Unraveling The Truth: Christian Faith Meets the Alien Debate

Dive into the depths of faith and extraterrestrial inquiry like never before! In our latest episode as we tackle the stimulating topic of whether the presence of aliens challenges or enriches our conception of Christianity. With guest James Allerton joining hosts Joe Landry and Laurie Oldford, the discussion takes a profound turn, contemplating Biblical narratives alongside the search for extraterrestrial life. 

We peel back the layers, exploring how various belief systems interpret divine encounters and the foundations of faith. With probing questions like, “Is it unchristian to believe in aliens?” and "Are there insights in scripture pertaining to other forms of life?", we engage in a lively discussion that critiques and fosters understanding. This episode isn't just a theological debate; it merges the ancient with the contemporary, inviting you to think differently about the narratives that shape our beliefs. 

Through reflections on the recent viral debate between noted scholars WEs Huff and Billy Carson, we delve into the realization that faith, while rooted in traditional texts, is not a closed system. It evolves, poses questions, and engages with today’s inquiries. Listen as we explore the fascinating world of ancient narratives, theological discourse, and the thrill of seeking truth beyond borders. As we touch upon exciting intersections of history, theology, and the prospect of alien life, prepare to be intrigued and challenged—everyone's belief system can be enriched through open dialogue. 

Join us on this intellectual journey where we ponder life, existence, and everything in between, igniting your curiosity and encouraging you to explore your own beliefs. Don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave us a review to help uncover the truth about what lies beyond!

"Space Journey" by Geoff Harvey
Copyright © 2021 Melody Loops LP
Full License Royalty-Free Music 
https://www.melodyloops.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Statements by The Hosts
• 3:44 Interplay of Religion and Paranormal Encounters
• 11:29 Christianity and the Supernatural: A Yearning for the Unknown
• 21:14 Guest Introduction: James Allerton
• 25:59 The Debate: Huff vs. Carson and Its Implications
• 36:44 Examining Scripture’s View on Extraterrestrial Life
• 45:59 Dinosaur Discussions: Bridging Religion and Science
• 56:29 The Role of Faith in Understanding Alien Life
• 1:05:59 Conclusion: Faith, Science, and the Search for Truth

Transcript

Joe: 1:01

Hello everybody, thank you for joining us on Alien Talk Podcast. This is the show where we discuss all things about aliens and UFOs and, as always, where we push the limits of our understanding. We are Joe Landry and Laurie Oldford, here once again to seek out the truth and search for the facts pertaining to the highly discussed issues about extraterrestrial life, the presence of UFOs and perhaps even the very meaning of life. And that is not to imply that those three are somehow mutually inclusive. They are not. So you've all heard us, on this show, examine the important interplay that we seem to find within the substance of religion as it ties into Western cultural narratives of what would be called paranormal encounters, particularly those about alien contact.

Joe: 1:48

Today, we want to explore the connection that exists at the very substratum of our collective psyche between our beliefs in the form of individual expressions of faith, and that which is more experiential in the way of a tangible reality, such as through something like the witnessing of a miracle. More succinctly, we would like to discuss how something like Christianity may unveil an innate drive within us to seek the supernatural, a yearning to find within our own minds that which is unknown, and to genuinely ask if it truly does explain how and why we all ponder ideas like the nature of our being, the purpose of our physical existence and the essence of a transcendent and eminent God. We also want to ask the questions that many believers have about alien life. Do the scriptures say anything about it? Is it unchristian to believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe? Would the existence of other sentient life forms on other planets preclude the doctrines of sin, salvation and sanctification? What are the connections and analogies between the stories of alien encounters and divine encounters?

Laurie: 2:56

Yeah, joe, of course we have alluded many times to how you and I, you know, we were brought up in the faith and how we spent our lives with being involved with Christianity and the church and the study of the Bible. And, you know, part of the reason that we started this podcast four years ago now was to help explain how all of this fits into a much bigger picture and, you know, to help people understand that to be religious or to be a person of faith in general, or to be a Christian doesn't mean you. You know you close out other ways of thinking, even if they seem to challenge what you have always accepted as the truth, by juxtaposing it with other possible models of knowledge, reality, the universe. What have you, and kind of doing comparative analysis, especially with regard to discoveries made that support the ancient alien theory? And the questions that inevitably get raised are ones such as you know is there a parallel to it with religious dogma? Do all of humanity's belief systems originate from our collective memory about the scriptural narratives? Obviously, we know that our ancestors described God and gods with the lowercase g as dwelling above us, both figuratively and literally. Is that because of a connection to the extraterrestrial encounters in the distant past, or is it because of something altogether different, different?

Laurie: 4:40

So for tonight's discussion, we are pleased to have with us a very special guest, a special friend of ours, who, like us, is of strong religious background and who, like us, also served in various capacities of Christian ministry. In fact, he is still active in the pastoral services. I believe he is a chaplain for many of the local first responder agencies here in southern Arizona police, fire, paramedics and he is part of a local agency here, now that actually he and I work at the same agency and you know. So with that, we would like to introduce James Allerton. I don't know, james, if you're referred to also as reverend pastor or whatever, but welcome to Alien Talk podcast.

James: 5:35

Thank you. Technically it could be reverend, but I prefer James. And thank you so much for inviting me on, just for your audience. I have known these guys well, lori for nearly 20 years now and Joe for just a little bit less than that. I've literally gone through doors with them. I was just thinking of a couple calls that I've been on with Joe I think it was after I was, when I was temporarily reassigned to patrol and he and I patrolled together for a good while. And, lori, I've known that if your audience doesn't know, that was, I'm using law enforcement code words, so I may have given away your secret if you're both undercover right now. Sorry about that. No, we're not. We've served in law enforcement together. Consider these guys. Brothers, I'm super excited that you invited me on because one they know.

James: 6:32

Both of you gentlemen know that I have a great deal of faith in my beliefs. But we've seen people with faith before that refuse to listen to others, refuse to tackle questions, refuse to hold up what they believe against what other people believe, and it's not healthy. If you truly think that what you believe is true, you should be able to be open to discuss it, be open to say that. Well, here's what I believe and here's why. And if we disagree? Here's what I believe and here's why. And if we disagree, that's fine. Now I'm going to endear myself to your audience a little bit because we're going to disagree and they'll probably get all mad at me, which is okay. But so I have a confession to make. I'm pretty old now, and back in the day the only thing on AM radio at night was coast to coast.

Laurie: 7:24

Yeah.

James: 7:24

The absolute only thing. So I often up late, either traveling or working listening to Art Bell in the day, and then George Norrie took over. So I'm super geeking out about this topic. I mean, as I said, I'm not going to agree with most of it, but I'm super excited about it and very interested to learn what you guys understand about it and some of the things that you know about it.

James: 7:49

A little bit about my background I do have a degree from a Christian school I went to—actually it was a Pentecostal school. You guys both have a little Pentecostal background. It was Christ for the Nations. I've taken classes at Dallas Seminary and Nazarene Bible College and I got ordained with the Church of the Nazarene in 2000. So I've been doing that for a little while. What is that? 20-plus years now? But I was a pastor before that as well licensed minister. So I've been doing this for a while.

James: 8:26

A little caveat we talked about we referenced a little bit the Brian Carson-Wes Huff debate that's making all the podcast rounds and all the buzz and all. I told Lori earlier that I am definitely no Wes Huff. So you're hoping to get a super in-depth discovery of biblical texts and some of that I'm not going to have the background that he did, but you can always go listen to him if you want to hear him. I do have a little bit of background, just nowhere near that capacity. So Laurie reassured me that we're not debating. When I first heard about this I was like oh man, and you know what I thought of initially. Do you remember the information about the Scopes trial way back? It was the trial. A trial, they were talking at Clarence Darrow and actually it was a trial. Scopes was a school teacher who wanted to teach the Darwinian evolution theory and it was a big controversy at the time because of course, the country was yeah, I agree with that yes, yeah, yeah.

James: 9:37

So William Jennings Bryant, who's from my home state of Nebraska, was the one that debated on behalf of the creation model, and he did just an absolutely miserable job. Basically, his only argument was the Bible says so. What's wrong with you, heathen, pagans, which I have an implicit bias towards believing the biblical text? So I'm going to do that some, but I hope to be somewhat more reasonable with it than just. Well, the Bible says so and you guys are all wrong. So I'm looking forward to discussing this not debating it, because I'll fall miserably short but again, I'm pretty excited to talk about what I know and, more important to me, to learn what you guys know and understand.

Joe: 10:25

Okay, well, yeah, it's great to have you here and, no worries, we're old guys too. All three of us are old, yeah, you know, 30, 35 years ago, and also beginning our lives into faith 35, 40 years ago, way back to the 70s and 80s, which seems like a very long time.

James: 10:57

Oh man. So today I was on base and they're having the heritage flight and they had some F-22s there and they're talking about retiring them. They said, yeah, that plane's old. It first flew in 1991 the the the like test model. I like 1991, that's just like three years ago. What are you guys talking about?

Joe: 11:12

no, yeah, that was really before. There was even email mentioning that art bell.

Joe: 11:19

They no podcasts at the time, so that's a bit of a reach backwards in time. Like you mentioned, we both have experience in evangelism and apologetics and we, like you, have spent a lot of time studying the Bible and have sat through many sermons and lectures. I myself have only been part of the lay ministry. I've never been ordained. Lori has been part of the lay ministry. I've never been ordained. Lori has, but I have not. I grew up as a Pentecostal and also as a Catholic. My family was involved in both and my dad did become ordained as a pastor in the Assembly of God Church.

James: 11:55

Oh, okay, interesting.

Joe: 11:57

And after my parents had left it back in the 80s, I returned to Catholicism and currently I'm still with it. I still attend Sunday morning Mass with my wife and sometimes my grandkids. We drag them along when they stay with us. They love it right.

James: 12:12

You used plural for grandkids, did you?

Joe: 12:14

hear that, but the three of us here all know the difficulties faced when we attempt to comprehend the meaning behind scriptures, both from theological and historical standpoints. All three of us have read the entire thing and have studied commentaries about it, even taken classes on it, and we know that we must rely a lot on hermeneutics, on the critical interpretation of the literary devices used within the Bible, especially going back to the original Greek or Hebrew languages, that is, if we are really to be serious about studying it. So Lori and I came across that debate on a podcast. I believe it's called Elevated. You mentioned it, James, and it was put out on YouTube probably in the first week of January this year, so about two months ago now.

Joe: 13:02

It was between these two guys. Their names are Wes Huff and Billy Carson. Wes Huff is a Bible scholar, apologist, theologian, and Billy Carson is an author, a biomedical researcher and a prolific proponent of the ancient astronaut theory. Both are fairly renowned academically as experts for what they specialize in. Now this particular video on YouTube has gotten a lot of viral attention. There are about 1.5 million views just this far, and I suppose I need to add that Mark Menard was also part of it as well, since he is the host of the show and he was the moderator of that debate.

Joe: 13:42

So now the dialogue centers mostly on the validity of two positions or interpretations of biblical history, one being the fundamental Christian worldview. The other was more from the perspective of interpolating ancient texts in a way that deciphers the literary traditions as being reflections of humanity encountering, possibly encountering, extraterrestrial beings at a time long before the stories were recorded. So what we want to do is focus on the congruities, as well as the differences, between Judeo-Christianity as a way of personal faith and Judeo-Christianity as it fits into the hypotheses of ancient aliens possibly interacting or even intervening with human affairs. So, james, you said you did watch the debate between Huff and Carson Real quick. What is your take on it?

James: 14:37

My take is I mostly want to talk about dinosaurs, but we're not going to do that.

Joe: 14:43

We'll get to that.

James: 14:49

Yay about dinosaurs, but we're not going to do that. So we'll get to that Yay. So I would be much more in the camp of Mr Huff, but as far as the debate went, I think he, putting aside the arguments on either side, I think if you have to assign a winner it would definitely be him, mostly because of the way that Mr Carson behaved afterwards. I agree.

Joe: 15:09

I do agree with that I did not know how he walked off the set. That was, to me, well inappropriate and unprofessional.

James: 15:18

He's since threatened to sue both of the other two for playing the podcast and having it on and, kind of Streisand, affected it, if you're familiar with that term and made the thing just explode, which I'm super happy about because I think it brings up some critical issues for discussion that oftentimes Christian believers are afraid of that sort of thing.

James: 15:45

Honestly, it can be very confusing to look at biblical texts, to look at textual evidence, to look at hermeneutical philosophies because, well, for one, most of us just don't speak Hebrew, aramaic, greek and certainly not Akkadian or, as we all discovered, pretty much nobody does Sumerian, including Wes and most likely Billy. So, yeah, the ancient languages can be a hurdle. So I like that. It brought the topic to the forefront, if you will, of a lot of church folks. I've heard a lot of buzz about that, certainly not everyone, but I think it does address the fear in discussing that topic and the fear of you know. Well, this guy might like is there really any sort of evidence to the biblical narrative, etc. Etc. So I liked it from that perspective.

Laurie: 16:48

Well, you know, it did get a lot of attention and it did bring out a lot of Christians who were actually on the fence with the whole ancient alien theory because they had a lot of questions about it. And there's been a lot of videos that's been put out on YouTube since that debate and a lot of people have fallen back to Christianity because of it, because they saw how well Westhoff handled himself and how well he explained his position. So the major problem that I saw with the debate was the insufficient evidence. So, like West provided, to show that the Bible is historically accurate, at least enough to prove that it is inherent and infallible. But there is a difference between claiming that the text is authentic and saying that there are early fragments of New Testament manuscripts that are unaltered and date way back to the time of the beginning of Christianity, and that of claiming that the texts are accurate, reliable and they're factual.

Laurie: 17:54

So, even if we had, say, pieces of papyrus with Greek script dating all the way to the time of Jesus' life in the early first century and it is important to note that we have not as of yet found that and even if we could show that the text remains the same. After being transcribed over thousands of years, it still does not prove that what it is saying actually happened in the way that it was, you know, written down. So, for instance, like we've all come across, you know, newspaper, magazine, articles written in the past year that you know we would say, you know, give stories that are, you know, virtually untrue and the way that they written is is clearly biased toward a person or or or another issue. You know, something like with the uh, the presidential elections, like things can be embellished, and I thought you were going to go local with the uh local uh elections.

Laurie: 18:57

Yeah, well, that one too but you know, and they can be spun to, you know, to support that narrative right. So if those newspapers and say, magazine clips were to be found, say, I don't know, two thousand years from now, the readers would, you know, come across text that was, you know, composed at the time of the event and, you know, could call it authentic. Yet you know they might be remiss to claim they are, you know, accurate or factual, without basing that off of some other piece of evidence to corroborate it with. So I mean, do we need to apply the same logical methodology when you know accessing the truthfulness of? You know the biblical stories, you know, particularly when it comes to the mentioning of the supernatural or extraordinary things? You know spectacles like Jesus, you know, walking on water. Or you know Balaam's donkey, you know speaking to him in perfect Hebrew. So the question is, james, for you is do you think Christian apologists are critical and objective enough as to how the scriptures are studied? What do you think?

James: 20:20

I think that's an interesting question and the answer to that probably depends on the apologist. I do know that I don't consider myself an apologist. I don't know if I mentioned my degree was in practical theology, so almost veering more towards the way that kingdom theology, people would work, that hey, how do we make things better here on earth rather than spending all our time thinking about the future? But my theology is very evangelical and you'll be very familiar with it. But to the question do Christian apologists give careful thought to it? I think some do, but I think that there's not a lot of them in the Christian world that would consider themselves academic enough to give a lot of critical thought to it. On the other hand, I think it is becoming more important and has always been a always might be a too big of a statement, but has been an important area of study Christian apologists have been working with, well, working against, like the Q Theory from the Jesus Seminar I don't know if you remember that from 20 years ago, maybe A little more recently the Gospel of Mary came out. So I think things like that have forced some of the more traditional Christian apologetics to tighten themselves up a little bit and to look a little deeper, a little closer into things and say, hey, what's going on here? And and really it's just been this century when some of the major, uh, literary discoveries have been made up.

James: 22:17

When was it? 45? Was the Nag Hammadi, whatever jar full of?

Joe: 22:23

stuff Joe knows that one.

James: 22:27

And then the Dead Sea Scrolls were 47, I think they started coming out with those. So I think in the past century that it has been a focus that maybe it wasn't before, maybe before it was just taken on. Oh well, as I mentioned before. Well, the Bible says that we have to believe it. Well, I think the question should be is it the Bible that we received? The early church referred to it as the Textus Recepticus Like. Is this the actual Bible that we received? Is it the same words as when Paul wrote it?

James: 23:06

If you believe that it had Pauline authorship for some of the New Testament or the Synoptic Gospels, is this really synoptic? Is this really the text that was put in the Synoptic Gospels? I think there's very good arguments for it and of course, I believe it, but there's a lot of other arguments that are against it as well, and again, my arguments are fairly sophomoric. I know some of the textual criticism and some of the texts that were involved and some of the reasoning, but I can only go so deep into it. But I want to discover it more and I think this whole sort of dialogue is a good thing for that, because once again, I think Christians have been afraid to someone challenges us and help me.

Joe: 23:55

I'm melting Right I mean, like it says in 1 Peter 3.15, that you should be ready to give reason to anyone who asks you about why you believe, why you have faith. So you know, as one who was once passionately delved into apologetics, I know that at the core of argumentation for the religious thought system is to provide support for the Bible in the way of evidence right. So by doing so we're demonstrating the reliability and the truthfulness of what is found composed in it, which in turn shows that one's faith in it is, being that it is believed, what it is to be, that is, the Word of God. Hence the message, which is canon, is that the Lord is real and he is holy and he loves us and that because of Him we have the hope of eternal life through salvation. So the methodology is always centered on how to seek verifiability of the biblical narrative, or if you can show your scientific validity to something like, you know, the Genesis flood, or the existence of Solomon's temple, or the virgin birth, or else a historical basis for, say, you know, the Babylonian and later Roman rule over the Jews, or even how the places like Jerusalem and Egypt. They're geographically real and that lends credence to everything else written within its pages. I think one of the inherent flaws in such a system is that it is prone to allow one to formulate assumptions of truth, assuming that the elements of these accounts could possibly be true or be reasonably true, without them ever being demonstrated as true. And this should be the standard of evidence, much like how we find with investigating and prosecuting crimes. Under the law, everything needs to stand up against scrutiny. All three of us here are familiar with that concept from being police officers.

Joe: 25:45

If evidence can't be found, or if it simply doesn't exist, then an idea is then believed, more so on faith or less so on fact.

Joe: 25:55

Now you know, I consider how Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, 17, that if you know the dead are not raised, then Jesus Christ was not raised, and if he was not raised, then our faith is worthless and we are still in our sins. It is only fair and honest to ask how mere belief in that can make such a notion true. At face value, it is believed as faith, as there is no tangible proof that could possibly ever be provided to demonstrate that idea. Paul is obviously using a literary device to communicate in metaphorical terms. So I don't think it is insensible to ask questions about scriptures and what they are really saying to the reader. I mean, even CS Lewis had once said that an explanation of cause is not a justification by reason. Things that are believed must be analyzed if truth is to be asserted. So, james, if things like laboratory experimentation and courtroom proceedings are approached with rigor, tedium and analysis, then why should we not also approach the Bible and the gospel in the same way?

James: 27:03

No, I agree with you completely on that. I think that that has to be done. There's always going to be an element of I decide what I believe, but I think that there is a very important point you bring up is that we should be ready to examine the evidence that is there.

James: 27:22

Is there enough to make a conclusion? Some would say yes, some would say no. I think there is. I think there's substantial evidence for the veracity of the New Testament texts. The Old Testament texts are more difficult, admittedly. How do you corroborate the evidence with that? How do you corroborate what happened with that? And I'll get back to the New Testament stuff in a minute. I want to mention you mentioned 1 Peter, 3.15. I think equally important is the next verse. It says be ready to give the defense. But the next verse, very next verse, says yet do this with gentleness and reverence, keeping a clear conscience.

James: 28:09

I think it's fair to say that too often when we discuss these things, we can easily lose the gentleness and reverence and respect for one another. If someone reaches a different conclusion than me, does that mean I need to lose all respect for them and lose my mind? And I think we've all seen that swirling around religious questions. And for me, if I truly believe what the scripture says you know, be ready to give a hope. Okay, I should be ready to give a hope, but I should do that with gentleness and reverence, not just all pissed off because you don't agree with me. So I think you guys have probably seen that more than once, um, and, and so I appreciate that, uh, that we can have this dialogue and, uh, even though you think I'm probably dead wrong, and vice versa, I, I, I love having the dialogue and I think it forces me to think and hopefully it'll get some others to think as well. So your question about evidence I think there's substantial eyewitness evidence.

James: 29:19

The Synoptic Gospels, to me, are fairly substantial eyewitness evidence that has been accepted by the generation after them and the generation after them. They've said that these guys were here. This is what they said, they saw, and they corroborate one another's testimony and they corroborate one another's testimony. If we look at eyewitnesses, say, for a crime, there's going to be slight variances, there's going to be slight differences. For instance, thinking of the testimonies that all four Synoptic Gospels has about the crucifixion, all four Synoptic Gospels has about the crucifixion, if you notice, each one has a slightly different version of what the sign above Jesus' head says. One of them says behold the King of the Jews. One says behold Christ, the King of the Jews, and says it in Greek, roman and Aramaic. So slight differences.

James: 30:25

Well, those sort of slight differences are the exact sort of differences that I would expect when I'm interviewing folks after a crime. They're going to have slightly different perspectives. They're going to have things that they understand differently than the next guy. They're going to have things that I'm going to use the term agenda. They have a certain agenda. Hey, I want to push this forward, not that that's necessarily bad or denigrates the evidence, but it's hey, I want you to understand this. So it said King of the Jews, or it's said it in three languages. You need to know that.

James: 30:57

So I think slight variances are to be expected and, to me, the acceptance by the early church fathers. So it's generally accepted now that the Gospels were written first century, late first century. There was again question about that. But scholars generally agree not everyone, of course that scholars have generally agreed not everyone, of course but that it's late first century, which means that the authorship is accepted as authentic at the time and accepted as authentic by the folks that immediately followed them. So in the Christian tradition and understanding, we have the acceptance of the apostolic fathers saying that, hey, I knew that guy, he wrote that book and passed it down to us. So is that definitive evidence? I mean, that's open to discussion and interpretation.

Joe: 31:58

So jump in here real quick. You said slight differences. I would argue there are major differences in the crucifixion and resurrection narratives of the four Gospels, not even just the synoptic Gospels, but also when you look at things like Jesus' birth. There are only two stories that give the nativity, one is matthew and the other is in a luke and and they're very different. Um, in matthew you have, uh, jesus being born in the time of herod the great um, you have the, the magi um, and, by the way, it doesn't even say how many, it just says magi from the song says three it says three.

James: 32:42

The song. The song, I'm just kidding, you know the we Three Kings.

Joe: 32:46

We.

Laurie: 32:47

Three Kings.

James: 32:49

We're going to sing that before we're done today. So the three of us.

Joe: 32:52

No, the idea of three did come about, but in Matthew it only mentions Magi or Wisemen from the East and Luke. Luke has shepherds, no Magi. Luke has the census taken at the time of Caesar Augustus, when Quirinius is governor of Syria. That is not found in Matthew. In Matthew here, Herod the Great is about 10 years. He ruled about 10 years before Quirinius ruled in Palestine, in Jerusalem, in Judea. So Herod the Great died right around, say, 4 BC. His son, antiochus, came into power. He did a terrible job. The Romans didn't like how he was doing it, so they put in governors, and Quirinius was one of the governors that was put in over Syria. So this is like a 10-year difference. This would be like somebody telling the story about the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy happening during Reagan's presidency and then someone else say well, the events that happened were more during Clinton's presidency. So you know, of course, even in Luke we have the manger. We don't have the manger in Matthew. Even within the crucifixion narratives in Matthew we have the part where the stone is rolled over and then, when there's an earthquake, and then the guards get afraid and they run away, there's mention of the dead leaving the tombs and walking about the city so that everybody can see them. That's not found in Mark, luke or John.

Joe: 34:28

John is a little different than the Synoptic Gospels. John is a gospel that was written more for Christians that were centered on John being the preferred apostle. It was a community of Christianity that was a little more fragmented in the first century and they were not all monolithic. So the Gospel of John was written by a group of Christians who saw John as the authoritative figure, less so than Peter. But you see in that narrative that Jesus appears before Mary Magdalene. She doesn't recognize him. She thinks he's the gardener and she only recognizes him at the time he speaks her name. So these are four very different stories. I mean, how do you sort of look at that? If you were to consider these as like interviews with people and you got these different versions of what happened, how would you synthesize them into one event?

James: 35:28

synthesize them into one event. So I don't think that there are dramatic variances for a narrative. Let me explain what I mean. If you're telling the story of Laurie's entire life, there's four of us telling a story. We would each emphasize different portions of it. We would each put forth different pieces that we thought were important to our readers, listeners, to get the point across that we wanted to get across. So I don't see the variances as exclusive. I would like some more info about the governor, about the time he ruled and all. To me that's potentially problematic. But the rest of the things you say are just differences that one narrator wants to put forward, another narrator doesn't want to put forward. So that's how I would answer that.

James: 36:14

And even when I'm interviewing someone, there's key elements of a crime that everybody's going to agree on. But then someone else is going to focus on one part, someone else is going to focus on another part. And well, to me, first of all, the concept that the early church was fragmented is again, it's true, and not necessarily true. There were certainly some elements that deviated from what was considered the orth Orthodox teaching, the Orthodox view, certainly, and all throughout church history you'll have that. But the majority of the church fathers had a very, very unified view, very solidified view, and held that same view and brought about some of the councils that we're familiar with, simply because they wanted to, uh, debunk, if you will, some of the other views like 300 years later.

Joe: 37:16

I mean they didn't come. Yeah, it was some time later until constantine uh became the first emperor to convert to christ, and that was around 313. The Council of Nicaea in 325 is when really the church was given the authority by the Roman Empire to exist, if you will to exist and also be the official religion of the empire and therefore to unify the empire with this common faith.

Joe: 37:47

Uh, constantine wanted a, a canon, and he approached all the the church fathers, the bishops, to and decide on what is canon. What are those books? Because there were many of them there. There was, there's, there's, dozens of apocryphal new testament books that did not make it into the canon.

James: 38:04

Oh, certainly, and I think that the idea of the canonical Bible is certainly very true. But it wasn't like they just decided, like they took some vote then. These were agreed-upon books from the early church. These are the 27 books that were agreed upon in the second century. They were agreed upon in the third century and then into the fourth century They'd already agreed upon these books. They didn't have it codified into the one big book, but they were the 27 books that the church read, the church used and the church agreed upon, except for the Coptic church. They're a little different group.

Joe: 38:44

And they still existed as they. They exist today as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and they, I think the Armenian Church as well, except a lot of other manuscripts that are not part of the canon that we have. There's even a difference between the Catholic and Protestant canonical Bibles. I mean, the Catholics have additional books that Protestants refer to as Apocrypha. Catholics would call them deuterocanicals, as they were included into the canon much, much later it was during the Counter-Reformation, during the Council of Trent of 1546, as a way for the Church in Rome to reassert its authority over Christendom in Europe. Lord, I think we've been kind of leaving you out here.

James: 39:28

Oh yeah, sorry, Laurie, let's go back to space aliens.

Laurie: 39:31

No problem. Well, to your point, james. I know you're getting at what the variance is. I'm sure Joel does too.

Laurie: 39:39

But it's like you know, somebody gets assaulted and we go take the report and we have a victim. We have a victim statement, a witness statement and a suspect statement, and all three of them are going to have different statements, but the fact is there was a crime that was committed, there was an assault. Now we have to determine from these three statements and the evidence that we have to determine from these three statements and the evidence that we have, you know who committed the crime. So we have the victim. The victim says that you know, that guy punched me. And we now see the evidence of the swollen jaw or whatever, the black and blue. But the witness says, yeah, I saw that guy, he did punch him, but he didn't punch him with his right hand, he punched him with his left hand, so he should have bruising on the left cheek, not the right cheek or whatever. And now you talk to the suspect and the suspect says I didn't do it, I didn't hit it. But we can take all three of these stories and this is where PC comes in the probable cause, the facts and circumstances that would lead a police officer to believe that a crime has been committed and that the suspect committed that crime. So, based on that, he's not guilty. But that's for court later. But we can determine that that's enough to make an arrest on the suspect. So, because, even though the witness did see him punch, he just saw him punch with a different hand, but he actually did punch and commit the crime, right.

Laurie: 41:11

So the problem that I have, though and the thing is with Christianity and the four gospels is there's like 44,000 different denominations, but they all have this different views. There are many different denominations that have all this different views. The many different denominations have all these different views, but they have one thing in common, which is the core, which is Christ and Christ's salvation, his death, resurrection and all that. But the words of Jesus in the Gospels because they came so late, they were written so late. Even scholars are in agreement now that they weren't written by Matthew, mark, luke, possibly John did write, but Matthew, mark and Luke were pretty much written by somebody else, and they must have taken the name and just assigned it to the book, like the book of Matthew or Matthew's gospel, or whatever, but the words of Jesus we are not able to use because Jesus is not considered to be the author of any of these words. He's because he's never written any books.

Laurie: 42:16

So this would all be hearsay on top of hearsay on top of hearsay and, like you know, the whole thing with when Jesus is telling a story about being in the wilderness for 40 days, 40 nights, tempted of the devil, you know who was there with him witnessing that? How did he explain that? Who did he first tell you know things like that? So the words of Jesus, I believe, are definitely hearsay. Now, I'm not saying he didn't say these things. Of course I believe in Christ, but I think that the wording or whatever it is, the stories that people have of him may have embellished it or maybe mistranslated some of the things. I mean, we can go on and on and talk about some of the wordings of certain scriptures and words and whatnot, but going back to the aliens and you can chime in again later. But I mean, in that debate with Wes and Billy, I think we can all agree that Wes put Billy on the hot seat and, by challenging him on the topics for which you know he had already well-prepared, answers him on the topics for which you know he had already well-prepared answers.

Laurie: 43:28

West did, because it seems that West was more controlling of the narrative, like he was appearing to win the debate. And he did win the debate, let's be honest, by sticking to his viewpoint and by his, you know, thorough understanding of the scriptures, which is very good. And I think West needed to put, he needed to be put on the defensive, but that didn't happen. But he needed to be put on the defensive by you know, like Billy should have demanded that he explain and defend his narrative with the specific evidence. You know particularly the historical validity of those biblical texts. You know not merely the authenticity of them, but you know particularly the historical validity of those biblical texts. You know not merely the authenticity of them, but you know and really I'm not convinced he even did that as he was unable to prove, more likely than not that the authors of the Gospels were, you know, like I said, the actual eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus.

James: 44:21

Right, Joe Billy definitely was not on his a game for that no, I agree, and he could have been thrown off.

Laurie: 44:30

He could have, like he he was claiming that he was not on his game because he was sick. Well, I, I mean he could have been sick and he wasn't prepared, which made it sounded like huff was well more prepared, and he that's what I mean by he was already controlling that narrative. You know what I mean. Like he knew what to ask Billy and he had those well-prepared answers ready to go.

James: 44:54

I'd like to transition to dinosaurs because I know James is dying to get into this, but I think there's a number of scholars who do believe in the early writing of the Gospels to that point. So, again, it's depending on the scholar that you follow. So there's a large body of biblical scholars and Wesley Huff one of them that do believe in the authenticity of early authorship of those books authenticity of early authorship of those books and before we go into dinosaurs put forth.

Joe: 45:31

The probable cause was mentioned when we were analyzing these four gospels. We know that probable cause is a low threshold for demonstrating something. That's true, much too low of a threshold. I could say that these stories are talking about something, that something happened. I don't know exactly what, but something happened and it was written down or was talked about and by the time it made it to the form that we're familiar with as the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, at least 40 years had passed. I guess I have to bring this point up here with synoptic gospels.

Joe: 46:13

You know they went into that debate between Huff and Carson. They talked about the Codex Anacticus and I don't know if it was Carson who initially alluded to it, but he was trying to say there's a possibility that crucifixion is not historically substantiated as believed as it fails adequate cross-references and other documents of the early church. But I think we can accept the idea of crucifixion because we know crucifixions did happen. Romans did crucify people did happen. The Romans did crucify people. That was not an event that we would say is unreasonable to say that somebody who was a leader of a religious movement could have been crucified by Romans in the first century.

Joe: 46:54

So the Codex Sinaiticus it's the oldest complete manuscript of the Greek New Testament. It dates to the middle of the fourth century and, in addition to the biblical text, it has some apocryphal ones, like the shepherd of hermes and the epistle of barnabas. But there's one thing that I would like to point out about it is that there are some things that it's lacking, and one of the things that's lacking is the, the last um 11 verses of the gospel of mark, and it's chapter 16, verses 9 through 20, and uh, it doesn't have it and it even um, if you go to any like my niv bible, I have it. It says right there that the earliest sources do not have chapter 16, verses 9 through 20.

James: 47:38

I think that should be footnoted in uh in the bibles we have now. I think most, most of them have.

Joe: 47:44

That is the part that deals with the resurrection, so that was redacted at a later time. If this is the earliest of the synoptic Gospels that we have, why is that part left out? It should not be.

James: 47:57

Let me to that point a little bit. It's not necessarily the earliest version of those Gospels Not saying that that verse was in Mark originally but there have been copies of the Gospels that have been found that are older than that and portions and fragments. However, it hasn't all been in a… like Codex Sinaticus… I forget how you pronounce that again, sinaticus. Thank you. Yeah, codex Sinaticus is the earliest compilation of all 27 books of the New Testament and that's what's not necessarily the earliest version of each of those books. Sometimes when people think of the biblical text, they think of it as one book, whereas I think of it as 66 books that have been compiled into one book for us. And definitely there were versions of all the Gospels that were existing before that, some of them. We found some of the earlier texts. We found the actual earlier text and the early church all agreed on all I say all that's again hyperbole, but the.

James: 49:10

It was agreed upon that for a few different reasons that these were the texts that we'll take, and one of them was simply because of the orthodoxy of it. One of it was because the provenance the early church generally believed that, hey, these were the guys that wrote these gospels. We know who wrote the Pauline letters, so we're going to believed that. Hey, these were the guys that wrote these Gospels. We know who wrote the Pauline letters, so we're going to accept that. The others we won't.

James: 49:31

And then the Catholicity of it, which is a little bit weaker of an argument. And not Roman Catholic but just the church in general accepted these books. So that argument is a little bit weaker than the other two. But I think there's strong arguments that we have the scriptures that the early church intended to hand down to us. And I still firmly believe that the early gospels or the gospels were eyewitness accounts and that the authorship is what it claims to be with those books. I mean, it certainly was common in the ancient world to reverse, plagiarize. Now we take other people's words and say, oh, I wrote that. Well then it was very common to say that, oh, this, you know, superman over here wrote this, so that's the book of Superman. Or you know, with a number of the what they call the Gnostic G gospels, a number of those, they they have those attributed attributions, so I don't know.

Joe: 50:31

Interesting topic all right, so we'll go to the dinosaurs here. So dinosaurs we all know um jurassic park and we all know this story of like they went extinct, lost away from a cataclysm that occurred 65 million years ago. There are those who believe that humans walked the earth with dinosaurs, laurie, did you? I think you had a tangent on this.

Laurie: 51:00

Well, yeah Well, it all depends on what you believe. You know when God created the earth, you know in the beginning, what happened between in the beginning and then the next wording of the scripture, like, was there a long time period? Does that mean that in the beginning you know there were the dinosaurs first and all that. And then you know the creation time, which is about 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, the creation of man, or you know Adam and Eve, you know, does that begin then? So, because there is there some type of time, a long time, between those first beginning words of the scripture, time between those first beginning words of the scripture. But before we go further into the dinosaurs, I want to lay the foundation for what is mentioned in the Enuma Elish. You know the foundational text, teasing me with dinosaurs.

James: 51:57

Okay, I'm listening.

Laurie: 51:58

Go ahead, All right, and so I mean, like in the creation narratives found in the Hebrew Bible. So, you know, with the Enuma Elish they do have a relation to the Hebrew text, like it seems that they were expanded upon from the Enuma Elish, like when the Jews, you know, first wrote their Torah. But scholars widely acknowledge that the creation of the Pentateuch, which is the Torah for the Jews, likely took place around the 7th or 6th centuries BC. This is post-dating the Babylonian exile, when they came out of the Babylonian exile, and this historical context of it suggests that the Jewish authors may have expounded upon those old Mesopotamian myths to construct their own theological narratives. Per se, god, like a monotheistic belief centered on the worship of the singular, all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present God, and like the opening lines of Genesis, say in the beginning, which can be juxtaposed with the enumeralish initiation phrase, which is when in the heights, and it's highlighting, you know these uh, um, thematic, uh, parallels. That don't it describes this chaotic being uh or beginning. It's like this chaos and the enuma elish that, and this is where it's pretty interesting.

Laurie: 53:41

The enuma Elish is seven tablets. We have six tablets that are detailing the acts of creation and then you have one tablet that is known as a tablet of summation. So it was discovered in the ruins of the Assyrian library of Nineveh back in the 1840s I think Henry Rawlinson was the guy that translated them, and I think Nathaniel Smith was probably another one but you know this likely, they believe, actually, that it did influence the biblical authors, as they, you know, they delineated their own account of creation, you know, with it being six days and followed by that seventh day of rest to culminate the entire thing that was done by God, and this reflects a distinctive Jewish religious perspective concerning God and his theological identity as Yahweh. So, james, I think that the verbiage of being created in God's image can be interpreted in a few ways, one of them being allegorical for a bioengineering process involving blood to produce a new species, which is the ancient alien theory on it. It's reasonable then, I think, to conclude that, due to the nature of blood, the created beings well, inherently carry these characteristics of DNA of their creator, and this is where we get that scripture verse, you know, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, make man in our image after our likeness, and that is one of the core principles to the ancient alien apostasis, and it's a predominant theme in. I don't know if you heard of this guy named Zachariah Sitchin, but he translated these tablets, the Sumerian tablets 19,000 of them, I believe and formed them into this series of books called the Earth Chronicles series.

Laurie: 55:49

Now, I understand that you know that phrase in the image of God is meant to illuminate the, you know, that preordained relationship that's between the Lord and man in a, you know, moralistic and, I guess, spiritual way, and that would hold true as well. Yet I mean you can't deny the depiction of a physical presence of God with man and Eve. I mean, he breathes into Adam's nostrils, brings him to life, he walks this is God walks in the garden in the cool of the day and he speaks to Adam and Eve, you know, in clear, face-to-face voice, and asks like, where are you? Like, where were you? I didn't find you, I didn't know where you were.

Laurie: 56:34

So I mean, what are we to make of this? I mean, is it all a metaphor? Is it subject to interpretation? I mean, if it is, then is then how are we to interpret it? Is it partly symbolic and is it partly literal? If that's the case, then I mean, how is anyone supposed to know where it is speaking in real narrative and where it is speaking as imagery. And I mean, I'll let you answer that. But you can probably throw in your thoughts on the dinosaurs too, where they come in?

James: 57:07

I think the answer comes back to dinosaurs. Clearly, there you go, no. So yeah, no. I think those are excellent questions to ask about the Genesis narrative. I tend to lean more towards literal, but, however, I have an understanding too that Eastern thought is very different than what we typically understand in Western, rational, reasonable sort of thought. Not that they're unreasonable, but they have a very different perspective, a very different way of communicating and a very different way of expressing things. So I think very much so. Some of it is metaphor, very different way of expressing things. So I think very much so. Some of it is metaphorical, some of it is literal. Some of it to them seems literal that would seem more metaphorical to us.

James: 57:54

So that's not a very good answer for those texts, but for me, I lend much more towards the literal, and one perspective that I've heard before is that I mean, obviously, as Christians. As a Christian with a very orthodox theology, I believe that God has existed the same throughout eternity. And existing the same means that he's existed in three, as the Godhead, he's the Trinity, if you will, which you're familiar with that, which means he's been Father, son, holy Spirit for eternity, in the way he chooses to express himself. And I think he's chosen to express himself and express through people the idea of all three the Father, son and Holy Spirit. So I think to me that can explain some of the physicality of walking with people in the garden. Maybe it was and I've heard this before and I don't have a definitive answer but perhaps it was Jesus in physical form walking in the garden. Is that a possibility? Because, again, at the same time you have scriptures that say that, well, god is spirit, not physical. But we certainly know that Jesus was physical and if we have that Trinity view, believe that he was God expressed as a man, god expressed as the Holy Spirit, god expressed as God Not saying I have all the answers on that, but I have heard that suggested as a possible answer for the physical nature of God, even in the Garden of Eden, talking about creation stuff in general, and probably get sidetracked on that a lot.

James: 59:38

But I think we're going to go into some other points. You want to bring up on that, you want to bring up on that. But for my views I am not dogmatic on this but I lean more towards a young Earth creation, but with the first of all with the room, for there could have been a lot more time Also for the room or leaving room for the idea that the earth could have been created mature, was made similar to how Adam was made as an adult. The earth could have been made as an adult rather than starting from the egg or starting from the seed. But again there's variances in Christian. Again there's variances in Christian orthodoxy addressing that issue of how long has the earth been around. How did creation roll out? Was it seven literal days, including the day of rest? And then some I've heard have used the later verse. That I don't think has anything to do with creation. But talking about how a day and a thousand years are interchangeable, I don't think it fits here, but some people do. So you can't say they're necessarily wrong for saying that, but with that I do believe in a much younger Earth and I think that mankind walked with all of the creatures that were created.

James: 1:01:07

So in other words, I think that people have seen dinosaurs and I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that. So a couple of interesting factoids about that. They've recently discovered soft tissue in some dinosaur fossils. Far as I know, soft tissue doesn't last millions of years and they've always said that oh, this you know, we know it's millions of years old, everything's calcified et cetera, et cetera. And scientists haven't walked it through and said exactly what the soft tissue is. But a lot of people think it's the actual soft tissue that's in their bone structure and all which would indicate a much earlier or much more recent death of some of these fossilized dinosaurs.

James: 1:01:53

Also, I think it's interesting that pretty much every culture has descriptions of dinosaurs, of creatures. Even biblically it talks about Leviathan and Behemoth but hundreds of discussions of dragons, dinosaurs, depictions of it. There's an Incan temple that has what looks almost dead on a stegosaurus. How do you know what a stegosaurus looks like? Unless you dug one up or you saw one, you probably didn't ride it because it's got lumpies on the back of it, but the chinese talk about dragons as if they interacted with them. So I don't think it's far-fetched at all to say that mankind walked with dinosaurs and, uh, interacted with them.

James: 1:02:38

Um, I've heard some creation theories about how the pre-flood earth um, you know, if you believe the, uh, the biblical reference to that or the other cultural references to that, again, over 100 cultures have indicated that there's a worldwide flood, with an individual that saved people or a group of people that did. But one guy heard theorize and, bear in mind, he sounded a little different when he talked, but he theorized that regarding what scripture refers to as the canopy that was around the earth, talks about that for dinosaurs to grow and thrive, because some of the like the pterodactyls, some of them couldn't have even flown in our atmosphere, but if it was a denser atmosphere they could have flown. And he theorizes that it was similar to a hyperbaric chamber in some regards, where increased atmosphere, increased oxygen, allowing these creatures to grow larger and to live and thrive. So, anyway, I want to hear your thoughts on dinosaurs and any questions about that, because I think it's a super fun topic.

Joe: 1:03:49

Okay, Well, I do find several things mentioned that are problematic.

James: 1:03:56

Go with it, because I could be completely wrong on that.

Joe: 1:03:58

Aside from just a very speculative part of you know, men or humans existing with dinosaurs, because there really is no record, either historically or geologically, of that. The fossil record does pretty thoroughly and consistently show that the dinosaurs were extinct between 65 and 35 million years ago. That's a long time and, yeah, if you're trying to sort of conflate that into a young earth theory where it's not really 65 or 35 million years ago, you're left confronting the physical evidence that is pretty consistently showing that that is true, that that is the age at which these things occurred. There is a good bit of evidence. I mean, it's not perfect, I'm not saying it's absolute, but more likely than not. Definitely the probability is held up by the evidence that's been found consistently regularly and they keep getting the same answer regularly and they keep getting the same answer and that answer is that, um, the dinosaurs were extinct long before we find evidence of humans on earth.

Joe: 1:05:12

So, as far as you know the stories, the myths and the tales about dragons and, uh, the, the artwork of something that looks like a stegosaurus, uh, the reference to leviathan and in the, we don't know really what Leviathan is. There are some who say it could be a crocodile, could be a whale. It's not really given enough of a description for us to definitively say what it really is. So to go to this young earth theory, you're asking people to accept the biblical chronology that you know God made everything in seven days and that he did so sometime around five to six thousand years ago, based on how we see the stories laid out in Genesis and how it was brought into the rest of the Old Testament, and that it flies in the face of the geological and fossil records.

Joe: 1:06:07

So if you're going to make that statement that the young Earth theory is most likely true, you're going to have to come up with some kind of evidence. I mean really even that thing with the firmament. We don't really have a good understanding of what that really is, if it's even a literal thing or if it's talking metaphoric. It sounds like what they're describing is that the Earth was inside of some kind of shaker globe and that at the time of the flood, the shaker globe came open, the water that was above it poured down on Earth. So in other words, you'd be looking up in the sky and there would actually be liquid water held up above the earth, and then that somehow enabled conditions to be as suitable for dinosaurs to exist? Has that been demonstrated?

James: 1:06:55

you have heard the theory before, then you are familiar with it. I am oh good, good, yeah. Well, yeah, there's some, there's some. Uh, yeah, there's some. I think there's a decided lack of evidentiary proof about how old the Earth is, and I don't necessarily trust all the conclusions about the fossil record. All of them, I mean some of them are you look in the ground, there it is, you can't deny it. But sometimes the fossil records intersect and to me it makes an argument for some cataclysmic activity that occurred in a lot of these places. So anyway, to me it's an interesting theory that's not necessarily definitively held out either by scripture or by historical and scientific fact, but it's not necessarily excluded either in my mind. Laurie, sorry, go ahead.

Laurie: 1:07:57

Yeah. So what I think is I think the biblical timeline is off. Timeline is off and of course we'll archaeologists, whatever and paleontologists they. You know, when you're measuring, when you're trying to figure out the date of the earth or how old the earth is, there's, you know, you can see these layers when you're driving around, especially here in Arizona, going up in the mountains, you see all of these sediments, the layers and stuff. It's just, it's similar to a tree. You cut a tree, you in the mountains, you see all of these cinnamons, the layers and stuff. It's just similar to a tree. You cut a tree, you count the lines, you know for each lifeline of the tree or each year of the tree. So the same thing is with, like in the Grand Canyon. You know you got these deep trenches and you have all of these different cinnamons and stuff. So they date the earth from way back, millions and millions of years.

Laurie: 1:08:47

Uh, just like the oldest rocks up in the northeast part of canada, newfoundland, where I'm originally from, you know there's some of the oldest. They even have this big uh type of uh glass type, uh museum, I guess, if you want to say, you can go in and you can actually touch these rocks and they're like the oldest rocks to billions of years old. And that's what I meant by what the you know in the beginning was what? What were they referring to in the beginning? Like way back 4 billion years ago or 6,000, 7,000 years ago? So what I what I'm talking about, with the timeline being off, is that geneticists have Homo sapiens going back to 250,000 years and I think you know the ancient alien theory suggests that the, the Homo sapiens, were created then.

Laurie: 1:09:38

That's when they were modified and it was the biblical narrative of when, say the, the first civilization, which would have been the Sumerians, because that's where we get our 60-dismal system from. We get all of these recipes for food, musical notes, all of that stuff, how to make beer. There's even cylinder seals that have this tall, maybe 12-foot being that's handing a plow to a 6-foot man and you know that's showing the agriculture boom. And we have the. You know the Neolithic period of when, you know the earth was what went through that cataclysmic, probably when the flood happened, which would have been about 13,000 years ago. And now we can throw Atlantis into the mix. Maybe there was an atlantis, maybe that's when a pre-civilization went under the sea during that time, because from the time when um uh who, was it? Uh socrates or whatever? Claimed that uh um who?

Joe: 1:10:39

was it plato plato.

Laurie: 1:10:42

Well, yeah, when pl claimed that was 9,000 years ago from his time and he was before the time of Christ. So could something like that be. And you look at the biblical patriarchs in the Bible, you know they have these 500 years, lived to be 900 years, methuselah 969 years or whatever years or whatever you know. But if you look at the Sumerian kings list which is on display in one of the museums over in Europe, it shows that these patriarchal kings had lifespans into the like 18,000 years. I think Alalu was 18,000 years. He reigned, ruled and reigned. And then they have other ones at 26 000 years and but with all of these uh, 10 antediluvial kings, they go all the way back to 250 000 years.

Laurie: 1:11:36

Now that would be at the time that genesis say that homo sapiens were created. Of course, the whole ancient alien theory is that these gods came and mixed with the genome of the Homo erectus and then implemented their DNA into that being and trial and error finally got the right specimen. They named him the Adamu. And that's how this whole thing happens with the creation of man placed him in the land of the Eden. With the creation of man, placed him in the land of the Edan. So you can see the similarities between the Adam and the Eden. The Adamu, the land of Edan, not Eden.

Laurie: 1:12:19

But and that's when Joe and I have talked before and said you know, it's so strange because even in the Genesis story, when God created Adam, it says that he placed him in the garden of eden, in the land of havala, where the gold is good. So we're like well, why would god be interested in gold? And of course the ancient sumerians spoke of their gods coming to earth to mine gold. So you can see these parallels. And then you see little hints in the Bible, that kind of show that it is being derived from this older ancient text. So I think that the patriarchs of the Bible, the eight patriarchs, are actually reminiscent of the. They're actually the, because I think Inlander Anna in the Sumerian Kings list has the same exact story as I believe it is Enoch. So anyway, those are my thoughts on that. I think the biblical timeline is off and I think there's significant evidence, scientific evidence, that with the Neolithic period and all that and the Homo sapiens DNA going back to 250,000 years, I think the yeah got it, but did they ride dinosaurs?

Joe: 1:13:40

you need to go to the uh, the thing yes and uh I've been there as both aliens and and dinosaurs james, if you want to just kind of uh expound on that, give your thoughts, your rebuttal, and then I want to go into one more uh topic before we we wrap excellent, um, so yeah, I mean different worldview on my part, different understanding.

James: 1:14:03

I think certainly that ancient cultures are going to have similarities about what happened, because what happened was what happened.

James: 1:14:16

But my primary thought is that I guess the biblical narrative has always been counterculture, if you will. The primary culture at the time especially in the Mesopotamian era, if you will was that hey, we've got lots of deities that they taught us these things, they showed us these things, they taught us how to live. We have to keep them appeased, etc, etc. I think that the biblical narrative has always been counter to that, saying that no, that's not true. There's one God who made us, he made us special, unique, and he cares for us and it's not about appeasing him. So, just a very different narrative, very different understanding from all the literally all of the cultures at the time. I mean I don't think you can find an ancient culture other than Judaism, if you will, or followers of Yahweh that held that belief. I mean you have Akhenaten in Egypt that during his reign he was generally monotheistic, but certainly very different than what the Christian understanding is of the biblical teaching, and we just simply believe that God created us.

Joe: 1:15:51

There are other examples of the monotheistic theme.

James: 1:15:54

Oh yeah, I'd love to hear about those.

Joe: 1:15:56

And there's also the polytheistic theme. And there's also the polytheistic theme and we find that is the case even within Judaism, that there is more complex parts to God. I mean, when we talk about Yahweh he's a singular, but it sort of parallels other figures that were known from the people of the land of Canaan, the Moabites, edomites. There was Baal. A lot of the personifications of Yahweh reflect on attributes of Baal. So yeah, I mean it's like you were saying, all these ancient cultures, they all share a lot in common and, of course, christianity is the one that has succeeded over the centuries to you know pretty much survive and well, some would say judaism too.

Joe: 1:16:48

But judaism as well, but more limited. Uh, christianity, you know, spread throughout uh europe for 2 000 years and then over here to the Americas. Right now, I believe it is the most populated. I mean, I think there are more Christians on the earth than anywhere. I think Islam is like a close second. I think it's Christianity, islam and then Hinduism. So just in terms of numbers, christianity is the one that's more prolific.

Joe: 1:17:24

Let's transition to the big question that I think we want to hit, and that is, you know, the existence of extraterrestrial life. And, james, you know the church really takes no official position on this. Okay, if you ask the Vatican, they say pretty much nothing, whatever it is. And really there are some Jesuits who are actually very open to the idea of extraterrestrial life, the Society of Jesus, the priestly order in the Catholic Church. So does the argument can we make it about the Bible, particularly the Synoptic Gospels, that would it exclude the belief of extraterrestrial life? Meaning, if there is extraterrestrial life, we find out tomorrow that there are aliens and they come to Earth. Does that change our doctrine about salvation and redemption and about our design, our special relationship with God, who is transcendent in the universe?

James: 1:18:23

That is a super interesting and fun question. Cs Lewis kind of dealt with that in his whole. What is it? The space trilogy, it's called the Pre-Alandra, and that Hideous Strength, and the third one and I forget the name of it strength, and the third one that I forget the name of it, but just that whole idea.

James: 1:18:43

What is what does it mean to, uh, to have the, this understanding of, uh, what if there is extraterrestrial life? Um, so, first of all, let me say that the universe is a very large place. Um, I don't think we're capable of defining the size of it in our understanding. And then there's the theory of the multiverses, which I don't subscribe to, but some do, and I'll actually answer your question in a minute, joe. I'm just swirling around, swirling around. So I don't personally believe in them, but I do understand that various parts of the church have said that. Well, why not make room for that? Why not? It is a huge universe and why not make room for that?

James: 1:19:35

I don't think it changes the gospel narrative at all. The question would be if space aliens existed, are they part of God's unique creation that needs salvation? Did they never fall—and this is just looking at it through a Christian lens—did they never fall into original sin? So don't have any need of a particular redemption, salvation? So you'd have questions like that. Again, I don't think that they exist based upon. I think we're a very unique creation as humans, but I don't think that someone proving or believing in the existence of alien life forms other than Canadian alien, I mean existence of of alien life forms other than Canadian alien, I mean you know, space alien life forms I don't think that changes the gospel narrative, the understanding of of salvation, redemption, the understanding of scriptures, simply because it's not addressed. And yeah, that's, that's my thought on that.

Joe: 1:20:43

Okay.

Laurie: 1:20:45

So I think so I obviously believe in aliens. I believe that we are the aliens. I believe Jesus when he said I have come down from above, I believe that you know. He said I'm going to prepare a place for you. When I go and prepare a place for you, I'm going to come again and receive you unto myself, that, where I am dear, you will be also.

Laurie: 1:21:07

And like what we were talking about earlier too, it's like, I believe, that the ancients, the ones that jotted these words down, they didn't have the understanding, they didn't have the vocabulary to explain what they were seeing. Understanding, they didn't have the vocabulary to explain what they were seeing. And we have examples of that, like with ezekiel, where, you know, he explains uh, seeing a chariot, um, god coming in a chariot, and it had wheels, it had four wings, it made the sound of thunder, um had a, had a being that looked like the son of man, which would be a human inside of this glass dome, which would be a, a cockpit, and you know. But he's he's trying to say that it had the wings of an eagle and it had the, you know, the face of a bear or the body of a bear, the body of a lion, whatever, but he's taking things like what he knows from his time period to explain what he's seeing, just like this Tic Tac UFO that we talked about so many times out in off of San Diego. They call that. We call in our time because we don't know exactly what it is. We call it the tic-tac because it resembles a tic-tac, and I think that's what the ancients did.

Laurie: 1:22:14

And so my theory is that, because we are 99% the same DNA as a chimpanzee, my questions are you know, why would God create us to be the same DNA, which has proven scientific fact that we have the same DNA. You look at a chimp's ear, an ape's ear. We have the identical ear and there's no denying it, and there's no denying it. And so I think that the aliens are the gods that ancient man misunderstood, and in the image of God. That means that God has got to be an organic being of some type, because he has arms and legs. We are created in his image or their image. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and so the God of the Bible, yahweh, could be one of these Anunnaki from the Sumerian tablets or the cuneiform scripts that they have about those who from the heavens came down to the earth.

Laurie: 1:23:20

And you know, just look at Nephilim in the Bible. The actual Hebrew word is Nephilim and it's not giants as it says in the Bible. So the actual, correct word is Nephilim. And when you would go to like the Helahim, you know Helahim can be used in the singular as well, but it's actually used in the plural and in Hebrew it's, I mean, the singular form would be Eloah.

Laurie: 1:23:53

But some claim that saying the Elohim is an invariant noun. You know meaning. It is pronounced and spelled the same way whether singular or plural, much like how we use the words sheep or fish to be both. But I don't think this is correct as it is not consistent throughout any of the biblical texts. And certainly when you look at similar Hebrew words, the plural form is different from the singular. For example, you have cherubim. The plural form is different from the singular. For example, you have cherubim, serubim and nifilim and they're all plural for these angelic hosts and the singular versions are cherub and seraph. And of course, nifilim might be an invariant noun, as to you know, or as it is the same, there is a nifilim and there are many Nephilim, so similar to there being a sheep and there being many sheep, but the words for God, being singular and plural, are both found.

Laurie: 1:24:50

You know, there is Eloah, which is singular for God, and that does appear in Hebrew text, as does Elohim, which means God or possibly godhood. So the singular word for Elohim should be Hiloah or Hiloah. It's spelled E-L-O-A-H, and these, of course, are just a couple of words that are attributed to him. You know Yahweh being a predominant one, but the first two letters of that word are EL or El, which represents Elion, the father of the gods, and this is most likely the Sumerian main god, which is Anu from, you know, the Sumerian pantheon.

Laurie: 1:25:35

So James, I mean in the book of Enoch, both Joel and I have read all three of these, and you know we've always wondered too about the book of Enoch. Both Joel and I have read all three of these. And you know we've always wondered too about the book of Enoch why that wasn't part of those 27 books or whatever that was in the New Testament, because Jude and some people say well, it wasn't inspired enough to be in that canon. But you know, we read the scriptures and Jesus, jude and Peter all quote from Enoch, and so that's. We always thought that that was a little strange.

Laurie: 1:26:06

But going back to what I was talking about just now with the angels, are in the book of Enoch. They're actually provided with the names of these angels and their root word is El E-L, such as you know Ramiel, tamiel, ezekiel, aziel, sentinel, daniel, and you know a lot more. I mean heck, even the Superman movies. His birth name is Kel-El, son of Jor-El. So I mean, is there not at least an apparent connection between you know, our understanding of this Judaic theology, the conception of the Lord, god Almighty, and what is learned from examining these and what would be called these pagan traditions? Could they be extraterrestrials? Could they be aliens? And just, the ancient men just put these explanations down to the best of their ability, to the best of their understanding, and then thousands and thousands of years copied texts and oral traditions over and over again. Here we are today with the wrong interpretation of these texts and, of course now, yeah, we believe one, god Almighty. Oh, is that a?

James: 1:27:23

question for me. You packed a whole lot in there. I don't even know if I even remember it all. First of all, with the Book of Jude, he certainly does quote out of 1 Enoch. I don't think that him quoting that brings the other book to the level of inspiration Paul quotes out of Philosophers of the Time as well. Oh man, I forget what he was quoting, but I think it was reference to the Cretan folks, which, by the way, there was a Stoics.

Joe: 1:28:01

He did quote the reference to Stoics the Platonist, so he referenced Platonic thinking and I believe it's Zeno, the founder of the Stoicism.

James: 1:28:15

So him, quoting outside sources does not necessarily raise the source to the level of canon. I mean, the scriptures that were included in the Bible were again, they followed that criteria that I laid out in the book of Enoch simply didn't get in there. As far as the Anukai and is that how I say that, anunnaki, sorry and their beliefs regarding that, I in I guess you say, orthodox Judeo-Christian belief, they're just simply, they're the gods that people at the time worshipped, whether they had supernatural power behind them or not. They were certainly an alternative to the God of Scripture and to the God of the belief system at the time, the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob, if you will. So, yeah, that's my perspective on that. It's a completely different pantheon and I think it's completely different than the God that we get from the scripture. I mean, that's a pantheon that was continually handed down and I think the Greeks and Romans have certainly echoes, if not direct reflections, of some of the same gods in the way that, like the way that they express things For instance, ishtar and Artemis very, very, very similar in some of the expressions of that and always been considered by the Judeo-Christian folks as completely different. To me, the best illustration of that is what those gods asked folks to do human sacrifice, etc. Etc. Now there's certainly the argument about well, why did God want to wipe people out? Isn't that human sacrifice? And yes, it certainly is, but I mean there were reasons for that as well. And then a little bit about oh, where did we go? Where did you go? I said a lot in like four sentences.

James: 1:30:30

Back to the Elohim, and I certainly subscribe to the argument that it is an abstract plural and I think generally when you use terms like that, you have to look at the verbs that are being used. In Hebrew the verbs reflect if it's plural or singular. And generally when they use Elohim it's reflected as singular, with the exception of the part where it says let us make man in our own image, but then the verse immediately after that it uses the singular verbs to go along with it. So the way I've heard it expressed is that Elohim is more of a title and then Yahweh is more of a name, so like the host of this or Lori. So that's my understanding and how I understand that expressed.

James: 1:31:25

And once again, to me the big telling factor in it all is a very different approach to how we express our beliefs, not you and I, necessarily, but as received from the deity. So I believe that there's one God, that he created us and we walked away from him and he made a way for us to come back through the death and atonement of Jesus. And the ancient gods said no, that's not true at all. This is what you need to do and here's how you are to live. So, yeah, very different perspective, but I'm super interested in hearing all this stuff and I'm enjoying the conversation. So are we going on or do we have to end?

Joe: 1:32:18

There's a lot of agreement and a lot of disagreement, but I'd like to put one question to you.

Laurie: 1:32:26

And.

Joe: 1:32:26

I think a lot of Christians wrestle with this idea, and I'm sure you have too. It's you know. The communication between God and mankind is not very efficient, and we can see that because there are many.

James: 1:32:44

I like that. I like that.

Joe: 1:32:45

Well, we see all the different religions in the world, okay, and they're all the same. God has told them through.

James: 1:32:54

Whatever?

Joe: 1:32:55

Or, you know, contemplation, prayer, inspired canon. There are many different canons throughout the world. I mean, there's the Koran, there's the Bhagavad Gita in Hinduism, there's the Koran in Islam, and even within Christianity there's differences on what God's will is for us. The Catholics have a different perspective on all of this, as opposed to the Pentecostals. So we have this sort of problem here where it seems like God is talking different ways to different people. He's giving different messages. It should be one message, really. If God has a relationship with all of humanity, that should be one single message and nobody misunderstands it.

Joe: 1:33:46

The dilemma is that you know we're getting all these different messages. So I mean, if I want to speak to you and tell you a message, I could do that very easily. I could just simply say this is a message for James. Lori, it's not a message for you, it's a message for James, and this is what I want you to do, and I can even give you feedback if you're doing it correctly or incorrectly and say no, no, no, not like that. Or I'm going to give you a message now, ok, and it's going to be the same message.

Joe: 1:34:16

I'm going to say James, look at what Lori's doing, do it that way and I can be very clear and make sure that no mistake is done, and I can do that very quickly and very effectively. It wouldn't take me 2,000 years and I could do that without having to write anything down. I can speak it to you, I can communicate to you, so that there is no doubt in your minds that it's coming from me and it's going to you and not to you. So if we can do that as human beings and we can communicate very well and very effectively, such that we can build civilizations and get all kinds of messages and information across, why does God, who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, all-present, all-intellect and all-sentience, only able to communicate to us through ways of stories retold as other stories?

James: 1:35:10

Okay, first of all let me step back a little bit to basic communication theory. Just, you know the part that's always so boring when you take a communications class. You have the sender, the receiver and the message. So what I believe is that the sender knows how to communicate with us. If he is, as we say, in all-knowing, all-powerful God, he knows how to communicate with us. He knows how to frame a message. But in my belief system there's a problem with the receiver. We're kind of screwed up. We've separated ourselves to an extent from the ability to listen to that. So we need to have a way of reconnecting with our creator, reconnecting with that message, reconnecting with the one who originally made the message. So that may sound a little bit simplistic, but I think it synthesizes. What I believe with that is that the problem's not with God, the problem's not with the way he framed the message. The problem is with the way we receive it.

Joe: 1:36:28

I'd like to refute that by saying let's use an example of us and children. We're better at communicating than children, so we can send the information to the children. Their ability to receive it is not as good as our ability to send it. We, as someone who has more intelligence and more understanding, more experience, realize that. So we know that when we're communicating with children and we have to do it in a way that they understand we have to make sure that they do understand and that onus is on us, it's not on them. So if the kids misunderstand or don't fully grasp what we're saying or they do it wrong, that's more like our fault, that we didn't make sure that they grasped it the correct way. By saying there's a problem with the receiver and that it's not God's problem, you're giving God infinite power, infinite knowledge, infinite presence, but no accountability for when the message breaks down. How do we rectify that?

James: 1:37:30

So you're given basic educational theory who's responsible for learning? As a student, the student is. Who's responsible for teaching? As a teacher, who's responsible for the student learning? If you're the teacher, the teacher is. So, yes, god has some responsibility in that and I firmly believe that he made a very easy way for us to connect with him, to understand him and to know what he's saying. And we can embrace that. In my worldview, we can embrace a belief in that, and it does require a level of faith, it requires a level of trust, and then we can step into that understanding. It's not hidden, cryptic, etc. Etc. So I have a little bit at odds with some of the Gnostic philosophy that if we just would understand this hidden, cryptic message then we'd be okay. I don't think it is hidden, I don't think it is cryptic. I think it's very clear and very straightforward and we have the opportunity to embrace that.

Joe: 1:38:34

No, it would be clear. It should be clear. I mean it shouldn't be encrypted at all, it should be as plain as day.

James: 1:38:40

Now the dinosaur part. That's pretty cryptic and that's mostly me, but I still like them.

Joe: 1:38:47

Yeah, I mean, but I mean to kind of get to this point where you know the flaw is with us as the receivers. I mean you're saying that none of us are able to grasp. You know the message correctly because, again, we have the message at the Catholic's spouse, we have the message at the Lutheran's spouse, we have the message of the Mormons, the Muslims, jews, orthodox Christians. You're probably going to get a hundred different versions of what it means to be a follower of Christ and what it means to have a relationship with Christ and what God's will is. It should be just as clear as day. Why, would you say, God is communicating in this way, where it's through dreams, through visions, through inspiration, to write scripture as opposed to just I don't know, putting it right there for everybody to see.

James: 1:39:48

Like in a book, putting it in a book so we could read it.

Joe: 1:39:51

Because not everybody knows how to read and people didn't know how to read proficiently until the last few hundred years. So you're having things communicated to people by secondhand recounting Somebody else who knows how to read is telling people who don't know how to read the story of Jesus and the story of creation and the story of God's will. That seems like it's not the best way. It's not how I would want my message or my instructions to be given out there, because I know there's a good chance of it'll be messed up, there'll be misunderstanding, um wrong decisions get again completely wrong in terms of the objective, and I would want to oversee that to make sure that whatever I communicated makes it as I intended to to everybody that I I gave it and it's you know, delivered it to.

James: 1:40:40

Fair point. I think God has chosen to partner with people who have these childlike inability to understand and reason on a God level. Chosen to partner with us to to connect with the world. So yeah, I don't, I don't understand all of God's choices and I'm with you.

James: 1:41:03

I think there's some things that, were you and I in charge, we could just run it a whole lot better, but I think that at work too. So, you know, and my boss has chosen to use me to do some things, and I'm sure it frustrates the daylights out of him, but that was his choice. Hey, this is in your hands. But yeah, as far as the message part go, I think that we have I'm trying not to use biblical terms for it, but we have a wall of understanding that we've put up ourselves to not understand what God's saying, and it does require a level of faith. We do have to have that faith in what we're believing in. And why are there different religions? Why are there different belief systems? I couldn't answer that, but I think I understand at least the basics of having a relationship with God and communicating with him and that sort of stuff.

Joe: 1:42:07

Laurie.

Laurie: 1:42:10

Yeah, no, I think I pretty much said everything I want to say about how God tunes in on this. I really think he's not the all-knowing, ever-present. I think we do have a lot of things lost in translation, a lot of misunderstanding over the many hundreds of years. And, like you were saying, joe, I also like to add that we have had constant wars against one another too.

Laurie: 1:42:44

And you look at the biblical God in the Old Testament. He created this civilization per se, but he gives commands to Moses and to Joshua to go in and slaughter every man, woman, child, to take over their tribes. You know, kill the animals sometimes. Don't kill the animals other times. Don't mock him, don't say anything against him, and you know, or he'll strike you down. And if this is Yahweh, who is often referred to, as we spoke to earlier, as a dragon, the nostrils, he flies his wings and it could be an allegorical thing, but he's described as a tyrant at times. And of course Jesus is the it's. You know, these viewpoints and different opinions and different takes on everything. It's very hard to, you know, determine who was right, who's wrong. And I mean we can't all be right, but I mean we can't all be wrong. So leave it at that.

James: 1:43:57

We didn't get to the Gnostic Gospels this time.

Laurie: 1:44:00

Yeah, maybe that we can do another one.

Joe: 1:44:03

A few other topics I want to touch on, but I think we're running on to two hours here. We don't have any commercial breaks, so we're kind of over a stretch here. But you know, one thing I think we can all agree about is that this is a very pervasive topic and it touches everyone's lives and it stretches across national boundaries, cultures, demographics, different church congregations, and I think we also know that the viewpoints on it are as diverse and as numerous as the people out there who believe in them. And, as always, it's up to you, it's up to the audience, it's up to the individual to decide how you should approach all these concepts and hypotheses, as well as what you should do personally to derive something from it, whether it's by faith, whether it's by skepticism, or whether it's from some unique experience, some special spiritual experience. Uh, it's up to the individual.

Joe: 1:45:00

Uh, for me, I believe faith is a very individual phenomenon, um, and that what you know is works as a, as a sort of comfort zone or as a connection for one person, uh, maybe different for someone else, and a lot of it has to do with where we where we are in our, our lives and where we are, uh, where we are in country. I mean, really for me, I find a sort of comfort and connection with Catholicism. That's because that's what I'm most familiar with, that's what I grew up with, and we all have the same personal experiences. It depends a lot on our social and cultural emanations. You know where do we grow up, who is our family, where do we go to school, what do we study? Emanations you know where do we grow up, who is our family, where do we go to school, what do we study?

Joe: 1:45:44

If I grew up in a country, say, like Iran, my idea of, you know, sort of comfort through faith would come through something different, a different religion, probably wouldn't come through Catholicism. So that's for me and that works for me. It may not work for someone else, and I'm okay with that. It may not work for someone else, and I'm okay with that. I don't find a problem with somebody saying that the faith that they have gives them comfort and it suits them and it makes them a person who wants to be the best they can be for themselves and for others. I have no problem with that. And, like you point out, james, the problem comes when people get angry and say no, my views have to be correct, and if yours counteract mine, then we have to argue and that's unproductive right Off with his head.

James: 1:46:35

Yeah, yeah. So I certainly believe in objective truth, but I also believe the scripture that says work at your salvation with fear and trembling, which to me means you need to approach it with healthy skepticism, with an analysis, with an understanding, with diving in, because I think it's important, to me, it's very important, and if you just blindly accept everything, that's neither productive nor working it out, as it says, hey, appreciate you guys. Thanks so much for letting me come on. I'm actually honored because I know, you know that I believe completely differently than than than Lori, for instance, but you still let me talk and share my views, so I love that.

Joe: 1:47:13

Thank you very much and I appreciate hearing you what you guys have to say, james, it was fun with us and it's truly an honor really to be able to have this profound conversation with you and to hear your points of view. Yeah, we disagree on a lot. I love hearing the disagreement. That is the beauty of living in a free society where we can communicate openly and disagree and still be friends. That's the greatest thing. I love this kind of forum. So thank you for taking the time to join us in what I found to be a very pleasant, lively and enlightening dialogue.

James: 1:47:48

Yeah, we went twice as long as usual.

Laurie: 1:47:50

Yeah, we did.

Laurie: 1:47:51

Hopefully everybody out there can enjoy this now.

Laurie: 1:47:54

I know it's a long one, but we hope everybody is enjoying the topic and the discussion. I mean we did keep it civil, the topic and the discussion, and I mean we did keep it civilized, and I wish we'd see more of that out there on these YouTube videos and podcasts, you know, because you learn a lot, and so we appreciate your willingness, james, to share your, I guess, expertise in order to help us get a better understanding of a very deep and sometimes opaque subject like this one, and I hope that we were able to maybe get you thinking about some things, and so maybe we can do it again someday and get more into the Coptic Gospels and whatnot. And so, anyway, thanks again, james, not. And so, anyway, thanks again, james, and for you, all of you out there, our next episode we are going to discuss, you know, some in further detail of the Mesopotamia, the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish, and we're going to delve more into how it may possibly have been to that original source material for, for the Hebrew Bible in the old Testament.

James: 1:49:00

Don't forget to get your alien talk. Swag everybody yeah.

Joe: 1:49:05

And from there we plan on continuing doing an episode which we hope to upload this on YouTube with some pictures to enhance what we're talking about. And we want to cover not only the Enuma Elish but also other manuscripts, the Ultra Hasas, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Code of Hammurabi and we think that these will be enjoyable episodes since we love studying the ancient world and learning about how the mysteries of the distant past relate to our modern day religious thinking. It is truly fascinating. So until next time, folks stay safe and stay curious.