Roger Marsh: Welcome to Family Talk, with your host, psychologist and best-selling author, Dr. James Dobson. He's the voice you trust for the family you love. I'm Roger Marsh, and today, we have a real treat for you. Dr. Del Tackett will be joining Dr. Dobson once again to continue their conversation about Dr. Tackett's 2017 film called, Is Genesis History? As you'll hear in today's interview, Is Genesis History? is more than a documentary film. And by the way, if you haven't done so already, you should stream it. Just search for, "Is Genesis History? film." This thought-provoking movie can be the first step on a journey toward understanding the history of the earth according to the Book of Genesis for you and your family to enjoy.
In this project, Dr. Tackett travels across the continent with over a dozen scientists and scholars investigating fascinating evidence for the creation and the flood. Now, before we go to today's exciting interview, let me introduce Dr. Dobson's respected guest. Dr. Del Tackett is the creator of the worldview curriculum called the Truth Project. Previously, he served more than 20 years as an officer in the United States Air Force. He holds three earned degrees, a bachelor of science from Kansas State University, a master of science from Auburn University, and he earned his doctorate in management from Colorado Technical University. Dr. Tackett is also the creator of The Engagement Project, which is his most recent worldview curriculum for small groups. Dr. Tackett and his wife, Melissa, have four grown children and they make their home in Colorado.
Well, with no further ado, here now once again is Dr. James Dobson with his special guest, Dr. Del Tackett, as they continue their classic conversation right here on Family Talk.
Dr. James Dobson: So, the question is, is Genesis history? At the end of the program last time, we were about to talk about the flood, Noah and the flood. And really to the rational mind, that seems impossible, one man building an arc. How many years, 100 years, 130 years?
Dr. Del Tackett: Could be 100, maybe 120.
Dr. James Dobson: That he worked on it and getting all species involved into the arc and feeding him for that... The whole thing seems a little spooky. I don't mean that disrespectfully.
Dr. Del Tackett: Sure. Right.
Dr. James Dobson: But we know that the Bible is truth. It says it, I believe it. That's the end of it. Explain why the flood is so important in the understanding.
Dr. Del Tackett: Well, it's critical just in the same way we were talking last time about how Paul is referring to the one man, Adam. I would start with what Peter refers to when he says that there will be scoffers that will come and they will say, "Where's the promise of His coming?" And then Peter then lays out the argument where he says it escapes their notice. And in the Greek, it implies that they willfully unnoticed, they willfully unnoticed that God destroyed the world with water. And therefore, then Peter says, because they unnoticed that, because they deny that, I call it putting a tarp over the evidence that God destroyed the world with a flood, they therefore miss, as Peter is putting together, says that God is going to destroy it with fire in the future.
And this to me is very, very critical and why the flood is critical. Because if you deny that, then you'll have a tendency to deny that God is going to bring judgment again and He's going to bring judgment with fire. So this whole notion about the Noahic flood is not just some pretty little story back there that you can believe, or you cannot believe, it's no big deal. Peter, I think puts it right in the midst of one's understanding of the judgment of God and that He will judge again.
Dr. James Dobson: What did the scientists say, the skeptics especially?
Dr. Del Tackett: Well, if you look first at the skeptics, they mentioned some things that you were pointing to in the beginning, that to have a global flood with an arc that's got all the animals on it and all that kind of stuff, it sounds fanciful. And so most people have then at least said, "Well, what we're dealing with here is a local flood," If they accept any kind of a flood at all. There are some who say, "Well, it's all myth," but the scientists that we will be dealing with in the film, in Is Genesis History?, we're going to be looking at the geological evidence, for example, that I think points to the fact that the evidence of that global flood is everywhere, it's all over the world in these massive sedimentary layers that I think you can only explain through this worldwide catastrophe in which the world that was, that's what Peter calls it, the world that was. That's how drastic this was.
And I think we do a disservice for our children when we have these little children's books and we sing the song, "the rain came down and the floods came up," as if the world just got soaked. Well, that's not what the Scripture says. The fountains of the deep broke open. This could well have not only involved some underground reservoirs, but most likely involved the breaking up of magma as the crust broke open. And we're now dealing with a global catastrophe beyond which I think we cannot even fathom it, but it was a catastrophe that ground the crust of the earth up. And then in this tsunami beyond belief, deposited those sedimentary layers, burying the creatures in those sedimentary layers from which we get the fossils.
So anyway, I get carried away because I love this, and I know you do because you have a scientific mind as well. I enjoyed meeting with these scientists in the field. We went down into the Grand Canyon, we looked at the layers, we looked at the nautiloid fossils. And those were the things that we're trying to lay before people to say, "Look, there's evidence here that what God told us really happened." Most creation geologists, creation scientists would agree that when God destroyed the earth with a flood, that is when we got this huge tectonic plate movement. And that's when we get the rise of these huge mountains, but even so, there's enough volume of water.
I figured this out by myself one time. I figured the volume of water that is on the earth right now, the world is mostly covered with water. The volume of water that we have right now, if the world were a cue ball, that water would be, if I've got my figures I remember... So anyways, like 5,000 feet, almost a mile deep. So most people don't realize just how much water there is right now on the earth. I think there is plenty enough water to cover the mountains at that time.
Dr. James Dobson: And the fossils are the residue of that catastrophic event.
Dr. Del Tackett: Yes, that's what I believe. That's what these paleontologists and the other people that we interview in the film. We look at those fossils, we looked at the soft dinosaur tissue in a lab in Arizona. It was fascinating to me, I got a chance to hold it, to look at it. Their perspective is that when God destroyed the world, He also said He was going to destroy all life with breath in it. And that is why He had to save Noah and His children, and the various kinds that would repopulate the world. And most people don't realize that or understand that you didn't need to have all the wolves, and foxes, and dogs. You only needed the dog kind, one pair of dog kind because they carry the genetics for all of those creatures.
But God destroyed even the animal life in that flood, and that's what we find. In reality, the sedimentary layers all over the world are a mass graveyard filled with fossils of all of these creatures that were destroyed in that flood. And quite frankly, it's the only way you can really come up with fossils. Because I mean, I grew up on a farm. If a rabbit dies and falls on the ground, it's not going to fossilize, it's going to be preyed on and rot. And so you have to have special conditions for that. And we believe that was the flood.
Dr. James Dobson: Was this a risky project for you to enter into? Are you going pay a price for saying these things? Are you not going to be seen as one of those creationist crazies that, and I'm referring not to the way I characterize them.
Dr. Del Tackett: Sure, I understand.
Dr. James Dobson: But what's that mean for you personally?
Dr. Del Tackett: Well, it's a very important question and comment because I had a number of people caution me before I did the film when they heard that I was going to do it. They cautioned me because they didn't want me to be then lumped in with all of these unscientific, stupid, ignorant creation wackos. But I guess, quite frankly, I am one. I don't think I'm a wacko and I do think that sometimes the rhetoric has not been Christlike on both sides. Often people who hold to a young earth near time, as I call it, have had a tendency to point to Christians who hold to an old earth and say, "You're unbiblical." And oftentimes people who hold to the old earth point to the young earth people and say, "You're idiots, you're stupid and unscientific." But I believe the issues are so great, especially as what we've been talking about.
We're talking about losing Adam, we're talking about losing the concept of original sin, we're talking about losing the promise of the gospel in the garden, we're talking about losing the reality of a God who judges, a Holy God who judges sin in a horrific way, and He will do it again. We're in danger of wiping all of that out when we say, "Oh, Genesis is just metaphor. It's just simile, it's just poetry." And it was so important to me that I'm willing to be called crazy. And you know what, Dr. Dobson? You've been called crazy.
Dr. James Dobson: I have.
Dr. Del Tackett: And you have not been willing to walk away from what God has called you to hold true to the Scripture. And I'm following your footsteps here. It is so important to me to hold true to the Word of God, that I quite frankly don't care if people think I'm a little loony.
Dr. James Dobson: It's an honor to carry the banner, it's an honor to stand up for what you believe. And if people don't agree with you and then live it and give it to the Lord, because this comes out of His Word. I believe in His Word, I believe in the validity of it, and the applicability to my life and the lives of those I love, but if you begin to tamper with it, you don't know where to stop.
Dr. Del Tackett: Right.
Dr. James Dobson: I mean, look at the foundation for marriage, which is found right in Genesis two.
Dr. Del Tackett: Yes.
Dr. James Dobson: And where we read the words that for this cause a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife and the two shall be one flesh. Is that gone too? Did marriage start there, or did it evolve, or did that come from the creator Himself? And if you say it did not come from God, what do you do with the metaphor between Christ and the Church, which is marriage? I mean, it's all linked together.
Dr. Del Tackett: It's all linked together. And it's all linked together because of the exquisite truth of God. And I mean, you've been fighting, Dr. Dobson, practically your whole life for the family, and yet it's rooted there. We live in a culture today that doesn't want it to be rooted in anything. We live in a culture that even wants to do away with the notion of male and female.
Dr. James Dobson: That's breathtaking.
Dr. Del Tackett: It is breathtaking, but you know that's happening. And so, this is the criticality of looking at the Word of God and believing that historically it is correct, and that God is the one who created male, He's the one who created female, He's the one who brought the male and the female together. And He was the one who said, "Now, you go be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth." And it brought a blessing with it. But when you deny that, and we have a tendency to deny the Scripture whenever it bumps into our own desire, but that doesn't lead to good things. And you know that, and I know that as well, all we do is look across our nation and see what happens when we walk away from the absolute truth of God's Word.
Dr. James Dobson: And that's where we're going, because there is no other truth.
Dr. Del Tackett: There is no-
Dr. James Dobson: This is the truth project.
Dr. Del Tackett: That's right. Well, that's why we did that as well. And that's my desire, I know that's your desire as well. I pray every Tuesday, I'm on my knees praying for that one thing that God would bring repentance to this nation, that He would bring us to our knees in repentance, that we would turn again and gaze upon the face of the God who has blessed us so deeply for so many years.
Dr. James Dobson: The only aspect of all this that we're talking about that I think I have to acknowledge is that God is sovereign and we can't even begin to grasp who He is and how He did all the things that He did.
Dr. Del Tackett: Certainly.
Dr. James Dobson: And I mentioned to you at our lunch together that we see through a glass darkly. We don't know it all and we won't know it until we get to the other side, and then we will know even as we are known, but there are aspects of what took place there in Genesis that we don't comprehend and can't explain.
Dr. Del Tackett: And that's really true.
Dr. James Dobson: So, what I'm arguing for is not to simplify the Genesis to recognize its validity, but also recognize that there are aspects to it that haven't been revealed to us.
Dr. Del Tackett: And you know what? I agree with that because we are looking at a miracle. I mean, for those who hold to the historical reading of Genesis, that God is the one who spoke and everything came into being. And then there is one of the great understatements of the Scriptures, and He made the stars also. He is the one, He is the God who is so omnipotent, He is so powerful, He is so mighty that He can speak. Jesus was the one who took the water at the wedding at Cana, and He turned that instantly into wine. And if you'd been the little winemaker standing there, you would've looked at it and said, "Well, I can do that, but give me 30 years to do that." And yet, we're faced with a miracle that cannot be understood and cannot be examined physically. I don't think you could have examined the wine that Jesus made at the wedding and come up through naturalistic scientific processes to determine that Jesus had turned that water into wine.
Dr. James Dobson: And you start trying to explain them away and you look foolish.
Dr. Del Tackett: You surely do. And I don't think any of us can really sit down and come up with a physical, natural way that Jesus rose from the dead. It was a miracle. God performed that miracle. And I think what we see in the first part of the passage in Genesis is the miraculous hand of God, the Word of God at work. And certainly there is a limit to our ability through natural means to be able to try and understand that.
Dr. James Dobson: There is so much scientific truth in the Bible and we gloss over it, we don't even read it, we don't understand it when we do read it. For example, in Isaiah, it says, "He sits above the orb of the earth." How did Columbus, if he did, and others before him, see the world as flat? You find out right there that it's an orb or a sphere.
Dr. Del Tackett: Yes. Yep.
Dr. James Dobson: And it's right in front of us, but we miss it.
Dr. Del Tackett: Yeah, we miss it because we haven't gotten the ability to see as much. And now we see it from the moon.
Dr. James Dobson: And still don't believe it.
Dr. Del Tackett: Some people don't believe it as well, but that brings up a great point because some of the things we deal with in this film, we're dealing with microbiologists. And we're looking at the amazing things, these little machines that we're finding now within the living cell. In fact, I was just with one scientist, we were filming him at Lipscomb University. He's working in cancer research. And there are these little tiny machines that we now know exist doing a remarkable work. Dr. Crick, when they discovered DNA, DNA has that coiled feature to it. And he knew that that had to be unwound in order for the cell to replicate. And he knew that that would cause problems because it would supercoil. Just if you had a rope, two ropes, and coiled, and you pull it apart, it's like your telephone cord.
And he knew that something had to compensate for this, he just didn't know what it was. Well, now we know it's these little machines, these topoisomerase machines that come out of nowhere when the cell's ready to replicate and they attach to the DNA at the right place, they clip the DNA, unwind it, the replication occurs. And after it's over, it winds it back up and melts the thing together. And then the little machine goes off somewhere else. I mean, how in the world, can anyone look at that and not be in awe at the exquisite complexity of the little tiny things in the middle of a living cell? And how can anyone think that all occurred as a result of random processes?
Dr. James Dobson: You know, Del, I was sitting in a physician's office not too long ago, I had a problem with my foot. And he stepped out of the room for a minute, the examining room. And I picked up a plastic model of the skeletal structure of the leg and foot. And I just stood there marveling. And I mean, I wish I could say right now, how many separate bones there are in the foot, many people listening to us will know, but how did they all get there? They're all the right size, they fit, and they hold up a 200-pound man. And I just sat there and said, "This physician who spent his life studying the bones of the body and even the foot, what I'm looking at here, don't see the wisdom of the design-"
Dr. Del Tackett: That's right.
Dr. James Dobson: "That was put into every cell, every dimension of the human body." It's just, it's foolishness.
Dr. Del Tackett: The great passage in Job that says, "But ask the animals and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you, or the fish or the sea." And then it says, "Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?" And that's the remarkable thing that God has given us, the ability to do now in the scientific capabilities that we have to be able to look into the little cell, for example, and to see these amazing things. It's the Psalm said, "The heavens declare the glory of God." And that's true, but now you can say the little machines declare the glory of God as well.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, Del, we're almost out of time. Let's talk about your film.
Dr. Del Tackett: Well, there's going to be some training and teaching elements that will be developed to help people if they want to dive down deeper into any one of these areas, so we'll give links to these scientists and some of their articles and research papers, so that'll let people go as deep as they want to.
Dr. James Dobson: The film is going to show what?
Dr. Del Tackett: It's going to show basically me meeting with scientists, Mount St. Helens, scuba diving at St. Thomas, walking down into the Grand Canyon, at the zoo, a dinosaur dig in Hansen Ranch in Wyoming, traveling all over. Meeting with these scientists, incredibly smart scientists, and looking at that evidence in the field that we believe supports the fact that Genesis is history.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, we're proud of you.
Dr. Del Tackett: Well, thank you.
Dr. James Dobson: And thank God for you. You love the Lord. I see it in your eyes, I see it in everything that you do, Del. And I thank you for your friendship to me and for the years that we worked together. And now, it's fun watching what God's doing with you.
Dr. Del Tackett: Well, Dr. Dobson, I have to reply to that because I have enjoyed my time working with you, you have been an inspiration, not only to me, but to millions of people all over the world and I thank you for that.
Dr. James Dobson: God be with you in the days ahead.
Dr. Del Tackett: Thank you, sir. God bless.
Roger Marsh: Well, that was a touching conclusion to Dr. Dobson's two-part classic interview with Dr. Del Tackett. For the past couple of days here on Family Talk, these colleagues and friends have been discussing Dr. Tackett's 2017 documentary film called, Is Genesis History? If your curiosity was peaked and you'd like to check out Del's film, remember you can find information on how to watch it when you visit drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. And Del is actually in the fundraising stage of production for the sequel to Is Genesis History? Again, you can learn about that project as well as Del's many other ministry endeavors when you visit drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. Or if you'd prefer, feel free to give us a call at (877) 732-6825. That's (877) 732-6825.
And as a reminder, Dr. Tackett has been partnering with our team here at the JDFI to create short, valuable videos that we're calling "Worldview Moments." In these videos, Dr. Tackett addresses relevant, important worldview topics in an accessible and easy to understand format. To watch these worldview moments, please visit drjamesdobson.org/deltackett. That's drjamesdobson.org/deltackett. You will not be disappointed.
For the entire month of July here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we've been partnering with best-selling author, Shaunti Feldhahn to provide Shaunti's popular 30-day Kindness Challenge to our listeners. For 30 days, participants will practice real, tangible kindness toward one person who they want to improve their relationship with, and they'll be guided every step of the way. Now, just because we're nearing the end of the month does not mean that it's too late to join. You can actually start any time, so sign up for the free 30-day Kindness Challenge today by visiting drjamesdobson.org/kindnesschallenge.
When you sign up, you'll receive an email with all the details about the challenge, and then for the next 30 days in a row, you'll get daily emails with tips and advice for how you can become more kind. Sign up now at Dr. James drjamesdobson.org/kindnesschallenge.
Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks so much for keeping Family Talk in your prayers. Remember, without your constant support, we would not have the privilege of standing up for righteousness and encouraging families in the culture. I'm Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, may the Lord continue to richly bless you and your family as you grow deeper in your relationship with Him.
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