Dr. Wright gave this presentation at the 2022 Faith & Science Conference.
Transcription:
Well, as we wrap this up today, I just wanted to spend my little presentation here talking again about it's okay to believe is that our goal for this conference was really to kind of embrace all the different fields of study in science. Science isn't just a single focus or a single field of study. We've tried to have information on biology, genetics, geology, paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, anything that we can to demonstrate that all the fields of science and all areas of study all confirm the truthfulness of God's word and the reality of Jesus Christ.
And so, in kind of just laying a couple of pieces, putting them together, I wanted to just talk about some recent experiences that we've been able to have through the Flood Museum and some recent things that have come about. One of those that I intended to talk about was Mount Ebal, then when Ted said he would come, I'd rather have Ted talk about it than me just try to summarize it. So, it worked out much, much better.
And it's interesting when archaeologists, and Ted can attest to this, I think, when an they come to stones that are regularly placed with a design, it's clear that somebody did it, right? Somebody did it. When we look at the biology of a cell or at DNA, it's obvious that there's organization and pattern, but it's the only field of study where you can't say, somebody did it, right? It's the one area of study that actually is off the table before the discussion even begins. And so, what we want to do is kind of put everything back on the table and say, if it looks like somebody designed it and did it, then somebody did.
And archaeologists shouldn't have all the fun, right? We should all be recognized patterns. Okay, so the first topic I'll just briefly touch on is DNA research. And we had a great presentation from Helmut earlier, and so I'll just go through this real quickly.
But there's a new book out from a researcher at Anthropogenesis, his name is Nathaniel Jensen, and his book is Trace. And it is interesting to me because, as he says, my model suggests that the history of civilization can be read off the nuclear DNA differences, i.e. the DNA in a specific part of our cells. Among the peoples of the globe, and on a time cell consistent with the Earth creation model, white chromosome differences, i.e. DNA differences in male inherited DNA, among modern humans represent, in theory, the first type of nuclear DNA signature of the history of civilization.
What's he saying? The fact is, when traditional biologists and geneticists look at DNA data, they assume that they already know how old everything is. And so then they look at that mutation load that is carried by the DNA, and they determine then, because we know that humans have been here for at least, we're going to say 50,000 years, but they know that they've been around for about 50,000 years when they came out of Africa, and so all the mutations must have happened in that time, and that gives us a rate of mutation, right? That gives us the rate of mutation, so then they can determine everything else based on that, because they begin with the end in mind. If instead, like we were talking earlier, if you allow the biblical record to be a historic fact, and other historical data, and you then look at the DNA evidence from there, the question then is, do these DNA mutation rates fit within the mainstream historical data that exists? Because what Nathaniel Jensen has demonstrated is that these population events that happen through time, where armies or civilizations come in and conquer other people, they leave DNA evidence behind.
Because soldiers don't just come in, spend a few days in a town and leave, right? They have children, and they leave DNA behind, okay? And sometimes the conquering armies stay, and so their DNA presence is even bigger. The question is, does the traditional rate of mutation in the traditional timelines, does it match up with those historical markers that we can see in the DNA evidence? The answer is no, it doesn't. So they refuse to even acknowledge it, but what you find through Nathaniel Jensen's work is that 6,000 years ago, the origin of Adam and Eve, it's supported by measurable base pair mutation rates.
6,000 years, as Helmut talked about, 6,000 years is an appropriate timeframe for this DNA mutation rate to happen, if sin came into the world, and mutations come with it, and genetic entropy then happens, okay? The origin of, at 4,500 years ago, we have the origin of low white chromosome differences. What's that mean? Well, there's a bottleneck that happens. With the Flood, now you only have four families.
All the genetic data has to come from those eight individuals. So the DNA evidence should point us to, then, a white chromosome match that ties us, then, to that period of time, and it does. And then 3,000 years ago, we can actually talk about the historic comparison of mainstream archaeology to the biblical record.
We start seeing these historic events that happen, and they fit the DNA evidence. So now today, we're able to look and say, if 50,000 years ago, people left Africa, that then says that all the genetic mutations happened in that time. So what we're talking about is roughly the lower limit of 170 base pair mutations.
If it was 6,000 years ago, you'd have between 20 to 79 DNA differences that happen. What the actual is is between 36 and 40. So the idea that there should be 170, which is the lower limit for a 50,000-year-old origin for man, it is not supported by scientific evidence.
So I personally think, if you want a book on genetics, and I haven't read the book that you just got from Helmut today, but Nathaniel Jeanson’s book Trace, it's very approachable, very readable, and I think it's probably the most significant book that's come out in a long time. It just came out last month, and it's the most significant book that's come out in a long time for the biological support for the biblical record. It absolutely puts it all to rest in my mind.
He does just such an amazing job. So then, coming on to this next one, this is near and dear to my heart this year, this last year, because Dr. Mark Armitage, well, you're probably familiar that in about 2005, Mary Schweitzer found red blood cells in dinosaur bones, right? Everybody heard about that? Some of you have, some of you haven't. It was a major deal, and it created a lot of problems for a lot of people, including Mary Schweitzer.
But Mark Armitage was a microscopist at Cal State Northridge University, microscopist is the person who works with microscopes, so he was an expert in it for Cal State Northridge, trained surgeons, trained a lot of other medical researchers, and did a lot of the research for them. And he saw her work, and he said, you know, if that's true, somebody ought to be able to duplicate that. They ought to be able to duplicate it, right? She can't have all the fun.
And so he went on a dig to Montana, and was determined, because everybody was using femurs, everybody was researching in femurs, so he was determined to find a femur. Now, I've been on a couple of dinosaur digs. You don't get to choose what bone you're going to find.
You can't go out and say, today I'm going to find a toe. It just doesn't happen. You find what God gives you.
And so he went out, and they dug for many days, and didn't find anything of any substance. And then Shanna, who has become a really good friend, she said, you know, I think I know where there's a triceratops horn. I don't know what kind of condition, but I think I know where there's a triceratops horn.
So they went out that day. Two days later, they dug it out. And he then took that.
If you've seen his Genesis history, you've seen the results of Mark Armitage's work. Because then as they started to pull that horn apart, they found pliable tissues still there. That's the one complaint he has about his Genesis history, is it implies that they actually treated the bone, that they decalcified the bone.
That's the bone right out of the ground. Okay. And it's amazing.
Well, we had the opportunity to go do a couple of labs with Mark Armitage, that's me, at one of the microscopes. And the significant thing about his research, what he found when he looked at that triceratops horn, and since then, Permian bones of Dimetrodon, Nanotyrannus, this is, I'm actually looking here at Nanotyrannus, but we were able to work with him in El Paso and Modesto, where we helped to set up these labs. It's an amazing work because here he is published in all the major scientific journals with this ongoing work of finding now not only blood cells, but bone, osteocytes, nerves, blood vessels, all right there.
I may tomorrow bring over a microscope and set it up so you can look through and see for yourself, because I have some of the slides we prepared. But it's amazing to see the level of preservation that there is in these bones that are supposedly between 60 and 150 to 200 million years old. It doesn't match anything.
It doesn't fit. But there were a number of things that we learned, and then we went on a dinosaur bone date with him in Glendive, and there we were able, that's actually me, right, that's me right there from a drone. We went up and we were digging, and amazingly on our first day we found two horns coming out of the ground from a triceratops, and so we spent the next, we spent the whole time digging up that triceratops, and they didn't even finish, I don't even know if they'd gotten out of the ground yet, but that was just like two weeks ago.
But I was able to come back with the triceratops fibula, so it's all good. But these are pictures I took myself with some of these decalcified bones. That's a, on the left there, that's an osteocyte, so a bone cell, and this is an actual nerve from a, that's from a coming triceratops.
This is his video, the pliable tissue that he found in the triceratops horn, this was the one that was featured in his genesis history. These are some other pictures I took. This is cross sections of nanotyrannous bone.
Now what's interesting here is, see these, all the dark, the dark spots, the light colored stuff, that's bone. These are just, are blood canals. This is clotted blood, found everywhere.
Do you know that the rampant, runaway clotting of blood in bones, and in blood vessels, in all mammals, is a sign of death by drowning. When an animal drowns, the blood quagmates. Yeah.
It's phenomenal that we find the evidence right there in front of us of death by drowning, and it's in all these bones. It's everywhere. Bones everywhere have the clotting.
These are osteocytes, also in a nanotyrannous bone. You can see it has all those, they're called philopodia, the little tendrils that go off, because the osteocytes, when they're in bones, and it's true for us as well, those osteocytes, as the bone is being originally built, and we are still growing and developing, those osteocytes, they're placed in the bones, and they reach those philopodia out and touch other osteocytes, and they're communicating with each other, and they communicate information about bone load, how much stress a bone is under, and if there's a fracture in the bone. So if they sense there's a fracture in the bone, they'll dissolve the bone and create new bone, all with these osteocytes.
Now, all that had to happen to get those osteocytes out of a nanotyrannous bone, which is supposedly 65 million years old, was to dissolve it in a substance called EDTA. EDTA is what's used in labs to dissolve bones today. So when you go in for a pathology and they take out a section of bone and they'll dissolve it so they can look at the cell, they need to get rid of all the calcium, the bone, and just look at the cells.
And so they dissolve it in EDTA, and then they look at it under a microscope. So you would expect to see that if they dissolved one of your bones, you'd expect to see osteocytes. You don't necessarily expect to see it, and now it's supposedly been dead for 60 million years.
This is a nerve in Demetrodon. The interesting thing about these is you can only really see them in polarized light. They're recognizable, they have a telltale sign, because there's a fatty layer of lipids that wraps around the cell, around the nerve, to protect it.
If you didn't have that insulation that those fats provide, when a nerve fires, all of them would fire, because they would be in contact with each other and would just be this rampant cross-firing of all your nerves. So they're wrapped in this insulation. Like when you have coax, we used to use coax for TV signals, right, with cable company and stuff, and you've seen that shield that's on the outside, and it's crossed, right, because it then provides maximum protection.
Now, from them, it's RF, radio frequency interference. Here, it is protecting it from not being exposed to signals from other nerves. So you have those cross-hatched lipids, fats, and they are only recognizable under polarized light.
Who would have ever thought that you could put polarized light on a 60 million, on this case, 250 million-year-old animal, bones, and it's going to have nerves, because it's fats. What happens when you leave fat out too long? It turns rancid and decays, right? Fat is one of the most easily decayed substances, and yet fats are still there. Some of the ones that Mark, when he was doing the research, he would actually put a cover slip on top and press it down, and you could see the fats spurting out.
They're so recent, okay? So, we look at the discoveries that this leads to. Soft tissues, so triceratops normally exhibited flexible tissue, without even having to be treated, is still flexible, pliable. The calcification of the osteocytes, nerves, and blood vessels.
Blood canals are still visible. Nerves were discovered in cretaceous and permian bones. Preservation, and this is some of the most amazing stuff to me.
Clotted blood revealed in fossilized dinosaur bone. Permian bones are better preserved than cretaceous bones. The bones that are lower in the column are better preserved than the ones that are higher.
If you believe in age as the indicator for the geological column, that's a problem. If you believe they were all laid down in rapid succession in a very short period of time, it's not a problem. You might expect, in fact, to see the bones that were lower in the column under greater pressure and temperature, when they are then subsequently buried and fossilized, would be better preserved.
Not to mention the fact of what is the effect, as we heard about Doug talking about the fountains of the deep, and the high mineral content in those waters. As those waters are first coming up, these animals that are in the ecosystems that are very sooner than the animals in the cretaceous ecosystems are very later in the flood, you would have potentially higher mineral contents, and so a greater opportunity for fossilization to occur, for protection to happen to these bones. Because the big question is, how are they preserved even for 4,000 years? How are they even preserved for 4,000 years? Something supernatural happened, or there are scientific processes we haven't completely understood.
We have some ideas about it, because if you look at the high concentration of minerals in the waters that come out of the fountains of the deep, the idea of sodium silicate being present in those waters is not far-fetched, and yet sodium silicate is one of the great sealer preservatives that's still used today. So, who knows what that has to say. Proteins fluoresce, indicating the presence of DNA fragments.
So within those bones, when they then expose them to high energy ultraviolet light, proteins fluoresce. They're still there. In these dinosaur bones, there are still proteins available.
Some of the doctors and physicians who looked at some of these slides said, oh, I can identify what proteins those are just by the nature of the fluorescence. So the DNA isn't even all gone. Now, we're not saying intact DNA exists in dinosaur bones, but there are proteins there that fluoresce to signal that DNA fragments are still present.
As I mentioned, there's an unknown mechanism for this preservation. But what we do know is that this conflict over here, blood is a preservative, that's what was being proposed. And they were saying that the iron in the blood would be a great preservative, and that's why you could have the blood still preserved in Mary Schweitzer's work.
The problem is, the blood in the iron, because iron is destructive, it oxidizes everything. And so what we see, what actually does happen is we see it rupturing blood vessels, we see it damaging tissues around it, and yet what the evidence shows is it's confined to blood canals. It's all still right where it should be.
So there's not blood. And how do you then explain the preservation of nerves and the preservation of bone and the preservation of other biological processes, the collagen and everything, how would it still be there if all of the blood is still in the bones? There's a cell that's still in the blood vessels, the canals. The timescales then don't match.
You can't equate this millions and millions of years with the condition we find these bones in. The older bones are better preserved. And there's the presence of carbon-14, which for how long has been the holy grail for all these people saying carbon-14 is what helps us know how old these things are.
Why would there be carbon-14 still present in dinosaur bones and coal? There shouldn't be any, right? It's much too old. So now we move on. This is one of my favorite guys that we've had a chance to meet in the last couple of years.
He's a paleoseismologist. It's interesting because he's a self-described agnostic. That's what he calls himself.
I told him, I said, Jefferson, I don't believe you, but it's okay. If that's the hat you need to wear, then you can just wear it. I guess that's fine.
But he's a paleoseismologist, and he's been working at the Dead Sea. And his specialty is paleoseismology. It's a geologist who specializes in earthquakes, and particularly ancient earthquakes.
So he looks at evidence in sediments and anti-archaeological wounds that say, that they can date then and look at how these earthquakes happened. So he, he said, to hear him say it, he unfortunately found a specific earthquake that happened in 30 A.D. It practically ruined his professional career. And this is, if you look in Matthew 27, it says, Matthew 27, 53, 54, Jesus, when he had cried again, and with a loud voice he opened up the ghost, and behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks ran.
So there was this great earthquake, and he goes on to talk about the, how they said, watching Jesus, they saw the earthquake and those things that were done, and they feared greatly, saying, truly, this was the Son of God. This was a significant enough event that even Roman soldiers, as they're seeing it, are going, what did we just do, right? And so there is this biblical account for an earthquake. So, yeah, that's meeting with Jefferson, yeah.
This is Jefferson digging at the Dead Sea. This is actually sediments that have been stabilized of the quake itself. And what he does is measure the deformation that occurs in these layers that are laid down, because the Dead Sea is now much, much lower than it was.
As they redirected water and everything else, it continues, actually, to decline. The analysis has placed this quake at approximately 33 AD. It's interesting that I've been talking to them recently, and they did get back some of the results for the pollen and botanical analysis of these sediments that have found that it looks like this earthquake happened in the spring.
So, between 30 and 33 AD. Well, because they find the pollen and everything, so they know that that occurs at a specific time of year as it's blown in. This is from his work.
The muds of the Dead Sea record earthquakes, normally sediments accumulate in the Dead Sea layer by layer, leaving a steadily growing thickness of Dead Sea mud. But during earthquakes, the top layer of the Dead Sea mud deforms, leaving something known as a seismite. Right now, the Dead Sea is 428 meters below sea level.
It was in 2014. It's estimated to have been 33 meters higher, up to about 395 meters below sea level in 30 AD. So, right now, then, the water would have been about 100 feet deeper than it is now.
New Testament scholarship is fairly in agreement on three important points surrounding the Day of the Crucifixion. It happened between 26 and 36, depending on which scholars you look at. It happened during the spring, around the time of Passover or Easter, so 14 or 15 some.
Two years are most commonly cited as a likely year of the Crucifixion, 30 and 33. Armed with these facts, we can test the sediments. Current research is focused on refining the year estimate.
This is something he wrote a couple of years ago. This is actually, I'm going to pass this around, this is actually one of the stabilized sediment samples from the Dead Sea. And there's a deformation layer right there.
You can actually see the evidence of the quake. Some of the additional evidence that he's not been ready to publish is they actually do find, immediately above that deformation, a dark layer, which seems to indicate, it seems to be indicative of what they would see with sandstorms. And so they believe that the three hours of darkness could very well have been the result of that layer of sand that exists right above the earthquake.
Yeah? Sorry, I'm not sure, I'm sure you're probably aware of this, but in the New Testament archaeological community and in the scholarship, one of the absolute best dates for the Crucifixion of Jesus is 33 AD. Right, exactly. I mean, all the historical, I mean, this is geological evidence now.
It's within the Exactly. And when he published it, he specifically did not mention, he won't call it the Crucifixion quake, he calls it the Jerusalem quake. See, Biblical scholars call it the Crucifixion quake.
He refuses and he calls it the Jerusalem quake. But he also has found the quake of Venus. And he used that as a marker to determine then where everything is.
But, yes? Who is it? Is it Jefferson Williams? Jefferson Williams, yes. Are you familiar with Steve Austin? Oh, yes, yes. This, the amazing thing about Jefferson is that I had watched, he has a really, unfortunately I can't recommend him, he has a really strange, he's going to see this, he has a really strange video about the Jerusalem quake.
He's kind of a New Agey agnostic-y kind of guy, but he basically talks in this video about how this discovery basically ruined him. And the whole movie is pretty much about how this discovery ruined him. And, but I saw, at the core of it, because most of us who are involved in this, I'm sure it's true for Helmut, I think it's true for all of us who are involved in this all the time, we read all of the scientific journals and everything anyway.
Because it's important that we get the data, even if we don't accept the assumptions. So, we just, you have to just, you develop the ability to look past all that and say, what do they actually know versus what they're saying? You know, what's the data? Because they're doing good research, they're just not doing good interpretation of the data. And so, but we want to know the data.
And so that was the case with Jefferson. I thought, I'm going to reach out to this guy and just see what he has to say. And so I started communicating with him online.
Turned out when we were there for my wife's father's passing and for her, for the family, anyway, for the family issues during COVID, I found out that he lived about 40 minutes away from where I was. And so I sent a message and I said, love to come talk to you. And he said, that'd be great.
So I went down, and it's an interesting experience. We actually then have been back twice since, and I recorded on the last time, recorded an interview with him, which is, it's going to be up on our website. It's really, it's pretty amazing to hear somebody who is fighting what the data means, but they have the data, they see the data, they know what the data means, but it has cost them.
And so he was kind enough to share some samples of this with me for the museum. And it's just, it's amazing to have this kind of physical evidence that exists. The bottom line, as we conclude our day together today, is that it's okay to believe.
And when we accept the Bible, when the Bible is accepted as an accurate historical record, science is advanced and truth is revealed. We need to stop separating the two. That's one of the most common comments that I have when people come to the Flood Museum, when they leave, is that they didn't realize it all worked together.
We, with the Lord's help, made a very conscious decision that we were not going to separate, okay, now we're going to talk about the science, and now we're going to talk about the faith, and now we're going to talk about the science. It's all one truth. It's all there together.
And people have asked me what's the most common reaction to the museum, and I have to tell you, because I think that people have to be predisposed to even come into a creation or a Flood-type museum. They have to be predisposed that they kind of want to believe, or they do. The most common reaction is relief.
And I encourage you to share this information with anybody you come in contact with, because the most common reaction you're going to see too, I'm convinced, is relief. They want to have their faith strengthened, they want to have their faith bolstered up, but the world is constantly criticizing them and telling them that if you believe that, you're unscientific, or you're backward, or you're ignorant, and we're none of the above. But we can be faithful.
So when we come up against something that looks like scientific evidence that might conflict with the Bible, I say just be faithful. Say, you know what, I just don't know enough. I just don't know enough.
And wait on the answers. And study, and research, but always with the foundational belief that the Bible is true, and it will be borne out. I promise you, it will be borne out.
Now, I had an interesting morning, and I'm just going to share this with you really quick, because when I got up, I couldn't come into the building last night because there were people doing a dance class in here. And I'm sharing this with some of the presenters. But I couldn't get in, so I said, it's no problem, I'll just go in first thing in the morning.
So I got up early, and I came over and I brought the sound system, and I brought the computer, and I brought the projector, and started setting up chairs, and I went to set up the sound system, got the speakers out, opened up the amplifier, and pulled the pocket down in the back where the cables and the microphone and the power cord and everything were at, and they weren't there. Whoever I loaned it to last time, when I got it back, I didn't get anything else. And this is not who.
It's not like you can run down to Best Buy, right? I mean, I was like, oh my word. And so I ran, I said, maybe I have extras. So I ran over, and I'm going through my garage and everything else, and I'm praying.
I'm saying, Heavenly Father, I know you want me to do this, so help me to find this stuff. Nope. Didn't find it.
Can't find it. And so finally, I said, alright, I get it. I get it.
If this is going to work, it's going to be obvious that you made it work. It will be obvious that it wasn't me. And so I'll accept whatever it is.
If I have to stand up here and yell, that's fine. Whatever it is, that's fine. And I've been, the last few days, I've had people say, well, I can't come on, I signed up and I can't come on Friday because I have to do this or I have to do that, but I'll be there Saturday.
And I've shared this with many of you, our experience with our museum, but when we were building the museum, I, many times, a thought kept going through my head, if you build this and nobody comes, are you going to be okay? And considering what we had to put into it personally, the answer was no, I'm not going to be okay. And then I, a few days later, I had that same thought, if you build this and nobody comes, are you going to be okay? Nope. And this went on for like over a week.
And finally, I said, alright, I get it. I get it. I get it.
Yes, I'll be okay. If I build it and nobody comes, but it's what you wanted me to do, I'll be okay. And I've never had that fear again.
And I can tell you that we've had thousands of people come through the museum. By many other museums' estimates, that's probably trivial. But the experiences we've had with people, there have been several occasions where I've said, if that was the only person who ever came to the museum, I'm okay.
And that's the case for me here. If it strengthens one person or encourages one person, it's okay. And I testify to you that we have to be able to accept whatever the Lord gives us.
And my wife asked me, how's it going? And I said, it was a crummy morning, but God showed up. Because it's not been a terrible day. So, and that's the spirit all of you brought, the testimony you brought with you, the willingness you had to come, those who spoke, the willingness you had to come and share your testimony, your knowledge of the truthfulness of the scriptures and of Jesus Christ, makes it all okay.
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