to GaN Eden which were now cannot see cannot enter because of our sin but once all of that is dealt with after the judgment then it heaven comes down and we return to GaN Eden that’s the promise that’s paradise so when there’s a beauty about this so that means that heaven isn’t another place it’s actually here well it here here and and that vet then becomes the quantum aspect of the quantum faith quantum physics we hear I had a question for you so you’re Jewish so yes there’s a there’s an idea enthusiasm of Midrash right correct which is as I understand it only forgot this right it’s like being able to take Scripture and kind of look at those places where there’s gaps or mystery and really kind of wonder about it together and explore not because we know for sure it’s true but because that’s part of the invitation of Scripture you’re not really engaged in Scripture if you treat it like this hermetically sealed thing and only engage the part that it didn’t tell you I did tell you you also want to wonder part of the parts that it didn’t tell you like wonder who Cain’s wife was wonder who the Nephilim were wonder what was outside the garden borders is that the right way to think about it absolutely for for example in Deuteronomy 6 verses 5 through 9 we’re given a set of instructions of something to do okay right right my word on the doorpost of your house okay how we’re weird where do I find okay so it’s in the back and nope it’s not in the back so I take a sharpie and I start writing all over the doorpost of my house and you come along and say no no you have to take a scroll and seal it up in a wooden box and nail it to it and there’s no one says no no no here’s the way you do it when you’re framing the house you write it all over the house you frame over it so this is the house that’s built on God’s Word and this one says and so there’s this and it’s all through Scripture God tells us what to do but he doesn’t tell us how to do it and so this is the appreciation of the gaps correct you know I like about it too is you got I imagine that those different camps are arguing with each other about it well yeah and it’s become very polarized that this you know oh I love this one rabbi and so I’m going to follow him and then I love this other rabbis explanation I’m going to follow him and that’s what’s going on in Jerusalem and a polarization being a thing but I do think there’s something really beautiful about maybe we don’t know the picture or the details in those places but it’s important to think about it and to wonder and that’s it’s important and I’m not saying that we should be fighting about it but I do think there’s something really meaningful about engaging those gaps right I have a I have a peer group a review group that there are others that have done postgraduate work in Near Eastern languages and various aspects of theology and and history and I have them regularly on the show and these are the conversations we have is is looking at the scripture looking at the historical context of it is it a word for now is it a word for then or is the word for some point in the future and to be able to put it into perspective so I can focus on what do I need to be looking what am I supposed to be looking at right now I mean what what am I supposed to be looking forward to second Peter 3:15 firstly is there 15 yeah which one have a ready answer for the hope that you have the hope that I have can’t be 2000 years old because hope is always a future tense it’s always a forward look it’s never my hope can’t be in the past okay that’s that’s that’s that’s an old dusty so your hope is that Jesus died on the cross no that’s not a hope that’s what he rose from the dead and so that’s a lie right that’s but but our little hope is in the future return of Messiah and eternal life and this heaven on earth is paradise and so it’s it’s a it’s a beautiful picture to get back to the book because the the book is really not no is it well written it’s understandable it’s put out by VP academic but I found it just as as classically a narrative of any good strong Bible study that took you through with the thought process of analysis of looking at the scriptures but adding the reality of life and the scientific community which has a great deal of credibility they’re not a discredited even though all of this is taking in some ways we have to look at what happened at Copernicus we have to look at at free thinkers that whose time has not yet come if a community says no no that’s wrong and we’re gonna ostracize actually that’s the person I want to hear a little bit more from the one who everybody is just completely attacking that’s why you that’s because I think when you look at Darwin and what Darwin put forward the church was probably right to reject that yes and if you look at what came after were the things like polygenesis which denied that we all descended from out of me but I think the church was right to reject that even though it seemed like the evidence was for it and even though that’s where a lot of the scientific consensus was I think we were probably right to reject that and you know if you look at some of the early versions of a Copernicus’s theory that the earth moves around the Sun and that there’s and then you know what what some of the other people were saying about you know they could look and see other universes what it was actually happening is that that was all good science however was also connected to bad theology and so so Bruno for example believed that all those other universes were or other people and that actually I mean that that’s actually where we I’m not gonna sit all correctly right now but I’ll just say that it was it was heretical teaching he connected to the idea of there being other planets and other solar systems and so the church didn’t like that and and he got into trouble for that now the thing that had to happen is we had to separate out his bad theology from the fact that what we were seeing in the world and then when we were able to do that it took a long time actually then it actually became no big issue to the point that most Christians today have no problem with the idea there being planets around other stars and stars out there and things like that that’s just not a big deal and cuz we don’t connect it to that bad theology I think that something similar is really happened with evolution that we’ve probably been very right to reject it because it’s been connected to a lot of really bad theology and now I think there’s just an opportunity to go back and realize that a lot of those things well maybe it’s a lot like just thinking about you know other solar systems and things like that maybe if we just separate out the bad theology there’s no way that it actually fits very comfortably with what we have here and yes that does put me in the strange situation of being the way I put it is that I’m in the no-man’s land between the trenches you’ve done is you’ve broken the surface tension that existed and kind of coexisted between this you you can’t be scientific and theological at the same time one will trump the other but there is a certain surface tension that has to be maintained between Scripture and science because as we probe into the narrative as we probe into life as it exists we probe into the science into medical breakthroughs into understanding our bodies actually are an exact replica of the kingdom there are demons in the form of bad cells cancer cells there there are attacks and it all is within us and we have to expel it we have to treat it we have to find new ways to go after to cast out to take authority over illness and disease and aging and listen when my father was 68 years old he was an old old man I’m 68 years old I’m as young and vibrant and my mother’s 93 and plays golf twice a week we’re finding ways to extend life and as we’re extending life were now turning the corners into new artificial intelligences you’re working in to find ways to – like Israel’s doing well they’re about to introduce medical technology that will eliminate the need for chemotherapy that they have isolated and targeted and come up with in some incredible breakthroughs and nanotechnology and using many of those tools so as we challenge and we believe that and what’s interesting is is that there’s no Hebrew word in the Old Testament for brain every every thought came out of the heart so now you come into this period of time where the brain is now able to exceed in capacity for understanding both in depth breadth and height what 2,000 years ago was not possible so does that mean that we have evolved within ourselves into a higher capacity because we’ve studied because we have a relationship with God that God’s expanded our territories expanded all that because we’re now ready to use it for what he inspired it to be and that that is a creationist divine intelligence worldview that that allows science to embrace as a gift a gift from God and the more responsible right there I really agree with you is I think that science doesn’t really have to be something where we don’t always have to accept everything the science says but we don’t also have to be threatened by it or there’s there’s reason to understand it and to see just to make see if there’s a way to make sense of it all together I think I think what I really would hope is that we could you know not worry so much about you know what we were jacked or what we disagree with it would be so certain of about closing all those loopholes that we think we see in Scripture but to maybe take that more Jewish approach of Midrash hang on it to wonder you know how could it all make sense together and in our thoughts experiment I mean the book doesn’t even argue that evolution is true it just looks at it from a thought experiment let’s just assume it is for a moment and see what happens is really are are you know deeply held beliefs in Scripture are they really challenged or not and I just don’t think that they are and and I think that that creates an opportunity yeah where we can start to see science as a gift from God to understand the world in different ways rather than as a threat to biblical Authority or you know things that are important to us too and I do think that science is a gift I mean I found myself here God made me a scientist for some reason he did and I think what you do is when you wrap the book up with last part the cross road tolerance humility and patience is that as we begin to navigate and find that there are there’s a growing community of former atheists that are now becoming believers but they haven’t abandoned their science because of their faith they’ve actually further embraced their science to outside Dart my friend right what’s that you meant side guard my friend yes The Sands yeah it’s a great story yeah great story of sight I had sion last week tremendously wonderful experience talking to him this is actually such a core piece of it so I think so many times we and the church we are we kind of come to this point where we’ve hunker down we bunker down we feel threatened by science or we go down this aggressive path where we feel like we have to you know attack it but what this does is it makes us either disconnected or the enemy to all of my colleagues in science and unfortunately a cadet the educational system being controlled by a federal office that says we’re gonna teach and I live in a state now that has divorced itself from common core and says we’re coming back to really examine what our educational system needs to look like based on the needs of the population we serve their different environmental conditions and capacity and we’re gonna find a way to reward encourage excellence and to provide opportunity to grow beyond the structure and the University of Alabama Auburn University some great institutions that are offering these kind of opportunities to high school students to really blow the lid off and take advantage of the academic world in embracing and fueling their interest in their pursuits so it’s been quite extraordinary unfortunately we’re running out of time I could talk to you for hours about this because there’s so many aspects to the Bible that there’s a convergence and God puts there is in some places as a question mark in some places there is an exclamation points places as a period and some places there’s a dot dot dot and that’s where you and I are talking about is the dot dot dot what lies in between this and that we’ve been talking to dr. s Joshua Swami das author of the new book a genealogical Adam and Eve the genealogical Adam and Eve of the surprising science of universal ancestry if you visit Nettie nation.com you can click on his name and it will take you right to a link you can also follow him at peaceful science dot o R G dr. Swamy dose thank you you know my pleasure the pleasure to be with you and we’ll send you a copy of this interview and you can share it with your friends and family and with the question God why did you do this to me it’s been a pleasure Erica I I honestly wish I hope we get a chance to talk more it’s been really great I was great hearing I saw some things I’m available to you anytime why god bless you my friend we’re gonna take a short break and when we come back we’ll bring in the next edition of revealing the truth