Most people don’t know: the genome is a formatted database with read/write memory systems which can reorganize itself to produce new species. Last week, we gave a thumbnail sketch of genetics as most people understand it. We distilled that common understanding into five basic statements, and showed how most people think new species arise from genetic mistakes and accidents. And we said we would be talking to Dr. James Shapiro, a world-leading geneticist with 60 years of experience, who co-leads a large group of world-leading scientists who collectively want the world to know that most people are misinformed on both points. The common understanding is not just outdated, but deceptively wrong! Here’s what he told us about those five basic statements. Fasten your seat belts! (1) it’s all about DNA: who you and your children are is all completely determined by your DNA; Your brain cells, muscle cells, blood cells … and all the other cells of your body … have exactly the same DNA. And yet they’re so very unique in many ways. What makes them different from each other — and you from anybody else — is determined largely by another molecule: RNA. (2) DNA is a long molecule which gathers together many genes, like beads on a string, which code for the proteins that your body is made of; Only a very small fraction of your genome (the total collection of all your genetic material) codes for proteins; perhaps just a few percent. Most of the rest of your DNA codes for RNA molecules which regulate the entire genetic machine. Any given “gene” (discrete chunk of information) has bits and pieces scattered all over your genome. (3) cells do everything they can to protect those genes from any kind of change; Your cells have built-in mechanisms which do the exact opposite of that: they actively change the organization of your DNA by: – moving large chunks from one position to another, even between chromosomes (recombination and reorganization); – moving large chunks between completely different species (“horizontal transmission”, in contrast to the standard “vertical transmission” from your parents); – combining the genomes of two different related species to produce a new third species (hybridization) or produce an entirely different kind of organism (the origin of the mitochondria and chloroplast); (4) UV light and mutagenic chemicals cause random mutations in the DNA, which can alter the function of the proteins they encode; Cells have very good error-correcting mechanisms which undo those kinds of mistakes, as well as those made when the “photocopier” (the DNA-duplicating machine) goes on the fritz; (5) those random mutations accumulate over time, producing individuals with new characteristics (e.g., blood type; hair color) and eventually … a new species; The occasional random mutations which might make it through the error-correcting mechanisms referred to in #4 above are completely unable to explain the origin of major changes in a given species (new “phenotypes”), let alone the origin of entirely new species. How much more wrong could we have been? This new and improved understanding of genetics and biological evolution open up new ways to defuse the debates which keep coming up when creationists push back on the Theory of Evolution. As always, tell us what you think … To find more about Dr. James Shapiro and the group of scholars he co-leads seeking to bring awareness to this new understanding of genetics, go to The Third Way of Evolution. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A brief overview of genetics as most know it, and why many don’t buy the Theory of Evolution. Next week, we plan to wade into the deep water of genetics in order to understand the origin of species. So this week we thought it would be good to first give a brief Genetics 101 to get us all on the same page, and then explore the reasons that so many people push back on the Theory of Evolution. Most people — non-experts and experts alike — have an understanding of genetics that they were taught in high-school, college, and undergrad university. The five main ideas on which this understanding is based are these: it’s all about DNA: who/what you are is all completely determined by your DNA; DNA is a long molecule which gathers together many genes, like beads on a string, which code for the proteins that your body is made of; cells do everything they can to protect those genes from any change; accidents happen: UV light and mutagenic chemicals cause random mutations in the DNA, which can alter the function of the proteins they encode. those random mutations accumulate over time, producing individuals with new characteristics (e.g., blood type; hair color) and eventually … a new species. Next week, we’re going to hear from Dr. James Shapiro, a world-leading geneticist with 60 years of experience, who co-leads a large group of world-leading scientists who collectively want the world to know that all five of those statements are not just outdated, but deceptively wrong! Stay tuned! During the rest of today’s episode, Boyd and I explored some of the reasons why some people push back on the whole idea of evolution (in some cases, because they just don’t properly understand genetics and evolution): “if humans evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?” “if we evolved from monkeys, how are we created in the image of God?” “if evolution is true, why do 100 million year old fossils of ancient turtles or snakes look the same as those animals today?” “what about all the missing links?” “you can’t trust science because it’s always changing” “evolution is only a theory” “it conflicts with a plain reading of scripture” “God made everything with apparent age and apparent common ancestry” “evolution raises difficult questions regarding Original Sin and Atonement” As always, tell us what you think … To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Is there a transition of power in play within the YEC movement? Think about Young Earth Creationism (YEC), and you probably immediately conjure up a mental image of Ken Ham: he’s been the figurehead of that movement for decades. One can critique his scientific credentials and his way of interpreting anything scientific through his dogmatic worldview, but say what you want, he had long been the face and voice of the YEC movement. Dr. Joel Duff has long been interested in the intersection between faith and science, and for that reason has been watching the YEC movement. In fact, Boyd and I interviewed Joel Duff on how it was actually YECism that was a bigger threat to his young Christian faith than science (see episode #26). In this episode, Joel comes back to tell us that he’s sensing a change in the YECist world. The perception that there might be a “transition of power” in play crystalized in Joel’s mind when he went to watch a major movie documentary — Is Genesis History? — that was released in major theatres across the USA a few years ago. This documentary had seven scientific experts exploring various lines of scientific evidence which support a YEC view of the origins of the world and life on Earth. As Joel put it: “I expect this film to become one of the most effective apologetics tools the young-earth movement has ever produced both because of who produced it—a group outside of the major creationist organizations—but also because of who is not in the film—AiG president Ken Ham.”  These seven experts, although fully YECist in their worldview, appear to be much more open to the advances of science, and are open to finding ways to harmonize the two rather than take Ham’s approach of misrepresentation and even frank denial of the science. Joel tells us more about these seven leaders — their bona fide scientific credentials, their areas of scientific expertise, and their very different demeanor: they’re more accessible to outside critique (Ham and his AiG experts won’t interact meaningfully with properly qualified experts outside of the AiG or YEC fold); they engage in more gracious dialogue; and most importantly, they’re quite willing and able to say “I don’t know” when raw data and science conflict with their YEC worldview … something which goes completely against the grain of Answers-in-Genesis and its current leader and figurehead who find ALL their answers … in Genesis. Not only are YECists possibly updating their leadership: their understanding of the origin of species seems to also be in flux. Instead of the traditional view that God made all the different species of animals “each according to their own kind”, they’re now working with a model in which Noah didn’t take hundreds of thousands of different animals onto the Ark, but rather only a few thousand proto-animals. One pair of proto-cats which contained all the genetic diversity of our present day cats (from the house cat to leopards to the sabre-toothed tiger). Same for proto-dogs, proto-apes, proto-birds, proto-insects, and so on. And once all those proto-animals stepped off the Ark, they underwent a process of rapid hyper-speciation: devolving into all the different species of animals within the course of only a few generations. In other words, for proponents of this idea, it might be more believable that all the species evolved over the course of a few hundred years than over many hundreds of millions of years. As always, tell us what you think … To find more about Dr. Joel Duff and his blog site and YouTube channel, go to Naturalis Historia. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Global warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, and humans. image adapted from Pixabay. . It seems like every week there’s another record-breaking weather event: never-seen-before temperatures, rains, or winds. Weather-related devastation at scales or in places that were unprecedented. Floods, droughts, tornadoes, wild-fires. Earth is developing a fever. Even the ocean is getting warmer and more acidic. Dr. Adam Fenech (PhD, Environmental Science) has spent three decades at the front-line of this problem … writing climate policy speeches for federal environment ministers … representing Canada in front of United Nations climate panels (remember COP26?) … and speaking to intergovernmental panels and universities around the world. He knows climate change. And what causes it: humans … well, humans producing greenhouse gases. After getting the 101 on climate change (definitions; how it’s measured; what are the root causes), we talked about four worldviews or ideas that need to be adjusted: (1) “the solution for pollution is dilution” An old saying, but how many people still get rid of waste by flushing it down the toilet, pouring it in the sewer drains, tossing it into a river, or burning it? (2) “GDP growth is necessary”. Much of the pollution in the world is a by-product of capitalism, convenience and consumerism. You convince yourself that you “need” to have the newest phone or computer, so you have Amazon courier it from China to your front door step … within three days. (3) carbon trading. This doesn’t reduce the problem … it just prolongs it. We need to reduce. (4) apathy. “The problem is too big, and I can’t do anything to make a substantial dent in it”. As Boyd put it: “Well, we may be going to hell in a hand-basket, but I can’t do anything about it, so let’s just enjoy the ride”. But tell me, what’s a bigger number: one times a billion, or a billion times ten? Sure, we can point to this billionaire or that country who are making the biggest dent on the environment (or who need to make the the biggest cash infusion to solve it); but if a billion of us nobodies each made a small dent (or paid a small price) we could collectively make a much bigger impact. Don’t quit making those small changes. At the end of the show, we barely scratched the surface on high-tech approaches to solving the climate crisis problem: seeding the skies with particles to create a mini nuclear winter … position giant sun-screens the size of tennis courts somewhere between Earth and the sun to reduce solar input. But this is like solving a weight control problem using liposuction rather than a lifestyle change. As always, tell us what you think … comment below or at our Facebook page. . Learn more about Adam Fenech and his work. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. See our podcast archive for a complete listing of our episodes.

How did inorganic chemicals eventually become you and me? For the past three weeks, we’ve been talking about “the cosmic egg” that exploded and produced the space-time continuum of our universe. Out of all that energy, quantum particles were formed, which eventually became the matter that coalesced into stars and planets. Earth itself seems to have taken shape about 4.3 billion years ago. And the moment it began to cool down … life appeared! This week, we had a great conversation with Dr. Stephen Freeland (studied at Oxford, York, and Cambridge; post-doc’d at Princeton; spent four years as project manager for NASA’s Astrobiology Institute) about what ideas he and his colleagues are working with when it comes to the the origin of life. We’ve come a long way from Darwin’s warm, wet pond basking in the energetic rays of the sun, and from flashes of lightning turning that chemical soup into Earth’s first living cells. Now, the money seems to be on deep-sea thermal vents … “black smokers” … which continuously spew boiling hot, highly acidic water at the dark bottom of a frigid ocean. We have good reason to think that primordial life could have originated by tapping into that huge pH gradient, and found a cozy spot nestled between the two temperature extremes at the edges of those thermal vents where it eventually evolved into something that changed the very chemistry of the planet (they produced the oxygen on which all modern life now depends). This would certainly explain why living cells today are powered by “batteries” (called mitochondria) that look like tiny engulfed bacteria which themselves create a tremendous pH gradient to turn chemicals into energy and organic building blocks. We also talked about: how our genetic machinery, which uses DNA as an information storage medium, is an upgrade on an earlier primordial system that used RNA (the “RNA World Hypothesis”), and how that primordial system was itself almost certainly an upgrade upon yet something else; our concerns about Intelligent Design as a legitimate scientific explanation (especially given its tendency to lean on God-of-the-gaps arguments); the relationship between matter and consciousness, even panpsychism; how life originating on other planets is not only a very distinct possibility, but seems to even be a “cosmic imperative”. As always, tell us what you think … . To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

. image adapted from Pixabay . . Dr. Robert Mann (PhD, Astronomy and Physics; U. Waterloo) shares with us his understanding of what evolved out of the “cosmic egg” that we’ve been talking about over the past couple of weeks … our universe. He has spent his career working on quantum physics and gravity and how they create Black Holes, and his lifetime as a Christian gives him a unique perspective on this. We pursued several threads that pull together scientific and theological ideas: (1) Christians in general over the past century have been quite resistant to Big Bang cosmology and committed to a Young Earth view of Creation, but over the past few decades many have warmed up to a very long view about the universe (although many of these are still quite “young Earth” when it comes to humans). Did they just get tired of resisting? Or finally become convinced by the data? Or did they change their view on the Bible (and Genesis) as a science book? Or all of the above? (2) Where did all the stuff (energy and matter) in the universe come from? Should theists have cognitive dissonance when embracing Big Bang cosmology while at the same time trying to accept the version we find in Genesis chapter one? On the other hand, should non-theists feel a similar cognitive dissonance when accepting the idea that all the energy and matter which make up the universe has always existed (that’s a whole lot of something from nothing), or that it just popped into existence all by itself without something putting it there? (3) cosmologists and quantum physicists are quite convinced that there are more dimensions to our existence than the three describing space (up/down; forward/back; left/right) and time … even as many as ten! Using “Flatland” as an analogy, we discuss how those extra dimensions make it perfectly reasonable to accept the idea that there is a Higher Being who can be/do things that are completely unexplainable to us more dimensionally-limited beings. (4) the Fine Tuning of cosmological constants raises very interesting and compelling arguments for the existence of a Cosmic Designer. As always, tell us what you think … . Learn more about Dr. Robert Mann. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Once again, a re-release from the past in anticipation of new episodes starting next week. Here, we look at one idea of how the universe came into existence. This is how we summarized it when we released this over a year and a half ago … When we read a paper1 published a couple years ago by last week’s guest — Dr. Chris Barrigar — we felt his idea was a perfect book-end to our recent discussions about Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design. We’ve often referred to an image of God rolling certain ingredients — thermodynamics; entropy; quantum mechanics; biological evolution — into a cosmic egg and setting that on the stage of the pre-universe … and watched with delight as that exploded into the universe we see now in front of us. Our guest now adds more detail to that image: those ingredients might have also included randomness, probability, order, predictability, determinism, massively large numbers, dynamic complexity, and chaos theory. And in the process, he tells us he’s found the meaning and purpose of the universe itself: it’s been front-end loaded (the cosmic egg above) to create agape-capable beings like ourselves. We’ll warn the listeners in advance though: this could be the most intellectually challenging episode we’ve done so far. We’ll be putting some of the most recent advances in science, philosophy, and theology on the table. We still believe you’ll be able to keep up with the discussion, but you’ll need to stay focused! If you’re intrigued by this, you’ll be pleased to know that this is only a shortened version of two chapters in a book Dr. Barrigar has written.2 Let us know what you think, and share this with a friend. Barrigar, C., “God’s Agape/Probability design for the universe.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70(3):161-174, 2018. Barrigar, C. J. Freedom all the way up: God and the meaning of life in a scientific age. FriesenPress, 2021. . To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Are certain cosmological constants “too good to be random or coincidental”? image adapted from Pixabay . We’re repeating this episode in anticipation of a couple new ones that will be released in two weeks, after the holiday season has passed (we didn’t want those to be eclipsed by the distractions of the holidays). Those two new episodes in January are part of our “Origin and evolution of …” series, and will focus on the universe and life, respectively. To that end, we thought we’d re-release previous episodes on the Fine Tuning of the Universe (this week) and Emergent Creationism (next week). . Apologies to my high school geography teacher. The only thing I seem to remember learning in that class was how to balance pencils on the end of their erasers!? I’d seen street performers turn the art of balancing odd things into an impressive revenue generator … maybe I could make something of it too? I might have taken an entirely different career path if I’d learned how to take that to the next level by turning the pencil around and balancing it on its point, but no one on earth has ever been able to do that. It’s as if earth’s gravity amplifies an imbalance of even a few molecules to instantly topple even the most carefully poised pencil (air currents are not the problem, because astronauts can do it in the space station). Chaos theory and the butterfly effect come into play here: the very smallest initial event gets magnified into a catastrophic system failure. Scientists have learned that many physical constants that dictate the structure and function of our universe seem to be so precisely tuned it’s as if they were like pencils standing on their points. If the ratio of the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force were off by a decimal with thirty two zeroes in front of it, the sun would burn a million times faster … and any life that ever appeared on earth would be immediately vaporized in that intense heat. If the balance between the nuclear and electromagnetic forces holding atomic nuclei together was off by a decimal with dozens of zeroes in front of it, the universe would have ended up either as one super-gigantic ball of mass like a mega-supersized proton, or as a vastly dispersed cloud of particles that could never form planets or life forms. Those are some pretty finely balanced pencils! And there’s a daunting list of other examples. But is that an argument for design? For a Designer? In this episode, we explore some of the reasons why some answer “yes,” and reasons why some do not. We also look at how some Fine Tuning proponents stretch this idea to absurdity, adding in all kinds of “examples” which … if you think carefully about them … are not examples of the universe being finely-tuned for life, but instead are examples of how life-as-we-know-it is so finely-tuned for this universe. As always, tell us what you think … . To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Some ethical/theological perspectives on public responses to the pandemic, and how to prepare for what’s in store image modified from Pixabay . We begin with a look at the public backlash against the authorities who are simply trying to save humanity from this existential threat: vaccine mandates vaccine revolts vaccine passports fake vaccine passports and fake consent forms masks hostility toward health professionals, government, police Even if we can collectively get on board fully with the scientists and health-care professionals, whom our societies have trained and put in place in part to help us through threats like this, and get the entire human population vaccinated, it may not be over. We found out last week that COVID is in the animals all around us, and is constantly mutating, looking for the chinks in the armor of our immune systems and our R&D programs. So we’re going to have to stop deluding ourselves with the dream of “finally getting rid of COVID” and learning to live with COVID: it’s going to become a seasonal thing. Which means annual boosters (along with our annual flu shots). It also means educating ourselves and our loved ones. To that end, Boyd and I look once again at how it is that some people can be so susceptible to science denial and wacky conspiracy theories. It’s wired into our brains: the rational “mammalian brain” (the frontal cortex) fighting against our much older, deeper, and more emotionally driven “reptilian brain”. Perhaps some ideas to help you reason with your crazy uncle at the family Christmas gathering? As always, tell us what you think … . To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Myths, misconceptions, and conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 image from Pixabay, adapted . Last week, we focused on the science around COVID. Today, we’ve got pseudoscience in our cross-hairs. The misinformation, myths, science denial, and conspiracy theories that are put out by internet trolls and circulated through social media. Or which are simply a product of well-intentioned people who don’t have enough scientific training to be correct, but just enough to be dangerous: TV/radio news reporters and overly self-confident internet surfers. Ivermectin is a perfect example of misinformed science. Pseudoscience actually. COVID anti-vaxxers have latched onto this compound, marketed as a de-worming treatment, because a small handful of scientific studies seem to have shown some beneficial effect. But those few studies have design flaws in them. On top of that, ten times as many studies have been done which show no useful effect with ivermectin, and even show harm being done. This is like someone trying to get you to invest in a strange new cryptocurrency, citing examples of people who have made tons of money on it, but when you look at the details, you notice that those people used some very questionable accounting practices, and many other investors have lost a ton of money on this new thing. Would you still buy? And then there are the conspiracy theories … COVID and the vaccine developed against it both being used to take over the world, and the players behind it all range from Bill Gates, to various world governments and military organizations, to Satan himself. We look closely at the claims that COVID is a biological weapon created in a lab, and that medical doctors are being coerced to falsify death records in order to hide or inflate the problem. And the proposal that the best way out of this pandemic is to just let COVID sweep through the global population and let Darwin sort it all out. As always, tell us what you think … . To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive