I'm linking to it but not embedding it. It's useful if you can endure an hour or so of boredom to hear some contemporary Christian nationalist thought. It's theological and Biblical hermeneutical value is, well, very low.
That entire podcast elaborates simplistic fundamentalist anti-evolution and anti-abortion arguments.
But they do try to sound like they read books. Miller says that "what it means to be human thousands or millions of years ago in that framework [evolution] or what it means to be human a thousand years from now is something completely different." (9:20ff in the video)
This is one of many places in this podcast where it would be good for your nonsense detector to start beeping.
The species Homo sapiens, of which modern humans are the only surviving branch, emerged around 315,000 years ago according to current findings. That would be 685,000 years later than one million years ago, and the 315,000 number is the old end of the time range, the more recent one being a piddly 30,000 years ago. (Russell Howard Tuttle, The emergence of Homo sapiens Britannica Online 07/22/2021)
Of course, all this is based on paleontology and biology and carbon dating and other science-y stuff like that, so Dr. Miller may not recognized all that as valid.
He also uses a common fundamentalist trope claiming that Darwinian evolutionary theory is responsible for racism, because only assuming the Adam and Eve story as literally true allows us to say that all humans are somehow equal. Not that Christian nationalists actually believe or behave like they think everyone is equal. But that's because they disapprove of the "bad choices" in life that they perceived non-white people to be making all the time on a large scale.
In fact, the main theme of the podcast actually focuses on that an other elaboration on the narrative that white racism wasn't really all that bad, but anyway it was all the fault of Mean Libruls and them thar scientists they love so much. Because they have to believe in "Darwinism" and that means they have to advocate eugenics - at least as JR Miller argues it.
As a description of the historical development of racism, any relation of their presentation to the actual history is largely incidental.
In case there is something that might be gained by the rhetoric, I'll note the following.
- Both Miller and Childers refer to the concept of imago dei, presumably to sound deep and mysterious because it's Latin. (Wait, isn't it a bit "Catholic" for them to be using Latin? But Miller is cool enough to use the Hebrew term, betselem elohim.) Imago dei is a common theological term referring the notion that humans were created in the image of God.
- Miller talks about the "Darwinian world view," whatever that may be. It's typical for fundamentalists to use that kind of framing to imply that Darwin's scientific theory of biological evolution by natural selection is something comparable to a religion or a sweeping ideology or philosophy.
- It tends to get more hardcore as it goes on. After 26:00, Miller argues/implies that Mean Libruls and "modern," progressive Christians - "progressive" is a dirty word in their world - want to use eugenics to get rid of poor people. (This is nonsense, but it's a stock Christian Right talking point.)
- Miller tosses in miracles in just before that. Because, why not?
- Of course, they get into abortion, which is part of their key ideology, which is deeply opposed to women's rights
- Hitler got his Nazi ideas from Darwin, or something like that. Somehow.
- Miller is broad-minded: He thinks both "Young Earth Creationists" and "Old Earth Creationists" have valuable things to say. He wouldn't want to hurt either of their feelings, I guess.
To close: Don't take any factual or historical claims in that podcast as accurate without verifying it from a good source. But as fundamentalist theology goes, this
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