Transcription
You are a psychiatrist and you believe that the brain didn't evolve. Why?
It's the most complex organ in the universe. It receives, transmits and processes information. It's got its own operating system. The probability of any of the parts actually arriving by themselves is impossible. And none of the parts can work without each other, and that had to have been designed. And if a designer makes something, there's a function and a purpose. Brain cells, they have an on and an off switch and they're two little chemicals. And as the chemicals are in balance all the time, 'cause if you have too much of the off switch, you go into a coma and die. If you've got too much of the on switch, everything's gonna fire off and you're gonna have an epileptic fit and you die. So the problem with evolution, you're not in a lab doing stuff and if that experiment didn't work, you can start all over again. If it doesn't work the first time, it's dead.
Why do brain structures look so similar across animals if they were separately created? Isn't that evidence for one common ancestor?
Okay. Um. We've all been taught that evolution is the process of making everything, including the human brain. But how did intelligence arise from non-intelligence? So Dr. Dianne, you are a medical doctor and a practicing psychiatrist in over 40 years of experience. You've mentioned before that you work in a lot of mental health-related issues and you've also explored a lot of different belief systems, including atheism. Can you tell me why you think the brain didn't evolve?
Right, the brain is too complex. It is the most amazing organ in the universe. One and a half kilos, and it only uses about as much energy as in a light bulb. And yet it's doing so many amazing things. Your brain is a communication and information processing device. It sends and receives messages. It can actually think about what's not there. It can think into the future and it can reshape itself. And the complexity of the brain is such, they talk about irreducible complexity. So many things in the brain are clearly formed with each other in mind. You can't just have one thing, then wait for the next thing to come along and hope that it's gonna work. Your brain's got so many different things from the molecular level, to the organs, to the way the brain interacts with the rest of the body and then with the outside world. All of that just didn't happen randomly. And the interesting thing is, if it didn't happen randomly, then, and it was designed, had to have been designed by a super intelligence outside of space and time. And then that's the sort of thing that we as humans with the brain that we think possibly just came outta nowhere, we go, we look at the stars and we go, "Oh, I wonder who made me." So there's a connection there. And that's really the interesting thing about the brain. It's so complex, but it's more than just space and matter and time. There's something else. There's information and there's soul and spirit and spiritual stuff there.
Interesting, so you are telling me that if you had a, you deal with the software of the brain.
I do, yeah.
You told me before. And the neurologist deals with the hardware, is that right?
Sort of.
Sort of.
Yep.
Yeah, okay.
We deal more and more with, there's more and more overlap these days. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, okay, so you're basically telling me that if you think of the brain like a extremely complex biological computer.
Yes, exactly.
Is that what we're thinking of?
Absolutely.
So if we look at a computer program and we think that this program has clearly been designed by a human being, we all know that you have to write code.
You do.
You have to run production, you have to do it with an end goal in mind.
Yeah.
And this is not strange to us in this day and age.
No, it's not.
So now we ask why do we think that the most complex computer that we have, a biological computer, was accidentally designed? It clearly has a designer and it clearly has to be more intelligent than the brain itself. Because when we have a computer software engineer, they can't put more than their own intelligence into a design.
Yeah.
Because that's impossible. So we think that it must come out of something who's much more intelligent.
Exactly.
And that's surprising because our brains, we can't recreate our brains, can we?
No, we can't, no.
Okay.
No, so there's clearly a designer, but we are clearly scared of the designer.
Okay, why do you think that?
So you've got your limbic system, you've got your frontal lobe, limbic system can see one perspective and see there's a problem and talk about that or express that. The frontal lobe can see two things at once, which is both now and later, good and bad. But if you're just in the limbic system, if you are basically going, I am me and I feel small and I feel bad, and you can't imagine that someone from outside you might go, "Yeah, you do." Maybe a baby, the dirty nappy might smell. Okay, the baby can't imagine that anything, there's anything other than their smell.
Okay.
Until the parent comes along and cleans them up and then they start to realize there's smell and non-smell. But if you're in smell, all you've got is this is awful. It doesn't, isn't right. You can't imagine that something from outside you might be able to see two things. And that's the difficulty. So as humans we think, oh, I smell, basically. And we think if God can smell me, He won't like me. We cannot imagine that a God might go, "You do smell and you can't fix yourself." You cannot imagine that someone from outside will say, "Well I'll come in here, in your mess and I will fix you." We can't imagine that, we have to be told of it. And that's the difficulty. And if people aren't taught that, if they're taught there's evolution and nothing, there's no designer and there's nothing, they cannot imagine. So they can't even imagine a God who loves them.
Okay, interesting.
So we're stuck.
Okay.
And then if we think that if there is a God, well, they probably won't like me, well then you don't wanna know the God. So like little kids, we go, I can't see you, which is what evolution's about, you know? I can't see you, God, you know? And then they believe all these different things and you tell them, "Hey, what about design?" As you said, well, it's clearly the brain was designed more than a computer program was designed. And they go, "Nope, nope, I can't see that, I can't see that." So it's not the facts that is the issue, it's the consequences of the facts.
Okay.
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Why do our brain structures look so similar across animals if they were separately created? Because isn't that proof that we might have all come from the same thing?
What about if there was a common, if there's one designer and common solutions to be solved, plenty of engineers will say, well, we need something to fly. So they'll produce wings and there's a number of different sorts of wings that people have used for. So usually, the answer from a creationist point of view is single designer, many designs and the best ones, and they work very well. And there's a whole concept of biomimicry where engineers look at what's been, come out of nothing and then they spend a lot of time trying to copy it so that they can use it for different purposes.
Okay, so you are saying that the brain structures look similar not because they came from the same root ancestor.
Yeah.
But because they come from the same designer, who left his thumbprint or his designer signature on the same things, even though that they were created differently.
Yeah.
What about feedback loops and plasticity? Could they just be survival mechanisms and not planning? Is there any way that could possibly be the case?
Let me give you the easiest one that a lot of people are aware of. The brain produces a chemical which tells the thyroid gland produce another chemical which will go to all of the body and say, stoke the fires, basically. All the little cells, you've got energy happening. And depending on how much of the chemical that comes from your thyroid gland, things will either run hotter or run colder.
Okay.
Now, you've got your Goldilocks or your homeostasis point for most things in the human body. And for the chemical from the thyroid gland, you have to have just enough. Too much is bad, you will die. Too little is bad, you will die, okay?
Okay.
So message comes from here down to here, out to the body. But there's also a receiver up here which can determine how much is floating around. And if it's too much, another message will go down to say, turn it down a little bit. Now, that's the basics of a feedback loop. And there are zillions of feedback loops in the body at the micromolecular level and at the organ level. And feedback loops are basically examples of design. Because you have to know the, you've gotta have the Goldilocks idea that you're sticking with in the first place. It's not random. You also need to have something that you're aiming at. You've gotta have something that you're sending and you've gotta have something that you're measuring. And then you've gotta have a way of changing the thing. So basically you've got a start, you've got a goal and you've gotta know if you're on track and you've gotta be able to change things to get to being on track. So that is goal focused.
And you don't think this could have been accidental?
The probability of producing one feedback loop is so rare. And then the whole body, the whole brain is together with so many different feedback loops that it's just not possible. It's impossible. So then we've gotta go.
Okay, mathematically you're saying there's no way.
Absolutely not, no.
Not even with a lot of time?
Not even with a lot of time. What's time gonna help you with? You can sit there and you can say, I'm here. I want to get to there.
You can't say that, you're not allowed to say that.
Well, you're not, okay.
You can't say where you're gonna go.
Time, randomly.
You can only say, "I want to survive."
Randomly.
I've gotta go all over the place. Well, that would be fine if it wasn't the fact that the postulate is this is living things and if they don't work properly, they die. And that's the end of things. So how can you get from one thing, one simple thing to a complex thing if you don't know where you're going and you randomly go around and you try many, many ways that didn't work, you're probably going to find that organism has died out a long time ago.
Okay, so we can't have feedback loops as a survival mechanism.
Example of evolution, no.
It's not working?
No, won't work for you.
What about plasticity?
Plasticity, ah, plasticity is amazing. If you were designing something, you would put plasticity into it, wouldn't you? You'd have the ability to change things. You know, there's some little neurons in the front of the brain. They respond to joy and you can always make new ones. You've got stem cells in the brain. They're just the ones sitting waiting to turn into other cells and they respond to joy. They also respond to a face that sees me. Now, where do you get that from lifeless chemicals?
Would, that couldn't be a survival mechanism?
Well, you would have something to survive in the first place. Where did that come from? It's a chicken and egg, though. It's a logical inconsistency.
Okay.
Let me tell you about some other feedback loops in the brain, okay? Now, you've been dying to have this brain picked up.
I really would.
(indistinct).
It's very cool.
All right. 100 billion neurons in this one. They're just the neurons, they're the nerve cells, the computers. And they connect with each other along cables, just like you've got a device here and it's connected to something somewhere. Have you got a little plugin device?
Yeah, there's a plug here.
USB port, okay.
Here we go.
That's the equivalent of a synapse in your brain.
Oh, cool.
So it's where one thing plugs into another to talk to each each other. So, synapse, S-Y-N, syn means?
With, together.
Yes, exactly, like.
What does the napse part mean?
Apes is, I think, is fastening and I don't think we've got any English words from that one. But a synapse or a synapse is a fastened together place in the brain.
Okay.
So you imagine you've got your little brain cells and they're all connected in local area networks. And the reason this has been colored different colors is because they've worked out, usually when things went wrong, they could go, oh, okay, this person's had a damage. If a person had damage at the back of their brain and suddenly couldn't see, people years ago could work out oh, I wonder if that's the place of a brain where vision gets processed.
Ah.
And then the red bit here is really amazing. That is providing, these things connect with your muscles and tell your muscles what to do. This part connects with the sensory area and will receive information, decide what to do and then send it out again. So if you wanna move your big toe or you feel something on your big toe, on what side's this one? This will be the left-hand (indistinct). This is the right-hand side of your brain.
Right-hand side of the brain.
Okay, well, down here you're gonna feel sensation from your big toe in your left foot.
Okay.
And then if you wanna twiddle your left foot, you've gotta tweak something here. You've gotta make a decision to, the control of the left toe will be down here.
So it's.
Make your left, it's crossed over, yeah.
It's connected like in a cross.
Yeah, it's absolutely amazing. But this side in the motor side's gonna be connecting to the other side of the brain. Now, where were we? So we've got local area networks, which is, they've got jobs to do. They control particular things. And then you've got lots of white cell, you've got your gray matter, which is your computers, they're the neurons. Then you've got your white matter and they are basically the cords.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, and they've got some fatty stuff around them called myelin, which is insulation. And they go.
Okay, so you're telling me.
Backwards and forwards.
This is a gray cell here, all right.
That's a gray cell, yeah, and here's your.
And then this here, this is my white cell.
Yep.
And then the covering of the cord is the insulation.
Well, they are actually white cells because they are cells, no, cells which produce the fat, but they're called myelin, the insulation. So there we go.
Okay, cool.
This is actually biomimicry, you know? Because we've got this in the brain and we've designed things like that too. And where I work in psychiatry, we play, we, psychiatrists or most doctors work in the synapses. So I'll explain those, then I'll come back to the parts of the brain that psychiatry's very interested in, which is the limbic system, which is the part of the brain which tells you where you are now and what's going wrong. It's very much the now, it's the subconscious. And then you've got your frontal lobe here, which is the part of the brain which is able to see two things at once. Brain cells in here can actually see both good and bad, now and later. And you need that for design actually.
All right.
So it's a bit like if you're only coming from your subconscious, you're just where you are, this is the part that sees and stands above and can go, okay, this is where I am, this is where I wanna be and this is what I need to do to get there.
Do animals have this part or is that just a human thing?
They've got a little one. It's called the neocortex. And in humans, that's probably one of the places where we have the things that are particularly human, like, oh, looking at the stars and wondering where did I come from? That's not what animals do. Music. And there's a lot of other animals, again, similar designer, they have variants of these things. And people have looked at the variants and said, "Oh, because birds sing, therefore that's where people get their musical concept from." Not necessarily. So you've got music, you've got your ability to love 'cause love is basically seeing two things at once, bad and good at the same time, and wanting to proceed forward to good, making a choice. So anyway, let's go to synapses 'cause they're fun, okay?
Tell me about your synapses.
You wanted to know something about feedback loops?
Yes.
Okay. So if you imagine in a synapse, you've got one brain cell wants to talk to another brain cell and there's a little gap in between their thing. You might even have a gap of air, the bit you plugged in. What happens is on one side, the brain cell, there's little bags of things produced and they're called neurotransmitters 'cause this is nerves talking transmission, you know? And the little things, if you imagine little balls, so basketballs or soft balls or something like that. So they're produced on this side and you wanna send a message from there to there. And so you spit out your little balls, they go across the gap and then they go into, you've got some little hoops on the other side. And when the right ball goes into the right hoop, you get a little ping. If you get enough pings, the message goes on.
Okay.
Okay. There's a bit of design in that because what if you evolved this side, oh, I'd like to send a message to the other side. What with? I don't know. Well, I'm gonna produce these little basketballs and I'm gonna send them over. Well, how do you know the other side's gonna have the right hoop to collect the basketball?
Yeah, and how are they even gonna read it?
Exactly, and then what's gonna happen next? So the whole thing, you can't explain by bit, by bit, by bit, random. It just happened over, and well, if we had enough time, we could try a whole lot of things and see how they go. The probabilities being timed didn't happen anyway. But you've gotta have the whole thing all together before you even get started.
You've gotta have the information there.
You do, because the information doesn't come from matter and codes don't come from matter. So every time you try and invoke evolution for even the simplest thing, you run into somewhere where you've gotta say, oh well we can't, we don't know about that. We've gotta imagine, isn't evolution marvelous? But if you really get down to tin tacks and go, "This is absolutely amazing", okay, now the brain cells, they have an on and an off switch and they're too little chemicals. And the interesting thing is the chemicals are in balance all the time 'cause if you have too much of the off switch, you go into a coma and die. If you've got too much of the on switch, you're gonna have everything's gonna fire off and you're gonna have an epileptic fit and you die. So the problem with evolution of saying, okay, we'll just keep trying until we get there, well, basically you're not in a lab doing stuff and if that experiment didn't work, you can start all over again.
But a lab is controlled and it's also got people who are telling information about it, so you can't do that.
Absolutely, yeah, but even so it's basically saying the thing that evolved to so far is going to not, I would wanna say is gonna push itself to something more complex. Well no, it's gonna accidentally find itself more complex. But if it doesn't work the first time, it's dead.
Yeah.
So you're not on the outside making something, you're, on the outside a design is here we are going to, here we started and we're gonna work our way along. And if we go off track, we can get ourselves back on track again. If it's evolution, I'm sitting in the position of I'm just continuing and I might die, but I might not. And there's something, you know, complex happens over here and then people go, "Oh, isn't evolution marvelous?" Well if you actually look at it, it can't happen.
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You can't have something that accidentally became more and then died because then you have to start all over again and you have to keep doing this.
Yeah.
Until you get to this point. But that still doesn't make any sense because you still have to be going towards this goal. It makes more sense to come from the outside in.
Yeah, but if you come from the outside in, you've gotta invoke a designer from outside of space and time who made time and space and matter. And if a designer makes something, there's a function and a purpose.
Right.
And you gotta then say well, if evolution doesn't work and it didn't work and we have to have a designer and we are designed for something, then you've gotta be, it's very scary because you imagine a super intelligence.
Yeah, well that's pretty terrifying.
It's absolutely terrifying.
It could threaten you hugely.
Yeah, exactly. And then you've gotta say, well why am I here? What does the intelligent want from me? Do they wanna take me over? And mostly people think, well, they do, so therefore I don't wanna know God. And if we've only ever been taught evolution, well, then we get to the stage where we go, I don't intend, I don't expect there's a God. Or if I'm told about a God, the God's pretty nasty, apparently. And then where does that leave us? Where do you think if you're a human being and you're designed, you're designed, you happen to be purposeful, I mean you don't get out of bed in the morning unless you've got some idea of what you're going to do.
Right.
And I know I work with people when they've got mental health issues and mostly this part of the brain isn't working very well. They can't get out of bed. You know, they're not silly, they're still intelligent. But if something goes wrong in here, they can go, "I didn't do anything. I stayed in bed all day. I wanted to have a shower, but I couldn't get going." Do you know what I do to help them? I say, "Let's break this down and let's see the goal. You wanna have a shower? Think about what it's gonna be like when you've had your shower." So you imagine yourself at the goal. Okay, I'll be nice and clean. Now we go back and we start at the beginning, we say, "Think about what would be the very first step." Okay, it would be walking into the bathroom. Okay, what would be the next step? Maybe getting off my clothes. Next step, turn on the water. Next step, hop into the water. And we actually do that with people. Now, we do that with kids as well, don't we? We teach people see the goal. See the first few steps. We don't say, "Randomly, see what might happen when I get out of bed in the morning."
Yeah, so we don't take that process.
If we did, we don't take an evolutionary concept process in our lives. We are human and we have purpose. And one of our purposes is to connect, to communicate. And we also like to feel safe. We also like things to stay the same. So if something threatens us, we've got a few things we can do. We can run, we can fight. And then what do humans do when they're faced with, they've only ever heard evolution and they're faced with some concept of God and they haven't heard that maybe the God is bigger than we can imagine and can actually love us when we stink. And then the people go, "I don't wanna know a God." And they do this all over again. And look, in my field in science, if you start to talk about creation, what they're basically going to do, because they either know that there's something and they're uncomfortable about a designer and what do they wanna do? They avoid or they attack. And what do we do these days? We cancel or we attack by either attacking the person or attacking, often they can't attack the ideas because you cannot refute any of this information. And they'll basically go, "Well, I don't care anyway." Or, "You are wrong", or, "I don't like you." Or they'll laugh and they'll mock and they'll change the subject and they don't want to know. So mostly, we just get on with our jobs and we don't tell people about this information. But it's really fascinating to know it because what do you think would happen if you believed in evolution only? You're human, you've got purpose in life. You're taught there's no purpose. You didn't arrive for any reason, and then eventually, you're gonna die. What are you gonna do?
You mean, if I lived this evolution out for real?
Yeah, if you tried to live the evolution out for real.
Well, I've got no purpose, so I have to create my own purpose.
Yes, you will.
But is my purpose any good? It might not be any good. I suppose if I was looking at it from an evolutionary perspective and I was honestly trying to live that out, then my, I don't even know if my purpose matters. And why should my purpose matter in the scheme of things? Because nothing that is made or that exists matters. So why should I even bother having a purpose that matters? Why should I even bother having a purpose? But yet there's something inside us that draws us to a purpose. Is this a will to survive? Well, that doesn't make any sense because why should I survive when there's no purpose? And why should I even pass my genes on when there's no purpose? And why should I do any of this if there's no purpose?
No.
And so really it's, and that's much too hard, actually. So maybe why don't I just die?
Yeah.
So I suppose if I honestly live that out, there's not much, like that goes suicidal. Actually, I wonder if that's why so many young people are ending in this situation 'cause we're told we don't matter, we're told we don't have any purpose.
Yeah, yep.
And we're told that there's no point.
You're a mote in the universe and there's no purpose. And there's no one who loves you, no one created you. If you're lovable, someone might love you. But you've gotta do the work to get loved, to be loved.
But that's not my purpose, again.
No, no.
Because then I'm just trying to win somebody else's affection.
Yeah, well that's what at lot.
But then what's that gonna get me in the long run? Nothing.
And what sort of fruit do we see in people's lives?
Yeah, I suppose that's what we're doing. But yet, we don't, like people who believe evolution, when I've talked to them, they're still alive.
Yeah, they are still alive, okay.
And also they often want to have a purpose.
Yep.
Like, people who wanna save the environment.
Yeah.
Genuinely are people who wanna look out for other people, they wanna do it because it's good, because it's right. But there's no basis for them to do that. Why are they doing this?
Well, maybe that's because people have to give worth to something. They have to worship something. And giving worth is the thing basically that you focus on. We have to focus on something, otherwise we're not able to function, all over the place. And so what we land on is what we give worth to, which is what we worship and human beings have to worship something. Now, mostly if we had to invent something, we'd invent the biggest. Now, we'd like to have the best, the best celebrity. Someone who's bigger or grander or got more power or something. We go for something bigger and bigger.
Why, why do we worship this?
Why do we worship? It's funny, 'cause we are purpose driven. If there's a purpose, you have to keep going towards the purpose. But you wanna find the right purpose, the best purpose. So when people start to look for spiritual things, they go, well, let me find the right or the best or the biggest.
Where did this concept of right or best or biggest come from? Because that's not survival either.
No, it's not either, it's not evolution. So there's a lot of interesting things in our culture at the moment where there was previously, a couple of hundred years ago, everybody had a creationist mindset. Then the long ages came in and then the evolution came in and then let's get rid of God. Or there are many gods that came in and we are sort of sitting in what we call the, well, it's the post-Christian era at the moment, where some of us had a bit of a Christian upbringing. There's certainly the laws were originally based on the idea of there is a God and you are accountable to Him. And if you do the wrong thing, there will be trouble.
Also, that we are made in the image of God.
Yeah.
And therefore we have worth and purpose. That's where human rights come from in the first place.
Absolutely (indistinct).
You know, I've been to uni.
Yeah.
And I asked, 'cause they're talking about ethics and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And so just out of curiosity, I asked them where this all came from and the best they could come to was there was a document that was signed with human rights. And I was like, well why do we have human rights? And if it's survival, if it is, why can't you kill another human to survive more than them?
Exactly.
What's wrong with that?
Yeah.
And they didn't have any answers.
They don't have any answers.
Which is a problem because that means that then we don't understand even where the moral system came from if we don't have the source of the moral system.
Exactly, and it breaks down.
Yeah, yeah.
So we see people's lives become purposeless and people do things either to avoid pain or give pleasure. And when it's too hard, they give up. And then we also have people who have this desire to do good.
Yeah.
And then they find something to do good with. And at the moment, I think we're seeing almost a concept of the greatest good is going to win over everything else. It's interesting that.
Where does that come from?
I don't know, it's very interesting that there's a one thing, even the people who don't believe in anything religious, they go, well this is the good that I think is right. And then they try and get rid of everybody else who doesn't agree with them.
Well, that's not.
Which is almost saying there is purpose. There is one thing. If it was random and it didn't matter, well then we wouldn't be fighting. It wouldn't matter.
Yep.
But we fight over ideas because we humans want the best, the right idea. Now we might be, might differ about what that is, but when people are arguing, they're saying, this is what I want. Another one says, this is what I want. Why do we want anything anyway? If we are just, if it's just evolution, why would we have a want?
Yeah.
No, so it's when you really try and say, okay, if I was completely honest as an evolutionist, you wouldn't be able to live in a society that we have.
What we've just been talking about, we've been looking at this through a evolutionary worldview. And it's really dark.
Yeah.
What's the alternative? What alternatives do we have?
Whatever alternative you're gonna come up with doesn't come from yourself. It's gotta come from outside. Because evolution says I am all that matters. And if I get to the point where I'm stuck in a pit, I'm gonna need some help from above, basically.
Okay, so you can't go to other humans because they're on the same sort of.
Unless the other humans have been out of the pit and are gonna help rescue you out of the pit.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay, so you're saying we need to seek help from something higher than us, something higher than our intelligence.
Yeah, and most of us have got that. We've done that at some stage.
Right.
Most of us have been to the stage of going, well, I'm a mote in the universe and that's nothing and that's scary. Why should I even exist? And for a while, we can be going and setting out our own goals and chasing after, you know, fame, pleasure, money, celebrity, all sorts of things that people, or doing good or all sorts of things that we go looking for. But eventually, we get to the end of those things.
Mm.
And throughout my life, my career, I've seen many people get to the point. People try drugs and it keeps, that means I don't have to face the pain. And eventually they say, and it's that wonderful question, And how's that working for you?
Oh.
Okay, and God said that to me once, it's basically Di, you're running your own life here and it seems to be doing okay. But on the other hand, how's that really working out for you?
Oh, yeah.
And I see young people who have lost hope. And I say, "You know what? What are you here for? What do you really wanna do with your life? What's your legacy if when you get to the end of your life, you looked back and what do you want people to say about you? What was the whole point?" All we have to do with our life is trade our time for something. And what we like to do, as I said, I'm pretty sure we are goal directed. We like a bargain, we like something good value for our time. And I say to young people, "Have you had a thought about what is your life gonna count for? What do you wanna build?" And I think the best good feeling we ever get is when we achieve a goal that our tribe values and we are doing something as a team, we become bigger than ourselves, greater than ourselves. Because particularly if we've created something that goes on without us. And so we can be in a little one perspective here, and I'm myself and that is so tiny. And if you don't agree with that, you are deluding yourself. You're dreaming. And then we say, I wanna be part of something bigger. And then we find a tribe. And there are lots of tribes out there with lots of ideas. They say, "Come and join us and you will be happy." And then most people get to the point of going, well, but I'm gonna die at some point. What happens then?
Yeah.
Now if it's evolution, it's basically, I don't know there's a God. I know there's not a God. When I die, who cares? I don't know. Well.
That's a big gamble.
That's a big one. That is a big gamble. On the other hand, if they go looking, the interesting thing is you look at your brain and you go, this was actually designed by the most super intelligent personality we could even imagine. And for purpose, for communication, for relationship, to be loved. Funny, I wonder if he has a phone number. Yeah, and yet most people get to the point of crying out to God and they go, "Hello, is there anybody up there?"
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And what we tend to find is if people really mean it, something happens. And you and I have heard many stories of people who got to the end of themselves, which is, they say that's where, you know, when you're at the end of your rope, that's when God steps in. But He is not a bully. He won't step in until you want Him. And if you don't want Him, He'll say, fine, I'm knocking on the door, but you know, I'm not gonna invade, you don't want me. He wanted to create children who would love Him and be part of His creative endeavor, not robots.
Right.
Now a robot starts somewhere, doesn't matter where it's going, it doesn't need to know where it's going. Humans, we start somewhere. We won't go anywhere unless we have some concept of where we're going.
Right.
Which is in the image of the designer. And generally what I say to people is ask.
Yeah.
You know, ask Jesus, literally. And I've looked at different religions and come to the conclusion that the one who has, you know, the only one that counts is Jesus, who is the designer in a human form. Now that does my mind. It took me a long time to get my head around that. That's another story for another time. But if you will actually ask and maybe even read the Bible, 'cause He said He wrote that as a instruction manual of how to live the best life. Stuff happens. And it's amazing. You know, I've worked with people, I worked with a lot of people who were non-Christian, who were evolutionized. And one of the biggest compliments I had was a lady who'd rung up and said to the receptionist, "I've seen she's a Christian, I don't want anything to do with religion."
Oh.
And so they'd written on her file, don't mention religion. And I thought, I'm so privileged that she came because she wanted help. And she was prepared to trust herself that a person who's clearly Christian and hopefully religious, not in the, you know, legalistic way, that I would be kind to her and not shove down her throat something that had previously obviously traumatized her. And no, I didn't mention anything with religion 'cause that would've hurt her. But the very fact that she had, she'd trusted me enough to say, "I wanna come and talk to you about the thing that I work in, but please don't hurt me in this way, I can't handle it." And I was just so impressed. I was like, so I, yeah, it's lovely working with Christians but with non-Christians, that was a real gift to me. I just love that. Anyway, Christians are, in a way, we are on the same page. If I'm working with Christian people, I'm not doing this alone. They already have met God. God has sent them to me. And I literally pray, send me people that I can help and keep away from me people I would make worse.
Yes.
And so when they come, I assume they're meant to be there. And I often say to them, "Well, why don't you ask God why you're here." And people go, "Ooh, okay." And then they close their eyes and oh, I've got this memory of something I didn't realize. Oh I didn't want to talk about, and that's where they're usually stuck. And we go there and then I go, "Well, ask God what went wrong and what you think about it and why it's causing trouble." And I do most of my work with Christians by asking questions. Sure, I give a lot of information about the brain, that's fun. But mostly what they wanna do is connect with where the solutions really are.
Yep.
And then I would say sometimes, you know, people say, "Can you pray for me?" I don't normally ask unless I know that they want that. And if they ask to be prayed for, I go, "Okay, well what do you want God to help you with?" And then they go, "I'd like blah, blah, blah." I said, "Well, do you think you could ask Him yourself?" Oh, okay, well that is prayer. I'm not a priest, I'm not a person in between the God and the person.
Yeah.
That's what priests do. But interestingly, as Christians, our job is to help people get to talk to God themselves.
Yes.
Completely. And we have that sort of priest-like role. A priest just connects the supernatural with the divine. There's all sorts of, this is the concept, not the, you know, not the title. And so what I do is I say, "Would you like to talk to God about that thing you're worried about?" And they go, oh, okay. I say, "Well by the way, He probably sees you like a toddler. You don't have to have big, fancy words or anything. If you send up little arrow prayers and if He tells you to do something, He knows He's gonna have to tell you 500 times as you do with a toddler anyway." And they go, "Oh, does God see me as a toddler?" Yeah, of course He does.
Well, He's that big.
He's that big, totally. And so I would say to people, "Ask God for what you want." And they ask Him and I say, "Great, you've sent a, you know, texted to God and you've put a message on His answering machine." And then I say, "Why don't you wait and maybe close your eyes and just let it happen and just see if there's anything gonna come back." And if they've already connected with Him, it's like they've got a, you know, Holy Spirit's a bit like a mobile phone, if you like. You can text to God and then you get something back and you don't like it. So you know, as we often do, finally, oh, okay, fine, I'll answer that message. You know, (indistinct).
God's very patient.
He's totally patient. And often people go, "Oh, I got something." If they are Christian and they know the Bible, I'd say, "Well, ask Him for a Bible verse 'cause that's His messages to you." It's like, open the manual and read the issue that the problem is. And they often go that, oh, I didn't realize, ah, He's with me or I feel safe or it's something encouraging.
What about people who aren't sure about God, who don't know Him yet, or maybe who haven't met Him personally? What would you say to those people who are still dealing with God as a concept rather than someone they've met?
Okay, most of the people I meet who come through the schooling system, which they're just taught evolution, they don't even have a concept of God. They're not looking for a God.
Oh.
Okay, so they're, but they're looking for something bigger than themselves, something supernatural. Natural is themselves and what's in their world and supernatural is something bigger than them. And we are all.
Above.
There's, you know, eternity is in the hearts of man, we are all looking for something. And I would normally invite a person to say, go look, have a look. Rather than here's my answer, here's what I've found. Well, I went through lots of journeys to find where I believe I am. But I would say it's okay to look, it's okay to ask God, you know, cry out, "God, are you there?" And that usually is what happens. And then God shows in some way and the people go, oh gosh. And then they go, "Oh, I didn't realize you were there all the time." Yeah, well that's fine. But if a person has been turned off God, and that's a lot of people we meet.
Yes.
They have the wrong concept. They haven't been taught, they have been taught something bad and they're frightened. Like the lady who said don't deal with religion, well, clearly that's an issue of trauma there. And so we are kind to them. And I think, you know, if you're an ex-smoker, you want everybody to be a person who doesn't smoke. And I think when people are Christians they go, "Oh look, I found something amazing. I'd like you to know about it." But so does every other religion, every other ism, every other, let's save the world in any particular way. There's a lot of things and I think that's great. And if people have that, if they go looking, they will find. The people that worry me more are
The people who aren't looking, who don't care, who say, "I've made my decision." Or a friend of ours went to a creationist conference where I, the first one I went to, I'm going, "Oh my goodness, this information, why wasn't I told this when I was really looking as a teenager, when I wanted to know what life was all about?" And we had a friend who came along and heard all of this information from lots of different areas. And I said, "Oh, I thought he might wanna become a Christian." And he's going, "No, I can't fault any of it. No, I'm not looking, not interested."
And if they're not interested, just be friends. Don't bring it up. If they don't wanna bring it up, you don't bring it up. But they know about it, and if there's a time when they have a need and they'd like to know, they will ask. And you be kind about that and just, you know, basically just probably pray that they will know that God is there for them.
"True, God often introduces Himself, usually we can't find Him when we're busy doing this."
"No, we can't."
"We have to first look for Him and then meet Him personally."
And I trained in Christian counseling and one thing we were taught, which took a great weight off my shoulders, was you are not the Messiah. You are not the one who saves people. You can't do that. All you can do is bring your friends to the Messiah and you might have to clear away some tiles in the roof to get the person to the Messiah if that's the case. So what we do is we try and get rid of the obstacles.
"Yeah."
"Because if God wants to meet a person, they will meet, they will meet. And he wants to meet them more than I want them to meet. So if I don't get anxious about it and go, it's fine. I just go along my path and if people are interested, I'll tell them. What does it tell people, for the hope, the reasons for the hope that we have with gentleness and respect. And if, you know, a friend of mine who said, "I don't wanna know about that stuff," I'm going, "Fine." Let's just talk about something that we can have relationship without something that's gonna get in the way."
"There you go, all right."
"[Dr. Dianne] Okay."
"So basically our goal here is to talk about the hope. Why do we have a hope in a world that has none? Why do we have a hope in a world that is evolutionary-minded and believes there is no purpose but yet lives as if they have a purpose? And then why do we live with a purpose? Why do we know?"
"Because we've met the super intelligent designer from outside the universe who made the universe."
"[Interviewer] Yep."
"Who made us and our brains to connect, to receive, and to be in relationship with and ultimately to be with Him forever."
"And that's something that's really worthwhile looking for."
"And that's something that's really worthwhile, yeah."
"Nice, thanks, Di. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. I really enjoyed it. So you're basically saying that if people don't wanna know about God, it's okay."
"Be kind to them."
"[Interviewer] You can let them be."
"[Dr. Dianne] Yeah."
"But if they do want to know about God, we need to give them some options that they can look into."
"[Dr. Dianne] Yeah."
"To see the reason why we believe what we believe and if it's a valid process to consider. And so we've got this magazine here."
"Yeah."
"I'll just hold it up so people can see."
"Yeah."
"It's "Creation" magazine. Can you tell me what you were saying earlier about this magazine and how it impacted you?"
"Okay, so started off, I started off by rejecting what I saw was religion in a church. Then I became an evolutionist and I believed all this stuff. And then I thought there must be something more. And I went looking for what is the supernatural thing. And then I was surprised to meet Jesus. I really wasn't expecting, was a bit ticked off to find out He was who He was. Then I found out He wasn't who I thought He was. However, coming from a scientific background, I assumed my friends would think I'd thrown my brains out and I needed some evidence. And Creation Ministries, particularly the "Creation" magazine was, is just brilliant so I could see the evidence. So I then knew that evolution didn't exist. And I know someone who said, "I've learned too much about creation, I've learned too much about the trucks you can drive through the holes in the theory of evolution. I might wander away from God, but I can never disbelieve who He is." And that friend of mine came back, you know, who had a Christian upbringing, learned all this stuff, thoroughly knows creation versus evolution and is now back, yeah, on fire for God. Which is great."
"[Interviewer] Wow."
"And you see the fruit of people's lives when they are back in, you know, they're doing what they're meant to do, what they were created to do and to be and they just thrive and it's good. So "Creation" magazine is worth having a look at. And look, if you've got friends who are interested, they might have a look, they might not. And if they do, that's great. And if they don't, that's their choice too. Because they were made with free will by a God who loves them."
"Correct, thank you so much, Di. Really appreciate it."
"Thanks. (upbeat music)"