The Catholic Case for a Young Earth | Christian Bergsma

The older we make “creation,” the easier it gets to picture God as distant, hands-off, and only occasionally involved. That’s the nerve we keep pressing with our guest Christian as we dig into why Genesis isn’t just a timeline question, but a question about revelation, providence, and what God wants us to know about him through the way he creates.

We walk through the Catholic case that the Church Fathers and scholastic theologians aren’t optional background reading on creation, but central witnesses to how Christians historically understood Scripture. From there we tackle the modern pressure points: why “trust the science” often turns into a one-way authority claim, why debates about evolution and old earth assumptions reshape theology downstream, and why the burden of proof matters when scientific models rely on interpretation and starting premises.

Then we get concrete. We talk dinosaurs and the controversy around soft tissue and hemoglobin claims, what uniformitarian geology assumes, and why radiometric dating ends up carrying so much weight in the modern story. We also connect creation to the Fall by asking what millions of years of suffering and predation before Adam would mean for original sin and nature’s relationship to humanity. Finally, we pivot to Graham Hancock, global flood memory, ancient structures across cultures, and the Sphinx weathering question, highlighting where alternative history is strongest and where it gets methodologically sloppy.

If you enjoy thoughtful Catholic apologetics, Genesis interpretation, creation theology, and honest friction with mainstream narratives, hit subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave us a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Cold Open And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:52

These intros are so sick. I can't so people that don't get the wrong idea that that's a specific person. I was that's one of our viewers that's ocean.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I am so sorry to involve you in our riff rap, Christian. I'm like, that was great.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

No, no, don't believe him. He knew that intro was that and he chose it anyways.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Um so all right, so Christian, you came up um you came up on our show the other night because I saw you on another show, and I I saw your name on it, and I was like, wait, that's John Bergman's son. I'm like, are you kidding me? That is so interesting. So we were talking about it on locals, and I was like, I'm I'm gonna try and reach out to him and see if we can get in touch with him. But I reached reached out to him. It was really Alex, it was Alex Poe. Yeah, yeah. Alex was on with us. Yeah. So Alex reached out to you, and then I had somebody else reach out to you, but um, but also Ryan Katsu Rivera, who's been a friend of the show for years, he now works for Sam Hyde, and they had an Egyptologist coming on their show soon. And Ryan had called me and he's like, Hey, we have this Egyptologist come on coming on. He kind of subscribes to like the Graham Hancock idea of the age of the universe and like that uh uh oh the age of civilization, like that there was this uh civilization that existed like 25,000 years ago and stuff like that. He's like, Do you have any good um anybody good in mind that I could maybe throw some questions at to maybe just like push back on the guy a little bit? So I I found out that you do a lot of studying on the theology of of creation and uh some of the stuff you do is on younger. So I thought you'd be actually the perfect person to get on to discuss some of that stuff with. Um what got you into this uh this area?

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Yeah, um, I'd say I was uh always interested in um the sciences growing up, right? Uh especially biology. Um and uh uh to a lesser extent, maybe you know, some of the others like astronomy. And um, so I always kind of I always kind of knew

Why Christian Studies Creation Theology

SPEAKER_03 3:15

evolution uh was false. Um and I had a kind of turning point though, I guess I would say, you know, maybe in my teen years or going into college, where I realized that there are actual theological um consequences that come from uh not simply evolution, um, but uh from uh the the reinterpretation of Genesis that uh sort of is birthed in the late 18th century and comes into fruition in the and peaks at the end of the 19th century, um, before you know uh Genesis has kind of thrown out the door altogether. Um so no, I've always been interested in that. You know, obviously, you know, it's no secret, you know, my family, we love the Bible, we're very interested in these kinds of things. Uh so I was reading a lot growing up and not just a lot of Catholic literature, a lot of other literature, um speaking of ancient civilizations, you know, at a very young age, I read uh Hidden History of the Human Race, uh, which is uh it's a book by a Hare Krishna scientist. And his whole kind of angle is he's trying to advocate for this idea that humanity is actually billions of years old. Um, but his evidence that he shows some of it's quite good. He's uh some of the examples he's gone through, like uh maybe gold chains found in supposedly Pre-Cambrian shale and stuff like that. But I think you can also go the other way around and say, well, maybe this indicts uh the theory that these layers are actually that old in the first place. I've always been inquisitive about that. But what happened where I really got active is people were always asking me questions. Everyone was coming to me, like, Christian, what do you think about this? Christian, you said this one theologian said this thing this one time. Can you and I said, you know what? I don't want to be in a million conversations about this all the time. So I'm just gonna make a telegram channel where I'm gonna post all of all of my research, everything I have, just as a way of keeping notes. And I'm gonna share that with my friends, just my friends, so that my friends aren't asking me questions. They can just go to the channel and copy paste the quote if they're ever in a conversation because they're always like, Hey, I'm in this debate. Can you help me out? Um, but then after a while, they started adding more people and started snowballing. So I said, okay, I'll just make this my thing now.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Okay, uh, do Rob, let's uh let's plug his telegram for anybody that is actually interested in that. Um I have it here. You have the telegram? Let's make sure we plug that for him to uh to to get him uh as many people on there as possible. So Rob and I it's kind of funny. Uh Rob and I we like the way our show progressed. The the uh the first year we covered like um like the the conversion of the pagan world, and then we kind of got tired of that topic, and then we spent like almost a full year diving into young earth evolution, all that stuff. Like we're from the Colby Center on, yeah. My entire opinion on the topic completely changed over the course of that year. I had grown up in just like the run-of-the-mill Nova Sordo Catholic world, where we were basically told, Oh, we're Catholics, we're not like those crazy Protestants. We believe in uh we believe in evolution and all, you know, we're not against the science and sciences and all this stuff. And the more we looked into it, the more our minds were blown. And I and it just I got to a point where I was like, the the the story of evolution itself and the and the idea that the a the earth is millions and billions of years old is just the atheist creation myth. Like that's that's all it is, it's the atheist creation myth, and it's meant to distract us from looking at the actual creation uh story that God gave us. So um did you did you attend that conference uh in Stubenville with uh um Gideon?

SPEAKER_03 7:07

Yeah, I was there. Um, that's how I met Gideon, and uh I saw I saw the episode you you guys had him on, as I recall. Um, yeah, so I I know him personally. Uh we share notes sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah, that's like it's because I what are some of the big pitfalls you think people fall into by not taking this topic seriously? Like it like Is it is there, but and then I also want to get into like these ancient structures, like the Graham Hancock theory, because I'm not against the idea that all these ancient structures were from the anti-deluvian world, like a pre-flood world, yeah. And then the flood comes, and then after that, civilization reappears and they kind of repurpose these structures and stuff like that. Like, I'm not against that. I just I never had I never knew if we have to like literally believe it's six thousand years old, or can we stretch that a little bit to 10,000 years, 12,000 years? I just know it's not millions and millions of years okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Well, to uh to to address your first point of the pitfalls, okay. Um people talk about the six days, people talk about six thousand years, they talk about the chronology. Um, these are all well and good discussions to have. This is this is all you know worthy to talk about, and the theologians do. Um, but I would say it's not where you want to start if you're going to start thinking about the question, because it's downstream from the real fundamental issues that are at stake. It's that it's sort of downstream, it flows from a fundamental difference that's actually higher up the chain, so to speak. And this difference in understanding is um how does God choose to reveal himself to us reveal who he is and things about his nature? Because God does he acts completely freely, he doesn't act with any constraints. Okay. So everything he does, he does very, very intentionally, with extreme, extreme precision and reason behind everything he does. And every external act he does, where wherein he manifests himself in some way in the created world, is done for our benefit. This is

From Mainstream Catholicism To Pushback

SPEAKER_03 9:30

what all the theologians say is that when he acts, when he acts either miraculously or at the beginning of time, when he was not so much superseding the laws of nature, but rather establishing them, he acts in a way that is directed towards us so that he can pedagogically reveal things about himself to us. And so the question you have to ask is what do God's acts or our interpretation of how God acted in the past in establishing each individual thing in the world, reveal to us about him? That is really where the scholastic theologians and the church fathers and also the doctors of the church come in very importantly, because they all say and they all teach us that God chose to act in these unbelievable ways almost that were not uh subject to, firstly, not subject to time because time is a creature, and God wanted to show that he was not uh subject to having to use instrumentality because he was showing the absolute creaturliness of creation and his absolute superiority over it by creating it. So not subject to long periods of time and also not subject to secondary causes, natural causes. That was the whole point of create of the way he chose to create over the course of six days or all in a moment, which which whichever interpretation you may take, although the second is while listed is not really exegetically defensible. Um that that's the logic. So St. Francis de Sales, for example, makes this contrast when he he there's this part in one of his books where he's talking about the creation of the stars and how God didn't make a star here and make a star there, but he actually created the sun and the stars all in the same instant, all the celestial bodies he makes in the same instant. And St. Francis de Sales says he makes a contrast between how nature works and how God works. And he's saying God created in a certain way to contrast himself to nature, to set himself apart to nature, because he knew he really foresees the fall and he wants to communicate his nature to fallen people who you know eventually really will uh start worshiping nature. And so St. Francis de Sales makes this comparison between a painter and a printer, right? So a painter has to often brush over his own details, he has to start in one corner and finish in another and add a detail here and there. And he says this is kind of how nature works to bring something about, but God is like a picture printer, he has the whole stamp and just slams it down, and all of the details are there, and and this is how yeah, this is how God sets himself apart. So I would say that is really the key thing we have to get at here, is that the God, the old earth creationist God is essentially a deist god, and all and on old earth creationists, old earth creationism in general comes from deists, it comes from really Buffon and other deists who are drawing from Boulanger, who is an atheist actually. But um he's a de is essentially a quasi-deist god because he interferes here and there, he'll create life here and there, right? Uh, but for the most part, for like non-organic matter, he lets things develop and and he stands back. And this creates this kind of distance, right? Uh, between uh uh our perception of us and God. So um, and not the good kind. So um that that's uh I think the fundamental point. And I can go into more detail if you like, but no, no, no, I want to I want to jump on the very high level. On a very high level, I would say that's the distinction that first has to be made before we even get to talking about are the six days of creation 24 hour days or not, or is it 12,000? Is it six thousand years? Before you get into any of that, you need to understand what does creation actually mean? What is God's intention by doing this and revealing it to us, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:25

I I think that that what you just said there about him being the master over time is such an important one, right? Because God stands outside of time, he's not subject to time. It's how even prophecy is revealed, because God knows the story before it's finished, right? Like, so that's that's how prophecy works. Like he can tell us exactly what's going to happen in in the most beautiful way where he gives it to us in prophecy, where we don't know it until it's fulfilled and you only see it in hindsight. But the fact that he's not subject to time is such an important thing that he doesn't kind of like set something in motion and kind of let it play out and just

What Creation Reveals About God

SPEAKER_01 14:05

you know, I'll take Yeah. St.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Augustine has that rhetorical question where he's he's posing the question rhetorically was at did Adam develop like an embryo, or was he made in an instant out of the slime of the earth? And he poses that question, was the maker of time in need of time? You know, as a as a as a question to answer his question, right? And uh uh Saint Um Cyril of Alexandria, for example, he talks about the way God creates and he says he he does it instantaneously and incomprehensibly, just according to his will. That's the words he used instantaneously and incomprehensibly, um, in a way that kind of begars belief, right? Anyway, go on.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yeah, no, it's just uh it's because I remember growing up, it was always it was always kind of taught to us like, well, you know, a day in the eyes of the Lord is but a thousand years, and you know, you know, so they kind of like throw those those things at you, and you just I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Yeah, but that also goes back the other way. Like um uh uh Luis of Granada, for example, Luis de Granada, oh the the great Dominican uh mystic uh and the theologian. Um he says, even if God had a thousand years or or or ten thousand years to contemplate how he was going to create, he still wouldn't have created any differently than he did. And he's explaining why God didn't make in this passage, why God didn't make this fish now and this fish later, but he actually made every kind of fish, every kind of aquatic creature simultaneously in the same moment. And uh he was uh basically his his ultimate point in the passage is that he he did that to uh uh manifest his glory in a way that would cause shock and awe and basically you know prom uh instill the fear of God and worship in man. Um, and that's what that's you know what Moses communicates to us.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

But go on. Did you did you get into this? Like, were you starting to debate people when you got it when you started uh studying this stuff? Or was it just like a a passion of yours on the side where you just started reading the church fathers and and it kind of just developed like that?

SPEAKER_03 16:14

I did I did one debate uh Franciscan. There was a student debate. We've tried twice to have another one, but both times the um we've had we've run into issues um where either people we were gonna have present uh on our side chickened out, or else um uh the the opposing side uh would would say, oh, I don't the Colby Center, they're uh dirty, I don't trust them or something, and back out or something stupid like that. That was back when I was working for the Colby Center a little a little more frequently. Um yeah, I mean I would get into certain debates with my friends, especially on like the cosmology aspect of it, but a lot of that was very scientific. I think it's it's really when you really see the evidence with the fathers and the scholastic theologians, it you know, the the weight, the theological weight is really stacked against uh uh stacked against you if you take an honest approach. And the best you can say is, well, you know, the position hasn't been condemned and you know it's been tolerated and stuff like that, but it's hard to make a positive theological argument for it rather than just like a negative one. Um, and uh and so people you know say, well, the science, the science, we gotta trust the science, whatever. So that's that's usually where it ends up if you try to debate people.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Well yeah. So what do you make of because we've we were told our whole lives that dinosaurs are millions of years old, right? And these were six, like it's kind of interesting if you watch, I know you don't want to do evolution, but uh like uh tonight.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

Well, no, this is good because dinosaurs are a great example, and they actually provide us a great uh uh uh argument against the old earth. Because if dinosaurs are these millions of years old, ostensibly, how do we still have intact hemoglobin proteins that we're pulling out of them? And this is the thing, guys. One thing you have to realize, because this is uh people have been talking about this for a while, but uh I think it was just last year we got a development in this case because for the longest time, people, you know, we talk about you know, we find blood, traces of blood, blood cells, whatever, um, in in T Rex bones. And the the argument was, oh, it's just heme. It's not blood, it's just heme. You know, it's just a part of the hemoglobin protein that makes blood. Um, and it's and it's long since broken down. Well, come to find out, I believe it was either this year or or late last year, uh, turns out there there are in fact intact hemoglobin proteins in T-Rex bone fragments that we're pulling out. Guys, this is a protein that you can't even keep intact in a in control lab environments for more than a few for for for a for a very long time, okay, before it breaks down, because temp mild temperature fluctuate fluctuations, sorry, tend to break down organic pro organic uh uh molecules very quickly. All right, hemoglobin in a T Rex, this thing cannot be more than a few thousand years old. I'm sorry, that it's like this is a pretty knockout case, okay? So dinosaurs is a great example if we want to talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Well, I I just I just I just find it interesting. Like uh the one of the one of the most interesting things that Hugh Owen brought up to us when he was on was that the way the way science works is they will see that a layer of uh let's say a layer of dirt forms on something uh over the course of 10 years at this rate. So then they just multiply that rate by a million times, and that's how they get their number.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

And it's like you're you're acting as if the the environment around that dirt never changed, like there was not some major event that could have changed the the uh the the environment that that that layer of whatever was this was the weakness of the epistemological assumptions uh of the uh 19th century geologists or an 18th century geologist, uh like Hutton, Lyell, Covir, however, you whoever you want to include in there. Um, because their arguments were based on sedimentology, they didn't have radiometric dating. And so Lyell would um uh make some assumption on uh you know, like layers of sand or something like that, and you would project that back. Um the funny thing about those kinds of assumptions is that firstly the geologists don't really use that to date anymore, even though that that dating method was what was used to try to to and really to great effect to kind of undermine everyone's faith in in the biblical chronology. That was what everyone abandoned the biblical chronology for, is this now outdated and passe method of saying we have this layer and then we have this layer, and we're going to project so many uh hundreds of thousands of millions of years between these two layers. Um, that's no longer really how the time scale is set. It's really radiometric dating. In in uh in 1932, they sort of um or sometime in the 30s,

God, Time, And Secondary Causes

SPEAKER_03 21:10

they sort of realized that, oh, like this stuff isn't really rigorous, and everyone kind of switched over to radiometric dating. But radiometric dating is really the only uh standard used today uh objectively. But what's funny too is after the fact we have guys like Guiberto, who you know, in his like warehouse size laboratory with these uh fluid sluices, has proved that in these flows where you have different kinds of sediments altogether, multiple layers are actually being deposited at once. So you can't point at one layer and say there's this gap of so many years between the layer. And so all the assumptions of the 19th century and 18th century geologists are all in the trash now. And yet that was what was used to make everybody abandon, um abandon uh this stuff. And and now they use radiometric dating, and we can get we will get into that. Um but Yeah, yeah, that's uh that's kind of funny if you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

I w I wanna I want to jump into some of the theological stuff because even uh Rob's wife is in the chat, and Rob's wife's kind of one of the first ones that kind of tried to red pill Rob and I on this subject is pretty good. So uh one of the major issues I came up and and found theologically was well, if sin and death come through the world through the eating of the of the forbidden fruit and evolution happens to bring man about, like how does that like that means there's millions of years of death, killing, suffering, disease, all these things. So sin and death is already in the world before Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

Yeah, so uh what that's a little complicated because I would say excuse me, there isn't there isn't it's it's dis it's kind of divided. The fathers are kind of divided, the theologians kind of divided whether there's some form of animal death before the fall, okay. But what's really the kicker is the suffering, because uh the the there's a and my I'm drawing a blank here, great medieval poet who wrote about this. Uh but he talks about how uh before the fall, it's possible that that the certain certain animals would pass away from age for natural causes, right? Not for necessarily from predation, but they would do so without pain. Uh, but they would do so may uh perhaps as uh in a pedag for a pedagogical reason, so man wouldn't really know what death was, right? What that when God said if you eat of this, you'll die, you know, he actually has that natural knowledge of like, oh, that that's what he means. I'm gonna like and but he the the theologians say they would just go back to the dirt, they they wouldn't like molder and and and rot in the same way, they would they would just go back into the ground. Um so the real thing is like cancer, they're like horrible suffering, some of these really sick acts of predation that we see in nature, like these kinds of things existing for millions of years before the fall, when the theologians all talk about the these things as being uh more or less and to greater or lesser degrees, results of nature's bondage to sin. And that's the thing is that the modern theologians have given up the idea that nature was affected by the fall, they just think you know humans uh were. But since all creation was under his dominion, yes, exactly. And all of it, and this is the explicit, this is something we argued about at the uh conference uh that Gideon was at, you mentioned, because one of these guys was trying to trying to say that, well, the fathers actually say that the the animals weren't subject to this, which is completely not true. And I would I would proof text all I start proof texting all these fathers against some like uh St. John Chrysostom, for example. Their explicit interpretation of St. Paul is that nature has become subject to suffering to a greater degree of suffering that ever existed before the fall because of us, because all of nature was under our dominion. And if you don't mind me going on a little further, this dovetails into one of the other greater theological issues with the old earth. Because the theologians, all the saints, uh the Bible, all of it tell us that all of nature was set under man's dominion, that man was the pinnacle of creation, that he was supposed to he was what everything was made for. So all creatures were made for his service, even the stars. Okay. Uh, I think it's Deuteronomy 4. It's either Leviticus or Deuteronomy. My dad's gonna kill me. But uh Leviticus and Deuteronomy 4. Maybe it's Leviticus 4. I think it's Leviticus 4, actually. No, it wouldn't be Deuteronomy. So Leviticus 4 says that um all of the do not you know gaze up at the stars and think to worship them because they were made for the service of the nations. So even though the stars were made either for our wonderment or for uh being able to navigate and tell time and stuff like that. So all of these creatures were made for our sake. Yet in the old earth model, most of the creatures who've ever lived on this plan uh on this globe, I should say, Hugh Owen's gonna kill me if I call it a planet. Um ever lived on this globe have lived their entire existence and gone extinct and disappeared completely long before man came on the scene. They had no relationship to us, let alone dominion. We never had dominion over those creatures. We never knew about them until very recently, and they never had any relationship to us. So the only conclusion is that they were made for their own sake. So it's another one of these problems that you guys have had uh O'Connor on to talk about aliens and stuff, where it's this idea that you know the Bible really just concerns man and his sphere, but there's other creatures made for their own sake and stuff like that, you know, multiple incarnations, whatever. But it comes down to the same problem with the old earth that most of the creatures who are ever made on this earth were made for the basically for their own sake, because they never had any relationship to man at all. They never were made for his service, and that's it, that's a really big pro bad problem because then it's like, are we are we that special? Are we really the pinnacle, the the cream of creation? Maybe God does love us in some way and he cares for us, but there's this distance, there's this veil that gets put between us and God all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

It's to make us insignificant, right? Like to all of that. That's why I see all of these topics evolution, aliens, uh, old earth, all of these topics are very tightly connected because all of them are made to make us feel insignificant and to make it seem like we're just you know an accident.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Part of this, yeah, or just part of this, you know, grand uh cosmic scheme, but we're not actually the the summit of it.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

I I find it really frustrating that a lot of the um the mainstream Catholic uh voices out there are so uh they go so

Dinosaurs, Soft Tissue, And Dating Assumptions

SPEAKER_01 27:55

easy on the alien question and evolution, like not just easy, like they'll they'll say, well, you know, none of this is uh defeat a you're allowed to hold these opinions. But they don't just they don't just say like, oh, you're allowed. It's more like uh the acceptable thing is to believe in evolution and old earth, but we'll allow you to allow it. We won't call you a heretic for it, but you are still an idiot if you kind of believe that like that's the impression I give. And it's pretty pretty frustrating. Do you do you think it's I do think the younger generation is turning on that though? Like, I think I think the younger converts and all the younger people coming into the faith, they're definitely changing their position on a lot of this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 28:39

Yeah, people are pretty tired of it. You get pretty sick of it because it's just shoved down your throat and it's being you know shoved down your throat by people at this point who you're probably not gonna terribly like or respect, um because they're you know boomers, um, or or whatever, Gen X, same diff at this point. Um But yeah, I mean that that is the thing, is that the default is that you know is uh believeless science, and uh if you you can believe what you want, but you know, that's kind of you're you're kind of an idiot. Whereas it really it's the other way around. I mean, the the burden of proof is on the scientists, and proof in the scientific world is a very, very high bar, right? And this is this is you know what uh Cardinal Mazzella and and Cardinal Bellerman talk about uh with with the sciences, even if they there wasn't these strong theological arguments, even if it wasn't say an ex professo consensus of the fathers, it was just a regular consensus. We still ought to default to that tradition in the absence of proof, and we don't have the proof, you know. That burden of proof lies with the scientists. But this sort of started to change. This this attitude of the burden of proof started to change sometime in the 18th century because beforehand you had the congregation, the index, you had the censorship, they took the approach that we can legitimately censor a scientist for making claims uh uh of something to be physically true when it goes against the consensus of the theologians or the consensus of the fathers, uh, you know, until it's it's absolutely proven. And absolute proof is a very high bar. Um, or you know, so even if it wasn't you know going against something defide, if it's just something that's you know a pious belief, we still need to default to that pious belief in the absence of proof. That got turned around with one of the guys who came into the congregation, the index, Father Jacques Hyacinth Seri, or Jacinto Seri, one of the Dominicans. And I'm sorry to say he's not my favorite theologian, um, but he's one of one of these Thomas Dominican uh theologians. Um, but uh not not one. Around what year? By any means, I don't think. Uh 1730s. So he comes in and he says, I he says, I don't, yes, but he says, I don't believe there was this big debate going on around Cartesian physics at the time because Cartesian physics doesn't really seem to work with the the dogma of transubstantiation. And then there was also the debate of, oh, well, should we relax the restrictions on geocentrism and all that? I'm not gonna get into all that. But he says, I don't even think geocentrism is true. He says, I don't even think Cartesianism is true, but we don't have any right to censor these guys unless we can absolutely prove that there is no way we can twist the words of scripture, there's no way we can change the words of scripture to fit with what they're saying. So it's the complete inverse of how it was where it was unless you can absolutely prove that it's true, we're not going to change our interpretation of scripture. Now it's unless we can absolutely prove that there's no way we can change scripture to work with what you're saying, we can't censor you. That was his and so that started not immediately, but that started to grow and and just kind of snowball that kind of uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

One one one thing that annoys me is when people brag about how it was a Catholic priest who came up with the big bang. I'm like, yeah, that guy sucked.

SPEAKER_03 31:53

No, he sucked, he was a complete modernist. He didn't suck out of my he uh he didn't believe in miracles. He didn't he thought the story of uh the book of Jonah was completely made up because he thinks it's a scientific absurdity for a man to be to survive inside a whale, which I guess it is, but that's the whole point. It's a miracle. But he didn't really, if you really, really read between the lines of what he's saying, and not even just between the lines, it's almost explicit. He did not actually believe in miracles. Yeah, he was actually like opposed to the idea. And this is this is where people make a huge mistake with the Big Bang, is that they think that the Big Bang is let there be light. Is is a yes, it's let there be light, or it's a reach and and and uh Lemaitre didn't actually like Pius XII making that comparison. He actually corrected Pius XII for that, but they think that it's um uh the fur it implies a first mover or implies an outward motion. But if you actually look at the math that he did, and it's it's not it great, it doesn't make sense, but his argument was that what was basically that the universe moved itself at the beginning because he wanted to separate the idea of miraculous or the idea of God interfering with nature out so much that he wanted a mode of beginning for the universe that actually he won so you know steady state wasn't working out. We need some way that time sort of starts moving, but he wants to find a way for time to start moving that doesn't involve that initial flick. And so he's very explicit about this that there is that the idea of a first mover is a purely philosophical, uh met or well, really metaphysical idea that God sort of that maybe creation emanates from God and and or or proceeds from God in this metaphysical way, but physically there is no first mover, and that's like uh you know, all damn near denying dogma. It probably is. Yeah, um, so now he was a heretic, he sucked. Yeah, all the all these guys, oh man.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Whenever whenever people say that, I'm just like, stop pointing that out.

SPEAKER_03 33:56

Yeah, this is like the lowest, at least like low low IQ, like Catholic slop, like, oh look, Catholics did cool things in the history.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Oh, it really is. It really is that. It really is that look, like pointing out something.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

You guys know Kevin James is Catholic too.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

That's it's literally what it is. It's like it's like somebody posting that you know, some somebody, some some famous Catholic was wearing their rosary. It's like cool. Oh my god. Okay, we get it.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

That guy Sachin knows that.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Yeah, it's like that's the worst of all my it is the worst Catholic slot there is, man. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

Why did you block this guy on Twitter, Ant?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Oh, we have that we'll do that on locals because there's so much I want to get to on locals that I I have to I want to wait till we're over there because I definitely want to. I like I know you lost a brother recently. Like, I want to I'd rather talk that kind of stuff on on the other side. So um there's there's a lot of questions I have uh for you, but we'll do it, we'll do it behind the paywall so that it's you know, if there's anything you don't want us to put out, we'll delete it or anything like that. Then there's no audience for it. But um yeah, all right. So some of the other theological um so are there are there other like theological

The Fall, Suffering, And Human Dominion

SPEAKER_01 35:10

theologically important things that Catholics really do need to to grasp about the way God tells us creation happened versus the way the secular world tries to convince you that it happened?

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Yeah, I mean uh just in no particular order. Um we are not only bound to the consensus of the fathers when they speak ex profeso, when they speak of something as a matter of faith, which in this case they do, okay. They do actually speak about it as a matter of revealed faith, divine faith, and not just a physical proposition. Excuse me. Um but also to one overlook thing, I think, is the scholastic theologians. These are theologians from roughly uh medieval times to about uh the end of the 17th century, beginning of the 18th century. And if you actually look at the the theological manuals, uh the theology about the scholastics, um, they actually also have a slightly less, but basically a somewhat binding consensus. Okay, where if if they're in consensus on something, then it provides us with theological certainty. Um now, maybe, maybe not uh uh maybe maybe it's not as binding to the same degree. I'm not I don't know. I'm a you'd ask ask asker. Is that a dogma? Um Ribburger, it yeah, it's it it's it we'll we'll say it's a certainty of the faith, which is proximate to dogma. That's what we would say. So Ribiger has a book about this, so you you can read, he's done done the work. Uh Cardinal Mazella uh talks about this. So when we look at those scholastics, they even go further in depth, even than the fathers, building on the fathers, of course. Um, so that's something to take into consideration is that when you read these guys who in these theologians uh the uh in the 19th century who start throwing this stuff out, throwing the common understanding of Genesis out, and introducing all these new theories, and their theories of interpretation vary person by person. They have no really like they have very little common ground because um, as Father Berewell says, what you get is a a different interpretation of the Bible for every different theory, right? So it just they're it just made a mess of theology of Genesis. Um, but when you read them, they don't consult the fathers, they don't do a careful, they'll maybe talk about Augustine, they'll quote my they'll mine a quote here and there from Augustine, take it out of context. Uh they'll talk about St. Thomas, they won't talk about the other fathers, or they'll straight up lie or make stuff up about the fathers, which I've seen in some of the theological manuals. Was one guy from Notre Dame? I forget. Uh Monsignor Cali uh was just saying the fathers were saying things they weren't even saying. So that and this guy's book was like very popular in America in the 19th century uh for seminaries. So um they don't take that into consideration, but these are things that actually bind us. So anyway, that's a very long way of saying, uh, yeah, one of the considerations we have to take into account is is the fathers and the but also the scholastics. Um, so that's that's another theological problem because you're just you just have to say the scholastics were wrong and unanimously wrong, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

That's what that's yeah, that should bother anybody, right? It's like and yeah, and not just that, like you see how much the world has been disrupted since people started taking that position that the scholastics were wrong, right? You see the the like uh the the pravity that the sciences have gotten into. You see, like once you remove the theological underpinnings of science, and once once you once you stop following this very specific structure that the church had put in place for the way we understand the sciences, it devolves into us creating chimeras and and and trying to you know genetically modify things.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

I mean, look how look how worried um was it Pius or Leo? Who uh Leo was with uh attorney Patras. Remember that encyclical? Yeah, where he like you know, he he foresaw so much of oh yeah of the last hundred fifty years uh intellectually I agree.

SPEAKER_03 39:23

I mean he he uh I think he he went too easy uh on the theologians of his time as well. I think he went he went definitely went too easy. Obviously, his magisteriums is is impeccable. Um damn, even his poetry is impeccable. He was he was writing poems calling out the the the rise of evolution. I don't know if you knew that Leo the Thirteenth was, but anyway, um but I think and I do think he was a little he was uh uh overly permissive. I uh with certain things. That's one of the issues.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

So we've been doing we've been doing like a series on papal encyclicals, and it's like you read the encyclicals and they're phenomenal, and you're just like, oh my goodness, this is so great. But then you find out behind the scenes they're kind of just way too permissive because they're trying to figure out a way to yeah, yeah, there was a lot of allowing things on the prudential level, there there were things left to be desired, um, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

Um, and that's that's one thing I wanted to. That's what I'm doing with this in with integrity magazine right now. Because right now I haven't been putting a lot of like creationist content up there yet. Because I don't think people are always quite ready for it. Because what they need to understand first is that you can't just trust something because it came, it was written before the council and got an implementer before the council. Okay. That you can't that this is what I'm trying to wake people up to, and so I'm looking at general things, general things in in biblical scholarship. I'm not getting to creation quite yet, but I want to wake people up to the fact that this is very deeply rooted, it goes to the French Revolution and a little bit, you know, a little before. So it was building up 200 years before the council. So all this stuff, people people like, oh, it's it's an imprimatur in 1958.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

That means you know, it's like no, this is actually kind of the stuff I want to talk to you about on the other side. I want to I want to get into some of that stuff. I didn't know if you you wanted to talk about it over here, but um before we do go over there though, I do want to talk to you because all right, so the the Graham Hancock series that came out. Um when I watched that, I was listening to his theories on like all well, you know, the the younger dryest and all these different things, and I'm like meltwater pulse 11b or whatever, yeah. Yeah, like he's coming up with all these theories, and it's like uh he he his point is that uh civilization was together, and he was trying to come up with a a like a logical reason why structures in South America look almost identical to structures you're finding in China and structures you're finding all over the world. Like you're finding these structures, they're all pyramids and things like that. And when I watched it, I'm saying, first off, the event he's talking about is the flood. And yes, my interpretation of it was the reason these structures look similar, probably, is because they are temples built to gods, and gods, no matter where on the planet they are, are are desiring to be worshipped similarly, and that's why you're finding these structures throughout the world.

SPEAKER_03 42:17

Yeah, that's part of it, and also it's it's um diaspora from a very uh uh you know tight-knit group of original humans who all sort of share this uh these ancestral strains uh you know that don't go that far back. It's actually easier to explain these things if they're less ancient, because all of humanity has a more recent connection, right? Cultural or memory than if these are 20,000 years old. So here's what here's what I respect about Graham Hancock and Robert Schock and these guys, okay? Um they are the they are some of the only people, only people in the old earth and evolutionist camp who are trying to actually address a huge elephant in the room for that side, okay? Because there's a really big problem that you run into with old earth. Uh so firstly, starting off, homo you have homo longi skulls, and homo longi, they're they're essentially anatomically human. The evolutionists would say they're a close, they're a sister, a sister species, the closest to us that interbreeded with us. So an old earth creationist would just say they're human, okay? They're they're humans essentially. Um you have so these homo longi, which are basically human skulls that are coming up with with dates, radiometric dates to a million years ago or beyond. You have human footprint footprints, anatomically perfect human footprints that are found in uh layers in England, and these layers are supposed to be about 900,000 years old. Okay. So the age of humanity keeps getting pushed back and back and back and back and back. And the problem is in the conventional time scale, we only really get writing advanced. Art, agriculture, serious uh civilization in the last like 10,000 years. So if humanity is that old, where's the receipts? Where's the civilization? Okay. So Graham Hancock is at least trying to engage

Fathers, Scholastics, And The Science Authority Shift

SPEAKER_03 44:15

with this question. He's trying to add so he's at least trying to be intellectually honest, which I respect it for. And by the way, he added me back on LinkedIn when I reached out to him, which is weird. I don't know why, because he I'm literally nobody has no idea who I am. So maybe he just adds people on LinkedIn. So everybody go add Graham Hancock on LinkedIn. Maybe, maybe he'll add you back. Um so anyway, that's what I kind of respect about him. He's trying to deal with this glaring issue that you have like, you know, humanity is just running around throwing rocks and sticks for almost a million years before they start doing stuff. Okay. Um the the problem with him is that he's not really consistent in his method. And so I'll give you an example. The the first place he goes in in his documentary, at least the one I saw, is Gunung Padang, which is this megalithic structure in West Java. And he makes his claim is that it's 20,000 years old and that it predates all of the Javan civilization that's there. And uh he bases this off one drilling that was done and some radiometric dating, some carbon dating, I believe it was, that was done on the soil underneath it, which firstly shouldn't even really be relevant because the age of the soil doesn't determine the age of the structure built on top of it. But anyway, so um, and they and and also it's based on radiometric dating, which we can get into tons of problems with that. The problem is he always talks about these traditions, you know, these oral traditions, these written traditions, uh, that humanity has this kind of collective memory of these certain things, right? But then he disregards the oral traditions when they conflict with his information, or sorry, when they conflict with his uh position. So, case in point, the local Javanese people say that this structure was built during the Muslim conquest of Java by a king who refused to convert. Um, and they they this king is semi semi-mythical in the sense that we know he was a real guy, we just we're not quite sure which historical king we want to link it to. But they say that their king built this uh during the Muslim conquest of Java in like the 1400s, you know. So why wouldn't you? If I was an ethnologist or an anthropologist or an archaeologist or whatever, urologist, whatever, I would listen to the uh uh testimony of the locals, right? Yeah because that that would seem to okay, they say it was built in the Middle Ages. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, they've been well.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

He also there's the a couple of other problems he has is one is that he completely refuses to acknowledge the Christian myth, right? Like, not the myth, but you know what I mean, like the Christian legend that the whole earth was flooded. Like that he'll he'll touch on all these crazy events that could have happened, but he will not acknowledge that there's a biblical flood that we all that like every culture on earth has this memory of a flood.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

I think I think he realizes there's this ancestral memory of the flood, but he wants to make it a he wants he wants a naturalistic uh explanation. Yeah, he wants one that he can sell to uh to a broader audience. Um Christian adjacent, like because he believes in the Ark uh the Covenant and that it was like hidden, he has this whole documentary on the Ark of the Covenant, but anyway, uh what what he did reveal is that uh when you try to challenge the consensus of the narrow of like the progression of human history, like if you try to challenge it at all, like the the concept they freak out, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Like, so if if you if you try to push against what they've established as well, this is exactly what happened. If if you push against that at all, they'll call you a racist, they'll call you like they'll go nuts on they'll call you anything to get you to shut your mouth because they don't want anybody to hear that you're pushing against this theory that they've come up with, and it's like you have to just take you have to take it as if it's written in stone, whatever theory they've come up with.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

Yeah, and I respect him for that, you know, because he's he's actually doing his his thing, you know. Yeah, he's doing his own thing. Um with Robert Shock, that who I believe is gonna be on Sam H. That's who's supposed to be going on Sam Hot. Yeah, yeah. So so his whole thing is the the Sphinx flooding, and I'll just go over this, what I think about this briefly, just my thoughts for whatever they're worth. And I I know other people in the Colby Center, like my geologist friend Adamar, who I'm actually writing a paper about the flood with right now. Um, that'll be out soon, but uh, he has his own theory about you know how this works. Okay. But the but this is these are my thoughts. Okay. You look at the Sphinx, and according to Robert Schock, and I I have no reason to believe he's making this up, that there's there's weathering from heavy rain, there's apparent weathering from heavy rain, okay? There's water damage on at least. I don't know if it was submerged or not, but it was water damage at least apparent on the Sphinx. Um my thought, uh my initial thought is this if you go down to the border between Sudan and Egypt and you walk away from the Nile, so you just go way, way, way out in the desert, you find Nubian rock art where they're depicting sailing boats out in the desert, okay? Um, and raising cattle in the marshes out there and stuff like that, and there's crocs and hippos, okay. Where and and this is this is pure desert for miles and miles and miles, as far as you can see. And apparently it was once like wetlands, like very you know. Um, so there's good evidence that at some point in the past, and and conventionally they'd say 5,000 years ago, I'd say it's closer to 4,000. And there are some mainstream sources that would agree with me. Um the monsoon belt that goes through Africa was quite a bit broader and reached way farther up north. Even today, you'll get the occasional heavy rain shower on a freak day in Cairo where the Sphinx is. So I'm just saying I don't see it as unreasonable to think that at one that at one time in the not so distant past it was raining pretty heavily in Cairo when they built the Sphinx. That's like my that's like the simplest possible explanation. So I think that's probably the best explanation. Now, now Adamar has a very interesting, complicated theory of how that works with the post-flood world and all that. Um, so you know uh I'm not dogmatic about this. Oh my gosh, I hit my computer. Um, but yeah, that's my thoughts on it.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Hey, uh, while we have Majarian in the chat, um uh we have Majarian as our amazing knickknack success story tonight. Majarian uh got married uh uh uh I think almost a year ago at this point, and he was clearly infertile and had no ability to impregnate his beautiful wife. So I sent him some Knickknacks, and boom, the man is going to be a father. So look, I can't scientifically prove I can't scientifically prove that knick-knacks cures infertility, but I'm pretty sure Knickknacks cures infertility. Like I I can't prove it, but you guys know what I'm saying. It's like I gotta ask you. I got I got VLO on me. No, no, no, no. We are sending you we are sending you knickknacks.

SPEAKER_03 51:35

Okay, because that's what I've been using. I've been I don't do anything that's less than maybe nine milligrams. I do 12 and 100 probably. Uh 12 to 900. We're gonna hook you up.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

We're gonna get you still generally some knickknacks, but uh so go to knick knack.com, use code ab25 for 25% off your first purchase, use code ab 10 for 10 off every subsequent purchase. If you guys are struggling with infertility, I'm just kidding. Use knick knacks.

Graham Hancock, Flood Memory, And The Sphinx

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Uh also uh black monk rosaries. If the knick knacks don't work, you always can ask our lady's intervention. She will cure infertility. She is definitely gonna help you get pregnant. So pray to our lady. Use your black monk rosary. Go to black monk rosaries, use code avoiding babble on at checkout for 10% off. We love our sponsors. Um, we are going to bring Christian to the other side because I have so many questions I want to ask.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

Do we want to answer any of the questions we have so far, though?

SPEAKER_01 52:32

Are they super chats? Uh, there are some, yeah. If they're super chats, yes. If they're not super chats, then no, these cheap people need to pay for locals and send money when they have questions. I am tired of the freebies. So if it's a super chat, bring it up.

SPEAKER_02 52:47

How would a geocentric Earth change the way we view God's creation of the universe?

SPEAKER_03 52:53

Uh, I would say that the the initial issue with geocentrism wasn't actually the anthropocentrism of the universe, although that's related. That's something people get wrong a lot, is that people thought that man wouldn't be the center of the universe if geocentrism was dethroned. Now, they did think that, but that wasn't the real controversy. Controversy is the authority of scripture and the authority of the exegetes and and and how that relates to science. So it's it would indirectly change our view, um, I would say, but I'd say that most the more direct intro the more direct issue with geocentrism is the idea of scripture. Okay. So it's a scriptural idea. Anthropocentrically, though, um certainly uh it would um I think it's it's a much grander thing to believe that the heavens are in motion than that we are, right? It's a much grander thing that to think rather than the earth as being in motion, that the heavens are in motion. And when the theologians talk about God, the saints talk about God putting the heavens into motion around us, um, there is a there's a real, I think, sublime beauty to that. I think I've benefited very much by accepting geocentrism. I'm not necessarily dogmatic about it, maybe not as much as some of the others in the in the say the Colby center circles. Um, but I think my my personal uh love of God, my feeling of intimacy with God has grown by realizing that there is nothing physically, there is no real physical objection to geocentrism. There's nothing preventing it from being true. And so why not just accept it?

SPEAKER_01 54:25

You know, you said uh uh you said Hugh Owens would get mad if you called us a planet instead of a globe. Why why is that?

SPEAKER_03 54:31

Because the the earth is not a planet, the earth is the earth, the earth is unique, the planets are the planets. The planet means a wanderer, a planet uh it wanders around, you know, in the sky, it doesn't have the fixed course like the fig, like the fixed stars. Um, but the earth is not one of those. And in and Tihard Des Chardin was absolutely right when he said that the at the Galileo trial, it was actually the evolutionary ideology that was at stake. And here's why because it's the idea of categories. What is the earth? The earth is a planet. What is man? Man is an animal, right? What is uh it's it it it keeps devolving to where this one thing that's unique. What is the sun? The sun's just a the sun is a star. No, the sun is not a star, the sun is the sun. Okay, so these things that are unique and special because of their relationship to humanity, and they're actually designed specifically. Our planet are not our globe and this the uh sun were designed specifically for us, and they're not they're not the same as any of the other bodies out there exactly. Um, but to say the sun is a star, the earth is a planet, man isn't is a is an animal. We take these special things that God made uh as pinnacles of the creation and we reduce them to the same level of everything else. Um, and to we we just bump put them in these categories where they don't really stand out uniquely. So um, yeah, that's why Hugh Owen's totally right. You should not call the earth a planet, it's not a planet, it's the earth. This is this is I love how passionate you are. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Uh, do we have any other super chats, Rob? Uh yes, one.

SPEAKER_01 56:06

Uh, if evidence is so good for young earth, why do most in mainstream science not back the theory? I find this topic fascinating. Secular science bias has corrupted the mainstream.

SPEAKER_03 56:15

Um okay. So, I mean, if the evidence is so good for young earth, there you can't physically prove young earth. There's no like there's no like physical, and you can't prove physically prove old earth. That's the thing, is that science doesn't prove things. So the when we talk about things like you know, if the evidence is so good for that, the evidence is so good for that, a lot of this is very interpretative and based on your worldview. So that's why you gotta really start with a theology. And obviously, the scientists are never, you know, the vast majority of the scientists, vast majority of people live in a secular world. They, you know, they're not gonna accept a religious principle, right? No, you know, no, I have never met a um a person who came

Sponsors, Super Chats, Geocentrism, Closing

SPEAKER_03 56:55

over from evolutionism or old earth who did so for physical reasons, for like they saw the physical proof and they were convinced. Okay, maybe a few people with evolution. Oh, yeah, I'll give them that. But with the old earth, I've never seen they've always come over because they had a theological breakthrough which changed their outlook and the way they interpret the evidence. Now, I'm not saying that you know the um that one argument is as good as the other. Obviously, I think that you know we we can't we have uh much stronger refutations of the old earth than the old earth has uh has uh the ability to poke holes in our theory for sure. Um, but yeah, I would say it's not really about the evidence because you can you can convince somebody intellectually of something, but if they're if the will isn't there, if they don't will to accept it, they're never gonna accept it. You can you can actually you show them all the evidence and they're still they're still not gonna believe you.

SPEAKER_01 57:49

It's you know it's for for some uh not like all the proofs in the world won't convince them. For those, no proof is needed. Like for some, no proof is needed, right? You just that's that's that's the old the old answer.

SPEAKER_03 58:00

Well, it's never going to be the commonly accepted theory because it it it is it is predicated on things that 99.9% of people will will just simply never countenance, you know.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

I mean, look how much evidence there is for the resurrection and how many people just disregard it. It's as it's as simple as that. It's it's the resurrection.

SPEAKER_03 58:20

So I can show you the hemoglobin proteins. Um, I can show you the the axis of evil if we're talking about uh geocentrism with the the alignment of uh uh of the uh the radiation across the uh plane between the earth and the sun or something like that. I can show you these shocking things that should be impossible. And you're the 99% of people still throw it out.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

Yeah, yeah, 100%. So all right, we're going to go over the other side. Uh I have I have some questions I want to ask you, and I don't I don't want to put you on the spot on YouTube, so I don't want anybody cutting it up and putting it out there. So um, if you guys are not locals members, this is where we go when we ask the fun questions, where we go have a better conversation. We don't give it for free. You cheapos wouldn't even super chat us tonight. For those of you who did super chat us, we appreciate you and love you. For those of you too cheap to buy locals. See you later. Take us out, Rob. Uh I wasn't ready.

unknown 59:17

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 59:18

I know, I know, I know you love it.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Like, I you're supposed to hit your post, Rob. That's like I lead, I lead up. I was busy, I was busy putting the locals link in. Oh, wait, no, no, no. Let's plug Christian's Telegram before we go.

SPEAKER_02 59:29

Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's already in there.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

That's in there. Okay, so uh if people are on Telegram, they want to just look it up. If they're uh is there a quick way to look it up?

SPEAKER_03 59:39

Yeah, just search Catholicism and creation. And the and is an and symbol. Catholicism and creation. The the link is like the t.me slash or whatever, and then it's creation quotations. Um but the name of the channel is Catholicism and Creation. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 59:58

All right, yeah. Let's make sure everybody everybody go and check out his telegram channel. He's got some cool stuff on there. I subscribed to it yesterday. And uh are you going to hit your post this time, Rob?