Institute for Creation Research - Sep 12 - 6:00 am

0:00Let us pray. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1-1. Lord you are an exquisite artist and master craftsman. You spoke this world into existence by the power of your words. You separated the heavens and the earth and carved out the mountains and the seas. You designed a magnificent world for me. There are so many places to explore that reveal the splendor of your glory. Thank you for giving me life so I can enjoy the wonder of your creation. I marvel at the andricacy of your design and realize nothing is impossible for you. My problems are reduced to nothing in comparison to the majesty of your creation. I want to dance on the moonbeams and hug you. I love you Lord. Amen.

1:01Thank you for listening to today's daily prayer. For more inspiration and an incredible message from our feature pastor, stay tuned to Pray.com's Sunday Service. Hello everyone. Welcome to the creation podcast, the show where we discuss the science that confirms scripture I have with me today. ICR's president, Dr. Randy Galusa. Thank you so much for being here Dr. G. Thank you very much. We always love having you on the show. Thank you for stepping away from all your work to come sit down and have a conversation with me. I am really looking forward to it. Well I know that today is, we're going to talk about everybody's favorite topic. It's kind of a joke. It's actually a pretty dark topic but it's important. It's something that we need to discuss and that is eugenics.

2:02For my limited knowledge of the grand scheme of science, I know that eugenics was kind of a big deal in the last century or so. I know that it was a big deal in the west. I know that I've heard things about it in like World War II and around those times also. When you explained to me what eugenics is, well first you're really blessed in a way to actually know something about it at this day and age when I was your age and through high school and college, nobody ever talked about eugenics. It wasn't in American history classes. It wasn't in my high school classes and nobody even discussed. It was like a topic that had been completely buried or almost expunged from US history and just recently with a lot of the honesty about slavery in the United States and our kind of our shameful past in relationship to that, that people have brought up our shameful past

3:07in relationship to eugenics so that you actually know what the topic is. When I hadn't even heard about it really until just about a decade ago when I was on staff with ICR and started actually studying what it was and how it came about. And as you mentioned, it took off in Western civilization particularly led surprisingly, not by Germany but by Great Britain and the United States. In fact, it was really the United States which was the leading proponent of eugenics at the time. And so people are probably wondering what in the world is eugenics. Well it was a major movement that started in Great Britain out of evolutionary thinking by a cousin of Charles Darwin's whose name was Francis Galton. And it was the quest to improve humanity as the name implies. You meaning good, Genics meaning genes or good genes.

4:12It was trying to get good genes into humanity by selectively breeding the best of human stock and eliminating inferior people through abortion, through euthanasia for the older ones and through selective sterilization of people that were deemed less fit than others. Okay, so that's really horrible which it makes sense that we would kind of try to want to hide that from our history kind of unfortunately that we participated in as a country and Great Britain participated in as a country. But I gather that it didn't just come out of nowhere. It's not like all of a sudden we're like, well this is exactly how it's going to be. So where did this idea come from? Where did the roots of the eugenics movement begin? You're right. It didn't just pop up overnight.

5:13It was a, it was born in many ways from Darwinian thinking of Darwin's view of the world and Darwin ushered in a world view. And that world view was called selectionism. And if you read actually the last two pages in Darwin's most influential work which was on the origin of species, he lays out his world view. In fact he says that there's a grandeur to this view in life. And the grandeur of this view of life was that through the struggle to survive, through extinction of many inferior types of creatures over very long periods of time that led to the diversity of life on earth culminating in humanity as he saw it over that time. So through the struggle to survive and death and extinction, you end up with an upward trajectory to all of life on earth in humanity which was not a direct creation by God obviously,

6:20but a result of a long evolutionary process. And that world view which he says is very grand is called selectionism because Darwin invented the term and really the entire concept of natural selection. And so that's a very death driven process. Yes, correct. Oh correct. It's totally death driven process. Nobody can separate death from natural selection because Darwin based integrated actually. He integrated the whole idea of the struggle to survive from a British philosopher named Malthus who believed that in any generation there would be more people born than resources available for them and therefore they had to struggle for those resources and the weak ones would die out and would be eliminated leaving only the best. And Darwin incorporated this idea into his concept of natural selection and that's

7:21why it was so powerful in influencing the way people thought of the arrival of humanity and therefore then the betterment of humanity over that time. So it was a world view which was which was born by Darwinism and basically took hold in the social realm and actually fueled the social realm though to be accurate. Social Darwinism, even though it wouldn't have been called Darwinism, but that social type of thinking of competition and elimination of the weak pre-existed Darwin's concept of natural selection. He just really gave it a lot of credibility and scientific credibility. All right, well without digging too deep into eugenics itself, I think it would benefit us and the viewers and listeners to just kind of talk about the kinds of things that may

8:26have occurred during that time and so for anyone who doesn't want to hear about this, just be warned we're talking about eugenics. This is not going to be a happy subject but I think that it is important to talk about these things. So you said that it is the quest to improve humanity and so at least from my perspective, from being a creationist, I know that humanity is not getting better. At least biologically generation to generation, we have more mutations. There's sickness and death and sure we have a lot of medicine and technology gets better. How are they trying to improve, I guess, the genome, the survivability, the fittest of humanity? How did they try to do that? What were they doing? Well, they're trying to, in the really big picture, control the evolution of humanity.

9:30It was like human intervention in the evolution of humanity. In fact, the second international conference on eugenics basically defined eugenics as the self-directed control of human evolution. So they're trying to do that. Doing it instead of nature? Instead of nature doing it. Of course, yeah, instead of nature doing it, we're going to try to replicate what nature is doing and there's multiple facets to it. There was the view that modern medicine was a threat to human evolution. That because medicine could now intervene at earlier stages, it could save people and was saving people that normally would have died. It was saving them to the point where they would actually develop and go on to their reproductive years and then reproduce. It also was viewed as society as developing a tolerance for people who normally shouldn't

10:30reproduce. In this particular case, it would have been people who would have been considered to be mentally unfit that at other times would have been eliminated in some way and would not have been able to reproduce, but this care, welfare, humanity, and other interventions was allowing them to only live, but kind of like nurturing them along to where they could actually reproduce. And the fear was that they would then reproduce mentally unfit themselves. Another aspect of it is what would be called positive eugenics, where it's almost like what you would do with cattle. You take your best cows, you take your best bulls from your herd, you breed them together and you're selecting for positive traits in which you would try to breed into it. Which in a way is also kind of, even though it's called positive, it has this kind of CD side to it where you're like trying to pick who's the best and encouraging them to breed and certain societies.

11:34They didn't even take people who loved each other. They were just trying to select for the best genes. So it isn't fully positive. And then of course, then there's the negative eugenics, which was the part that really raised the biggest outcry and that was forced sterilizations, government mandated sterilizations of people who were deemed unfit. And this happened in the US? Oh, yes. Okay. Happened in the US, happened in Great Britain, and of course it happened in the Scandinavian company countries as well. Germany happened all over Western society. In many ways led by the United States abortion, even before there was a Roe v. Wade, there was abortion in this country and then Euthanasia, which all of these haven't really left society by any means. And in fact, are even increasing today. So I have something written down here on my notes and it said that you mentioned medicine

12:37was kind of ruining the process of natural selection. I have here that it's like civilization and its entirety is ruined the process of natural selection and eugenics must replace it. To me, that seems like society and civilization is what makes us human in the first place. Like that doesn't ruin anything. That is us. I mean, right? Right. That's what makes us civilized. That's what makes us different than animals. Right. Is the fact that all of us were created in the image of God and we have this sense, almost this innate sense of the value of other human beings. Of course, your conscience can be overridden. It can be poisoned to where you no longer see that. But I think you're referring to a quote. I'll just read it because it is so valuable. It's from a man named Karl Pearson. A Karl Pearson, I mean, you just give a little bit of background on him. Karl Pearson was a British bio statistician.

13:40And in many ways, he did a lot of good things. When I was at Harvard getting my masters in public health and I was taking courses in bio stats, I used many equations by Karl Pearson. In fact, they're just called Pearson equations in many ways. And I was unaware of this other side of him that he was such an advocate back at the turn of the last century for eugenics. I was always thinking was Francis Colton, who was the cousin of Charles Darwin. But Pearson in many ways was a leader of this movement and influenced in the United States as well. And this was an interesting quote that he had. And he actually had two. I have two, one from 1920s and one from 1912. Long time ago. Long time ago. Long time ago. And I read the 1921 first because it kind of gives an overview. By this time, he had developed his thoughts a little bit better about this. And then I'll just pick right up and read the 1912 one, which he read to a bunch of medical

14:42doctors at a medical society. And I think they'll just give us some things to discuss. Yeah. For Pearson said quote, in my mind, in an growing number of other minds, civilization will end unless civilization can find a method of doing for itself, what natural selection. If you show, if you print this quote for the people on the screen, you'll see it's capital and capital S did for man during his ascent, ensuring that he shall breed only from his best. The study of how that is possible forms the subject matter of what we now term the science of eugenics. We have to replace the ruthless action of natural selection by reason conduct of civilized man. That's gross. It's like an oxymoron. It's one of these perversions that you almost sense there's this evil influence in it because

15:45it's taking what what normally would be seen as good and turning it completely on its head. The reason conduct of civilized man has to be replaced with this ruthless action of natural selection, which brought us there. And earlier he had said to a medical society meeting in 1912, and it's really quite a long quote, but we have a shortened version of it. He says, nevertheless, medical science has to face the fact that the upward progress of man in the past has been largely controlled by stringent Darwinian selection. Just pause right there. What he's talking about is death is that people had died in his view of how man got here. And that's how we got better. That's how we got better. In fact, that's the only way you get better is by one stepping on the corpse of the other and advancing that away. He adds, we shall gain nothing for racial efficiency by neglecting the central fact of human development.

16:48Now if there be a fairly stringent selection of the weaker individuals by the mortality of infancy and childhood, what will happen? And he's asking the doctors this, what will happen if by increased medical skill and by increased state, increased state support and private charity, we enable the weaklings to survive and to propagate their kind. Why undoubtedly we shall have a weaker race. But we can show from isolated instances that in many ways medical science has led to survival of the unfit. That goes back to what you said earlier about medicine as a problem in this regard. All right. He saw that as a problem and he said this quote goes on. He says these physicians later on. Now if you take natural selection as your world view and I'm paraphrasing him here, but that's what he says to them, then you must put into practice, medical doctors.

17:55You must put into practice that you believe in natural selection. What he's saying then is what? You have to choose between life and death for these people. That's right. Yeah. Wow. It's really scummy. It is scummy. So people who have put their trust in medical doctors for their well-being and care can't trust them because these medical doctors are not their patients' advocates. They're the advocates for humanity. They're the advocates for human evolution. And that's what he's calling on them to be. As a medical doctor, how does that make you feel? It makes me feel like a traitor. It would make me feel like a complete traitor to my patients on that where if anybody is going to be their advocate, if anybody is going to stand up for their patient, and that's what my job was as a medical doctor to fight for them, to argue for them, to do everything

18:56I can to get the resources they need to get better, not just apply medical skills. But to basically be in their corner with them. And that's what real medical doctors are supposed to do is to be on their patient's side. Then now I have a divided interest. And I am supposedly put the best interest of humanity and my worldview of natural selection into effect and essence, not do my best for them or worse, do things to hasten their demise. Wow. Okay. So we know that this is really gross. Eugenics is immoral, distasteful, but it's not at least to the extent that it was. It's not in practice to that extent anymore. I mean, we're not, we don't have like marriage registries or anything like that for like choosing

19:56a fit mate, at least as far as I know. So it's fallen out of practice to an extent, would you agree? Oh, yes, but we can't really gloss over how extensive it was in this country. Most people don't realize that the United States was the leader in this. And it's fallen out of practice. But what I didn't realize was that in the United States, 31 states, 31 states had passed forced sterilization laws. And leaders in the United States of doing it were Virginia and Indiana. And the laws of these states were actually taken by the Nazis, the Nazi German government. And they were used as the basis for them developing their laws. And most people don't realize this. What a, what a, what a, that's really uncomfortable.

20:58I know. I think that it, we think it was the Nazis who were the leaders of this, but it wasn't. And in fact, they took the law in Virginia and they used that as the basis for developing their laws. And 31 states had developed forced sterilization laws. And over 70,000 American citizens were forcibly sterilized during that period of time against their will. So much so that there was a major Supreme Court decision referred to quite often called Buck versus Bell. Buck versus Bell. And it was, I'll just summarize it very quickly. A woman did not want to be forcibly sterilized. And she was deemed to be mentally unfit. And her mother was deemed to be mentally unfit as well. And she fought the forced sterilization and went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote the major decision.

22:01And he basically said, and I'm paraphrasing again, but I'm pretty accurate. He said, you know, we call on the best citizens of the United States to lay down their lives in wars. And therefore, it's not too much to ask other people to be forcibly sterilized, or he said, the cutting of the fallopian tubes. There's a minor sacrifice in comparison to laying down your life for the betterment of society. Therefore, the order is put into effect. And the order was that she was sterilized. And as it turns out, she never was a mental defective at all. She was quite normal. And that went on for quite some time. And as you mentioned, the forced sterilizations began to fall out of favor. But they didn't really go away until 1973 when- Which is not that long ago. Yes.

23:01I know. That's what's quite shocking is it went all the way up until the 1970s. By this time, I was 14 years old and wasn't completely unaware of any of this happening when three young girls, African Americans in Alabama, were taken to a family planning clinic. And the oldest was 16 years old. And she had a forced IUD inserted in her two sisters. They were called the RELF sisters, R-E-L-F, the RELF sisters. Fourteen years old and twelve years old were forcibly sterilized at that age. And they were as far as we know the last four sterilizations in the United States. But we can't forget this all goes back to this mentality of survival of the fittest.

24:02Right. That it was natural selection which brought us to the place we are as humans and we are undoing the effects of selection. Right. That brings me to I have here and now it says defenders of Darwinian thought they're like, oh, well, this was just a misapplication of Darwinism. This wasn't like Darwin didn't intend this. But like you you read those quotes. I mean, you it looks like this is just a consequence of that natural that selectionist thinking mindset. Yes. It's a consequence of it and it is the outworking of it completely. And you know, a lot of times we talk about it, we say there's the Darwinian eugenics connection or the evolution eugenics connection. And in many ways we're just soft peddling it because so many of us still want to hold

25:02on to the selectionist worldview. We don't want to tie it right back to where Carl Pearson and Francis Galton tied it to which is the struggle to survive and one lineage dominating over another. And as you mentioned, it's a consequence. But selectionism also gave it a sense that it was normal. Scientific. Scientifically. And natural. You know, we look in the natural realm and we see some organisms as dominant and some as submissive. And and therefore, oh, selection brought that dominance about and selection brought that submissiveness about. Therefore it should be normal in humanity as well. And we see differences in certain segments of population, particularly in the United States and Western country at that time, minorities were in economically inferior positions

26:05to white people in Western society. And selectionism gave the idea, well, that was just natural and that was just normal. That selection only leads to fitter people and survival of the fittest, but it leads to this type of segregation. And it's not that it's abnormal, but it's actually normal. So across the board in many ways, selection is thinking really grips a mindset leading to these perverse outcomes. Wow. Okay. We're going to continue this conversation in just a second, but I'm going to interject. This is related, but I just this is our random science question of the day. Are you ready? Okay. All right. Here it is. Why, in your opinion, do you think Darwinian thought had such a stranglehold? Why did it grip society the way that it did and still does?

27:07What about it made it so appealing? What about it made it so just like, yeah, like made everybody go, okay, yeah, this is it. This is how we're going to run the world from now on. Like what about it made it so appealing to everyone? Well, that's a great question. In many ways, it's almost like the perfect storm. You've heard of that movie. Yeah, everything lines up. Yeah, George Cleaning was in it and he evidently wasn't the fittest in the movie. But the perfect storm is where so many things line up to lead to a disaster. In the military, we call it the Swiss cheese effect, where you have to get all of the holes to line up just the right way, all these different conditions and then disaster strikes. Eliminate any one of those and you kind of prevent the disaster from happening. And in society, there was a lot of things lining up.

28:10One, higher criticism of the Bible had taken hold of a lot of thinking. So people were beginning to doubt the Bible anyway. And they were questioning the historicity of the scriptures in areas that were not even related to science. They were questioning the historical accounts and genesis and all over. So there was a questioning of the authority of the scriptures bank. That's like one whole right there. There's this, there's this loss in the authority of scriptures. So the industrial revolution was beginning to take off in the 1860s and all the way through the 1890s and early 1900s. And there was this element of social Darwinism, even though it wasn't called at that time the social idea of Darwinism, but there was this idea where you dominate over the weaker. One industry, if it can, can eliminate the competition, become a monopoly and just become dominant altogether.

29:10And that was almost looked up to and respected in some ways as the way of the world. Even before Darwin was even pushing this. So you had this kind of ruthlessness which was taking hold in society as well. There's like another line of the search. Darwinism light. Light, which preceded Darwin's thinking. In fact, Darwin borrowed ideas from that and incorporated them into his selectionist mindset. And that in the third is the rise of science. In the prestige of science. And science can give things credibility. A credibility of knowledge which began to rival the credibility which religious figures used to have when they would speak. And they would, and people took that as the truth. Now science would speak. In other words, it's like believe the science. I'll be the science. Have you heard that recently? Or science gives things a lot of credibility.

30:12Bing, there's another whole. So the view of the Bible, the industrial revolution, the rise of the authority of science. And then Darwin's thinking got the stamp of science and scientific credibility. So people were just like, whoa, this is exactly what we have been waiting for to free us from the shackles of religious thinking all along. And he provides a way to explain the design of life. He provides a way to explain the diversity of life, which it doesn't refer to a direct creation by God. And voila, we now have an explanation for how we got here that seems to make sense and has scientific authority and seems to go with the ways of the world. And we're not responsible to a creator. And we're not responsible to a creator. And all of those things were lining up in my opinion. Yeah. But that's a very well thought out opinion to lead to the acceptance of Darwinian thinking.

31:13OK. Well, thank you very much. That's great. I mean, it's not great that it happened, but it kind of makes sense that all those pieces lined up at the exact right time. And then it just took hold. Because always kind of wondered, you know, I mean. What about him? Because you read it and it's, you read the origin of species. And it's, you know, there's some interesting ideas, but it's not any real different than like there were a lot of other thought processes going on at the time. Why did that one take hold? So I think, yeah, that's, that's a great, just summary of why it took off. Yeah, it does. Well, thank you. So we'll get back to the topic at hand. Which is related, I think, because we're now going to talk about why, why eugenics kind of took hold in the US, why it held the US and Western culture and it's grit for so long. So eugenics is immoral.

32:16We know that it's immoral. We can just see that and feel that in our conscience. We know that from the get go. But why and how is it so accepted in its time? Well, that actually made almost like a playbook for how almost any scientific idea becomes accepted today and becomes dominant because you're right. You know, the whole idea of forcibly sterilizing a person, that's just, that just kind of goes against our conscience and as Americans and went against this whole idea of freedom. Right. Did you get the idea that this was something good, that this is something that we ought to do? Well, that goes back to the authority of science in many ways and you just didn't have eugenics just pop onto the scene. As Pearson said, we call it the science of eugenics. And so it was built up as a major scientific work and there were credible, respectable peer

33:20reviewed journals that were established, two leading ones that were established in the United States. And they were set up by eugenicists. They were peer reviewed by other eugenicists. But one something gets published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. It takes on a level of credibility, which is very hard to argue against in a lot of other ways. So it's like Harvard publishes a peer reviewed study on such and such and it goes to Congress. And then people are going to listen to that and then someone wants to criticize it. The first thing they're going to say is, well, do you have any scientifically peer reviewed studies on your own? And the answer is no, we don't have them. And part of the reason why you don't have them is because you don't have your own journals and two critical studies that you might want published in the journals never pass peer review because they're controlled by the eugenicists.

34:22Second, you end up with major conferences that are established international conferences on eugenics and people get invited to be keynote speakers. And then they take on an air of authority. And then those people get established as department heads or chairman of major universities. And that gives them even more authority. So now you have Dr. So-and-so who is the chair of the department of such and such at this major leading university says, and that makes it hard to argue with as well in all of those areas. So you have basically the stamp of approval of science by establishing the major leaders in control of the major universities running the major peer reviewed publications. And all dissenting opinion is effectively squashed. Well, to me that correct me if I'm wrong, to me that just sounds like, hey, we want to

35:24get this idea promoted. We're going to start a club and we're going to invite all of our friends who also believe this idea. And then we're going to make a big deal about it. We're going to make some magazines. We're going to have some big conferences. And only our friends and people who believe like us can join this club. And if you're not a part of this club, you're out. You have no credibility whatsoever. I mean, that's what it sounds like. They're manipulating everything. Exactly. Okay. That's that became, as I said, like a playbook. Once and what's interesting is nobody even thinks about the fact that eugenics had all of this scientific prestige behind it. It fell out of favor primarily because I had a lot of racial overtones to it. And it was gone. But if you go back in time, it had as much scientific, the scientific stamp of approval behind

36:26it as evolutionary thinking does today. Who control the major journals, who control the major research institute, who influence Congress, who help influence laws and states and other things. The universities. And universities. And the climate change debate is run the same way. And I'm not even taking a stance on global warming one way or the other. I'm just saying the debate is controlled in the exact same way. And it goes back to even at the time, if you go back then, smoking. 9 out of 10 doctors. 9 out of 10 doctors. This is that. It does this, even though a lot of people knew of smoking. And then there was a major industry, which might asbestos. And people were beginning to wonder, is there a connection between asbestos exposure and lung disease? And all the major researchers came out on the side of the asbestos mining companies. Because all the money was.

37:26That's where the money was. And you had the peer reviewed studies. You had everything else which squashed for a long time, dissenting views that there may be a linkage between asbestos exposure and lung disease. So I could point to multiple places where the science was totally wrong and where people are telling us today to trust the science or follow the science are completely ignorant of in many ways the abysmal track record of consensus science and trying to persuade people's thinking. And there's just and there's another area. There was a failure on the part of the church. People in the church knew for sterilization was wrong. And there was a major silence in the part of the Protestant church, particularly where pastors and other leaders basically caved into the scientists and either endorsed what

38:34they were saying from their pulpits or were completely silent about it. So a major segment of the moral voice in society was completely blunted. It was absent. In fact, the from the religious side, the moral voice came against eugenics from the Roman Catholic church which became the major voice pushing back against it. Well good. Good. That's good. Well, it's good that someone was speaking out against it. It's not good that the Protestants did not. To me, that sounds very similar to the situation that we're facing today with churches and evolution of like, we don't want to talk about it or like it's an iffy issue. We'll just be quiet because we don't want to offend anybody. Right. And you know, the scientists tell us and who wants to look scientifically ignorant. Right. So it's there's so many parallels to the situation the church is facing today with

39:37creation evolution and the church will be facing and it's coming down on us like a freight train with the LGBTQ plus community as well because they are going to get the stamp of approval from science. They are looking for the studies. They're looking for studies that people are quote, born this way, act this way. All these other kind of things. They want the stamp of approval of science as well because you can't argue with science. That's right. Well, at least that's that's the general mindset. So in essence, a small, vocal minority controls the pure, the peer review procedures, they muffled any sort of criticism and then they, they make their own experts, the experts talk and then they just monopolize. I guess it comes to authority, the authority of science. That's right. Okay. That's kind of scary. It is. Yeah. And it makes me really uncomfortable.

40:38But I want to kind of tail in this with, so you said that eugenics fell out of favor due to racial overtones. Can you give us a little bit of just a small snippet about that and why that's important? Well, yes, because a lot of the people who were considered to be unfit were racial minorities and they suffered and this is a good use of the word disproportionate, the effects of eugenics policies in the United States, not just minorities, but they were the major thrust of many of these forced sterilizations and other things. And for, for at least one good reason and that was a fact that it was very racist in its applications, it started to fall away and then the whole idea of forcing someone to be sterilized became more and more morally repugnant and then physicians and medical

41:39doctors are seeing that this is just a misapplication of what they should be doing. It went away. In a way, it's a shame that that is the only reason why it fell out of favor when we should actually be seeing that there was no scientific justification for it at all. And number two, we're not pinpointing the real problem, which was Darwin's selectionist world view, which led to survival of the fittest. Why is that a problem? I guess I shouldn't be asking you the question, you're supposed to be asking me. Why, why, no, that is a problem. Like it, word, it's just a symptom. It's a symptom of a greater issue. It is and it doesn't go away because in medicine, if you don't make the correct diagnosis of the problem, then you won't treat it correctly. So if you're diagnosing the problem as racism and you're not diagnosing the problem as Darwin's

42:43selectionism, then you're not treating the right thing. And then selectionism doesn't really leave society. It hasn't evaporated from the church at all. And it just manifests itself in other ways through sociobiology or through evolutionary psychology, which ends up with other manifestations where eugenics move it just morphed into the abortion. Yeah. The abortion is still alive and well. It's a huge issue. That's right. And even though we've gotten rid of some of the horrible aspects of the eugenics movement, I mean, abortion is horrible. It is, you know, and it's still here. It's still here with us today. Exactly. And it's still practiced in many ways like eugenics. And this is another thing which people really need to consider. There's another thing that they need to think about.

43:43You end up with like coerced abortions. You know, you want to people want to say, well, these are voluntary abortions. Well, they're not necessarily always voluntary. Now, let me explain what I mean by coerced. So a couple goes in and they want genetic testing on their pre-born child. And let's say the genetic testing comes back and it indicates there's going to be some kind of problem or deformity or whatever it is. You as a couple have to rely on unbiased counsel from somebody. But if you and if you had unbiased counsel, then you could make an informed decision. It's called informed consent. But let's say you came into me and I was a biased physician. And I give you biased counsel because I have bigoted ideas against someone with Down syndrome.

44:43And I don't value what they bring to society. All I see is the cost to society of a person with Down syndrome on that because I have this who kind of warp to view of humanity, warp view of the value of people and all of this. And I give you biased counsel. And I give you skewed counsel about all the costs and to society and the cost to you as a couple cost to you as a family. You can twist it anyway. I can twist it anywhere I want. You can twist it anywhere you want in that situation. Exactly. And how this person will suffer and therefore in many ways it would be better off if they were never born. Right. I actually bit of a personal touch for those of you listening and doing, you may get a little more story about trade than you want. That was the story of my mom was they recommended her to abort me in the early 90s. They said that I had lots of issues and I was born.

45:45I was a little premature. I don't have any major issues that I know of. But she was like absolutely not. This child's made in the image of God, you know, and if he's got issues, he's got issues. But even in the 90s they were right. They recommended that. That's right. Exactly. And that is the creep of selectionist thinking which ends up devaluing all the way going back all the way to eugenics human beings. We're human beings. We're made in the image of God. There's, we're not animals. They're treating us like animals, you know, almost. And it just makes me, I think about some of the language that's used in the eugenics movement. It's just very uncomfortable. But I'm glad that we talked about it. Thank you for talking about it with me. Do you have any closing thoughts before we draw this to a close?

46:45Sure. One, just as a follow-up for couples, you need to find good counselors. You know, you'll get good doctors and there's value of prenatal testing and there's value of prenatal care and all those things. But you need to find doctors you can trust too. You need to rely on the Bible. Yes. And what the Bible tells you about that child that the Lord allowed you to conceive and go forward on that. If you don't get, if you don't rely on the Bible, you will not have real informed consent. And you rely on this biased information. And then three, even as creationists, we need to watch the creep of selection is thinking even into our mindset. So often I will hear someone say like, well, natural selection is just a conservative process. It's not a constructive process. And what they, and I say, well, explain what you mean by that.

47:47Well, let's say, natural selection is basically a God ordained process to help people live in a fallen world where nature eliminates the weak and eliminates those defective genes from the population. And therefore, it really preserves and conserves the population, the genetic health of the population as a whole for the benefit of everybody else. And we've even said those kinds of things in the past. And that just shows how easily your thinking can be swayed by selection as thinking where we end up in essence, say God ordained a process to weed out the unfit for the benefit of the others. And we don't even realize what we're saying, but we're saying God is a eugenicist. Yeah, that's my God is not a eugenicist. You know, right? Right. So, wow. So that's a, we need to be careful and go back to the Bible and our thinking and be suspicious

48:52when the world tries to bring to our mind and put into our mind their worldly thinking. Well, thank you so much. We'll actually, we'll link in this video. You have three episodes of our other podcast creation.live where you sit in with some other ICR scientists and you talk about some of the issues with Darwinian selection and why that's a big deal. So we'll link to those so that others can watch and listen to those. I feel like that's a very good full understanding of why that's a problem. So, but thank you so much for being here, Dr. G. Yeah. And thank you to all of our listeners and viewers. We really appreciate you tuning in for this and listening to this. Please make sure to like, subscribe and share. We know that this can be a little bit of an uncomfortable topic, but it's important to talk about and just as a reminder, this is not just a misapplication of Darwinian selectionism. This is a consequence. This is where Darwinian selectionism leads you just as an idea, as a world view.

49:57It's very dangerous. So we just encourage you to share that with your friends and we encourage you to examine your own thought processes to see if selectionism has crept in there in any way. So for now, we'll see you next time on the Creation Podcast. The podcast, The Bible in a Year with Jack Graham, is a moving and inspiring biblical audio experience that will help you master wisdom from the world's greatest book. In each episode, you'll learn to apply biblical principles to everyday life. Each cinematic episode is a journey through the Bible's most profound stories that will strengthen your appreciation of the word and inspire you to keep learning. Listen to the Bible in a year with Jack Graham on the I Heart Radio App or wherever you get your podcasts.