Prophetic Dreams: Evidence of an Intervening God - SC2539

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Is there such a thing as an intervening God? Joining me to discuss part three of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again, Dr. John. SPEAKER 2 Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution Impossible: 12 Reasons why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. And we have been discussing this book as part of this series and in particular chapter 13 this time. And we've been talking about evidence for supernatural intervention in human life and experience. And last time we talked about angels and voices. Before that we talked about some biblical evidence. And this time there's the evidence of premonitions and dreams. We're going to discuss this. And tell me a little bit more about premonitions, what they are and what link they may have to some supernatural sort of influence. SPEAKER 3 Right. SPEAKER 2 So a premonition is generally a feeling that people have, that something is going to happen in the future, usually warning of some sort of danger or bad thing that seems to be the strongest thing. So it's a really strong impression. SPEAKER 3 That. SPEAKER 2 Something is going to happen and maybe you shouldn't go there or whatever this is. But also there have been premonitions of given people, sometimes people call them intuition, have given people ideas in science and this sort of thing as well, has also been recorded. So I guess they're thoughts that come to our mind. Generally, a premonition is generally associated in terms of a warning. And also, there are certain people that I've talked to and I've read about in research have described certain dreams that are very different from a normal dream. In that, like Nebuchadnezzar's dream that we spoke about earlier, it stands as if it's some sort of special dream in some way. It's meant to warn you of something or explain something to you. SPEAKER 1 Right, that's interesting and certainly because many dreams occur and we tell they just, they're just a whole mixed mash of confused thoughts and they don't mean anything, don't they? So when you have one that stands out, it really can stick in the mind, can't it? SPEAKER 2 And I guess just to say something there in terms of premonitions, when we talk about premonitions that are coming true, One of the arguments that are sometimes used is, well, look, people are going to dream whatever the calculation is, you know, a million dreams in their life. The probability of something happening to line up is there. And so I did some research into this as well. And what we call, what I would refer to as premonitions is an area where there is something definite about this dream. Often the dream is repeated. Often the dream has some specific detail in there. There's a clue, there's some detail in there that's quite specific. And it's almost as if, yes, the dream is giving you a message in some way. And that's what distinguishes it from just other dreams. SPEAKER 1 Interesting. Yeah, and then obviously if it's got a specific detail and then something happens that matches that detail, that's when people can see the significance of that occurrence. SPEAKER 3 Yeah. SPEAKER 1 So, some real-life examples of that. I mean, in the story, we talked about Daniel back in the first part of this session. It was a dream, and it had that specific detail element and then an application. What about some more modern-day things that have happened, some stories or something? SPEAKER 2 Yes, yes. So, I was very interested in this, and dreams have actually played a role in a number of, you know, discoveries. So, for example, the Bapu oil fields in Arabia were discovered as a result of a geologist having a particular dream that they'd been drilling for ages, not finding anything. They'd run out of money pretty well. And he had this dream to go and drill in this particular place. And that's where they found oil. SPEAKER 3 Wow. SPEAKER 2 Mendeloff, with the periodic table, had the layout talks about it and revealed to him in a dream to order the elements in this particular way. Dr. Banting that discovered insulin had this dream. They were trying to do research and understand diabetes and how it could be prevented and so forth. And he had this particular dream, I think, was to go and take a horse's pancreas or something like that and treat it in some way. I forget the detail now. So there's been a number of quite fascinating scientific discoveries that have resulted as a result of people having dreams and then acting on those dreams. But there's also, of course, the examples of premonitions in personal life. And researchers have looked at this. People studying psychology and so forth have looked at particular premonitions. There are a lot of corroborated premonitions, for example, for the Titanic, sinking of the Titanic. And there was actually a book written back in the 1890s called the Wreck of the Titan, which actually describes the very scenario that happened to the Titanic. I was fascinated by this. I actually bought a copy of the book and read it and went through. And again, when you think of the number of ships that hit icebergs is actually quite rare, quite small, but then to actually sink as well and the conditions and so forth. So it was, you know, it's quite an interesting thing to happen. So if you want to try and explain it in terms in terms of probability and this sort of thing. But I think some of the spectacular dream research that we have, well, I mean, there's a lot of people that have reported premonitions and warnings. Abraham Lincoln, for example, confided in friends that he'd seen his body lying in state, and a couple of days later he was assassinated by Booth. Mark Twain had this very vivid dream of his brother being laid in a steel coffin and a lady coming in and putting red roses on the coffin. And a little while later, or about six months later, his brother was killed in a big steamboat explosion. I think it was the Philadelphia blew up. His brother was working on the boat. was severely burned, but lived for quite a long time afterwards. And he, about 40 days afterwards, and the young women of the town, who was a young man at the time who died, were so impressed with this young man's struggle to hang on but didn't make it that they put in and bought an iron coffin. And when Mark Twain arrived down there to visit his brother, he went into the room where it was in a hall, the coffin, and it had white flowers on it. But just as he was there, a lady came in and put red roses on it. SPEAKER 1 Interesting. SPEAKER 2 So we had one similar situation in that there were twins working at the research labs where I was at the time. And one of those told me a dream that he had had where. SPEAKER 3 He. SPEAKER 2 Had this really vivid dream. He said it was a really vivid dream. where he saw himself walking next to his brother, who was Stephen, who was on a stretcher and was being wheeled out past the school auditorium. And just as they walked past the school auditorium, he looked in through the windows and he saw there was a gym class on and there was a girl that he knew there who saw him and waved. And again, about six months later, in a metalwork class, there was an accident and Stephen accidentally fell over and hit his head against a piece of steel machine who was badly concussed. The ambulance was called. Paul was in the same class, being a twin, stayed with his brother and was as he was walking out next to the stretcher, he said, this is I've seen this before. and just then he looked around and realized they were walking past the auditorium and as he looked in there was the girl who smiled and waved. Now another story is told by another friend of mine who his wife had gone to visit her sister west of towns. They were living in towns for his wife lived several hours drive away in a country town sorry, his wife's sister and one day she decided to do a trip out there, visit her sister and her husband. And anyway, she hadn't returned that evening. And my friend rang his brother-in-law to say, you know, has Marie left yet? And he said, yeah, she left hours ago. And Mike, before then, on three successive nights, had had this dream where he saw his wife driving the car up to this corner, and then the car just disappeared and the dream stopped. But he was able to describe the corner on the road, and he said it had a really strong smell of onion grass. SPEAKER 1 Oh, wow. SPEAKER 2 And my, the brother-in-law said, I know where that corner is. From your description. And I can't remember the actual, they called an ambulance and they drove out there. Anyway, they found that Marie's car had gone off the road and the road was banked the opposite way, and she'd rolled over the bank and was actually out of sight. but she was trapped in the car jammed with her head jammed between her chest and the steering wheel. And Mike said that the ambulance told if they hadn't got there within another half hour, she would have been dead. So that was a story where a dream saved a life specifically. And of course, a lot of premonitions, say with the Titanic, stopped people canceled and decided not to go. And this, this sort of thing. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 So. It's fascinating what they mean, but I think the bottom line in all this is that to me, it's powerful evidence that there's another mind, a supernatural mind, that can connect with us that sees the future. And this is something that because events are random, you can't predict that. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is fascinating. And of course, there are other stories as well, and I know you've got other stories in your chapter. the evidence can just keep stacking up. SPEAKER 3 But. SPEAKER 1 What is the point in all of this in relation to science? Of course, we've been talking about science and evolution and how there's evidence that show that evolution is not the most valid explanation. So I guess in all of this, with the idea of the supernatural, you know, are there things that science cannot actually explain with its naturalistic approach? And what does that look like? SPEAKER 3 Yes. SPEAKER 2 And I think the mind is one of these areas. Evolution can't really explain the origin of consciousness. SPEAKER 3 True. SPEAKER 2 Because evolution talks about chemical mutations. These are atoms and molecules with their electric fields and so forth. But the mind is non-material. Yes. And I find it quite fascinating, and I mentioned this at the at the end of chapter 13, that Sir John Eccles, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1963, at one of his talks where people were looking about this whole area of what people call the paranormal or the supernatural. He said, the most paranormal thing in all is how I can move my little finger When I do so, it will. The mind is the problem to explain. And I think this links us together that there seems to be evidence of a powerful, supernatural creator mind that can also influence this world and the material things in this world. We didn't mention, for example, the story in Daniel of the writing on the wall, where suddenly, just before Babylon was conquered. The night that Babylon was surrounded by the Medo-Persian army, a hand appeared and wrote in the plaster wall while they were having the banquet. And Daniel was called in to interpret what the words meant. And he said, it means that you've been found in the balance and weighed in the balance and found wanting, and your kingdom will be taken tonight. and that night he was saying, but all those people saw this hand, just a hand, no wrist, no arm, just a finger writing on the wall. And of course, that's where we get the saying, the writing's on the wall, meaning it's gonna happen. That's the end of it. SPEAKER 1 It's finished. SPEAKER 2 And so this evidence for a supernatural mind who can intervene is overwhelming because when we look at the bottom line, We can't explain the origin of the universe. We can't explain the origin of life. We can't explain the origin of the laws of physics and chemistry. We can't explain where the information came from that encodes DNA, that it makes these amazingly complex biochemical systems that we know as life. But the Bible does. And it says that there is a supernatural mind who is an intervening, all powerful God. SPEAKER 1 Powerful, very fascinating and very valuable to consider that other dimension and how it relates to our perspective on these questions of science and origins and evolution and everything. So thank you so much for sharing from your research and the stories. And we look forward to Discussing a little bit more next time, where we'll summarize this whole discussion with an overview of 12 evidence-based reasons for rejecting evolution. So be sure to join us for that.