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Giant Sequoias: Too Complex to Be Accidental | The Creation Podcast: Episode 115
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- [00:06]
A
What living thing grows taller than a 25 story building, survives raging wildfires, and actually depends on those fires to reproduce? Giant sequoias do exactly that. Their cones, bark and seeds work together in a tightly coordinated system that reflects purpose, precision, and remarkable design. Welcome to the Creation Podcast, where we explore how science confirms scripture. I'm your host, Mary Claire, and today we're heading into Sequoia national park to uncover the brilliant engineering behind the biggest trees on planet Earth. Giant sequoias. From fire activated cones to hydraulic systems that surpass human engineering, these trees raise a powerful. How could these unique traits work together without an intentional designer? The short answer, they can't. But let's have ICR scientist Dr. Brian Thomas explain that to us. Thanks for being here, Dr. Thomas.
- [01:02]
B
My pleasure.
- [01:03]
A
So, Dr. Thomas, before we get into the science, many of our listeners might not be familiar with your background, so could you take a moment just to tell us a little bit about your expertise and how it lends to today's topic?
- [01:16]
B
Sure. I don't have a degree in botany, but you have to take botany in order to get a degree in biology. And then I got a master's in biotechnology, which is just biochemistry with application, and then a PhD in paleobiochemistry. So that's really dinosaur and fossil, other fossil proteins. So whether it's this degree or that or the other degree, proteins are kind of in the middle of it all. And so there are proteins involved in today's discussion. We may get to them, we may not. But there's a lot of proteins going on inside these trees. And inside these trees, see? And they are the little motors that keep all these things going that we're going to talk about.
- [01:55]
A
That's pretty cool. Sounds like you're very well equipped to talk about today's topic, which is giant sequoias, which is scientifically referred to as Sequoiadendron gigantium. So to start out simply, most people know that giant sequoias are really big trees, but that's kind of the extent of their knowledge. So in your words, what makes these trees so remarkable and why do scientists find them so fascinating?
- [02:21]
B
They're big. In fact, the name Sequoiadendron giganteum means big sequoia tree. I mean, that's all it means.
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A
That's pretty straightforward.
- [02:29]
B
It's pretty straightforward, yeah, once you translate it out of scienceese into regular speak. But they're the most massive. They may not be the tallest, but they are the most massive. And when you go there and stand at the base of a couple of these, it's like, am I looking at a tree or an apartment complex? You know, it's that kind of a thing. You just walk and walk and walk to get just around one of them. So it's just, it's unreal, you know, how big these things, how big these things have grown.
- [02:57]
A
Yeah. For real. So now that we've kind of gotten a sense of why sequoias are so extraordinary, just like to the naked eye, I would love to take a look at one of their most surprising traits, which is the way that they rely on fire to reproduce. To start us off, could you walk us briefly through how fire helps sequoias germinate?
- [03:17]
B
Sure, I'd love to. And it turns out that some plants are like this, not just sequoias, where they seem to have a suite of coordinated traits that all the switches get flipped on when there's fire or recent fire. And so the fact that it's a suite of traits and that they all switched on for the same reason at the same time, for the same purpose. Same reason. Fire, purpose, reproduction at the same time tells me that someone had to have thought this out beforehand. And so that's what's exciting about it because I happen to know that someone who the Creator has revealed himself in the Bible and he claims credit for making all things. So it stands to reason that he would have left signatures of his handiwork. And I think that's what we're looking at. And I like the way that you teed it up in the introduction, talking about these three different collaborators, which is the bark and then the cone and then the seed, the seed itself. And so all three of these fit with one another in this purpose. So the bark, I guess I'm starting backwards, but the bark helps because some of the, some of these trees, it's a spongy bark. It's fun. When you go up to the tree, you can actually press it and you can feel the bark sponge inward if you mash on it.
- [04:42]
A
So cool. There's not really any other trees that do that.
- [04:44]
B
Yeah, most trees you do some trees, I guess, but not like this one. Cause it's so thick, it's like 10 to 12 inches of this spongy bark. And so that's a very strong fire resistant tactic. And so a wildfire can rage and burn right up against these trees and it'll burn through some of that bark, but often it does not burn all the way through that one foot thick bark. So why is that significant? Well, someone thought ahead because if you need fire for the seed to germinate, but if that same fire were going to burn down the parent tree, that would be counterproductive. You're trying to reproduce, not die. So the tree, the parent tree protects itself, has a self protective feature or mechanism. We're calling it a collaborator. We have three collaborators and the bark is one of them, but then the cone is another one. And so the way these cones work, and it's only about this big, they fit in the palm of your hand. And so they have these scales like you're familiar with with pine trees, but then inside each scale is a seed, but the seed is trapped underneath the scale. So to expose the seed to the world, the scale needs to lift out or hinge open so that the seed can fall out. Well, it turns out that that hinge stays closed, it could stay closed for decades with fully formed seeds ready to go. But it's not going to release until the fire comes.
- [06:09]
A
Yeah, I read a little bit about that.
- [06:11]
B
So the hinge activates from the heat. If you read the literature or even popular signage, it talks about the heat and the fire. And when we talk about the seed in a minute with the ash, as though these are all causes, we give causation, we afford like more power than these. These are just factors. It's just fire, it's just ash, it's just chemicals. But what makes it a cause for these particular organisms, this tree, is that they have a sensor that detects it. So when it detects the temperature, then it opens up. So now there's the potential for that seed to, to come out of the cone. When the seed falls in the ground, it's still not going to germinate unless it detects certain sunlight and certain chemicals that are in ash.
- [06:58]
A
Yeah. Kind of going right off of that actually is. Why is this like freshly charred soil? Why is that such a perfect environment for young sequoias?
- [07:08]
B
Well, it's a great environment for any seedling of any kind of tree or plant.
- [07:13]
A
I actually did not know that.
- [07:15]
B
Yeah. So if you want to add nutrients to your plant, just take the stuff out of your fireplace when you're done with the fire. And the ash there is full of phosphorus and nitrogen and other organic carbon based compounds that plants can really dig, so to speak. Yeah. And grow on that. So that's why if you see just a standard wildfire and a, for a field, the grass springs up right afterwards, especially if you have rain. So field fire, then rain, you have massive Plant sprinting growth after that. So that's just plants in general. But the thing is, how do the seeds know, right? And it turns out they do. And okay, I just did an AI search and I said, okay, AI, you're intelligent. So tell me how these seeds are detecting the ash. Somehow the seed knows it's time to germinate when it lands in ash that's left over from a recent fire. And what did AI say? Well, the seeds don't actually detect it, but the ash causes it stimulates the seed to germinate. Okay, backwards. Wrong.
- [08:37]
A
That's what I was thinking too.
- [08:38]
B
Because if ash or heat stimulates growth, then we should stick our babies in the fire. That would make them grow really fast, right?
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A
That's not recommended.
- [08:48]
B
Is ash a stimulant? Did you drink ash? I mean, I mean you could, it wouldn't hurt you, but probably not. It's a stimulant. It's only a stimulant to plants. Well, why is it only a stimulant to these plants? Because these plants have detectors and they know what's around them somehow. So they do have detectors. And it turns out that in the case of the seeds with the ash, there's chemicals in the ash and smoke that actually mimic growth hormones. Get this, this isn't in your notes. The growth hormones are in all these forests, in all forests, basically. And they're produced by fungus in the ground, in the soil. And the fungus releases the growth hormone, which has no effect in the fungus tissue itself, but gets transferred to the nearby tree roots and it stimulates the tree to grow. It says here, I'm a fungus, I'm here to help you. Go ahead and start growing. And then the fungus adds other nitrogen based compounds for the tree to grow more tree. And so what we have when the smoke comes is like a, it's like a chemical signal that the seed is already set up to receive and to do something with it. It's like a key and a lock. So if you think of a key and you have a locked door, so when you come up to the door and you put the key in the lock and you turn the door and then open it, then you can go in there and do stuff inside. Would you say that the key is a opening stimulant? Is it all you need is the key.
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A
I mean, like, you have to be the one to actually like turn the key in the hole.
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B
In the hole, yeah, that's it. Okay, so if there's no lock, then the key is useless, right?
- [10:34]
A
I see.
- [10:35]
B
So yeah. And you have to turn it. So in this case, you have locks which are made of proteins, you have these keys which are hormones, which are in the smoke. And that unlocks a preformed lock. And the key fits the lock literally in the chemical world, it's a lock and key fit three dimensionally. But also with its electron configuration, it's a fit so that it tells the cell, the plant cell that's in the seed, hey, now's a good time to germinate. So how does the seed know that it's all pre programmed? It has to be pre programmed.
- [11:11]
A
And it's so specific, too.
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B
It's so specific.
- [11:14]
A
Well, reproduction is only part of the story, really. So to reach their incredible heights, sequoias depend on a complex water transport network as well. And that is really what I want to dive into next year. So giant sequoias can haul over 500 gallons of water up more than 275ft in a singular day. That's pretty astonishing. Can you break down that hydraulic process for us, just to put it into everyday language for our viewers?
- [11:43]
B
Well, I can try, but it's a lot of techno talk.
- [11:47]
A
I have faith in you. You can break things down.
- [11:50]
B
But isn't that marvelous? I mean, you look at the. You stand there and you just look up and up and up. And finally you see these leaves that are way out there and you know that it's taking water from the ground and pumping it all the way up there.
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A
I just don't understand.
- [12:06]
B
And the pumps are silent, they're frictionless, they're efficient. I mean, these are like no human made pumps. These are beyond what we can do as humans in terms of pumping water against the pull of gravity. So there's three. We had three collaborators to reproduce knowing and using fire and the effects of fire. Now we have three collaborators in the tissues of the plant cells, of the trees. Plant cells. And so. So one of those collaborators has to do with osmotic pressure. Osmotic pressure. So there's your first tech term, right? Yes, osmotic. So this has to do with osmosis, which we learned about when we were
- [12:48]
A
in biology back in the day.
- [12:50]
B
Back in the day, yeah. And so basically the principle is pretty simple. Water follows salt, waterfall of salt. This is why if you put a frog into the Dead Sea, what happens?
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A
Doesn't it float?
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B
It definitely floats, yeah. But since the sea is saltier than the frog and the frog's skin is very thin, it's a semi permeable membrane, then the water that's in the frog's body follows the salt. And you'll have a dead frog within minutes because the water, the salt that's in the Dead Sea, sucks the water out of the frog's body and it just shrivels right up. Poor dead frog. And I did not know I was going to use that morbid illustration, but hopefully it'll put it in our minds and we'll remember water follows salt. So someone had to know this. Someone had to know this principle in advance, because somehow the cells that are in this tree, they can pump ions. Salt. Salt ions into different chambers. And then, okay, I've got some water down here, but I need to get the water up here. We'll pump some ions into the. Up here, the upper chamber, and the water will follow the salt gradient. And it does this and it does this and it climbs and it climbs and it climbs. So you can manage osmotic pressure with these ion pumps, by the way, each pump with a protein, my favorite molecule. So it's literally a pump. And it says, okay, one magnesium ion, I want you over here. It grabs it, it moves it across a membrane, puts it in another space, and then the water follows that ion, that salt, chloride ion, whatever ions they use. So that's one. But it only gets you so high. You gotta get what you said, 275.
- [14:53]
A
275ft in the air.
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B
Mm, man. So that'll get you so far, but you can reach a certain point where gravity is just too strong. And now you gotta use something else. Okay, what's another one?
- [15:07]
A
Part two.
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B
Apoplastic.
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A
Yes, Apoplastic water fraction.
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B
Apoplastic. That's just a water bottle.
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A
Oh.
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B
So when you go hiking, you have the water that's in your body. You can even take a big drink and you have water that's in your stomach. But eventually you run out of those waters. And that's why you think ahead and you carry a water bottle with you, because you have a brain and you thought ahead and you thought. So then when you get to where you need more water, you. You take a swig. Yeah, someone thought ahead and provided each of these cells with their own little water bottles, tiny little pockets within the cell, like vacuoles that have extra water. So how do they get the water there? From times in moments of the day, when the water pump is flowing more freely, it stores a little bit of extra water. And then during those times of the day, day, night, cycle, when the flow is slowing down, all these different factors are working in play. Then it can use these extra water bottles that are inside the cells. And to say, you know what? I need to keep the flow going so that the leaves don't wilt. That's the whole objective. Make sure the leaf tissues don't wilt.
- [16:28]
A
That brings me to the next point that I wanted to talk about, which would be turgor pressure. And so, according to my research on this topic, turgo refers to the water pressure at which leaf tissues begin to wilt. So that's kind of what sparked that in my brain. What exactly is turgor pressure, and why is that important to this topic?
- [16:47]
B
I have no idea. No, it's. Yeah, that's the. So the trigger pressure loss point is the point at which these leaves wilt. And you don't want that, because when the leaves wilt, then they can't do photosynthesis and they die. The tree dies, you know, if too many leaves wilt. So that's like. So we have these three collaborators that are trying to keep water going, you know, up into these tissues. So in other words, turgor pressure loss point is a technical phrase that just refers to too little water in the tissues. So to keep the plant from reaching that lost point, you have to do something. So one thing we talked about is osmotic pressure.
- [17:36]
A
Yes.
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B
So that's ion pumps. The other we talked about is apoplastic water, which is water bottles. And then the third tactic that keeps us from reaching that loss point has to do with the flexibility of the plant cell walls.
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A
Okay.
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B
Okay. So it's like. So it's like this. You have a water bottle, you're going to carry it backpacking. You have your water bottle in a. You just carry your water in a Ziploc bag. What do you think of that?
- [18:11]
A
That sounds not easy to do. I feel like it would leak out very easily.
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B
Easy to leak. So too floppy, right? Yeah. Just going along that line of thought. Think of the. Think of the leaf cell as a tube, like a water bottle itself. So if it's too floppy, then you pump a bunch of water into it, but it's gonna sag, right?
- [18:35]
A
Yeah.
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B
So you will fail to get the water up.
- [18:39]
A
That makes sense.
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B
If the cell walls sag, the water is gonna drag out instead of get pumped up. So basically, the Lord Jesus knew all this, Somebody knew all this, and we might as well give him the credit because he deserves it. And so he thought, well, let me make the cell walls that are at this particular place, way up high in the tree a little extra thicker. So that they can hold their shape even when the water inside the water diminishes. So if the water shrinks, the cell walls won't shrink, because if the cell walls sort of collapse when the water does, then the water doesn't reach the tissues either. So it's to do with the rigidity or the flexibility. They're just the right flexibility. They flex. So flexi walls, water bottles, and ion pumps. And those are the three collaborators that make it so that these trees can do these fantastic feats of engineering. And it's all with. It's all with micro, nanoscopic parts.
- [19:44]
A
Like, you did such a good job at painting those pictures, because I can actually see it in my head and truly understand exactly what it is that you're talking about, which is so cool to me. But so understanding how sequoias function, that's one thing, but their history opens up another set of questions. So that brings us to how scientists interpret sequoia's age. So many of us were taught at one point that one age ring in a tree equals one year. But can you explain why that could be incorrect?
- [20:15]
B
Oh, sure. And if you talk to any forest dendrochronologists even acknowledge. So dendro means tree chronologist means you're marking time, so you're marking time with tree rings. That's dendrochronology. But if you talk to forest people who actually work with trees, the dendrochronologists need to listen more to the foresters, because they actually count growth rings in all these different forests around the world and have done so. And they'll tell you what's really going on in these trees is that there are multiple factors that can create a growth ring in different kinds of environments and different kinds of climates and different kinds of forests. So annual cycling of seasons is one of those factors. It's the main factor, but it's not the only factor. You can also have a drought in one season, and then the rains come and boom, you just. The tree makes a new ring in one season. So you have two rings in one season because you had a drought that season.
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A
Interesting.
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B
That's just one example. Yeah, you can have a disease that causes the tree to just not grow. So there's plenty of water, but it's not gonna make a ring because he's feeling puny for that year. You ever felt puny for a year?
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A
Sometimes I feel puny for longer than a year.
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B
So these are different factors. But nevertheless, if we by and large, we acknowledge, yeah, these are mostly most of these rings are gonna be annual, especially if they're in places where you have all four seasons. And the seasons are different enough from one another for the tree to go, okay, I need to shut down. It's dormant time because it's too dry or too cold for photosynthesis to work in the leaves. So it has to shut down its leaves if it's too cold or if it's too dry, if there's a dry season and then followed by a wet season, that's going to make a growth ring. Okay, yeah. So dendrochronology is not foolproof. It's not absolute. But that's only one. The biggest problem with dendrochronology is building out these long, extended chronologies into the past, because there's no single tree trunk alive that has that many rings. Yeah, you're right. But they have this. What is it? It's a bias in favor of what we call deep time. So you've got to have. You gotta have your hundreds of thousands of years. You've gotta have your millions of years, because everyone knows that's how old things are. That's how old the world is. And so despite. Despite the evidence against that, we have to invent evidence to fill those time gaps. And that's exactly what some of these workers do, unfortunately, is they take a set of data from one tree, another set of data from another tree, and they do this ring matching, and then they extend it out like stacking ladders sideways, but the matches are not that good. And so anyway, it turns into more of an imagination, subjective setup for that system. Okay, having said all that. So that's why I don't buy. I don't buy it when the dendrochronologist says, you know, these records extend for tens and hundreds of thousands of years. Well, they do in your imagination because you stacked all these different on paper, you know, but there's no single tree that has that many rings.
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A
There's a lot you can manipulate on paper.
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B
That's it? Yeah, that's it. So. But we do have rings. And so when you go there, say you go to Sequoia National Park. Have you been?
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A
I have not, but I want to so badly.
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B
Now that you've studied this.
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A
Yes. I've learned so much about sequoias through this podcast.
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B
Put me on a plane and send me over there for sure.
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A
That would be really cool.
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B
When you go there, you see these cutaways, and, you know, they have a cutaway and you can see their growth rings on the trunk. And it's just thousands of them. But how many thousands?
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A
I don't know. Don't ask me.
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B
Well, it goes back to just before the Exodus, you know, so we're Talking about say 3,500 years ago, something like that. But that's actually interesting because we would say that the flood was 4,500 years ago based on the Bible's chronology.
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A
Yes.
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B
Now that's based on eyewitness testimony. People were there, they wrote these things down. That's how we have that information. Way more reliable than tree ring matching or any other what we call scientific age dating process, because when people were there, they wrote it down. That that is the best form of evidence even in the court, law courts today. So that's where we get that. So the thing we notice with these sequoias is why aren't they older? Why aren't there more rings? If we've really had this history that goes back for tens of thousands of years, at least right there on the western slopes of the Sierras in California, you know, it's. And they say it's what the last ice age was, you know, 1 to 10 million years ago, something like that. Well, why aren't these trees older and bigger and have more rings? And so it's like the whole forest was populated no longer ago than exactly when the Bible suggests they should, that those forests should have become available to be populated, to be pioneered by these trees. Well, when is that? Well, it would be after the flood, so 4,500 years ago, but it would also be after the ice age. So in our biblical model of world history, we have the flood followed by an ice age. And that ice age would have lasted for some centuries, let's say five to seven centuries. So there you go. Seven centuries later, now the ice melts, you have new land that is now available for trees to take root in, to pioneer. And the sequoias did that right about the time when our model says the land was available to do that. And that's why their tree ring numbers match the age that we think that those forests even could have started.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So do you see the match there that I'm thinking?
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A
I do, I understand it.
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B
And if it makes no sense, if I use too many words, then just go to ICR.org and go to the search engine and type Brian, that's my name. And sequoia.
- [26:42]
A
It'll pop right up.
- [26:43]
B
Remember to spell sequoia right. It's got all the vowels.
- [26:46]
A
It does. I know, it's a complicated word for sure.
- [26:49]
B
And then the first hit on our search engine will be an article that explains this and actually gives quotes from secular scientists who have done this research that they're scratching their heads going, why aren't these trees older? Because we know, quote unquote, that this forest has been here for a million or more years, but yet these trees are all only 3500 or so hundred years old. So it's a good match.
- [27:15]
A
That's a super important article that we will definitely link in the description as well. That way people have easy access to click and learn more about exactly what you're talking about.
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B
Yay. Link, click, learn.
- [27:24]
A
Exactly.
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B
Love it.
- [27:26]
A
But those scientific and historical insights naturally lead to the bigger picture. Like, why does this matter for believers? So for the average Christian who's listening today, why does the engineering of these giant trees strengthen our confidence in scripture?
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B
If nature could not have done it, someone outside of nature must have done it. That is the most responsible, the most logical, the most scientific conclusion. So if I already know this creator, and yet I'm in this world, I'm in this world which, which systematically denies this creator, I'm beleaguered, right? I'm oppressed, I'm suppressed, I'm poo pooed on, I'm spat upon, and you believe in a creator, and then I get called names, you know, and yet I go to the sequoia and I go, wait a minute. Nature, natural processes, call it evolution, call it selection, call it whatever silly name you want to call it. Nature cannot do this because nature cannot think ahead because nature cannot think right? Okay? So someone outside of nature has to be our first, most rational thought and conclusion about how these coordinated collaborators came into existence in the first place to make these trees. So if I'm a believer, I just go, wait a minute. This confirms what I've already been learning from the Bible about God being the Creator. In the beginning, nature created the heavens and the earth. Is that how that goes?
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A
I believe so.
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B
No, it's in the beginning God.
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A
Yeah, some people would say that for sure.
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B
And so we, and I grew up believing in the beginning nature or in the beginning hydrogen, you know, but now that I look at these, at the intricacies and the purposefulness, you know, that's inherent in these design features and these engineering principles that were deployed when these trees were built, I have to conclude something more in line with what the Bible teaches, even though that goes against the majority of what the world says about nature having done this through natural processes and blah, blah, blah, the Lord Jesus gets the Credit. He absolutely does. And so good science, this is what I'm saying. Good science leads to worship, you know, because I learned about these things and it's cool within themselves. But then, like you said, I appreciate your asking this backing up, big picture. What does this mean? Wow, Lord, look what you've done. And then he gets the credit. He's happy because he's, you know, it would be like you making something and showing your. Let's say you draw a picture, you show everyone in the classroom or whatever room. You go. Do you go to classrooms at all anymore?
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A
I don't go to classrooms anymore.
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B
No, you show it to the room in the living room and they're like, oh, that's a really interesting picture that natural processes put together. You're like, no, I did this, I did this.
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A
I'm the creator.
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B
Yeah. And so he deserves the credit and we should give it to Him. And that's called praise. And that's one of the big reasons why we're even on the planet, is to praise and worship him, to love him and serve him forever. But we can only do that if we deal with the sin problem. Sins are what keeps us from Him. So why is it that the world suppresses the truth? Is it because there's lack of evidence? Suppresses the truth of the Creator, Suppresses the truth of the Savior, who is the Creator? Suppress, suppress, suppress. Why are we doing that? Is it because there's no evidence for him? No, there's plenty of evidence. The scripture says in Romans 1, we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So it's our very sins and the desire to want to carry out our sins our way, live life apart from Him. That's why we suppress the truth. And so that's. So if you're a believer listening to this and you're like, why does the world say that science proves the Bible's wrong? It's not science, it's masquerading as science. And it's actually sin and the sinful heart. So. But anyone, evolutionist, creationists, anyone from any belief and any background can do the same thing. You acknowledge, yeah, my sins are earning for me my own death penalty. And the good news is that Jesus Christ came to pay my debt. To pay my debt. He died on the cross, paid it in full, rose from the dead so that I can now believe in him and repent of my sins. I agree. These are the problem. This was wrong of me. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to trust you. I want to follow you please rescue me and save me. Boom. He does that. And then you have a new relationship with him, a new life in Christ that lasts forever. And through that relationship now, you see the whole world totally differently. And you look at the sequoia and you go to the Sequoia national park. And instead of going, wow, what a great big tree, you go, wow, what a great big tree. Awesome job, Jesus. Yeah, and it adds a whole new dimension to our life on Earth. Even that's just a side benefit.
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A
I know. And it just gives you so much hope, too, just for the future and for your life and for the reason that we are here on this Earth, so very special.
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B
Amen.
- [32:28]
A
So, Dr. Thomas, thank you so much for just unpacking this topic with us today. Before we wrap up, could you share three main takeaways from this episode that you want our viewers to be able to walk away with?
- [32:40]
B
Sure. Number one, Don't trust the conventional ages just because they sound authoritative. Oh, the tree rings prove it. Actually, they don't. Thus and such proves it. Are you sure? How do you know for sure? So don't trust them without investigating them. Okay. Investigate those things. First, when it comes to the age assignments. Second, remember the engineering that's required and how elegant it is, how effective it is to get water all the way up these trees to get the next generation of Sequoia through the collaborative efforts of these different tactics that fit together for a purpose. And so when we remember the engineering, what does that force us to do? Think about the engineer himself. Okay. And then third, and finally, worship the engineer himself. Okay. And so give him the credit that he deserves from both doing what he's done, leaving his handiwork, his signature in creation on these trees and everywhere else, but also in leaving us his word, which tells us how we can know him, how we can get past our own sin problem. He rescues us and he tells us all about that. About our sin, our need for rescue, how we can be rescued, the benefits of getting rescued. He tells us all those details in his word. So those are the three. Distrust what the world says, think about what God made, and then trusting God himself.
- [34:24]
A
All amazing, amazing takeaways for sure.
- [34:26]
B
Yay.
- [34:27]
A
So if you enjoyed today's episode, go ahead and hit like and subscribe and pass this along to a friend who loves digging into God's creation. You can also support our ministry by joining our members and patrons community. Their names are rolling on the screen right now. One of our viewers actually had a question for you, Dr. Thomas. So he acid refluxguy wants to know if there is any strong scientific evidence that supports the idea that humans interacted with dinosaurs. Give it to us.
- [35:00]
B
Oh, scientific, huh?
- [35:02]
A
Scientific evidence. Yeah.
- [35:03]
B
Well, it depends on what we mean by scientific. So if I say archaeology is a science, then hopefully we would count that as scientific. And so when we look into the world of archeology, we find man made artifacts. And if we look into the world of history, what you can call a science, historical science, we find our ancestors written records, so artifacts and records. And what do our ancestors say about these things they record and they describe. Now, this is ancient ancestors, long, long ago, but it's in all these different cultures around the world. But they describe encounters with creatures that are, you know, they're large, they even have names for them, the dragon or what have you. Different languages have different names and they have descriptions of these. And the descriptions, both written and carved or artistically produced these descriptions. Some of them, most of them don't match what we know from fossils. But some of them do match what we know from fossils about specific dinosaurs like dinosaur genus and species level details. So because the science of archeology and history point to our ancestors having encountered creatures, it's difficult for me to conclude that all these people from all these cultures who did all this artwork across all these different centuries were all wrong. So how do I know that they were all wrong? So it's more consistent with those data to say they were onto something. And what if they were onto that? Humans and dinosaurs, some dinosaurs and other extinct creatures interacted with, with one another after the flood, and that's where we get those histories. Well, you sprung a tough one on me.
- [37:11]
A
I know it was kind of tough, but.
- [37:13]
B
But I think I would suspect that the acid reflux guy, he doesn't really care for history and archeology as being scientific. He probably wants something like where you're measuring numbers.
- [37:26]
A
Yeah, probably so.
- [37:28]
B
Oh, well, we don't have it.
- [37:30]
A
Nope.
- [37:30]
B
We don't have it in those different sciences, but we do have the evidence in the historical and the archaeological sciences, in the records, which are more descriptive than they are comprised of numbers and measurements, but still pretty scientific.
- [37:45]
A
It is scientifical. That's a crazy word. Okay, well, thank you so much for answering that question for us today, Dr. Thomas, and thank you viewers for joining us. We see you next time on the Creation Podcast.