Comment on A big reason why so many people are leaving the church by Sean Pitman.
You wrote:
The younger one is, the more susceptible they are to such teaching. That’s another reason why organizations target youth. Cigarette manufacturers prey on this vulnerability because, in contrast to your assertion, it’s easy to sell them “a bill of goods†without their knowing it.
We’re not talking about quantum physics here you know (and I have in fact taken several fairly advanced statistics courses as well as courses in evaluating experimental designs). We’re talking about the relatively basic ability to see the problem between a Church that claims that all living things on this planet were created in just six literal days by a loving God vs. mainstream scientists who claim that all living things evolved over hundreds of millions of years of time from a common ancestor via the brutal uncaring mechanism of random mutation and natural selection or “the survival of the fittest”.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to tell that there’s a problem here. Who are young people going to believe? A Church who tells them to ignore empirical evidence and “just have faith”? – or scientists who tell them to use their brains to rationally understand the world around them? Where not talking about a physical addiction here, like smoking. If that were true, kids who were confused early on could “grow out of it” when they become older and wiser adults. The problem, as you know, is that most never grow out of believing in evolution once they become convinced of it. And, those who ardently believe in evolution are not likely to join or come back to a Church that has a fundamental belief in a literal 6-day creation week…
Apologetics, by the way, is just as faith-based as any other spiritual enterprise.
Do you not know that science itself, as a collective enterprise, is heavily reliant upon apologetics? – convincing one’s peers with the use of evidence and arguments that they might find appealing and convincing? That’s what apologetics is all about. You seem to share Eddie’s notion that science deals with absolute truths or proof or “the facts”… but not with “faith”. That’s not true at all.
Science is impossible without a component of faith. Science requires one to make leaps of faith beyond that which can be absolutely known. It is for this reason that truly scientific theories are potentially wrong – potentially falsifiable. True scientists, by definition, must therefore always admit to the possibility of being wrong when any scientific theory is proposed. This is a far more humble position, in my opinion, compared to your more self-assured assertion that your exclusively faith-based position cannot be wrong, even in theory, since it cannot be subjected to any form of testing or empirical evaluation…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Professor Kent:
Rejection of the Seventh-day Sabbath because of a rejection of the clear reading of the Genesis account of origins is a rejection of the nature of inspiration of the Bible that Mrs. White (and the SDA Church) was trying to promote. Such a rejection completely changes the picture of God in one’s mind and the nature of the Bible as well as the Bible’s power to change one’s life and one’s world perspective. The Bible means something very different if it is viewed as a allegory vs. if it is viewed as literally true on those topics where the author(s) clearly intended to be taken as describing real historical events.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Professor Kent:
There are many different ways to “believe in the Bible” that are completely opposed to the type of belief or faith that Mrs. White was trying to promote. Many believe that the Bible is a book of good moral instruction, but has nothing of any real value to say about the physical world. Many believe that the Bible is a collection of man’s best wisdom over the centuries, but is not actually the Word of God.
What Mrs. White was talking about is that a belief in mainstream evolutionary theories destroys a belief in the Bible as the clear Word of God on every topic it touches upon – to include the topic of origins. The evolutionary perspective undermines faith in the character of God that Ellen White understood and which the SDA Church is trying to promote. It undermines faith in the reasonableness and rationality of God – suggesting that God is willing to “command men to observe the week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike his dealings with mortals, and is an impeachment of his wisdom.”
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Shane Hilde:
Exactly! Not even Abraham was asked to believe in the naked word of God devoid of empirical evidence that would appeal to the rational candid mind. God was not offended when Abraham asked for this evidence because without such evidence, Abraham would truly have been insane to simply follow voices in His head claiming to be the voice of God without any external empirical confirmation…
There are false spirits out there that will lie to us. These spirits must be tested. And, the only basis upon which to employ and interpret tests is our God-given human reasoning abilities.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.
Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).
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